If the history of the Pentateuch is a literary problem, it matters how well we read. This book returns to the origins of modern biblical scholarship with Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza and charts a new course—not through Julius Wellhausen and the Documentary Hypothesis but through Hermann Gunkel, whose vision of a literary history grounded in communal experience is reimagined as a history of responses to political threat before, during, and after the demise of Judah in 586 BCE. This book explores creative transformations of genre and offers groundbreaking new readings of key episodes in the wilderness narrative. Readers will find new answers to old questions about the nature of the exodus, who Moses is, and why he must die in the wilderness. Literary and historical criticism are remarried in a new synthesis that can help us situate this literature historically and understand its continued significance for readers today.
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“The art of close reading is not dead in biblical studies. The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible is an eye-opening interpretive journey through the part of the biblical foundation story that stretches from the plagues of Egypt to the borders of the land of Canaan. For readers new to biblical studies, it offers a crystal clear and consistently engaging entry into the exodus and wilderness story that is far more accessible and fun to read than a conventional biblical commentary. However, it also has much to offer students and scholars seeking fresh insights into the biblical text, such as its discussions of the role and rhetoric of emotion in the biblical account. No story is more familiar than that of the Torah, and yet the author is able to make one feel as if one is reading it for the first time”
Steven Weitzman
Director, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
“In this masterful volume, Erisman demonstrates how crucial the wilderness narratives are for understanding the Pentateuch as a response to Israel and Judah’s historical experience. Drawing on the best of documentary and supplementary approaches, she offers a distinctive account of the Pentateuch’s development. Every page reveals fresh exegetical insights as various theoretical perspectives are combined with ease and elegance. It is not only a novel and compelling journey through the narratives of Exodus and Numbers, but a model for how to do work that is literarily sensitive and historically aware.”
Nathan MacDonald
Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament, Cambridge University
“Through a smart and vibrant synthesis of literary and historical methodologies, Erisman illuminates the ways in which the writers of the Hebrew Bible used the wilderness narrative to explore some of the deepest social and political challenges that beset the ancient Israelites throughout their history, and that in fact continually confront political and social communities throughout time: What is the nature of sovereignty? What are the consequences of rebellion and foreign invasion? How do politics, religion, and rhetoric intersect for good and for ill? In Erisman’s brilliant and probing analyses, the Hebrew Bible becomes a living engagement with political thinking—one that will be of deep interest to biblical scholars as well as readers interested in the intersections of literature and politics more broadly.”
Graham Hammill
Author of The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton
“The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible is a bold new reading of the Hebrew Bible that sees the Moses stories as political allegories with deep implications for the way we structure our communities today. This book has the potential to change the way scholars read the formative stories of the Hebrew Bible, and it breaks new paths for biblical interpretation, political thought, and theological method.”
Charles Halton
Grawemeyer Award–winning author of A Human-Shaped God
“I am impressed. This is a new and groundbreaking examination of the wilderness, with new methods from the humanities. It is very reader friendly and provides new insights on a central topic of the Pentateuchal narratives. It is a must read for all scholars, students, and others who are interested in the formation of the Pentateuch.”
Thomas Römer
Professeur, titulaire de la chaire “Milieux Bibliques,” Collège de France