The Savage in Judaism: Anthropology of Israelite Religion

and Ancient Judaism (review)

William G. Dever

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Volume 9, Number

4, Summer 1991, pp. 135-137 (Review)

Published by Purdue University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.1991.0104

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/470971/summary

Access provided by Australian National University (12 Jul 2018 15:27 GMT)
Volume 9, No.4 Summer1991 135

torical chronology of Israel and Judah, and Babylonian/Jewish month

names. With bibliographies of ancient and modern sources and three indices,
this book is a highly serviceable reference work for biblical and related his-
torical chronologies.
Minor flaws. There is one glaring typo in the book: in the first table of
chronological data (Gen. 5-11) on p. 7, the columns of figures culled from
the LXX and SP are reversed (they are correctly presented in the tables on
pp. 12, 19f., 45, and Appendix A). The omission of both captions for the
many tables of figures scattered throughout the text and of a list of these ta-
bles limits somewhat the reader's ease of access to this information.
Jeremy Hughes' book, in my opinion, represents an outstanding addi-
tion to the rather esoteric branch of biblical studies devoted to chronology.
While I hesitate to call any secondary work on the Bible indispensible, I
know of no other recent study on biblical chronology in any language that I
would prefer to have in my personal library.
Steven W. Holloway
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Chicago

The Savage in Judaism: Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Ju-

daism, by Howard Eilberg-Schwartz. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990.289 pp. $35.00 (c); $17.95 (p).

The author, now a professor of religious studies at Temple University,

acknowledges that this revolutionary book had its genesis in his disillusion-
ment, while a rabbinical student, with previous models for understanding an-
cient Israelite history and religion. In particular, he eschewed then, and now
in this book, the tendency of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship,
mostly Christian, to exclude ancient Israelite religion and later Judaism from
the study of "primitive religions" ("the savage"). Thus this tradition was
eliminated from consideration by modern comparative religion, ethnogra-
phy, and anthropology-to its detriment.
Eilberg-Schwartz begins in Part I with a review of scholarship since the
Enlightenment, arguing that leading students of comparative religion such as
Durkheim, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard, Boas, Mead,
Krober, Benedict, and others rarely influenced the study of Israelite religion.
He contends that only since the mid-sixties, with such studies as those of
Mary Douglas on food taboos and Edmund Leach on structuralist ap-
proaches to religious narrative, has the picture changed. Most previous stud-
ies up to this time, theologically based and apologetic in nature, had tried to
136 SHOFAR

demonstrate that Israelite religion had left animism and mythological

thought far behind, and was thus superior to anything in the ancient world.
But to Eilberg-Schwartz, such "comparative" studies only "served a defensive
posturing and evolutionary agenda."
Despite inevitable polemics, this first section is provocative, often per-
suasive. Nevertheless, the author has minimized the very rapidly growing use
of sociological and anthropological models, even by mainstream biblical
scholars, since the 19708. He takes brief notice of some such scholars, like
Robert Culley, Norman Gottwald, and Robert Wilson. But he is unaware of
seminal and very influential recent works by C. H. 1. de Geus (1976); N. P.
Lemche (1985, 1988); F. S. Frick (1985), J. W. Flanagan (1988), R. A. Oden
(1987), and others-not to mention the "new archaeology" movement and
its use of socio-anthropological paradigms, which as I have shown elsewhere
is now having at last a truly revolutionary impact on the study of ancient Is-
raelite cultural history, society, and religion. 1
Part II, entitled "Cows, Blood, and Juvenile Fruit Trees," is Eilberg-
Schwartz's own comparative, anthropological analysis of such aspects of an-
cient Israel as the use of animal metaphors in narrative; circumcision and the
language of fertility, descent, and gender; and menstrual blood, semen, and
the fluid symbolism of the human body. In general, the attempt at a sort of
functionalist-structuralist approach is fresh and often provides new insights,
gained either from cross-cultural comparisons or sometimes from appeal to
common sense and universal human experience. Here the author is often at
odds, of course, with more traditional studies, based as many of these are on a
rather narrow philological and theological approach. Yet one cannot escape
the feeling that the author's lack of credentials as a technical biblical scholar
(as he acknowledges quite candidly) is often a handicap. Thus, while Eilberg-
Schwartz is provocative on occasion, one comes away saying: "Yes, perhaps;
but . .." The scant analysis of biblical texts in the original Hebrew does not
inspire much confidence, nor does the infrequent citation of pertinent analy-
ses of leading biblical scholars. Eilberg-Schwartz's overall picture of ancient
Israel's social life and religious institutions is thus somewhat ideosyncratic, its
chief value being programmatic. That is, not itself a truly authoritative study,
it nevertheless helps to point the way to a more fruitful approach to eluci-
dating some of the basic phenomena that make ancient Israel still a subject
of such fascination to laypeople and scholars alike.
Despite the caveats above, several things must be said for Eilberg-
Schwartz. First, he is certainly on the right track. Second, he writes elo-
quently and thus should attract a wide, popular audience that is not usually

I See, for example, W. G. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical

Research (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990).
Volume 9, No.4 Summer 1991 137

reached by Biblical scholars. Finally, he works perhaps as well as can be ex-

pected with inherently difficult categories, such as "symbol and meaning,"
where definitive proof must always be lacking, and where the suggestive,
seminal idea is the best we may be able to do at the present stage of scholar-
ship. Whatever its limitations, The Savage in Judaism commends itself to all
serious students of Israel; Judaism, and Christianity as a lively confrontation
with conventional scholarship, which has all too often been parochial and
pedestrian.
William G. Dever
University of Arizona

Hebrew Bible or Old Testament? Studying the Bible in Judaism and Chris-
tianity, edited by Roger Brooks and John J. Collins. Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1990. 242 pp. $22.95.

These papers were presented in a conference at the University of Notre

Dame in 1989. The introduction points out that Christian appropriation of
the Hebrew Scriptures is a sensitive issue. However, it is a presupposition of
this dialogue that such a supersessionist view is untenable.
The essays address three separate issues. Part One is entitled "What's in
a Name? The Problem of What We Study." The first essay by Roland Mur-
phy discusses differences between "Hebrew Bible" and "Old Testament," the
possibility of producing a biblical theology, and the legitimacy of Christian
interpretations of the Old Testament. '
J. Massynbaerde Ford, in "The New Covenant, Jesus and Canoniza-
tion," begins by comparing two first-century communities of new covenant
(the Qumran Covenanters and Jewish-Christians), then discusses Paul and
the Torah, and finally the role of ritual in the process of canonization.
The final two essays in this section deal with textual criticism. James A.
Sanders provides a perceptive review of textual criticism and its importance
in biblical studies from the 16th century to the present. Eugene Ulrich asks
whether Jews and Christians share a common reading of the Hebrew Bible
or Old Testament. The Qumran scrolls are one more indicator that the Mas-
soretic Text is only one of the textual forms of the ancient biblical text. He
discusses too the variety of meaning for "original text" and the lack of preci-
sion in speaking of "the canonical text."
Part Two, "The Theological Costs of Historical-Critical Study," tries to
sort out theological and scholarly presuppositions at work and the gains and
losses for Jews and Christians in modern critical studies of the Bible. In the
first essay, Rolf Rendtorff summarizes the evolving relationship between Old