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Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel. By LESTER L. GRABBE. Valley Forge, Pa.: TRINITY PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 1995. Pp. xviii + 261. $20 (paper).
This book examines various forms of religious specialists in ancient Israelite society and attempts to describe their social interaction and relationships. The specialists include kings, priests, prophets, diviners, healers, and sages. Surveys of biblical material concerning the particular specialists are followed by synopses of cross-cultural evidence (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, anthropological) based on secondary literature. Combining these types of evidence yields what the author calls a "Gestalt" of the specialist. Grabbe reaches the foregone conclusion that many types of specialists were active in ancient Israel, that the distinction between professions is often ambiguous, and that the roles evolved without our ability precisely to trace them. The book summarizes the textual evidence, and contains some interesting insights such as viewing the sages as theologians; but, it also has numerous flaws, only a few of...