Authorship and the Hebrew Bible ed. by Sonja Ammann, Katharina Pyschny and Julia Rhyder (review)

Reviewed by: Authorship and the Hebrew Bible ed. by Sonja Ammann, Katharina Pyschny and Julia Rhyder Mahri Leonard-Fleckman sonja ammann, katharina pyschny, and julia rhyder (eds.), Authorship and the Hebrew Bible (FAT 158; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022). Pp. xii + 277. €134. "What follows la mort de l'auteur?" (p. vi). So begins this volume, which seeks to reevaluate the concept of authorship in historical-critical biblical studies. Originating in a 2018 conference, the volume uses the seminal, theoretical works by Roland Barthes ("The Death of the Author," in Barthes, Image, Music, Text ed. and trans. Stephen Heath; London: Fontana, 1977 142–48) and Michel Foucault ("What Is an Author?" in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977 113–38) as points of entry into a conversation that engages with literary-theoretical and literary-historical approaches across ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean studies. In the comprehensive introduction (pp. 1–16), Sonja Ammann describes the contours of present issues related to authorship in Hebrew Bible studies. The concept of authorship continues to be utilized, she explains, though often without critical reflection (p. 1). A. then offers a range of incisive questions that frame and focus the volume, including: Can the category of authorship be justifiably applied to ancient ways of producing texts, even as a heuristic tool? What are the implications and consequences of questioning the concept of authorship for historical-critical research? The first three essays come from fields related to the Hebrew Bible. In "Narratives of Authorship and Cuneiform Literature" (pp. 17–36), Sophus Helles differentiates between "etic" and "emic" approaches to authorship, in which the etic or "outside" approach questions the objective reliability of sources, connected to real authors, while the emic or "inside" approach skirts the question of authorship to ask what narratives meant for those who circulated them. Helles argues that the emic approach is a more fruitful avenue for investigating scribal processes in the ancient Middle East, for it allows us to approach narratives "not as flawed representations of an elusive reality, but as revealing narratives" (p. 21). Sylvie Honigman then examines differing Judahite and Greek conceptions of text, attribution, and past in "The Greek and Judahite Representations of Author, Book, and End Page 400 Event" (pp. 37–58). She demonstrates that, while Greek historiography correlates author, book, and event as single, stable entities, and used textual attribution as a strategy of legitimacy, Judahite historiography allows for multiple versions of representations of the past with pseudonymous attributions. In "Rewriting Authorship in the Dead Sea Scrolls" (pp. 59–74), George J. Brooke scrutinizes the history of scholarship related to the Dead Sea Scrolls, stressing the theological underpinnings of earlier searches for authorship, linked to the idea that texts had fixed meanings attached to inspired authorities (p. 70). Slowly, studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls have replaced notions of pure Urtexts and authors with ideas of pluriformity and changeability. Brooke proposes that scholars "resurrect" (p. 71) the idea of authorship to consider how transmitters of texts function as coauthors and interpreters of early Jewish literature in the late Second Temple period. Shifting to the Hebrew Bible, Melanie Köhlmoos investigates changing notions of authorship in historical-critical studies in "Authorial Intention(s) in Old Testament Texts" (pp. 75–92). She differentiates three views of authorship in the history of critical exegesis— the author as "originator of linguistic artifacts," "of metaphoric speech," and "as individual." She argues that the questions of authorship and authorial intent remain necessary features of biblical studies, despite the permanent challenge of whether and how such authors can be traced (p. 89). Balancing the history of scholarship and textual investigation, Ehud Ben Zvi reflects on "Matters of Authorship, Authority, and Power from the Perspective of a Historian of the World of Yehudite/Judean Literati" in the late Persian/early Hellenistic periods (pp. 93–114). Ben Zvi notes the complex understandings of authorship, focusing specifically on Moses-as-author and passages from Chronicles, and concludes by proposing strategies to advance studies of authorship through various case studies and observations. Turning to textual investigation, in "From...