How did the use of earlier narrative and legal material within Chronicles and other Second Temple texts illumine instances of unevenness that later interpreters smoothed to a degree but retained in the text? Benjamin D. Giffone shows how community memory existing outside the written texts provided limits on the changes that could be introduced by scribes. Narrativity as a key feature of the texts allowed certain memories to be retained, framed by various techniques to suit the storymakers' aims.
In this volume, Benjamin D. Giffone shows that the coexistence of at least three cultic centralization models within the Pentateuch, including Northern, Benjaminite, and Southern traditions, helps to calibrate the level of theological consistency that may reasonably be expected of biblical texts. The scholarly tendency to view biblical narratives as late, tendentious fictions is not sufficient to explain the texts' final forms. The author explains how the use of earlier narrative and legal material within Chronicles and other Second Temple texts illumines instances of unevenness that later interpreters smoothed to a degree but retained in the text. Community memory existing outside the written texts provided limits on the changes that could be introduced by scribes but was sufficiently malleable to allow for changes. Narrativity as a key feature of the texts allowed certain memories to be retained, framed by various techniques to suit the storymakers' aims.
Table of contents:
Chapter 1: The Unhewn Stones
1.1 Unevenness and the Origins of the Hebrew Bible: The Truth Is Stranger than Fiction
1.2 Proposed Contribution
1.3 Structure of the Book
Chapter 2: Narrative Historiography and Cultural/Community Memory
2.1 Ancient Israel, Biblical Israel, and the View from Somewhere
2.2 Ricoeur and Narrative Historiography
2.3 Assmann and Cultural Memory
2.4 Fleming: Israel in Judah's Narratives
2.5 Conclusion
Chapter 3: Models of Textual Development: Survey and Assessment
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Recent Challenges to the »Growth Model«
3.3 Empirical Studies and Test Cases
3.4 Conclusion: »Storymakers« and Intention
Chapter 4: Northern Israel, Disputed Cultural Memory, and the Politics of Centralization
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Studies on Northern Israel and Benjamin
4.3 Related Concepts of Political Economy: Selectorate and Heresthetic
4.4 Applied to Current Biblical Scholarship
4.5 Evaluation
Chapter 5: Interim Assessment
Chapter 6: Cultic Sites in the Babylonian and Persian Periods: Potential and Actual Competitors to Jerusalem
6.1 Scope
6.2 Outside Yehud
6.3 Within Yehud
6.4 Evaluation
Chapter 7: Centralization and Anachronism in the Laws and Narratives of the Pentateuch
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Wherever I Cause My Name to Be Remembered: Traces of Pre-Deuteronomic Non-Centralization
7.3 Gathering Unhewn Stones: The Sites of Abraham and the Patriarchs
7.4 Conclusions
Chapter 8: Next Layer Down: All Roads Lead to Jerusalem in the DtrH
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Tent of Meeting at Shiloh: Joshua 18 through 1 Samuel 4
8.3 From Samuel's Circuit to David's Tent: 1 Samuel 4 through 2 Samuel 6
8.4 Dual or Non-Centralization? Ark-Tent and the Tent of Meeting
through Solomon's Temple (2 Samuel 6 through 1 Kings 8)
8.5 Conclusion
Chapter 9: Bethel, Community Memory, and the (Non-)Erasure of »Decentralized« History in Kings and Beyond
9.1 Introduction
9.2 The Construal of Bethel and Northern Sites in Hosea and Amos
9.3 Portraits of Bethel and Non-centralization in Kings
9.4 The Chronicler's Reconstrual of Northern Sites, Deuteronomism, and Pre-Deuteronomistic Elements
9.5 Bethel in Pre-Dtr, Dtr, and Post-Dtr Texts: A Preliminary Conclusion
Chapter 10: Centralization and the Framing Conclusions of Joshua and Judges
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Judges 17-21
10.3 The Ending of Joshua: Priestly Completion of a Hexateuch, or Deuteronomistic Seam?
10.4 Transjordan »Shrine« in Joshua 22: Narrative Analysis
10.5 Shechem in Joshua 24
10.6 Summary: Burial of Northern Sites at the Seams of »Books« and of Collections
Chapter 11: Conclusions: Round Stones Forming a Square Altar
11.1 Danite Shrine Aetiology: A Thought Experiment
11.2 Summary of Key Theses
11.3 Synthesis: Heresthetic to Achieve Elite and Popular Support for Judah's Bible
11.4 Implications for Further Study
11.5 Epilogue: Modern Discomfort with »Unhewn Stones«
