Anabaptistica
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 2 – Spring 2014
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By John J. Pilch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. 307 pages. Paperback. $26.00
This is a unique book and difficult to place within a genre or type. The core of the book is a collection of bimonthly articles the author wrote in The Bible Today. This book is also a sequel to an earlier book, The Cultural Dictionary of the Bible (Li- turgical Press, 1999). In the first book, Pilch collated articles written from 1993 to 1997. That book was well received and translated into other languages. Hence this new book is the collected articles published from 1998 to 2006.
The aim of the articles is to illustrate the biblical texts within their proper cultural and historical context. The author has focused on Middle Eastern culture and social scientific approaches used to interpret the biblical text. This book is different from the first, in that it is a narrative versus a list of dictionary entries. The book is grouped by various subjects into eight major sections: The Cosmos, Earth, Persons, Family, Language, Human Consciousness, God and the Spirit World, and Entertainment. Within each of these sections there are from five to nine topics. For example, in the section about Earth, there are six topics: Desert and Wilderness, Caves, Swamps, Snakes, Dragons, and Mirrors and Glass. It is clear that each of the topics was originally an individual article written for the journal (The Bible Today). The author grouped these topics into sections, whether or not the topics belonged together, or introduced the reader to a specific topic.
The section on Earth implies that it is going to be about the ancient Israelite views of the natural world or an introduction of historical geography. The first topic discusses the regions of the wilderness. The next topic is about caves. The introduc- tion mentions the cave where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, then it mentions geological aspects of Syro-Palestine as well as prehistoric caves and some mentions of people in caves from the biblical text (e.g. Lot and his daughters, imagery of clefts of the rock in the Song of Solomon). It concludes with Eusebius’ connection with three special caves in the life of Jesus (cave of his birth, his tomb, Ascension cave). This topic is a scattering of data about caves and discusses Byzantine pilgrimage and church sites and their connection to early church fathers and pilgrims mystical experiences. The next topic is about swamps from Moses in the Delta to Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan.
Pilch next discusses snakes and then dragons (although he notes the term for dragon in the Old Testament is snake; which, in some translations, particularly in Exodus, are probably crocodiles). The last topic is mirrors and glass.
This section mentions Pauline metaphors of mirrors (e.g. 1 Cor. 13:12) and ancient Roman glass. The reader does not learn about the various regions of Palestine, nor an overview of the animal and material world. We know that there were deserts, snakes, caves, swamps, and glass. Surely this section does not accurately reflect the topic— Earth. This example is representative of the other sections of the book. Pilch moves freely in his discussions between Old Testament and New Testament interspersing with the modern period. The author notes in his preface that the book should not be read from beginning to end, but by choosing topics from the Table of Contents that interest the reader. This is not a reference book, nor can it be used as a textbook. It is written for a Catholic lay audience and the topics individually would have been informative and insightful in their original presentation of a popular journal. Pilch is at his best when he is discussing New Testament background, especially the life and times of Jesus. It is unfortunate that the author did not rewrite his original es- says into a synthetic work, as he is an excellent communicator and is a scholar who is comfortable with social scientific approaches to the Bible. His expertise in Middle Eastern culture provides much needed insight to the cultural context of the sayings of Jesus and the context of the world of the Bible. For those who have followed his bimonthly contributions, this is an excellent collection of his insights into the biblical world.
