Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Wisdom from the Witch of Endor: Four Rules for Living. Foreword by Adele Reinhartz. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xvii+78 pp.; Pb; $12.99. Link to Eerdmans
This sermon was discovered among Frymer-Kensky’s papers after she died in 2006. She served as professor of Hebrew Bible and history of Judaism at the University of Chicago. She was known for In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (Random House, 1993) and Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2006).
In her forward, Adele Reinhartz describes the book as a “homily, a modern midrash, on the story of the witch of Endor” (xiv). 1 Samuel 28:1–25 describes King Saul’s encounter with the woman who calls up the spirit of Samuel. Rather than comforting Saul, Samuel condemns Saul and reminds him that the Lord has torn the kingdom out of his hand and given it to David (1 Sam 28:17). The story ends with Saul “filled with fear because of the words of Samuel” and “there was no strength in him” (28:20). The next day the Philistines defeat the armies of Israel, Saul’s sons are killed. Saul is forced to take his own life (1 Samuel 31).
To use the witch of Endor to illustrate positive character traits or as a demonstration of biblical wisdom is a bold move. Most interpreters see the story as the last in a series of questionable choices by an increasingly desperate Saul. While David is led by the Lord (1 Samuel 30:7–8), Saul is completely cut off from the Lord and must resort to visiting a necromancer. If the witch comes up at all in the interpretation of the story, it is only to highlight how despairing Saul is on the eve of his death. Most people who preach or teach from this passage more or less ignore the woman in order to focus on the glaring contrast between Saul and David at this point in their careers as kings of Israel. Frymer-Kensky does not ignore the woman but focuses attention on her as a model for living a life of wisdom.
Instead of Saul and David, Frymer-Kensky offers a meditation on a marginalized woman. Since Saul suppressed mediums and the necromancers, she was pushed to the edges of Israelite society. Nevertheless, she excelled at what she did, and when needed, she did what Saul asked (call up the spirit of Samuel) at the risk of her own life. Frymer-Kensky points out that she comforts Saul and humbly provides food for him. She killed a fattened calf and made bread for Saul and his servants (28:23-24). She chose the moment to excel, and at the end of the story, she is the one who behaves properly.
Wisdom from the Witch of Endor is a modestly priced, small-format book (4.5×6.5) with ample margins and frequent block-style quotations highlighting key lines. It is indeed a short sermon in a convenient format. Most readers will finish the book in less than an hour.
NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.
Elder, Nicholas A. Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2023. xvii+326 pp. Hb; $49.99. Link to Eerdmans
Nicholas Elder is assistant professor of New Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. His Marquette University Ph.D. dissertation was published as The Media Matrix of Early Jewish and Christian Narrative LNTS 612; T&T Clark, 2019). This new monograph answers “media myths” about the mechanics and sociality of reading, writing, and circulating the canonical gospels. Elder surveys Pliny the Younger, Cicero, and Fronto (the tutor for Marcus Aurelius), Greek novels, and some elite letters in order to demonstrate how books were written and read in the ancient world in order to shed light on the production and circulation of the canonical Gospels.
Part 1 challenges common assumptions that reading was always done aloud and communally. People did, in fact, read silently and by themselves. The gospel writers intended both types of reading. Elder traces the common view that reading was always aloud, whether in a group or in private, to a 1990 Paul Achtemeier article, which relied on a 1927 article by Josef Balogh. Elder provides ample evidence across several genres and centuries that literate individuals read silently. He also challenges the popular view among New Testament scholars that virtually all literature was composed to be read communally (38-40). There is evidence to show that solitary reading occurred in the third and fourth centuries, and he suggests that the gospel of Luke may push that back into the first century. But there is also evidence for both large and small group readings in the Greco-Roman world and Jewish Christian contexts.
“Ancient reading practices were always diverse” (79). The gospels, therefore, are self-consciously written for a range of reception. In order to demonstrate this, he compares various features of the four gospels that help public reading, para taxes, to similar features and other literature. In the gospels, phrases like “let the reader understand” or referring to a document as a βίβλος (biblios) are media-conscious parataxis. For the Elder, the gospel of Mark is “a watershed event” (120) that innovatively textualizes oral tradition. Mark is on the borderline between oral tradition and textuality.
Part 2 addresses how people wrote books in antiquity. Elder addresses the “media myth” that all books were written through oral dictation. Sometimes, documents were handwritten (although these are not mutually exclusive options). New Testament scholars usually assume that the gospels circulated orally and were converted to text (Mark represents the preaching of Peter, etc.) A writer (Paul) dictates to a scribe (Tychicus) who converts the spoken word to text. As with reading, it is a case of both/and. Handwriting played a significant role “but did not encroach upon the important role dictation played” (143). He makes nine observations based on his findings, such as writing included including its mechanics is a social affair” (171).
The Gospel of Mark was reduced from an oral event to a text for the purpose of re-oralization (reading the gospel in a public setting). This explains why, judged literarily, “Mark’s style is substandard…but reactivated in oral mode, the gospel thrives” (206). Matthew and Luke use Mark’s oral style to craft literary texts. So, Matthew and Luke work best as texts read primarily by individuals or sections read aloud. John does both because it complements the style of the synoptic gospels in various “reading events.”
Part 3 deals with how texts were distributed. This challenges the common concentric circle model. In the common view, ancient books were distributed by the author to a small circle of friends. Perhaps the author received feedback or response before a public release. Books might be placed in a library or a bookshop. Finally, others make copies. Distribution is often intentional but occasionally can be “accidental.” Ancient books were sometimes pirated or revised and redistributed. Elder discusses Galen’s On My Own books. This was written after the famous doctor found books allegedly written by him that he did not write. Galen thought these books were a farce since “anyone who was learned would not be fooled by these pirate books” (234).
The circulation of the gospels follows the same pattern. It was textual, even if there were communal readings and performances of the gospel text. “Performance is a mode of engaging a written text, not a manner of circulating it” (237). He draws on evidence from early ecclesiastical writers, such as Papias’s well-known statement that “Mark became Peter’s interpreter” (Eusebius, HE 3.39.15-16). As with reading and writing books, the gospels follow the same pattern. Mark was likely sent to a select group first before receiving a wider circulation. Matthew and Luke had a public release, with copies sent out, allowing for copies to be made, which would popularize the text. Elder points to the redactions made to Mark in Matthew and Luke as evidence for the difference in how Mark and Matthew/Luke initially circulated. See also the essays collected in Francis Watson, What is a Gospel? (Eerdmans, 2022) and James Dunn, The Oral Gospel Tradition(Eerdmans, 2013).
Conclusion. As often happens, non-specialists tend to repeat what they read in textbooks. Unfortunately, this leads to the perpetuation of myths about how books were written and read in the ancient world. In this book, Elder challenges those myths with evidence drawn from the ancient world. In both the case of reading and writing, the myth has some element of truth, even if the myth ignores the opposite view. In my own teaching, I have often stated (with supposed authority) that books were always produced orally (dictation to an amanuensis) and that all reading in the early church was aloud and communal. I still suspect that most reading in the church was aloud and communal because of low literacy among the earliest Christians and lack of access to full gospels.
NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.
Thompson, Glen L., and Mark Wilson. In This Way We Came to Rome: With Paul on the Appian Way. Lexham Press, 2023. xviii+279 pp. Pb; $29.99. Link to Lexham Press
In This Way We Came to Rome is a commentary on Paul’s travel implied in Acts 28:13–14. Paul arrived in the port city of Puteoli and stayed there for seven days before traveling to Rome. The authors aim to allow readers to travel the road Paul traveled and “see it through his eyes.” Well documented and richly illustrated, Thompson and Wilson succeed in their goal. Readers will follow a suggested route for a seven-day trip from the port city of Puteoli to Rome. Whether Paul took this exact route or not, this book will be an excellent primer for travel in the Roman world.
The twenty-seven-page introduction covers Paul’s sea voyage from Caesarea Maritima to Puteoli (Acts 27:1-28:13). After tracking some of the details of sea travel, the shipwreck, and Paul’s time on Malta, Thompson and Wilson describe the harbor city of Puteoli in detail. Modern Pozzuoli, Puteoli was Rome’s chief seaport at the time (17). By Paul’s time, Ostia’s harbor was silted up, preventing larger ships from sailing upriver (19). Puteoli was the main hub for huge grain ships arriving from Alexandria and goods imported into the region of Campania.
Thompson and Wilson suggest a seven-day itinerary based on the distance traveled and cities between Puteoli and Rome. This assumes Paul and his companions covered 18-23 miles, traveling 7.5-10 hours daily. A chart on page 27 conveniently summarizes this data with suggested towns for overnight stays. Citing Procopius (Wars, 5.14.6), an unencumbered person could travel from Capua to Rome in five days. Thompson and Wilson add one day for Puteoli to Capua and one day because he was not unencumbered (27). Other Acts commentaries suggest the journey took as many as ten days.
In any case, Paul would have traveled along the consular road from Puteoli to Capua, then the first 132 Roman miles of the Via Appia (the Appian Way). As the authors observe in the introduction, there is no previous description of the road from the port city of Puteoli to Capua (xvii). Italian guidebooks for Via Appia tend to focus on nearby sites and monuments. This book provides readers with what a first-century traveler would have seen and experienced. Thompson and Wilson want to help readers see this journey “through Paul’s eyes.”
Each of the book’s seven chapters covers one day of this suggested itinerary. Each chapter begins with a detailed map of the day’s journey, using ancient Roman descriptions to track possible stops in towns they passed through on that day. The authors provide detailed descriptions of each town that the travelers pass through, with plenty of references to primary sources. The chapters are illustrated with charts, maps, and plans of towns, and photographs when available. Many of the photographs were taken by the authors when they visited the locations. The descriptions of locations often cite Italian archaeology reports.
Each chapter has several maps (twenty-eight in all). Glen Thompson and Jesse Cordes used maps from OpenStreetMap and superimposed ancient roads and city features. This results in a sharp, easy-to-read map correlating ancient locations with modern streets and landmarks. In addition to these maps, the book contains forty-five photographs and illustrations. Physically, this is a beautiful book that is a pleasure to read.
Two added features make this book particularly valuable. Thompson and Wilson provide modern GPS and satellite imagery for most of the locations mentioned in the book. An appendix provides coordinates to road positions and monuments so interested readers can follow along on Google Earth or Google Street View. This data is available as a download from Lexham Press. Second, Thompson and Wilson used Topos Text. This website maps more than 6300 historic places and connects them to more than 730 ancient texts (over 257,000 ancient references). You should bookmark the page or get the app for iOS and Android to enhance your travels with Paul.
The book has several appendices. First, the authors briefly discuss the route from Puteoli to Rome found in popular Bible Atlases. Second, they discuss the rise in elevation along the Via Appia. They suggest using the coastal route to avoid Mount St. Angelo, which would have saved only about a quarter of an hour. Third, they define Mansiones and Stationes as two options for travelers to purchase food and shelter. Appendix 4 lists GPS coordinates for the places mentioned in the book.
Conclusion. In This Way We Came to Rome is a detailed study of one particular seven-day journey mentioned in the book of Acts. Although Paul may have taken more or less time on this trip or even a different route, Thompson and Wilson describe the kind of travel Paul and his companions experienced. The book is well-illustrated and will appeal to academic readers and non-professionals interested in what travel in the Roman world may have been like.
NB: Thanks to Lexham Press for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.
Carey, Holly J. Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2023. xi+225 pp. Pb; $29.99 Link to Eerdmans
Holly J. Carey serves as professor of biblical studies and chair of the Biblical Studies Department at Point University. In 2019, she published Jesus’ Cry From the Cross: Towards a First-Century Understanding of the Intertextual Relationship between Psalm 22 and the Narrative of Mark’s Gospel (LNTS 398; T&T Clark, 2009).
In Women Who Do, Carey argues that “as a whole, the women who followed Jesus were the ones who most consistently took action—who quite literally followed Jesus in ways his closest companions failed to do” (8). This active discipleship makes Jesus’s female disciples exemplars for Christians (9). To achieve this goal, she offers a comprehensive survey of female disciples in the Gospels and Acts through a close reading of the text and considering socio-cultural realities and challenges women faced in the first century. She does not select a few examples; she covers all examples, including characters who interact with Jesus and women who are used as hypothetical models (such as women in parables).
Carey does not offer explicit conclusions on women’s roles in the church. She wants to offer a body of evidence to consider, mainly that the gospels present women as exemplars of faith. However, in the book’s conclusion, she suggests that her study implies that these women’s stories should be part of any discussion of women’s roles and leadership in the church. The discussion should include texts like 1 Timothy 2 or 1 Corinthians 14 and the many gospel stories of Jesus’s encounters with women that portray women as ideal disciples.
Chapter one sets the context by examining what it was like for a woman living in the Greco-Roman and Jewish culture of the first century. By examining some of these cultural norms, she can examine how Jesus’s female disciples were unusual or norm-breaking. This chapter faces several challenges. First, no first-hand records written by women exist. Men wrote about women’s lives for their own reasons and never just to “state the facts.” Second, the life of women in the 1st century is not monolithic. An elite Roman woman lived much differently than a Roman slave (or a Jewish woman). Third, the gospels are a mix of both Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures. Although Jesus was active in Jewish culture, each gospel represents the context of the Greco-Roman world in which it was written.
She divides the material into two sections. First, a woman had “worth by proxy.” Her value came through her marriage and family and was affected by widowhood. Second, Carey examines a woman’s place in the world. Here, Carey covers virtues such as modesty and loyalty and the expectations placed on women for running a well-ordered home. First-century women were often active in religious life, both in a Jewish and a Greco-Roman context. Although there were many limitations on women in the first century, there were avenues of influence for women through the practice of patronage. She cites an example of a first-century patroness from Pompei named Eumachia. This woman worked with her husband in the family business, and her name is listed as a benefactor on a large building dedication, not her husband (45).
Chapters 2-6 survey Jesus’s female followers in Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John. She begins by observing that Mark has the harshest criticism of the Twelve, and the women in Mark “serve as a foil for belief and understanding.” In the gospel of Mark, women display the qualities Jesus requires of his disciples, and the Twelve do not. Matthew portrays the Twelve more positively, yet women who followed Jesus function more like disciples than the Twelve. In Luke, women like Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna are faithful witnesses of Jesus and whose actions demonstrate their love for him. In Acts, Tabitha and Priscilla are singled out as exemplars of discipleship. The gospel of John features several women prominently, the Samaritan woman and Mary Magdalene, for example.
Conclusion. Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels is an excellent survey of all the women in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Carey successfully provides a close reading of the text and proves her point that women are portrayed positively in the gospels, while the Twelve male disciples are not. In fact, I am not sure any women in the gospels are presented in a negative light (unlike the Pauline epistles).
NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.
Quarles, Charles L. Matthew. Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary. Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2022. xxiii+828 pp.; Hb.; $59.99. Link to Lexham Press
Charles Quarles is a research professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has previously contributed several books and articles on Matthew, including Sermon On The Mount: Restoring Christ’s Message to the Modern Church (B&H, 2011), A Theology of Matthew: Jesus Revealed as Deliverer, King, and Incarnate Creator (P&R, 2013, and Matthew (Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament (B&H, 2017, reviewed here). He recently co-authored 40 Questions about the Text and Canon of the New Testament (with Scott Kellum, Kregel 2023; reviewed here).
In his 104-page introduction, Quarles begins his discussion of the authorship of the first gospel by observing the author was certainly a Jewish Christian, probably from Galilee. The author seems favorable toward Galilee and negative towards Jerusalemites. “Due to early and unanimous testimony supporting Matthean authorship and the lack of internal evidence contrary to this testimony,” he accepts Matthew as the author. He does not argue this from apologetic or theological concerns, but after a “thorough survey of the evidence,” Matthew is simply the best conclusion (12).
Similarly, cumulative evidence favoring a pre-70 date raises concerns for confident claims Matthew wrote after A. D. 70. For him, the key evidence is the Gospel of Matthew and the so-called “parting of the ways.” For many, phrases like “your synagogues” or “your scribes” (4:23, 7:29) suggest Matthew had already separated from the synagogue when the gospel was written. Traditionally, the parting of the ways is dated at least to A. D. 85, after the so-called council of Jamnia. However, this date for the parting (and the whole idea of a council of Jamnia) as a watershed moment has been scrutinized and often abandoned. Quarles takes the Book of Acts seriously. Separation from synagogues is commonplace in the Pauline mission (for example, Corinth, Acts 18). What about the implied destruction of the temple? He takes the evidence as a foreshadowing of the temple’s destruction rather than an implication that the temple is no longer active. Many distinctive features of Matthew make the most sense if the original assemblies addressed were still participating in Temple worship.
He is much less certain about the provenance and destination of the gospel. There is not enough evidence to conclude where the gospel originated, although it is clearly addressing Jewish Christians. Likewise, it is not clear what the original language of the gospel was. As early as Papias, some early church writers assumed Matthew wrote first in Aramaic, which was later translated into Greek. However, Matthew used Mark and Mark is clearly written in Greek. It is impossible for someone to have translated Mark into Aramaic for Matthew to use and then translate Aramaic Matthew back into Greek. The parallels between Greek Matthew and Greek Mark are too exact to have passed through multiple translations. However, Quarles thinks some portions of Matthew were originally written in a Semitic language (31). However, evidence is lacking to reach a confident conclusion. What sections does he have in mind? One example: in Matthew’s genealogy, three sets of fourteen generations seem to be influenced by gematria based on David’s name, totaling fourteen in Hebrew or Aramaic. This does not work if one uses the Greek spelling of David.
Quarles follows the almost universal agreement that the gospels are ancient biographies. For him, this has important implications for how to read Matthew. Since the subject is Jesus, Matthew is a Christological document (34) and historically reliable. Quarles structures the gospel following Mark’s chronological and geographical pattern. This raises an issue that’s missing in this commentary. He assumes Markan priority (Matthew used Mark’s gospel). He does not argue this point in the introduction, nor does he raise the issue in the body of the commentary. Using the print library feature of Logos Bible Software, I searched for references to Q (or “sayings source”) in the commentary. Q only appears twice (once in a quotation of Davies and Allison in a footnote and another in the bibliography). Occasionally, footnotes discuss a difference between Mark and Matthew, but Quarles is only Matthew’s text. There is nothing on the synoptic problem, nor does he engage in source criticism or redactional analysis. I find this refreshing since he spends the entirety of his effort in the commentary itself on the text of Matthew, and other commentaries focus on redactional issues. I would, however, like to have a paragraph in the introduction stating his assumptions.
The bulk of the introduction (pages 45-104) covers fourteen theological themes in the Gospel of Matthew. Since he argues that Matthew’s gospel is a Christological document, all fourteen of these themes relate to Matthew’s presentation of Jesus. These themes are then woven into the commentary in the exegesis and his concluding theological reflections entitled “Bridge.”
The commentary moves through his outline of the book pericope-by-pericope, treating major paragraphs in a few pages. The commentary is based on the CSB translation provided at the beginning of each unit. Following the text, Quarles sets the context before moving to the exegesis. His exegesis is based on the English text (Greek words rarely appear). He does not deal with textual criticism and only rarely makes grammatical or syntactical comments. This is true even when there are bracketed verses in the text of Matthew (such as in 18:11). He makes connections with rabbinic sources when they shed light on the text (Matthew 22:23-33, for example).
Although the commentary is nearly 600 pages, Quarles is a master of the art of brevity. His explanations are very clear and readable. The focus is on explaining the meaning of the gospel. Although he interacts with secondary literature in the footnotes, this is not a commentary on what other commentaries have said.
The final section of each unit is entitled “Bridge.” These are canonical connections, often referring to the Old Testament but also to other New Testament passages and (occasionally) church history reception. Although these sometimes have contemporary applications, this is not the purpose of the section. He is bridging canonical connections, not bridging the ancient gospel with a modern context.
Conclusion. Quarles’s commentary is an exemplary contribution to the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary series. Pastors and teachers will find this commentary to be valuable as they present the first Gospel.
