ELLEN F. DAVIS, Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and she Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel's Prophecy (JSOTSup 78; Bible and Literature Series 21; Sheffield: Almond, 1989). Pp. 184. £22.50, $35.

In this revised Yale dissertation Davis reviews the modern history of research on Ezekiel and concludes that none of the commentators has sufficiently weighed the impact of the shift to writing in the composition of Ezekiel's prophecy. Ezekiel composed his oracles in writing, but in a manner imbued with the forms and practices of oral prophecy. Factors in Ezekiel's environment constituted a new kind of challenge to the prophet in communicating his message, and writing provided him with the linguistic means to answer that challenge. D. argues that writing played an important role in Israelite society at Ezekiel's time and that literacy among the exiles was high. Still, the prophet's use of devices from oral prophecy (repetition, highly visual images, formulaic language) produced a form of speech that could be recognized and assimilated by his audience.

Davis interprets the swallowing of the scroll as pointing to the function of the prophet to make known to Israel the divine author of its judgment and the just grounds for its execution. Unlike earlier prophets, Ezekiel establishes the grounds of the disaster; he does not attempt to fend it off. With Ezekiel there is a shift in prophecy from an interactive communications situation to a unidirectional flow of information from God. The fixity of the scroll of judgment permits no negotiation in response to the people's appeal. Ezekiel falls dumb and lets the swallowed scroll speak through him in writing. The removal of dumbness in chap. 33, on the other hand, shows that Ezekiel was no longer constrained by the message of the swallowed scroll because the limits of that text have been exceeded in the destruction of Jerusalem. Through the sign actions, Ezekiel speaks for God and vividly depicts Israel's fate. In narrating his performance of these signs, Ezekiel shows his own involvement in the people's suffering.

An author's task is not so much to address a previously identifiable social group as to create a new community. D. describes the devices Ezekiel employs for engaging his audience's attention and active involvement and for establishing his own authority to speak. The reference to the thirtieth year in 1:1 shows that Ezekiel used a linguistic code that would have been familiar to his audience. Such a code builds a sense of comradeship between the speaker and addressee, and it excludes people who cannot use the code and who must remain on the outside. Ezekiel claims to be the privileged listener to God's speech, passing on everything exactly as he had received it. By phrasing everything as divine speech addressed to himself, Ezekiel invoked the highest authority for his prophecy.

Ezekiel develops an archival speech form which is oriented less toward the immediate press of events in the political sphere and more toward a reformation of the tradition in light of the catastrophic event of Jerusalem's fall. The radical difference in Ezekiel is the reorientation from prophecy as a current mode of activity to prophecy as a written record. By writing his prophecy down, Ezekiel contributed to the eclipse of prophecy as a contemporary phenomenon. Once the literary work assumed independent existence, the writer--in this case the prophet--becomes unimportant or even disappears as a distinct individual. Encounter with the divine word as fixed in the text now became all-important. Writing prophecy down also necessitated repeated acts of interpretation if the text is to remain useful.

Davis has used tools provided by contemporary studies of written discourse to understand Ezekiel as a writing prophet. She has explored how Ezekiel is engaged in remodeling prophecy as a form of social interaction. If she is correct about how this shift proved determinative for written tradition, Ezekiel played a far greater role in the development of subsequent centuries of Judaism than is normally assigned to him.

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By Ralph W.Klein, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60615