Susan Niditch

Begins by illustrating the "terrible burden" of the biblical tradition. In 1689 Cotton Mather preached a sermon to comfort the armed forces going into battle against the native inhabitants of New England. "The mood is intense, electric with blood-strirring references to beloved friends killed by Indians...to the need for courage, and to the faith owed a supportive but demanding God." In cadences of the Bible, he speaks the listeners' myth. They are Israel in the wilderness, confronted by Amalek. Israel must approach the enemy with a priestly purity of body and soul. Amalek, deserving of vengeance and total destruction, is to be "beaten small as the Dust before the Wind, Cast out as Dirt in the Streets, eliminated, exterminated."

Well into the 18th century the campaigns against native people were justified by preachers who thanked "the mercies of God in extirpating the enemies of Israel in Canaan." The author states: "This ongoing identification between contemporary situations and the warring scenes of the Hebrew Bible is a burden the tradition must guiltily bear." [4] Indeed, "The particular violence of the Hebrew Scriputres has inspired violence, has served as a model ofand model for persecution, subjugation, and extermination for millennia beyond its own reality."

In fact, little archeology supports any suggestion that the Jews, or their scripture, are genocidal, or unusually so. In fact the authors of Chronicles and Jonah, and some Deuteronomic threads, are clearly uncomfortable with war, and especially wars of extermination. [5] A vast range of war ideologies emerge, and they are compelled by a long social history. Of which we know embarrassingly little. [10]

"The first war text of the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis 14, is the story of Abram's military rescue of his nephew Lot." This night assault "has baffled generations of scholars and the bibliography concerning it is extensive." [11] Many of the texts and rules conflict with each other. If Genesis 14 preserves a record of a battle, and it portrays a patriarch who is socially equivalent to the warrior kings around him, but a leader who undertakes war only for defensive purposes to right an injustice, and who does not seek to profit from the battle." [12]… (más)

Many of the books of the Bible come from multiple sources, but none, perhaps, are such rich tapestries as the books of Judges and Samuel. This fact, and the fact that the textual traditions of both books are complex, impose a tremendous task on the translator and commentator. And it is a task Susan Niditch handles with aplomb.

The tales of the Judges clearly originated in large part as folktales (in the case of Samson, probably exclusively as folktales), and Niditch, who has a background in folklore as well as in Biblical studies, is able to use that fact to see deeply into the stories in a way that few other commentators have.

That alone would probably justify the purchase of this volume, but there is more. Niditch gives a very full and detailed textual commentary, including not only places where the versions might cause us to modify the text but places where the Greek and the Old Latin offer interpretations of the text. This gives us a useful perspective on the early church's understanding of Judges.

The translation prepared by Niditch is a little peculiar, given to inversions of word order and rather stiff renderings in order to bring us a little closer to the Hebrew. It is not a version for casual reading, and should not be understood as such. But once that it understood, it is a clear and useful version. You won't want to abandon your New Revised Standard Version -- but you'll want Niditch's translation to tell you more about what you are reading.… (más)