Barry G. Webb on The Scrolls

Barry G. Webb, Five Festal Garments: Christian Reflections on the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther, New Studies in Biblical Theology No. 10 (Leicester: Apollos, 2000), 151pp., ISBN 0851115187.

[The following is a lightly-edited version of a review first written in November 2000 and published on London School of Theology’s website.]

Barry Webb’s work (in the ‘New Studies in Biblical Theology’ series) takes up the five generally neglected Old Testament books traditionally known as ‘the Scrolls’ – Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther.

His discussion of each book is divided into three parts: first, he looks at the book itself, allowing it to set its own agenda; second, he then reads the book against its wider Old Testament context; then third, because Webb is self-consciously offering ‘Christian reflections’ on these works (as indicated in the volume’s subtitle), he looks at how the book in question relates to the gospel as proclaimed by Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. As such, the volume provides a concise overview of the books themselves and worked examples of looking at them from a biblical-theological perspective, offering helpful perspectives on what he sees as their themes – Song of Songs as the garment of love, Ruth as the garment of kindness, Lamentations as the garment of suffering, Ecclesiastes as the garment of vexation, and Esther as the garment of deliverance.

A few points for dialogue could be raised. With the possible exception of Ecclesiastes, all books have had considerable input from ‘feminist’ interpreters, but you wouldn’t really know it from Webb’s work. One doesn’t have to agree with all that is said in the name of feminist approaches to the Bible to appreciate some of the challenge such interpretations bring to the contemporary church. Even if one starts from the text (as well we should) rather than impose ideological agendas onto the text, we have to do justice to the significance of the singing voice of the woman in Song of Songs, to the mournful cries of the widowed ‘daughter of Zion’ in Lamentations, to the role of the central female characters in Ruth and Esther – all within a broader biblical-theological reflection on the relationship between men and women in Christ.

Also somewhat lacking is discussion of the interface between Christianity, Judaism and biblical theology (an ongoing and controversial topic in current scholarly debate on biblical theology and Christian theology more widely). This is particularly ironic, as Webb has chosen to tackle these books as the ‘Scrolls’ which are gathered together in the third part of the Hebrew canon (the ‘Writings’) and which were adopted for reading at five major Jewish festivals, but which are separated in the Christian canon (!) and apparently serve no function as a unit.

But these are simply indications that we all still have a lot more work to do. If these volumes and others like them continue to be published, we may be both optimistic and excited for the future of biblical theology.