Holloway, Steven W

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James Madison UniversityJMU Scholarly CommonsLibraries Libraries & Educational Technologies1996Richard H. Lowery, The Reforming Kings: Cultsand Society in First Temple JudahSteven W. HollowayJames Madison University, hollowsw@jmu.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/letfspubsPart of the Biblical Studies CommonsThis Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries & Educational Technologies at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Libraries by an authorized administrator of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact dc_admin@jmu.edu.Recommended CitationHolloway, Steven W., "Richard H. Lowery, The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah" (1996). Libraries. 125.http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/letfspubs/125  ReviewReviewed Work(s): The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah byRichard Harlin LoweryReview by: Steven W. HollowaySource: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 55-57Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/545383Accessed: 05-01-2018 19:04 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a widerange of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity andfacilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://about.jstor.org/termsThe University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Journal of Near Eastern StudiesThis content downloaded from 134.126.76.227 on Fri, 05 Jan 2018 19:04:07 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms JANUARY 1996 BOOK REVIEWS 55 very fine pieces of scholarship in their own right, combining sound analysis, clarity of pre- sentation, and the excitement of new discovery. PAUL M. COBB The University of Chicago The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah. By RICHARD HARLIN LOWERY. Journal for the Study of the Old Test- ament Supplement Series, no. 120. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991. Pp. 236. $50. As stated in the preface, this volume is a revi- sion of a (1989) Yale Ph.D. dissertation advised by Robert Wilson. A comparison with the disser- tation itself reveals that, aside from correcting typos and reining in a penchant for colloquial- isms, the conclusion alone has seen substantive revision; the book contains a comprehensive bibliography with scriptural and author indexes compiled by the author. Lowery's enterprise, the synthesizing of a social history of Deuteronomic theology in the monarchic period, is clearly voiced and consistently addressed, from the sub- stantive introduction to the conclusion chapter. Chap. 1, "Monarchy and Economy," examines land use, real estate ownership, royal and cultic taxation, and the royal ideology and kinship structures which weave a complex fugue through the Old Testament narratives. Chap. 2 examines the biblical narratives of the cultic activities of Rehoboam, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Athaliah, Joash, and Amaziah. Chaps. 3 through 6 deal with the reigns of Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Josiah, re- spectively. Lowery maintains that "Assyrian imperialism provides the context for the devel- opment of deuteronomism in Judah" (p. 214), specifically, that Assyrian extortion of tribute, corvee, and other vassal obligations exacerbated tensions already existing between Judahite mon- archy and its subjects, ultimately leading to the formulation of the Deuteronomic vision of soci- ety and its partial manifestation in the reform program of Josiah. Like so many studies in the biblical field to- day, Lowery endeavors to write an original his- tory of the late monarchic period by combining his own redaction-critical readings of the texts of 2 Kings and Chronicles with a critical survey of the secondary literature; there is virtually no independent examination of extrabiblical pri- mary texts or pertinent archaeological finds. On the positive side, the introduction provides an up-to-date summary of theories regarding the composition and redaction of the Deuteronomis- tic History. Lowery has performed a useful ser- vice for the English-reading constituency by introducing the important monographs of H.-D. Hoffmann' and H. Spieckermann2 into his dis- cussion of the salient biblical texts and the vexatious issue of Assyrian cultic influence. The author is refreshingly cognizant that the "official" religion of monarchic Judah was a cult of many gods, with Yahweh as the paramount god of the nation (pp. 119, 139), and, after exploring the massive literary stylization of 2 Kings' description of Manasseh, rejects the popular "rampant syncretism" interpretation of the reign of this king because the cult polemic oppressively outweighs the historical content (p. 189). He is to be commended for identifying the majority of the cult practices abrogated by Josiah in 2 Kings 23:4-20 as "indigenous" (p. 203) but, regrettably, does not explore the possibility that their very recognizability as West Semitic cults may have more to do with Deuteronomistic theological Tendenz than late Judahite history. On the negative side, Lowery poses a series of historical questions the answers to which are artificially circumscribed by his reliance on secondary studies and basic conviction in the historicity of the biblical narratives, repeated disclaimers notwithstanding. For instance, his conception of the Assyrian overlordship of Judah as a period of worsening socioeconomic condi- tions for all classes, save the privileged few, may need adjustment in light of the immense oil IHans-Detlef Hoffmann, Reform und Reformen.: Untersuchungen zu einem Grundthema der deuteron- omistischen Geschichtsschreibung, Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, no. 66 (Zurich, 1980). 2 Hermann Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit, Forschungen zur Religion und Litera- tur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, no 129 (Gaitt- ingen, 1982).This content downloaded from 134.126.76.227 on Fri, 05 Jan 2018 19:04:07 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 56 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES VOL. 55 No. 1 manufacturing complex recently unearthed at Tel Miqne-Ekron3 and evidence of growing urban complexity and expansion in trade goods in con- temporary Edomite territory.4 Given the histori- cal patterns of resistance to Assyrian expansion in Western Asia, it is reasonable to speculate with Lowery that the majority of the Judahite populace took umbrage at the burden of imperial tax and corvie and that, in general, vassal-state economies shifted towards a surplus and trade- oriented mode of production. The author's failure to access independently the archaeological pic- ture and optimism in the historical transparency of isolated prophetic polemics and cult reform narratives of 2 Kings, however, vitiates his bold claim that "the economic pressure of meeting ob- ligations to the empire sent Judah headlong into social crisis" (p. 130). Lowery's discussion of the "high place" sanctuaries (pp. 75-80) demon- strates no awareness of the extensive treatment by Barrick,5 and he follows the traditional scho- lium of T7Y1 1/tDti7 as "cult prostitutes" (pp. 70, 88-93) without any indication that this inter- pretation has been seriously challenged.6 Again, reliance on secondary literature may have detoured Lowery from bringing Egypt into his analysis at significant points. In his discus- sion of the fiscal and administrative structures  the Divided Monarchy, it would be logical, given the ancient in lusion of Syria/Palestine within the active Egyptian Kulturkreis, to ex- plore the possibility that Egyptian administra- tive structures might off r useful parallels with those of Israel an  Judah. While Lowery is aware of waning Assy ian power during Josiah's reign, he does not appear to grasp implications of an Egyptia  assumption of Judahite overlord- s ip from Assyria. If, for instance, the Josianic cult reform took place well after the translation of Judah from an Assyrian into an Egyptian vas- sal state, then th  quest for literary vestiges of the erad ca ion of Assyrian imperial cult impo- sitions rom the temples and shrines of Judah loses its cogency. Finally, given extensive evi- dence of Egyptian deities in glyptic and other iconographic artifacts of Iron Age Palestine, and the proximity of this 'Great Tradition" to the ur- ban centers of Judah, it is rather suspicious that nothing in the 2 Kings narrative of the Josianic cult reform hints of Egyptian cultic origin. If the authors/redactors of 2 Kings were uninformed regarding Egyptian cults in seventh-century Judah, how much more probable is it that they preserved a knowledge of Assyrian religious practices, whether politically imposed or volun- tarily adopted? Lowery breaks no new ground in his consid- eration of Assyrian cultic influence in the vassal states, including Judah (pp. 135-40, neverthe- less a useful summary of the major research on the topic in the last ninety years). While he re- jects most of the earlier scholarly efforts to infiltrate Assyrian deities and cult practices into the narratives of 2 Kings, he nevertheless iso- lates "astral cult practices from Assyria" (never defined) in the rooftop altars of Ahaz (p. 205) and allows the possibility that the chariots of the sun in 2 Kings 23:11 and the incense offered to Baal and major celestial objects in v. 5 could refer to either indigenous cults or Assyrian im- ports (pp. 205-6). In truth, with the exception of 3 Seymour Gitin, "Tel Miqne-Ekron: A Type-Site for the Inner Coastal Plain in the Iron Age II Period$" in S. Gitin and W. G. Dever, eds., Recent Excavations in Israel, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 49 (Winona Lake, Indiana, 1989), pp. 23-58. 4 John R. Bartlett, Edom and The Edomites, Jour- nal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series, no. 77 (Sheffield, 1989), pp. 136-43; Stephen Hart, "Some Preliminary Thoughts on Settlement in the Southern Edom" Levant 18 (1986): 54-58. For a promising understanding of the reasons behind Jeru- salem's growth in the Assyrian period very different from that of Lowery, see now Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People: From the Writ- ten and Archaeological Sources, Studies in the H s- tory of the Ancient Near East, no. 4 (Leiden, 1992), pp. 333-34, 343. 5W. Boyd Barrick, "The Funerary Character of 'High-Places' in Ancient Palestine: A Reassessment" VT 25 (1975): 565-95; idem, "The Word BMH in the Old Testament" (Ph.D diss., University of Chicago, 1977); idem, "What Do We Really Know About 'High-Places'?," Svensk exegetisk Arsbok 45 (1980): 50-57. 6Wolfram von Soden, "Zur Stellung des 'Ge- weihten' (qdsD in Ugarit," Ugarit Forschungen (UF) 2 (1970): 329-30; Hans M. Barstad, The Religious Po-lemics of Amos: Studies in the Preaching of Am 2,7b- 8; 4,1-13; 5,1-27; 6,4-7; 8,14, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, no. 34 (Leiden, 1984), pp. 28-29; May r I. Gruber, "Hebreu qgde&ah and Her Canaanite and Akkadian Cognates," UF 18 (1986): 133-48.This content downloaded from 134.126.76.227 on Fri, 05 Jan 2018 19:04:07 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms JANUARY 1996 BOOK REVIEWS 57 SamaS the sun god, Sin the moon god, I~tar, as- sociated with Venus in her morning and evening manifestations, and the collective Sebetti, asso- ciated with the Pleiades, there is strikingly little textual evidence for the worship of astral en- tities in royally sponsored temples in Assyria, Despite the East Semitic origin of the word, the semantic development of Hebrew mazzd- 16t, "planets, (zodiacal) constellations," 2 Kings 23:5 has no parallel in its Akkadian cognate; Akkadian boasts perfectly straightforward ex- pressions for "planet", bibbu, and "(zodiacal) constellation(s)," lumaisu. The concept of zodiac is unattested before 555 B.C.E.-if the biblical authors intended that as the meaning of mazza- l1t, then the term is anachronistic for monarchic Judah. While it is entirely plausible that the his- torical Ahaz and other Judahite kings subject to Assyria emulated aspects of Assyrian astronom- ical observation and celestrial divination, the cult narratives of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Jo- siah in 2 Kings must be mercilessly ransacked for "evidence" however ambiguous, like the rooftop altars of Ahaz, to support a historicist's reading of the Deuteronomistic History, a his- tory which shows neither political nor cultic interest in Assyrian affairs following Sennach- erib's anachronistic parricide until Josiah's death. Had rooftop altars been mentioned in connec- tion with the cultic peccadilloes of Ahab, imag- ine the sophisticated scholarly expositions that might have "demonstrated" Aramaean or Phoe- nician cultic influence in Israel! Richard Lowery has written a highly readable social and religious history of Judah, with good coverage of the secondary literature and aware- ness of the most combustible issues in current scholarship surrounding the Deuteronomistic History. One hopes that a sequel will follow containing the primary research necessary to sustain his conclusions, better demonstrating the powers of critical historical reasoning that glint at several points from the pages of this book. STEVEN W. HOLLOWAY American Theological Library Association Chicago, Illinois In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. By J. P. MALLORY. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989. Pp 288 + 175 figs. $29.95. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the search for the Indo-European homeland. Amid the recent publi ations in this special field of research, Mallory's book In Search of the Indo-Europeans clearly stands out because of its clarity and its wish not to present yet another hypothesis. Rather, it follows "the general mainstream of 'conventional wisdom'" and at-tempts "to provide a general. . . survey of the current state of our knowledge about the earliest Indo-Europeans" (p. 8). As such, one ca  only admire the author's vast erudition and scholar- ship, which enab e him to cover questions of archeology, comparative linguistics, and many topics of Indo-European culture spread over several millennia and cove ing very ifferent societies. After a short "Forschungsgeschicht ," the author formulates the Indo-European hypothesis according to which a whole set of languages, ranging from Indo-Aryan and Tocharian in the East to Celtic in the West in the early period and far more dispersed nowadays, presupposes a common ncestor, "Proto-Indo-European," with a population that once occupi d a restricted ar a somewhere in Eurasia roughly between 4500 nd 2500 B.c. In t e next two chapters, the lan- guages and language groups in sia and Europe are all reviewed. Especially helpful for the non- specialist reader are the short text samples of one or more languages in each subgroup. It is in this section of the book, however, that the specialist reader may find some minor points of criticism. Any Hittitologist will, for exam- ple, protest against the statement: "the Hittites called themselves nes and their language nesili" (p. 26). How much the Indo-European invaders in Anatolia assimilated with the apparently autochthonous non-Indo-European Hattians is shown by the fact that these invaders adopted the autochthonous name and called themselves "men of Hatti," although their language pre- vailed and Hattic must have been a nearly dead language in this early period. The name Hattic, however, is reserved for this substratum lan- guage, which was mostly restricted to use inThis content downloaded from 134.126.76.227 on Fri, 05 Jan 2018 19:04:07 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Richard H. Lowery, The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah

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Richard H. Lowery, The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah

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