Content area
Full Text
WESTON W. FIELDS, Sodom and Gomorrah: History and Motif in Biblical Narrative (JSOTSup 231; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). Pp. 228. 40, 60.
This book consists of a preface, a list of abbreviations, a bibliography, two indexes, and nine chapters, the last of which is both a summary and a conclusion. The title emanates from what Fields calls the "Sodom and Gomorrah motif," but which is generally known as the "stranger in your (or our) gates" motif. Although F is interested in the way in which this motif defines the relationship between insiders and outsiders in various portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, he pays particular attention to Lot as ger in Sodom, the Ephraimite as ger in Gibeah (Judges 19-21), and Rahab as the "outsider" in Jericho.
Fields begins by defining terms and methods which he will use in his analysis (chap. 1). He combines a simplistic attempt to define "the nature and purpose of narrative" and "the nature and purpose of biblical narrative" with a good discussion...