Now available on both sides of the Atlantic (and, therefore, the entire planet) is Katherine Stott's LHBOTS Why Did They Write This Way?: Reflections on References to Written Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature, Vol. 492.
We asked her to write a little bit about her new book and she graciously accepted our request and has contributed to our little Author's Circle. Thanks!
Please enjoy her thoughts:
Specific attention is given, in the first part of the book, to the many literary citations in the Hebrew Bible texts. One important insight gained from a comparative survey is that the historical books of the HB stand virtually alone among historiography in the wider ancient Near East when it comes to the explicit citation of sources. In this regard, the HB is much more akin to literary trends in the classical world, where historians/authors more commonly cited authorities for their accounts. Important differences, however, are also apparent between the HB and classical historiography/literature. While classical authors, especially the early Greek historians, relied predominantly on oral sources, the HB is characterized by its appeals to written tradition.
Despite this noteworthy point of difference, an examination of the source citations and use of sources in classical literature provides other valuable insights. Interestingly, the explicit citation of literary sources is more the domain of non-historiographical genres in classical antiquity, yet in those cases where written documents are mentioned in historiographical texts, they are rarely exploited for evidence in the same way as modern historians use such material. Citations in history writing are not necessarily a reliable indication of the conscientious use of sources and do not always reflect an author’s first-hand knowledge of the referred sources. Indeed sources that were used are not necessarily those mentioned and vice versa. Furthermore, sources could be cited for a variety of reasons—for example, as an authenticating device, for their iconic value, as literary adornment—and not necessarily, or only, to indicate what sources were used.
In the second part of the book specific attention is given to certain references to written documents that play a part in biblical narrative, such as ‘the book of the law’ said to have been discovered in the temple in 2 Kings 22. A dominant tendency within biblical scholarship has been to view such documents as providing insight into the historical development of the texts within which they are mentioned and to use the stories about them as material for reconstructing the history of the times they purport to portray. However, in this study the focus is shifted to an examination of the roles that these references play in the text—and in shaping the message of the text—regardless of whether they provide insight into the historical world external to the biblical narratives. By doing so, this study brings to the forefront of research matters such as the existence of common structural frameworks and the fact that central motifs of these stories were more widely employed in both ancient Near Eastern and classical literature. As a result, the study contributes to a better understanding of the possible reasons, both rhetorical and ideological, why biblical authors were inclined (either knowingly or not) to emplot their narratives about the past using these narrative conventions.
From a more general perspective, this book contributes to a reconceptualization of the way in which biblical historiography is examined vis-à-vis its use of references to written documents. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the heuristic potential of comparative approaches for future historical research on the HB. Such an approach facilitates an understanding of biblical historiography in relation to broader historiographic and literary trends in antiquity. It enables modern interpreters to recognize shared features of ancient texts, including literary devices and narrative conventions, which may have gone unnoticed, had they not been read in conjunction with one another. It also provides insight into how biblical historiography differs from other ancient forms of historical writing, revealing the particular ways in which the producers of the biblical texts utilized the existing conventions of their day to convey their own stories about the past.
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