Abstract
Niditch has produced a volume that, like many of her other works, raises fascinating questions, opens new directions for future research, and provides new questions for older research. Here, she is interested in “personal religion”—thinking about the expressions of religious faith, both public and (where evidence is available) private, focusing especially in the period after the disastrous invasions by Babylon in 597/587 BCE. As she states, the topic includes “the portrayal of everyday small things that relate to essential aspects of worldview, and descriptions of self-imposed ritual” (1). A brief survey of the chapters effectively shows the range of issues N. has pursued in order to shed light on “personal religion.”
In her first chapter, entitled “Sour Grapes, Suffering, and Coping with Chaos: Outlook on the Individual,” N. begins with the famous example of the saying (one that is, in my opinion, clearly cynical), “The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” It is repeated in both of the “exilic” prophets, Ezekiel and Jeremiah (Ezek 18:2; Jer 31:39). From a perspective informed by anthropology and folklore studies, N. points to a wide variety of assumptions in the literature with regard to this proverb, but I am not sure that sufficient attention is given to the negative implication of how the passage is introduced in Jeremiah 31: “In those days people will no longer say . . . ,” which strongly suggests that Jeremiah, at least, strongly disapproves. As a measure of personal views and religious ideas, however, investigating such “rumors” is clearly a creative approach.
Chapters 2 and 3 reflect on how contemplating one’s own death is a decidedly individual and personal affair, and thus gives rise to precisely the kinds of “personal religious” discussions that are the subject of her analysis, as well as examining (in chap. 3) how the genre of lamentation may well have arisen from incantations, therefore expanding the evidence in the Bible beyond the typical focus on Lamentations and Psalms. N. ends this chapter with a very interesting reflection on the rise of “autobiographical” statements related to lamentation forms.
In her fourth chapter on “Vowing and Personal Religion,” N. argues that vows are a decidedly personal activity, and in this chapter, she follows through on how vow traditions (e.g. Nazirite vows) actually reveal an impressive level of agency for those otherwise without significant power to make decisions—for instance, women. It would be very interesting to take N.’s chapter and bring it into dialogue with early Christian encratistic literature, where such vows of purity and chastity may be read in an interesting attempt to gain personal choice.
The final three chapters examine a diversity of issues, including a preliminary analysis of burial sites and how they reveal a variety of personal acts of individual piety, but in chapter 5, she also pursues the use of physical signs and symbols, such as the famous “yoke” on Jeremiah’s neck. Following this discussion, in a chapter entitled “Experiencing the Divine Personally: Heavenly Visits and Earthly Encounters,” N. then wades into dangerous waters—namely, apocalyptic literature. One of the basic questions she addresses is whether dream reports in apocalyptic follow defined parameters for this form of literature, or whether we are reading (in any of these works) an actual personal experience. The issue, then, is whether this is socially defined literature rather than intensely personal, but it is still reported as intensely personal.
Finally, in her chapter “Characterization and Contrast: Dynamics of the Personal in Late-Biblical Narration,” the author focuses on the increase in postexilic biblical writings that mention personal motivations, thoughts, and decisions (such as Tobit, Jonah, Ruth). The presence in biblical stories and narratives of what characters were “thinking,” their motivations and conversations, is one of the elements of biblical narrative that raise serious difficulties for historical-critical arguments. The problem becomes obvious the moment one imagines reading what is purported to be a critical piece of United States Civil War historiography that suddenly quotes the very thoughts of, say, General Grant! How is this, then, “history” in any real sense? And if it is not, then how can we base historical conclusions on such narratives?
In her brief conclusion, N, states that she has tried to avoid the common observation that “somehow exilic writers discover the individual or invent the self, whereas earlier Biblical writers emphasize community and shared culture. Overt and explicit manifestations of personal religion, however, are preserved in noticeably large numbers in the written tradition in the period following the Babylonian troubles” (135). In other words, N. has concluded that there really is something to these older arguments, and her work explores many examples of this rather effectively.
If I had any criticism of this work, it would be that N.’s most provocative and interesting comments often come in the closing paragraphs of each chapter, and I found myself wishing that those precise points were developed a bit more or were even the central focus of the entire chapter, especially when N. began to address possible connections between social circumstances and diaspora existence as a foreign enclave in the Babylonian heartland. Still, one can certainly measure the success of a work in the questions it provokes—and this certainly is a fascinating series of studies.