Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel: Prophet, Priest, Sage and People

Written by Aaron Chalmers Reviewed By Matthieu Richelle

Seminary teachers are in constant need of new, well-informed, and informative textbooks. Whereas valuable introductions to the Old Testament, the history of Israel, or its ancient Near Eastern backgrounds are available, there are probably fewer textbooks that could be assigned for a course specifically on the religion of ancient Israel. In this context, Aaron Chalmers’s work is a welcome addition as a resource of this kind. In accordance with a format already used for other IVP Academic titles in the “Exploring” series (e.g., “Exploring the Old Testament”), this relatively short book contains five chapters following a simple but attractive layout. The main text is written in two columns and clearly divided according to a detailed outline; it is accompanied by many interesting textboxes and illustrations (i.e., drawings or photographs). Each chapter addresses simple and practical questions. For instance, where were prophets to be found? How did someone become a prophet? What did a prophet do? The result is a series of chapters that can easily be assigned as reading to students. Moreover, the characteristics that one expects of such a book are a combination of clarity and up-to-date information, and this is, in my opinion, exactly what Chalmers offers us here. With the exception of one surprising reference to Wikipedia (p. 16), the bibliography is representative of the current scholarly discussions and contains well-chosen titles. In addition, students will appreciate that each chapter ends with a selection of a few titles for further reading.

More importantly, the approach adopted by the author proves to be an efficient one: he has chosen to introduce the reader to ancient Israel’s religion by describing what we know of the main actors involved in it. Thus, after a brief review of the “sources for reconstructing the social and religious world of ancient Israel” (pp. 6–14), each chapter is devoted to a group of “characters” such as priests, prophets, wise people, and common people; the book also includes an excursus on the religious role of the king. I confess that my initial reaction was to wonder if this approach would be too restrictive—would not important aspects of Israel’s religious activities be ignored by focusing on people? But the actual content of the book convinced me that this is a fine strategy. With discussion of sanctuaries, teraphim (household gods), high places, terracotta figurines, the Ugaritic Baal cycle, “Asherah,” and Israelite tombs, among others, there is hardly an important sub-topic that is bypassed. (That said, some of them are addressed rather quickly, and it seems to me, for instance, that the chapter on priests could have included a development on the different types of sacrifice in Leviticus and their ANE parallels.) Another advantage of the book’s approach is that it allows the author not only to expound well-known topics but also to highlight less-explored ones, for example, the training of the prophets, the presence of female prophets in Israel, and the role of the wise in Israelite society.

Obviously, any synthesis on the religion of ancient Israel depends on the use of the available sources, including the biblical text, and the current diversity among scholars about the reliability of the Old Testament inevitably leads to different reconstructions. Chalmers’s own perspective is middle-of-the road, neither maximalist nor minimalist, in that he regards the biblical text as a valuable source of information and takes it seriously into account, but does not ignore the current scholarly debates in the field of biblical criticism and integrates some results of the latter into his own reconstruction. Predictably, some readers more conservative than he will have reservations when the text does not seem to be regarded as the final authority on some matters. For instance, according to the author, what the Deuteronomist claims about non-Levites appointed as priests by Jeroboam I (1 Kgs 13:33) needs to be viewed with a certain degree of suspicion, though he takes this as possibly authentic information (p. 18). Similarly, he downplays the implications of 2 Chr 26, where King Uzziah is punished because he tried to offer incense, for the reconstruction of the king’s role in religious matters, on the grounds that it is a late and post-exilic text (p. 90). There are, however, only a very few places in the book where the author distances himself from what the texts say. On the other end of the spectrum, more critical scholars will doubt that Leviticus is a source for pre-exilic Israel, in contrast with the author’s perspective (p. 37n10; note that most competent linguists will agree with him, since Leviticus is written in Classical Biblical Hebrew and not in Late Biblical Hebrew). These scholars may feel that he uncritically uses many Old Testament passages as a source for his historical reconstruction since he makes an extensive use of the Bible and trusts it far more often than not. One cannot please everybody, and it is inevitable that some readers will disagree on some points. However, I think that most knowledgeable readers will regard the vast majority of the content as a reasonable and accurate description of the current state of knowledge. In my view, even professors who have a higher view of Scriptures than the author would benefit from using his book to teach, not only because this disagreement concerns only a handful of points, but also precisely because doing so would create an opportunity for them to discuss these issues with their students rather than ignore the critical debates. In fact, this work is such a fine example of a textbook written with admirable teaching skills, bringing together so much information in a short space without losing clarity, that it would merit being read by a far wider readership than only students.


Matthieu Richelle

Matthieu Richelle
Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangélique
Vaux-sur-Seine, France

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