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The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World. By RAYMOND F. PERSON, JR. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, vol. 6. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2010. Pp. xii + 205. $26.95 (paper).
The book under review represents the culmination to date of R. Person's work on the historical process that led to the creation of the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy through Kings, hereafter DtrH) and the book of Chronicles, as well as his work on the role of oral traditions in shaping these biblical texts. As such, significant portions of each chapter are revisions either of earlier essays already published by Person in several Festschriften, or of his decade-old monograph on the DtrH. Person's heavy reliance on his previous work gives the impression that there is little that is new in the present monograph. It would appear that the primary intent of this volume is to combine his older thesis vis-à-vis the historical reconstruction of the DtrH with his more recent insights into how multiformity in the oral traditions underlying the biblical texts of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles can help explain the inclusion in the biblical tradition of two historiographies that cover roughly the same time period. The combination of these two themes is at times rather awkward, never more so than in the introduction, where it leads to a lack of fluidity in the presentation of his argument and to some confusion as to what is the overarching contribution that Person wishes to make to the discussion.
For the purposes of clarity, this reviewer will first discuss Person' s presentation of his thesis regarding the historical process that led to the two major historiographie works of the Hebrew bible, the DtrH and the Chronistic History, before moving on to a discussion of how the concept of multiformity is used by Person to support his main thesis. In his introduction (pp. 1-21), Person proposes that these two texts were the products of contemporary scribal schools in competition with each other. Furthermore, the composition of both works spanned such a lengthy period of time (exilic through postexilic periods) that it is impossible to determine in which direction the literary influence ran over the redaction history of both these texts. With this argument,...