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This sale only lasts for a month, so go and get some books. Welcome to the new Books Network. The Hebrew Bible is filled with narrative doubling that can be a challenge to interpret. Through an interdisciplinary model, Joshua Berman offers new insights into how battle reports may serve as oblique commentary and metaphors for the non-battle accounts that immediately proceed then.
Battle scenes are revealed to stand in metaphoric analogy with accounts of a trial, a rape, a drinking feast, and a court deliberation among others. Join us as we speak with Joshua Berman about his book, Narrative Analogy in the Hebrew Bible. You're listening to new Books and Biblical Studies, a channel of the new Books Network, and I'm your host, Michael Morales. Joshua Berman is a lecturer in the Department of Bible at Bar Ilan University, Israel.
His other books include The Temple, Its Symbolism, and Meaning, Then and Now, also created equal how the Bible broke with ancient political thought and Anim Aumin, a book on Biblical criticism. Joshua, welcome to new Books and Biblical Studies. Thank you, Michael, and welcome to all of our listening audience. Joshua, tell us about yourself and your family.
Oh, wow. So I am originally from the New York area. I am an Orthodox Jew. I'm a rabbi.
I did not grow up a rabbi or an Orthodox Jew, I passed to Jewish. But I kind of came to a religion around the time I met at the Rambi Day. We said it came from grandfather. Congratulations.
That's the short of it. Your book is on Narrative Analogy in the Hebrew Bible. Would you explain for us what you mean by Narrative Analogy and what led you to pursue this study? Sure.
Okay. So this actually was the published version of my doctoral dissertation. I've written under my mentor, Professor Edward Greenside. Within the study of Biblical Narrative, and for the purpose of our discussion, anyone speaking of Bible, speaking of Hebrew Bible, we find that a remarkable phenomenon that is subtle and can only really pick up if you're really attuned to the Biblical Hebrew and the word clays that are going on at is that Narratives will echo one another, not merely by explicitly invoking, you know, oh, you know, when we saw this with Moses or we saw this with Abraham, not even explicitly, and not even implicitly by just, you know, kind of paraphrasing a verse that had appeared earlier in scripture.
But the whole structure of a story follows very closely the structure and language of a previous story, the point that it seems to be in conversation with it or making a commentary to it. Let me give an example of what I'm talking about here, because this is something that I think, you know, most people are familiar with the Bible, read the Bible regularly. We'll often be focused on the passage of hand, the story at hand, and might not be attuned to the ways in which scripture is broadcasting to other stories. There is a remarkable similarity between Moses at the burning bush, Mount Horrib Exodus 3, and Israel at Sinai in Exodus 19 to 24.
We can see how those two narratives follow the same plot structure that you have the protagonist, let's say Moses in Exodus 3, and Israel in the Sinai, they both approached the Mount, they are told to make some preparatory gestures to prepare for revelation, whether it's removing your shoes in the case of Moses, or whether it's purifying themselves, in case the Israelites. You have revelation as a fiery, scary sort of thing with a protagonist, not quite clear what's going on. God's speaking to the protagonist for the first time in both stories, identifying himself, giving them their task, their calling, if you will, and moving on from there in both narratives to the protagonist kind of rebelling. Moses halfway through the story he gets cold feet and doesn't want to go, doesn't want to be Moses, you know, and defies what God says, and God gets angry with him.
And the Israelites likewise, at Sinai, no sooner do they receive the tablets and the covenant, but they rebel with the golden calf, and sure enough, here too, God gets angry and there's kind of a need to come back to equilibrium. So and there's lots and lots of linguistic parallels between those two stories as well. So this is what we mean by a narrative analogy, the entire narrative to a entire narrative are analogous, which then begs the question, what is scripture trying to stay by doing this? And then that, you know, that can go in many directions.
So that is the basic observation. And it comes up many, many, many places. I've given you an example of two stories with a single book, but often these narratives, these energies will cross a cross box that one book will echo a story much earlier in previous book. We could even add a third parallel to your illustration when Joshua bowed down before the messenger of the Lord in the book of Joshua.
Okay, that's another good one. I that invites comparison. You have Joshua in Joshua chapter five, I believe in it's right before the conquest of Jericho in chapter six. And there too, it's an epiphany.
It requires Joshua to cleanse himself or to over his shoes. There is a calling that's actually have a total somewhat similar right for the splitting of the swimming crossing of the Jordan River in Joshua chapter three, where the waters are stocked up. The language there is very reminiscent, of course, of the splitting of the sea. They are actually scripture is explicit about God says to Joshua see, yeah, well, of Israel will know that you are as great as Moses because you are what is the stock and you were crossing, but it's weird that the scripture and its exposition gets that that that explicit about what we're meant to learn from these analogies.
The Hebrew Bible, to my reckoning, has about 70 battle stories by battle story. I mean, not just that have battle had happened, but some description of its of its of its of its well, its development of more than let's say four fibers. We will call the story we can say here's a beginning is a bell is in it. And that's an awful lot of battle stories of what what battles, you know, the nation is about the land is where they're going to battles.
And what I noticed or tried to bring attention to was that in a number of cases about six cases where we read these battles and description is is is is very detailed of the the unfolding of the wild that gives the initial impression of the risk of elitube. This is the way it happens. They were here, they ran to there, they killed off this number of people, they encircled, it just seems to be a description of what was that when you look carefully at the story that precedes the battle off the battlefield in the previous chapter, that's lo and behold the battlefield development of the battle, way to describe winds up being a analogy for what happened off the battlefield in the previous chapter. That's what the book is about that phenomenon.
I tried to give six cases. Now, let's look at some examples from your book so we can see something of the function and point of these analogies. Would you tell us about the narrative analogy and judges between the battle against Benjamin in the difficult story of the rig of the concubine? We will recall at the end of the book of Judges by the concubine at Gibbia where this couple, if you will, was sojourning and travelling and they arrived in sub-based in Benjamin, out of Gibbia and they were put up for a few nights and the townsfolk were not particularly suitable to them and ultimately pushes out his concubine and the townspeople ravaged her and victimized her and then she winds up getting cut up to pieces and truly ups the horrible story.
In itself, that story is already an analogy, analogous to the story of Sodom, and his journey there and the requested of people that give over one of their daughters for them to victimize. But for my purposes in this book, what I tried to show, we will call it following that story of the victimization of the concubine that the rest of Israel is absolutely scandalous. It's such a terrible thing could have happened and the rest of the tribes take upon themselves to avenge this terrible climb by taking the tribe of Benjamin to task, by going to war against Benjamin and there's a very long battles and the end of Judges 20. And in the last episode there, it describes the final stand of the tribe of Benjamin as they are encircled and decimated by the other tribes.
And when you look carefully at the imagery and the language, it describes the decimation of the tribe of Benjamin, lo and behold, it is very reminiscent of the ravaging and the victimization of the concubine by the Benjamin in the previous chapter. And so this is what I mean, you have a battle story that just for all appearances seems to be just a description, this is what happened on that day on that battlefield. But then you look and you see, wow, this has been carefully crafted and it's been molded in such a way as to remind you deliberately of the previous story and the previous chapter of the battlefield. What does this all mean?
Well, in that particular instance, I think it could be taken in one of two directions. It could be, you know, you all of Israel, you think that Benjamin was a savage? Well, you're no different. The savagery seems to be a widespread phenomenon at this time in Israel.
Or it could be what we call in Hebrew, Medak, connected Medak measure for measure that is frequent form of order of theme in biblical punishment. That is that the punishment somehow seems to fit the crime just right. So if the Benjaminites had encircled and ravaged the concubine, then they themselves will be encircled and ravaged. Would you offer us maybe one more example from your book?
Yeah. So let's see with the with the in Joshua story of Aiken. So we will recall that story near instead of the end is this trial and they wind up having to stone him and putting the kind of like a a Karen of sorts where he was where he was very always wanted. The same thing happens in the next story, which is a kind of corrective following the battle at I that we have the AI we have the defeat of the king there and the treatment of the king there is very similar to the treatment of of of Aiken himself.
Perhaps shows that, you know, now that they have repaired or have corrected that which was the stress and now you can see that things have now returned to a proper to a proper force. So what are some of the conclusions you draw from your studies? This is the issue of narrative analogies is really is all over the place and and yeah, it always invites really important questions as to what scripture is trying to do. So that you know, just go back to the example that I opened with within the book of Exodus.
So what what is this about really that Moses said that at horror that at yeah, that at horror is the same as Israel at Sinai and the truth is that that analogy goes even deeper because we can see that the wife of Moses as depicted in chapter two of Exodus, it merits the the trajectory of Israel once they come out of Egypt. That is you have Moses it says it says that he he grew and he went out from his house. That's chapter two verse 11 and that's like Israel going out. You have that Moses gives a makah by ya the word makah, which means which is the word for play.
It's the same it's the same roots strike he strikes the Egyptian and God strikes the the Egyptians. Moses doesn't have any water in Israel. In chapter 16 don't have any water and then Moses winds up in the home of his father, Lord Jethro who then feeds head red and the Israelites also lead to red and so do you have those two things as well. So that the analogy between Moses and Israel is great.
But what is it meant to tell us is it meant to tell us and you know there's a scripture doesn't give you any answer to these things. This is left for our theological imaginations to speculate about. Perhaps it tells us that the Almighty works salvation in kind of templates that appear over and over again. Just as the Almighty does salvation this way at this time so too he will do it.
That is how you will recognize that it is his hand in history. It is the same way that you know once you look at the trajectory of of of of of of of of of Jacob going down to Egypt or Abraham Abraham's about example. Abraham goes down to Egypt because of a famine and gets rid of him comes back to Israel. Egypt then and later Israel goes down to Egypt because of the famine gets rich on the way out.
Right. The street times God says take gold and silver from Egyptians and comes back to the land. So it could be that this is the analogy here between Moses and Israel is telling us about some sort of template about divine salvation how it works. It could be that is telling us something about the need for Moses to undergo the types of tribulations that Israel will undergo because since Moses was raised at Prince of Egypt he doesn't have been in the identity with the slaves and with the types of experiences that they had had and so it's been affected leader maybe he needs to first go through all the things that they're going to go through so that he can relate to them or vice versa.
Maybe the people are saying who is this going to know he's not really one of us. Yes you know maybe he's DNA as it were his hours but you know he's he's Egyptian he's he's royalty and so you know we can't relate to that we can't trust him they cannot be our leader but it may see that in his own biography that he is he has already gone through the things that they have gone through and perhaps that that enables them to accept him as a leader. So there's many avenues of what these what these analogies might mean. Joshua before we let you go would you tell us what you're working on these days?
Oh wow so glad you asked Michael what I'm working on now I'm so excited about it and it's just the fields to be able to share and I'm sure that I need lots of help with this book because it's a really fascinating and big question and it goes like this. The Hebrew word to forgive is the word we slow up that's the that's the the the end of the slow up but not only translators to forgive and it appears almost 50 times in Hebrew Bible what's striking is that all of those occurrences are solely and exclusively between a human agent and a divine either people asking God for this sleaha call forgiveness or God-ranting people sleaha forgive us but you never find anyone asking another person or sleaha or you never find a person granting another person sleaha you also never find the word apology anywhere you don't want to apologize there is no word for apology and really you never find any narrative where you would say you would see what's going on and say yes they are asking one another for forgiveness using any term you want it's just totally absent it's totally absent and this seems totally bizarre to us because we think of the Bible as a book of instruction about how to be a person and you know we certainly have at least a couple dozen stories in the Hebrew Bible of things that go on in our lives you know there's a lot of trouble to repair well how do you do that we would say well you need to apologize to ask for your missing grant forgiveness and none of that happens in the Hebrew book and so the question is what's going on here were these people just rude or what and the answer is that is that the conventions of moving from a rupture to repair are very culturally dependent and and you know you and I and probably most of our listeners who run up in the West have something that you know all of us share in common they have type of paradigm that I mentioned before but it turns out that that is a very moderate paradigm a lot of cultures even to this day don't work that they do have conventions of how we move from ruptures with air but they're not the ways that we think of doing it and so this requires deep dive across culturally to see well what other ground rules that the other cultures have what does that say about speaking of relationship society and then to come back to biblical text and to try to read these texts anew and say so how are these characters moving past the rupture that it developed between them and so the fourth point of the book is going to be called without apology without forgiveness the restoration of relationships in people is there a publication data and you know well to quote Churchill that maybe maybe what the end of the day it's been a joy Joshua spending this time with you thank you for joining us okay good and I wish you like a little as a Godspeed and to thank you for having me. Friends you've been listening to new books and biblical studies a channel of the new books network until next time goodbye.