LEGAL FRICTION, LAW, NARRATIVE, AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN BIBLICAL ISRAEL.

LEGAL FRICTION, LAW, NARRATIVE, AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN BIBLICAL ISRAEL. Gershon Hepner Studies in Biblical Literature 78 New York: Peter Lang, 2010.1110 + xx pp., cloth. $149.95. Gershon Hepner is a prolific poet and independent scholar whosespecial interest is Studies in the Hebrew Bible. In June of this yearPeter Lang brought out Hepner's massive tome, bound in anattractive yellow cover with black lettering and passages from theHebrew text of Genesis screened subtly in cream color as background.This is a volume of comprehensive scholarship by a persistent andhumorous scholar who was born in Leipzig, Germany, and who emigratedwith his parents at the outbreak of World War II to England andeventually to the United States. Hepner is an assiduous Bible studentand when he is not deep into the original Hebrew or Rabbinic texts hewrites esoteric poetry, which you can find published on the Web. This volume sniffs out the mystery of the biblical stories inrelationship to the central body of the Sinai laws, the Torah. Hisspecial methodology is to flush out of the brush and swamps of thebiblical and rabbinic texts the intertextual allusions suggested byverbal resonances. You may not always agree with what he finds orimagines, but you will always be entertained and instructed. Every pageof this large work is decked with surprises--insights you never thoughtof and associations you never considered possible. Hepner has divided his work into four parts with a total offorty-one chapters. Each chapter is numbered separately, starting overwith number one at the beginning of each part. Each chapter is built outof and around a specific individual biblical narrative. Many of theseare familiar and until the reader gets deeply into each chapter he orshe may feel that the material does not need another digestion. ThenHepner surprises us with a mind-boggling and unexpected turn of thoughtor nuance in perspective. This author has a panoply of new ideas onevery biblical subject or story, and at least half of them are not onlygood but urgently necessary. The book's theme is stated clearly in the title. What you seeis what you get. This is a book about Legal Friction between theunfolding story of the ancient Israelite experiment in religious andpolitical sociology, on the one hand, and the dominant tradition ofTorah on the other. The biblical narratives tell the stories ofIsrael's quest, within this tense psychospiritual matrix, to find aclear sense of individual and communal identity. All of us who know theBible well and study it devotedly know what a tortuous quest that becamefor ancient Israel, and what a typical paradigm of our universal humanstruggle with grief and pain it proved to be. Hepner examines each narrative he treats to discover connections,usually verbal, with some aspect of the Torah. For example he begins atthe beginning of the Israelite story, as crafted in the exilicredaction, with the separation of Abraham from Lot. He is sure that thisnarrative expresses the tension in the Deuteronomic prohibition ofintermarriage with the Ammonites and Moabites. He finds not onlyconceptual allusions but verbal usage that urges his conclusion.Similarly he sees the language employed in Sarah's expulsion ofHagar as reflecting a violation of Sinai prohibitions and draws theconclusion that this leads directly to the Israelite Exile in Egypt. Hefinds in Jacob's rejection of Reuben's offer to guaranteeBenjamin's life with the life of two of his sons a reflection ofJacob's obedience to the Deuteronomic proscription of vicariouspunishment. The upshot of Hepner's scholarship is a reading of theentire "historic" narrative of Israelite tradition andmythology as a report crafted by the exilic and post-exilic editors intheir attempt to bring its details in line with Torah. There are those who will challenge this perspective on the groundsthat the exilic and particularly the post-exilic redactors reflected avariety of dispositions toward Torah, ranging all the way from rigidimposition of it to thoroughly ignoring it. Some held to a Mosaictradition and other entire movements in Second Temple Judaism rewrotethe early traditions without reference to the Torah--indeed, clearlyintending to suppress it. On the other hand, Hepner's attempt toemploy his unique lens for reading the entire early tradition offers anew hermeneutic that is consistent in its methodology, interesting inits productivity, and entertaining in the author's inimitable styleof wry humor at nearly every possible turn in the road. One good indicator of the responsible and diligently detailednature of Hepner's scholarship is the fact that his weighty volumecloses with one hundred pages of index: subject, scripture references,and authors; and fifty pages of bibliography. Each chapter has detailednotes to elaborate upon knotty questions raised in the author'sargumentation. This is a book one cannot and must not overlook. It makesan imaginative and illuminating contribution to Hebrew Bible Studies.