The Copenhagen School: The Historiographical Issues

AJS Review

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 1-21

  Brettler, Marc ^a  

^a BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85012536374     PISSN: 03640094     EISSN: 14754541     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0364009403000011     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Thomas L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (BZAW 133; Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 1974).
2. John Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
3. See esp. E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), in particular his claim that the Bible's misunderstanding of the brother-sister stories in Genesis suggests their antiquity (pp. xxxvii-xli).
4. Niels Peter Lemche, Israel i Dommertiden (Copenhagen: Institut for Bibelsk Eksgese, 1972).
5. Niels Peter Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy (VTSup 37; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985).
6. See A. D. H. Mayes, “Amphictyony,” ABD 1.211-216.
7. See his “The Greek ‘Amphicyony'-Could it be a Prototype for the Israelite Society in the Period of Judges?” JSOT 4 (1977), pp. 48-59.
8. Niels Peter Lemche, “The Judges-Once More,” BN 20 (1983), p. 51. See also his Early Israel, esp. p. 384.
9. Positive reviews of these early works by mainstream scholars in mainstream journals include J. C. Greenfield in IEJ 27 (1977), pp. 185-187; Aelred Cody in Bib 57 (1976), pp. 262-265; J. A. Emerton in JTS 27 (1976), pp. 155-158 and J. W. Rogerson in BibOr 48 (1991), pp. 616-619.
10. Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People From Written and Archaeological Sources (Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East 4; Leiden: Brill, 1992), p. 422.
11. In addition to other scholars located in Copenhagen, such a survey should include at least Philip Davies and Keith Whitelam of Sheffield.
12. Niels Peter Lemche, Early Israel (VTSup 37; Leiden: Brill, 1985).
13. Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (London: SPCK; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).
14. Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (NY: Basic, 1999).
15. See above, n. 2.
16. Personal communication from Thomas Thompson.
17. Werner Keller, The Bible as History (NY: Morrow, 1981).
18. Niels Peter Lemche, “The Old Testament-A Hellenistic Book?” SJOT 7 (1993), pp. 163-193.
19. See the literature cited in Marc Zvi Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995), esp. pp. 8-19.
20. Y. H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), p. 10.
21. For a summary see Michelle Piccirillo, “Medeba,” ABD 4.656-58.
22. For pro-student account see J. F. Harrison, Voices from Tiananmen Square (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1990), pp. 173-203; for the official account see M. Oksenberg, L. Sullivan, and M. Lam bert, eds., Beijing Spring, 1989: Confrontation and Conflict. The Basic Documents (Armonk, NY: M. Sharp, 1990), pp. 55-88. Note the reflective analysis in “Afterward: History, Myth, and the Tales of Tiananmen,” in Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China: Learning from 1989, eds. J. Wasserstrom and E. Perry (Oxford: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 244-280.
23. This is especially so in contemporary scholarship, where the old assumptions concerning the fundamental conservatism of texts that eventually became part of the Bible, and of oral traditions, has been questioned. Concerning the latter, the work of the Scandinavian Lemche has been instrumental in questioning the work of the Scandinavian School of Epic, which had emphasized the fundamental reliability of epic tradition; see his Early Israel, pp. 380-383. The study of folklore would confirm these observations concerning the variable accuracy of oral audition.
24. See the literature cited in Theodore Hiebert, The Yahwist's Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 204, n. 5.
25. See the discussion and critique in Ernest Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 132-160, esp. concerning the work of Van Seters, Schmidt, and Rose.
26. See Douglas A. Knight, Rediscovering the Traditions of Israel (SBLDS 9; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975), index s.v. “source criticism.”
27. See Rolf Rendtorf, The Old Testament: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), esp. pp. 157-163.
28. See R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (JSOTSup 53; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989 [1987]). This anti-source-critical movement is sharply critiqued in Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century.
29. David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch (JSOTSup 10; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982 [1978]), p. 98.
30. I use this term as shorthand for “Old Testament” to reflect Lemche's writing and his preferences; see Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition, p. 171, n. 1.
31. This model is the basis for inner-biblical interpretation; see esp. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). Sid Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scriptures: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence (Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1976), makes a strong argument that the tripartite canon represents distinct stages of canon formation.
32. Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), p. 101.
33. This is the position of John Barton, The Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Israelite Prophecy in Israel after Exile (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 35-95.
34. This was the traditional, pre-Barton position. For a critique of Barton, see R. T. Beckwith, “A Modern Theory of the Old Testament Canon,” VT 41 (1991), pp. 385-395. A useful, recent summary of issues concerning the canon is found in John Barton, “The Significance of a Fixed Canon of the Hebrew Bible,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Saebo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 1.67-83.
35. See the model developed by Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel.
36. See n. 32 for full citation.
37. See Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scriptures.
38. In the case of biblical studies, new evidence may be archaeological, or may reflect the development of a new theory that succeeds in explaining a wide variety of texts more successfully than previously.
39. See Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 342-344.
40. See the summary in James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 129-130 and the discussion of Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 28-29.
41. See Jeffrey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).
42. This is the Laurentianus LXX, the A manuscript of the edition of Haiim B. Rosen, Herodoti Historiae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1987); see his description on p. 1xxi. This point was raised in a discussion of the Copenhagen School at the International SBL Conference in Finland in summer 2000.
43. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, p. 46.
44. See M. H. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Aleppo Codex and the Rise of the Massoretic Bible Text,” BA 42 (1979), pp. 145-63.
45. The literature on Josephus as a historian is immense; see the literature cited in Lester L. Grabbe, “The Current State of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Are There More Questions than Answers?” in The Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran Fifty Years After, eds. Stanley E. Porter and Craig A. Evans (JSPSup 26; Roehampton Institute London Papers 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 57, n. 13.
46. A significant number of problems in Thompson's reconstruction of the Hellenistic period are noted in Lester L. Grabbe, “Hat die Biblel docht Recht? A Review of T. L. Thompson's The Bible in History,” SJOT 14 (2000), pp. 122-126.
47. This was the term used by several scholars at the 1999 International Meeting of the SBL in Finland.
48. See the classic exposition of this view in Speiser, Genesis, pp. 9-11.
49. See Bob Becking, “Continuity and Community: The Belief System of the Book of Ezra,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformations of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times, eds. Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel (OTS 42; Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 268-275.
50. See the literature cited in Steven L. McKenzie, “Deuteronomistic History,” ABD 2. 160- 168; the lengthy defense of the two-editor theory by Mark A. O'Brien, The Deuteronomistic History Hypothesis: A Reassessment (OBO 92; Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg, 1989) should be added to his bibliography.
51. See Peter Machinist, “The Question of Distinctiveness in Ancient Israel: An Essay,” in Ah, Assyria: Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor (ScrHier 33; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), pp. 196-221, reprinted in Essential Papers on Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. Frederick E. Greenspahn (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 420-442.
52. See Philip R. Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel'(JSOTSup 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), pp. 102-105; the article in question is E. A. Knauf, “War ‘Biblish-Hebraisch’ eine Sprache?” ZAH 3 (1990), pp. 11-23.
53. Ian Young, Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew (FAT 5; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1993), pp. 203-205; Martin Ehrensvärd, “Once Again: The Problem of Dating Biblical Hebrew,” SJOT 11 (1997), pp. 29-40; Arian J. C. Verheij, “Early? Late? A Reply to F. H. Cryer,” SJOT 11 (1997), pp. 41- 43; and the study of Avi Hurvitz, cited in the following note.
54. Avi Hurvitz, “The Historical Quest for ‘Ancient Israel’ and the Linguistic Evidence of the Hebrew Bible: Some Methodological Observations,” VT 47 (1997), pp. 301-315.
55. In this connection it is noteworthy that Thompson explicitly admits as a fact that Aramaic became especially important in the post-exilic period (The Mythic Past, pp. 215, 267-268), so we would not be disputing the basic background assumption of this linguistic evidence.
56. On these words, see John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 20.
57. On the borrowing of this word, and its possible exact meaning, see HALOT 5.1937-8.
58. This point concerning the spelling of Hezekiah's name was pointed out by Nadav Na'aman during the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Finland in 2000. On the spelling in the scrolls, see Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1959; Hebrew), pp. 78-79; in English, Edward Yechezkel Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 104-106.
59. On this type of orthography, see Emanuel Tov, “Groups of Biblical Texts Found at Qumran,” in Time to Prepare the Way in the Wilderness: Papers on the Qumran Scrolls by Fellows of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1989-1990, ed. Devorah Dimant and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 94-96, and the critique of Tov by Eugene Ulrich, “Multiple Literary Editions: Reflections toward a Theory of the History of the Biblical Text,” in Current Research and Technological Developments on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Conference on the Texts from the Judean Desert, Jerusalem, 30 April 1995 (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 20; Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 93-96.
60. See the comprehensive corpus now published by Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1997). For some cautions concerning the proper method for using such material, see Bob Becking, “Inscribed Seals as Evidence for Biblical Israel? Jeremiah 40.7-41.15 Par Example,” in Can a ‘History of Israel’ Be Written?” ed. Lester Grabbe (JSOTSup 245; European Seminar in Historical Methodology 1; Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 65-83.
61. See the list of these in Gershon Galil, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (SHANE 9; Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 153-54. Much of this material is reproduced in a more narrative form in Lester L. Grabbe, “Are Historians of Ancient Palestine Fellow Creatures-or Different Animals?” in Can a ‘History of Israel’ Be Written?” ed. Lester Grabbe, pp. 24-26.
62. See John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 299-301. A more extreme position concerning the use of sources is developed in Menahem Haran, “The Books of the Chronicles ‘Of the Kings of Judah’ and ‘Of the Kings of Israel': What Sort of Books Were They?” VT 49 (1999), pp. 156-64.
63. Oral comment at 2000 International SBL conference.
64. See ANET, p. 321.
65. See Galil, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah, p. 32, n. 1, for literature on this inscription.
66. The literature on this is immense. The original publications are A. Biran and J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” IEJ 43 (1993), pp. 81-98 and idem, “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” IEJ 45 (1995), pp. 1-18. JSOT 64 (1994), pp. 3-32 contains three important essays on the reading. More recent bibliography may be found in Nadav Na'aman, “Three Notes on the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Dan,” IEJ 50 (2000), p. 92, n. 2.
67. For a more strident critique of this skepticism, see William W. Hallo, “The Limits of Skepticism,” JAOS 110 (1990), pp. 187-199. I do not share all of his reservations, especially as they are voiced in his earlier “Biblical History in its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach,” in Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method, eds. Carl D. Evans et al. (PTMS 34; Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1980), pp. 1-26.
68. In fairness it must be noted that his book was published before the events of 9/11/01.
69. See èmile Puech, “Hodayot,” Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, eds. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.365-9.
70. Gerald Henry Wilson, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter (SBLDS 76; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) and the various studies in The Shape of Shaping of the Psalter, ed. J. Clinton McCann (JSOTSup 159; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).
71. So Bob Becking, “Ezra's Re-enactment of the Exile,” in Leading Captivity Captive, ed. Lester L. Grabbe, pp. 40-61.
72. So Lester L. Grabbe, “ ‘The Exile’ under the Theodolite: Historiography as Triangulation,” in Leading Captivity Captive, ed., Lester L. Grabbe, pp. 80-100.
73. Lester L. Grabbe, “Are Historians of Ancient Palestine Fellow Creatures-or Different Animals?” pp. 29-30.
74. See W. Kendrick Pritchett, The Liar School of Herodotus (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1993), esp. p. 351, “What the modern scholar has to do is to estimate the likelihood of genuineness against a broad background of historical probability.”
75. Those who advocate this position are discussed in Steven L. McKenzie, The Trouble With Kings: The Composition of the Books of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History (VTSup 42; Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 84.
76. McKenzie, The Trouble With Kings, pp. 81-100.
77. See Brettler, The Creation of History, pp. 47 and 174, n. 170.
78. See H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah's Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) and several of the essays in Roy F. Melugin and Marvin A. Sweeney, eds., New Visions of Isaiah (JSOTSup 214; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
79. See DDD, second edition, pp. 520-521.
80. On this work, see Eli Yassif, The Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle-Ages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984; Hebrew).
81. Joüon §137b and èdouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 1984), p. 5.
82. Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4-6; John 1:23.
83. See p. 15.
84. By concluding with this example from Homer, I do not mean to suggest that Greek, rather than ancient near eastern texts, should be our primary point of comparison; I merely want to meet the Copenhagen School on its own terms. In contrast, for example, to John Van Seters’ In Search of History, the Copenhagen School rarely uses comparative evidence from the ancient Near East to draw its analogies; yet, as noted, among others, by Hans M. Barstad, “The Strange Fear of the Bible: Some Reflections on the ‘Bibliophobia’ in Recent Ancient Israelite Historiographies,” in Leading Captivity Captive, ed. Lester L. Grabbe, pp. 120-127, a reasonable working hypothesis is that the Bible should be viewed as an ancient near eastern text!
85. See the summary in Hans Günter Jansen, “Troy: Legend and Reality,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (New York: Scribner's, 1995), 2.1121-34.
86. This is the Ms. Venetus Marcianus 454, also called Venetus A; see Michale Haslam, “Homeric Papyri and the Transmission of the Text” in A New Companion to Homer, eds. Ian Morris and Barry Powell (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 61.
87. Jansen, “Troy: Legend and Reality,” 2.1131.
88. For one such reconstruction of these stages, see Gregory Nagy, Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 107-206, and a summary in Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), p. 42.
89. Geoffrey Horrocks, “Homer's Dialects,” A New Companion to Homer, pp. 193-217. I cite Horrocks in particular, since he tends to be a minimalist concerning the retention of pre-Ionic elements in Homer.
90. The literature on this is immense; see for example, E. S. Sherratt, “ ‘Reading the Texts': Archaeology and the Homeric Question,” Antiquity 64 (1990), pp. 7-24; Jan Pal Crielaard, “Homer, History and Archaeology: Some Remarks on the Date of the Homeric World,” in Homeric Questions, ed. Jan Paul Crielaard (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieban, 1995), pp. 201-288; and John Bennet, “Homer and the Bronze Age,” in A New Companion to Homer, pp. 511-533. The summary in Martin Litchfield West, “Homer,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (third edition; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 719 is quite apposite: “Only fossilized memories of the Mycenean age survive in his work”-but they do survive!
91. Jansen, p. 1131. For an additional example where the Iliad reflects second millennium practices, see R. Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 4.213 on Iliad 14.402-408.
92. The composition of the Homeric epic poems may be even more complicated than that of biblical texts; if anything, this strengthens my analogy.
93. Thompson, The Mythic Past, p. xv.
94. For the problems with using the term “literary” for the Bible, see The Creation of History, pp. 14-17.
95. It has its origin in modern critical scholarship with Johan Huizinga, “A Definition of the Concept of History,” in Philosophy and History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer, eds. Raymond Klibansky and H. J. Paton (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1975), pp. 1-10. Huizinga's essay is critiqued in Brettler, The Creation of History, p. 11.
96. This is the main point of Baruch Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco, CA; Harper and Row, 1988). Even though he exaggerates the extent of these “antiquarian interests,” he does show their presence.
97. Thomas L. Thompson, “The Exile in History and Myth: A Response to Hans Barstad,” in Leading Captivity Captive, ed. Lester L. Grabbe, p. 101.