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I finished Volume II of Rainer Albertz's A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. The part of the book that I read today concerned the second century B.C.E., and how some Jewish voices (such as the Animal Apocalypse in I Enoch) advocated the Jews rising up against their Gentile oppressors, after which God would purify the Temple. By contrast, other voices, such as the second part of the Book of Daniel, held that the Jews should wait on God's intervention, rather than acting on their own, and that they would be resurrected for such faithfulness. Daniel 11:14 criticizes the Jews who rose unsuccessfully against the Ptolemies. In the Book of Daniel, the message is that the battles are fought in the heavens, and so God's people should trust in God and his angels to defeat the evil forces behind the worldly powers.
I also read the endnotes, which had interesting tidbits. Here are four items:
1. Isaiah 29:23 talks about the sanctification of God's name, within the context of such issues as social justice, the multiplication of the children of Israel, and the conversion of people to sound teaching. Albertz makes a profound point on pages 640-641:
"'Jacob' or 'house of Jacob' in v. 22 probably already means the whole community united with the poor through the conversion of the upper class. The idea of the hallowing of God's name which is given a new stamp here is that God will only be truly honoured when he visibly disassociates himself from being compromised by unjust social and economic structures. Therefore true worship of God must aim at the demolition of such structures. The insight of the prophetic theologies of the lowest stratum of the people was taken up by Jesus in the first petition of the Our Father (Matt. 6.9)."
2. I appreciated Albertz's nuanced discussion of Ezekiel 18 on page 609. Ezekiel 18 affirms that guilt is individual rather than inherited from one's parents. Albertz states that Ezekiel 18 was not the first chapter to support a notion of individual rather than collective guilt, for "after the replacement of blood vengeance---the legal understanding of guilt was for a long time individual (cf. Deut. 24.16)." Where Ezekiel 18 was revolutionary was that it "applies this sacred category of guilt from sacral law in a context of moral and historical guilt". Deuteronomy held that, within the realm of law, individuals were to be punished for their own sin. But, contra what many scholars think, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomist still believed that, on a national level, children could suffer for their parents' sins: After all, according to the Deuteronomist, did not the guilt of Manasseh play a role in Judah's downfall, even though Josiah later led a national reformation?
Moshe Weinfeld refers to examples in which the Deuteronomist highlights God punishing individuals (i.e., Ahab) for their sins rather than their children, and Weinfeld's argument here is important. But I still think that Albertz is hitting on some important nuances, and so one cannot totally stereotype Deuteronomy or the Deuteronomist as believers in individual rather than collective guilt. Traditionally, Jewish interpreters have sought to reconcile transgenerational punishment with individual guilt by saying that individual guilt is relevant in the area of human courts, whereas God is free to punish children for the sins of their parents---on a national level. But Albertz's point is that Ezekiel 18 says that God does not punish transgenerationally.
3. I talked yesterday about how Albertz contends that later apocalyptic literature came from upper circles, but I did not detail his justification for that. In today's reading, Albertz challenges the model that there was a conflict between a "theocratic" upper class and an "apocalyptic" lower class. On page 652, in an endnote, Albertz says that apocalyptic works such as I Enoch and Daniel manifest scribal and wisdom features, plus Daniel exalts teachers, or maskilim (Daniel 11:33, 35; 12:3, 10); essentially, Albertz is suggesting that the sophisticated scribalism apparent in apocalyptic literature, plus their wisdom elements, demonstrate that it is from the upper class. On pages 565-566, Albertz offers other reasons that late apocalyptic literature was an upper class phenomenon: Enoch is described as a scribe of righteousness (I Enoch 12:4; 15:1; cf. 12:3); texts "standing near to the apocalypses suggest priests as tradents (4QAmram; Jubilees; 1QM I)"; and concern about social conflict does not occur in apocalyptic literature until its second phase, after the establishment of Hasmonean rule in the second century B.C.E. This last point resonates somewhat to me, for the apocalyptic elements of Daniel do not really touch on the issue of poverty, as far as I know.
4. Something that I've often wondered about the Books of Chronicles is why a post-exilic book would talk about the Davidic monarchs. Was it advocating the re-institution of the monarchy? How would that sort of mind-set get past the radars of the imperialistic Persians? Albertz actually dates the Books of Chronicles to the early Hellenistic Period, and he offers some mathematical/chronological sort of rationale (on page 545) that I do not really understand. But I doubt that Israel's imperialistic rulers in the early Hellenistic Period would appreciate Israel having a massive work that glorified the Davidic monarchy.
On page 657, Albertz says that the Chronicler believed that God's kingship limited human kingship, and he refers to Sara Japhet's idea that the Chronicler advocated a democratization, not a divinization, of the monarchy. I did not read all of the texts that Albertz cited for this claim, but the ones that I did read were about the the authority of the people and popular institutions in Israelite society (e.g., tribal elders), even before the Israelite monarch. Could that be how the Books of Chronicles passed imperial scrutiny? They said that the main institutions of power were the Israelite people, not the Davidic monarch, and the Persians were content with that claim, so long as the Israelites submitted to the Persians!
In conclusion, I enjoyed this book. I thought that Albertz did a good job in identifying plausible historical contexts for biblical writings, and in showing how biblical ideologies about God could have addressed those contexts. And his picture of this involved far more than power-struggles among Israelite claimants to authority, for it entailed a significant wrestling with profound theological issues about what God is like, and how Israelites thought they should respond to that. He also had a vivid writing style, which, compared with much that I read in academia, was quite refreshing!
