The latest issue of the Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament is now available online. The main articles (listed below with their abstracts) are available from here, with a pdf of the entire issue available here. As always, it’s worth checking out its book reviews as much as anything else.
Andrew E. Steinmann
A Note on the Refrain in Genesis 1: Evening, Morning, and Day as Chronological Summary
The meaning of the refrain in Gen 1 “There was an evening and there was a morning, X day” (Gen 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31) has long been in dispute. This paper argues that the refrain is a chronological summary of the preceding text by demonstrating what the syntax and usage of such summaries are in the OT. The phrase then means “In summary there was an evening and then a morning, X day,” thereby encompassing an entire day beginning at sundown and ending at the next sundown. Moreover, the phrase “evening and morning” is further defined in the refrain as a single day.
Drew S. Holland
On the Commonalities of Deuteronomy 13 with Ancient Near Eastern Treaties
This article evaluates the numerous potential influences upon Deut 13 from ancient Near Eastern treaties. After assessing both the features Deut 13 shares with Hittite, Aramean, and neo-Assyrian treaties and the ways in which Deut 13 is distinct from them, it will become apparent that this biblical text shares some significant literary traits with these ANE treaties, but the degree to which it differs from them does not enable us to confirm literary dependence, a claim many scholars have asserted. Rather, Deut 13 expresses a uniquely Israelite treaty style within a general ancient Near Eastern treaty tradition.
Greg Goswell
King and Cultus: The Image of David in the Book of Kings
The image of David in the book of Kings is of a cultically-observant king, who does not commit the sin of idolatry, and, as a result, David becomes the model of proper royal behaviour for all kings that follow. In the theology of Kings there is an essential link between kingship and the temple cultus, and the kings who were like David reformed the cult and suppressed deviant cultic expression. The author of Kings measures and assesses the performance of every king by the rule of whether he supported the primacy of the YHWH and his temple in Jerusalem (of which piety David is the exemplar). It is argued that the image of David found in Kings is not without connection to the memory of David preserved in the preceding book of Samuel. In terms of the fate of the Davidic house in exile and beyond, various features in Kings suggest that the book is at best ambivalent as to the long term future of kingship as an Israelite institution.
Book Reviews
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