Ralph W. Klein

November, 2001

All of us who teach are grateful that Antony Campbell and Mark O'Brien have put this textbook in our hands in an attractive format and at a relatively modest cost ($37). Their collaborative scholarship first became known to most of us through their publication of Sources of the Pentateuch in 1993.

In the nearly sixty years since the publication of Martin Noth's classic study of the Deuteronomistic History, that hypothesis has become ever more complicated and contested and many of our students learn to know this great biblical history only through discussions about it while remaining innocent of reading the Deuteronomistic History itself. Hence our joy at this publication. This book offers students a chance to see the Deuteronomistic History at a glance in a virtually unchanged printing of the NRSV; members of the guild will lament the lack of a Hebrew version of this work and a lack of significant attention to the LXX or the manuscripts from Qumran.

Noth's proposal has never been without its critics, in whole or in part, and in these post-modern times we hope in vain for the "assured results" of biblical criticism. There clearly is no present consensus even on, one might say especially on, the Deuteronomistic History and so this book is only a handbook to the reconstruction of that history by Campbell and O'Brien rather than a handbook to the Deuteronomistic History.

The vast majority of scholars subscribe to the idea of some kind of Deuteronomistic History though there are notable exceptions: Graeme Auld, Ernst Axel Knauff, Claus Westermann, and others.

While there is much on which most scholars working with this hypothesis agree on about the Dtr, there are the following major differences:

Scholars differ on

• Whether Dtr was composed in pre-exilic times, at the time of Josiah (Cross, Nelson, Provan, Knoppers), or first in the exile (Noth, Smend and the Göttingen school, and now recently McKenzie. I also place myself in the latter number). In a sense Cambell and O'Brien embrace--and modify--both the Cross and the Smend proposals.
• Among those who identify Josianic and exilic editions, there is disagreement about whether the post Josianic additions were relatively minor (Cross, Nelson) or major, as in the volume under review and in the works of Levenson, Boling, Peckham, and Mayes.

Scholars differ on

• Whether there was a pre Dtr document called the Prophetic Record, extending from 1 Samuel 1 to 2 Kings 10 and containing all the passages listed in columns I and II on my chart dealing with 1 and 2 Samuel (Variations of this hypothesis can be found in Birch and McCarter), or whether the pre Dtr documents consisted of such things as the Ark Narrative, the History of David's Rise, and the Succession Narrative (Noth, many others). Van Seters and Hans Detlef Hoffmann believe such pre Dtr documents cannot be recovered at all and Van Seters sees the Succession Narrative as subsequent to the Dtr.

Scholars differ on

• Whether the Deuteronomistic Editing was minimal in the books of Samuel as in Campbell-O'Brien (see my chart)--or sizeable as in Dietrich and Veijola. There are only four verses in 1 Samuel and parts of nine verses in 2 Samuel that Campbell and O’Brien attribute to the Josianic Dtr. There are supplements to the Josianic DTR from a royal focus and from a national focus in the chapters dedicated to the rise of kingship in 1 Samuel 7-12. The only post Josiah deuteronomistic addition in 2 Samuel according to Cambell-O'Brien is 2 Sam 7:22-24 (from the deuteronomistic national focus). They also consider 2 Samuel 21-24 secondary, but not deuteronomistic.

All readers, but especially beginning students, may have to struggle to master the rather complicated system of typefaces by which our authors distinguish the several hands that produced this massive work. As far as I can tell, the authors have achieved a high degree of accuracy, except for the following types of errors:

• Formatting in 2 Sam 6:20-23, p. 290, where the single sideline identifying this chapter as a pre Dtr pericope is omitted.
• In discussing the sin of Jeroboam, the authors remark on p. 326 that "At no point is Jerusalem given a characterization equivalent to 'the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes." Surely they mean that at no point is Bethel given such a characterization. Jerusalem for Bethel p. 326.
• On p. 418, the single sideline is placed alongside only the left hand column (1 Kgs 5:11-21), but it is clearly needed alongside of both columns.
• 2 Kgs 22:1aβ, which specifies the length of Josiah's reign is judged to be later than the Dtr historian, but it is printed in normal Roman type with a serif. P. 457
• The "headers" in Samuel and Kings state only The Books of Samuel or The Books of Kings. It would have been helpful to distinguish between 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings in the headers to enable readers to find passages much more quickly.

At several points in the book Campbell and O'Brien lament that a particular topic cannot be pursued for space reasons. In that spirit I would recommend that they create a web site to provide additional materials for students in a fashion similar to the way that K. C. Hanson and Douglas Oakman have done to support their book on Palestine at the Time of Jesus. Using the electronic copy Campbell and O'Brien have already prepared, many of the items on this website would be very easy and inexpensive for them to prepare. I think the web site could have the following features not contained in the book:

• The full text of the Prophetic Record and the so-Josianic Deuteronomistic History formatted as independent documents. Clearly the idea of a 9^th-century Prophetic Record is a favorite hypothesis of the authors since there is a longer discussion of it than either the Josianic or final Deuteronomistic Histories in the introduction to this book. But with all the subsequent revisions and incorporations of other materials they propose, there is no way a scholar can detect the effect of the Prophetic Record on a reader. The same goes for the Josianic Deuteronomistic History. It's one thing to be told (p. 22) that the Josianic DH set its sights on the reform of Josiah "implementing the law of Deuteronomy for centralization of worship and the observance of Passover" and quite another to read those passages from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings as a unity that made up that Josianic DH.
• This web site might also include the "original" texts of other pre-canonical sources, such as "The Conquest Narrative" from Joshua (pp 23-24); "The Deliverance Collection" from Judges; "The Ark Narrative" from 1 and 2 Samuel, and the "Hezekian King List" from the books of Kings.
• A third desideratum on this web site would be a table listing all the source and redactional assignments for the complete Deuteronomistic History, much as I have given on the sample handout for Samuel (and Kings). Whether this would make their proposal more or less credible we will discuss later, but I found that it was almost impossible for me to understand their proposal without making such tables for myself. In fact, I would suggest that if a second edition of this book is ever printed, that such tables be included as an appendix. A table comparing their series of exilic additions with those exilic additions identified by Cross or Nelson and a table noting the DtrH, P, and N assignments of the Göttingen school would also help readers note similarities and differences between the proposals. There are running references to Veijola in many places, but no indication whether these allusions are complete or how the identifications of Campbell and O’Brien compare to those of Dietrich, Veijola, and others.
• A fourth addition on the web site would be the text of the NRSV printed out much as it is in the book, but using fonts of many colors to represent their source and redactional assignments. I think they did as well as they could in the present printed copy, but the distinction between serif and sans serif type is not dramatic enough except for the most attentive reader. Indented vs flush left text is also a major distinguishing factor in the present volume, but that too is not dramatic enough. Color coding of the text--a new Regenbogen Bibel--would make the understanding of their proposal much easier.

The identification of various editions and redactions by the use of varying type faces and indentations in the present book might inadvertently lead to misreadings by students. Campbell and O'Brien for example print flush left all the pre DH materials and the redactional additions of the DTR himself, with the latter printed in bold type. A student might think he or she is reading Dtr by paying attention only to these bold faced paragraphs and indeed one would expect to find here the clearest statements of Dtr's theology or ideology. But the pre-Dtr documents they identify, such as the Prophetic Record in Samuel and Kings, the Conquest Narrative in Joshua, the Deliverance Collection in Judges, and the ark narrative in 1 and 2 Samuel are now a full part of the Josianic Deuteronomistic History. A comparison with Chronicles may be helpful. To study the message of Chronicles, one reads not only the Sondergut, but those extensive materials the Chronicler has incorporated from the Deuteronomistic History, the Psalter, and elsewhere. The difference between the Chronicler’s History and the Dtr is that we--unless we follow the hypothesis of Professor Auld--can tell, more or less, which passages the Chronicler has omitted, which he has added, and how he has changed the texts of the Deuteronomistic History or the Psalter he has incorporated. But the whole of 1 and 2 Chronicles is the witness of the Chronicler, save for those passages that may have been added later. Similarly, the Josianic DTR is not just the bold paragraphs marked out in this book, but also the pre Dtr documents that were included by the person who drafted these paragraphs printed in bold.

At one point Campbell and O'Brien seem to fall victim to such a misreading of their own handbook. On p. 326 they write: The Josianic DH has little to say about the north, leaving it to the Prophetic Record which lays the blame squarely on the people (2 Kgs 17:21-23). But of course in the Josianic Deuteronomistic History, the Prophetic Record has become fully part of the Deuteronomistic Historian's own message and so he is leaving nothing to another hand. What's more by incorporating the Prophetic Record the Josianic Dtr indicts the whole people, an accusation they attribute elsewhere to the exilic deuteronomistic revision with a national focus.

Thinking of the Chronicles analogy also raises other problems. When the Josianic Dtr incorporated the earlier sources, did he change them? Did he leave out irrelevant or contrary paragraphs, just as the Chronicler omitted almost all of the Succession Narrative and 1 Samuel 1-30? Did the Deuteronomistic Historian incorporate previous materials without any changes at all. Readers of the synopses of Vannutelli or Ben David know that there is hardly a verse in Chronicles that is exactly the same as in Samuel-Kings. Some of these differences are trivial spelling differences, but the vast majority are small or larger adjustments of his Vorlage. Would we not expect a somewhat similar procedure by the Josianic Dtr? If one removed the Sondergut from Chronicles, one would not be left with the Deuteronomistic History but with chapters from that history that have been revised and occasionally even put in a different order. If one removes from the Deuteronomistic History the Josianic additions to the pre canonical sources, is one really left with the Prophetic Record or the other alleged sources? At most we have the Deuteronomistic Historian’s version of the Prophetic Record and other hypothetical documents and not the Prophetic Record itself.

In his Reading the Fractures of Genesis, David Carr reminds us that detection of the first level behind the present text is the easiest and safest part of the procedure of source criticism, but that as one proceeds to find more and more levels and redactional hands, the whole enterprise becomes much riskier. Scholars, for example, have been able to achieve a high degree of consensus in the isolation of P from non-P materials in the Pentateuch, but the attribution of verses to J and E and the like have remained irresolvably fluid (Carr, p. 147). Campbell and O'Brien claim to have detected a multi-tiered composition. They not only distinguish between the Josianic redactor and an exilic updating that includes later events, but they also identify other exilic deuteronomistic redactions and ascribe to separate hands passages that have a royal focus from those that have a national focus. They also assign a significant number of verses to a fourth deuteronomistic hand from the late exilic period.

Handout. Columns 1-2 in the handout on the books of Samuel list the verses that make up the Prophetic Record. Column 1 contains those materials that antedate the prophetic editing itself, while column 2 assigns verses to that editing and to the later extension of that record from 2 Kgs 10:29 to the fall of the Northern Kingdom.

Column III - identifies other pre Dtr documents. For Campbell-O'Brien, this includes the Ark narrative, selected chapters in 1-2 Samuel, and the Succession Narrative

Column IV is their Hezekian king list. This is primarily isolated by unique royal judgment formulas, about which we will say more below.

Column V identifies additions by the redactor of the Josianic Dtr; also the extension of that document after the death of Josiah and the destruction of Jerusalem to bring the story up to date (2 Kgs 23:28-37; 24:1, 5-12, 15-19, 20b; 25:1-11).

Column VI contains the verses assigned to an exilic revision of the Josianic Dtr from a royal focus. It appears only in 1 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. It attributed the failure of the Josianic reform to the institution of kingship in Israel.

Column VII refers to an exilic revision from a national focus, that is, it emphasizes the sins of the people and the importance of observing God’s law. National focus additions appear in every book of the Deuteronomistic History, from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings.

Column VIII contains other post Dtr additions, without prejudice on the date of composition

Column IX lists a few, difficult-to-assign passages.

Working backwards to a time before the purported seventh-century Josianic Dtr and the purported sixth century reworkings and revisions of that history, they also identify the following prior documents (p. 9): the ark narrative and the stories of David’s rise in the tenth century, a Prophetic Record drafted in the ninth century, and an extension of the Prophetic Record and the beginnings of the "Hezekian movement" in the eighth century. In the case of the Prophetic Record they distinguish between the sources accessed by that prophetic redactor and the words he or she added themselves. Huldah's words in 2 Kgs 22:15-20 are assigned by them to four separate hands (458-460). Campbell and O’Brien are thus able to detect at least eight levels within the present text and the caution issued by Carr seems very much in order.

Campbell and O'Brien acknowledge that some of their literary judgments have been affected by their own--and Helga Weippert's--study of the judgment formulas that are attached to the accounts of the kings. They distinguish the following patterns in these judgment formulas:

Pattern A, which they attribute to the so-called extension of the Prophetic Record, dealing with the northern kings from Jehu to Hoshea (2 Kings 10:29-17:23).

Pattern B, which they attribute to the Hezekian king list, naming the southern kings from Rehoboam to Hezekiah, who are praised, with the reservation that the high places were not taken away [1 Kgs 14:21a, 22a, 23aα, 25-28, 31 (Rehoboam); 15:3a., 8 (Abijam), 11-12a. 14a, 24 (Asa); 22:43, 50 (Jehoshaphat); 2 Kgs 8:18, 20-22 (?), 24 (Joram), 27 (Ahaziah), 12:2-3, 20-21 (Joash), 14:3-5, 19-21 ((Amaziah),), 15:3-5, 7 (Azariah), 34-35a, 37-38 (Jotham), 16:2b-3a, 5-9, 20 (Ahaz); 18:3-5a, 7-8 (Hezekiah)] .

Pattern C relates to the northern kings within the Prophetic Record (p. 33), but the pattern itself is attributed to the Josianic Historian (p. 324).

A mixed Pattern B/C, which is used only for Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah

Pattern D, which is used for the four kings after Josiah, who were not included in the Josianic edition of the history.

We need not discuss here pattern B/C which is only used with Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah, and with pattern D used only with the last four kings.

The last two patterns—that is, B/C and D, play the smallest role in this discussion. Pattern D, used with the last four kings, employs a stereotyped pattern: A given king did evil in the eyes of Yahweh according to all his fathers, or his father, or Jehoiakim had done. This repetitive pattern is either the shorthand used by the author who added the accounts of these last four kings, or, as Erich Zenger, has pointed out, it is a devastating way to present the accounts of these last kings if they were an original part of the Deuteronomistic History. As for pattern B/C, the pattern used for Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah, this pattern shares with pattern B the mention of High Places, and with patterns B and C it shares the reference to walking in the ways of, or in the sins of, a predecessor, and with C it shares the notion of the king provoking Yahweh to anger. Amon is treated as a carbon copy of his father Manasseh so that this pattern is used only to contrast the very bad Manasseh and Amon with the very good Josiah. Manasseh rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah had removed, and Josiah gave them their final destruction. Who added it? Josianic Dtr?

The question is whether the fluctuations among patterns A, B, and C are slight enough to allow for their composition by a single author (Provan) or whether these variations can be explained as changes required by the context (McKenzie). Campbell and O'Brien argue in the negative in both cases. They believe that the author of the original Prophetic Record (or the Deuteronomistic Historian) used pattern C for the northern kings from Jeroboam to Joram, and that the person responsible for the extension of the Prophetic Record, from Jehu to Hoshea, used Pattern A. In their view the distinctive nature of pattern A points to this as a block of text existing in its own right, originally unconnected with its wider context in the Deuteronomistic History (Of Prophets and Kings, p. 153).

My own comparison of Patterns C and A in the Northern Kingdom calls this dichotomy into some question. Actually, elements 1-4 in these patterns, dealing with the judgment that (1) the king did evil in the sight of the Lord, (2) in the manner of Jeroboam, (3) who made Israel to sin, (4) and a plain reference to this king’s sins are virtually identical in the two patterns. Pattern A does add an expression (element 5) that the king did not depart from these sins, but this addition occurs already with Joram, the last king in pattern C. The notice that the king walked in the way of, or in the sins of, a predecessor (element 6) does occur with five/six of the nine kings in pattern C, but also with one of the ten kings in pattern A. Two elements are unique to pattern C: the expression "which he sinned" (element 8) and "provoking Yahweh to anger" (element 9), but the element 8 is not only absent from Pattern A, but from the last three kings in pattern C as well, and element 9 is not only absent from Pattern A, but from the last king in pattern C as well. In other words the pattern does not change where their theories of composition says it should change. For the pattern to change after Jehu (the only king in the north after Jeroboam I who does not do evil) does not seem strange to me, let alone demand the identification of an extended version of a document called the Prophetic Record. Even more surprising, even inexplicable to me, is that one of the nine judgment formulas in C--supposedly the work of the author of the Prophetic Record and therefore included by the Josianic Historian--is assigned by them to the exilic national focus document (1 Kgs 14:15-16; p. 380) and four of these formulas, are assigned by them to the exilic royal focus document (1 Kgs 15:30, p. 386; 1 Kgs 16:13, p. 388; 1 Kgs 16:19, p. 389, and 1 Kgs 16:33b, p. 391). Thus five of the nine formulas in Pattern C are added only after the writing of the Josianic Deuteronomistic History. The assignment of five of the formulas in pattern C to exilic times is either a mistake that inadvertently entered their work and/or evidence that the evidence for a first draft of the DTR in the time of Josiah may need to be rethought.

I am also not persuaded that the polemic against the high places in all the southern kings from Rehoboam to Hezekiah requires the identification of an otherwise unknown document called the Hezekian king list.

I would propose an alternate interpretation of the variation in these judgment formulas: that the Deuteronomistic Historian used pattern B for the judgment formulas in the south until Hezekiah (citing the non removal of the high places), used a special formula B/C for the polar opposites Manasseh-Amon and Josiah, who are contrasted with one another, and then omitted mention of the high places altogether thereafter since Josiah put the high places out of business once and for all. In the north all the royal judgment formulas except for the last king Hoshea raise a litany about the sins of Jeroboam which he made Israel to sin. Changes in the second half begin with Joram in two cases, and with Ahab in another case, and thus not with Jehu as their hypothesis requires. (Five of the nine royal judgment formulas are ascribed to a time later than the Josianic historian in any case).

One of the most helpful features of this volume is a series of notations repeated with most pericopes called text signals and text-history approach. The first of these paragraphs identifies important ideas or vocabulary in the pericope, and the second, the text-history approach, allows the authors to assign the passage to one or more of the documents they have identified and to show how it expresses the thesis of their several authors.

A third type of notation, again appearing with every major unit, speaks of Present-text potential, and here the authors offer a synchronic reading of the final form or the canonical text. This kind of notation does not seek to relate the text to any period of composition and therefore the interpretation is more or less timeless and to my taste somewhat flat. In my judgment, a different understanding of the final form could have been attempted. If the first edition of the DTR was written according to their proposal in the time of Josiah as a kind of propaganda for his reform, subsequent additions to this edition listed in columns 6-8 radically reversed the meaning of that history from optimistic propaganda to pessimistic theodicy since the Josianic Dtr was in their opinion mistaken. But of course it is not only columns six to eight that make up that final form. Rather, all the materials in columns 1-8, and perhaps even parts of column 9, are now enlisted to explain the fall of both kingdoms. I think the book would be considerably enriched if the authors would have addressed the interpretation offered to Israel in the sixth century BCE in this massive work that came from a series of deuteronomistic hands. I would have preferred an interpretation of the final form of the comprehensive Deuteronomistic History, rather than an interpretation of the canonical shape which in their reading really has nothing directly to do with the Deuteronomistic History as such or with an address to any specific period in Israel's history. If the proposal of the first edition of the Deuteronomistic History proved to be theologically false, it is remarkable that the subsequent editions could correct it and refocus it by making some additions and by incorporating almost all of the failed first edition. Comments in the paragraphs dealing with the present text potential might have indicated how the final editors could have tolerated the remnants of the Josianic edition which had proved to be widely mistaken.

Participation in a panel like this allows a scholar to state the kind of book he or she would have written if they had had the time or the cleverness to write the book under review. The virtues of that book I will never write should not diminish our profound gratitude for the very fine book that Anthony Campbell and Mark O'Brien have in fact written.