Review

Author(s): Robert D. Haak

Review by: Robert D. Haak
Source: Hebrew Studies, Vol. 42 (2001), pp. 336-338
Published by: National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27913560
Accessed: 29-02-2016 07:36 UTC

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Hebrew Studies 42 (2001) 336 Reviews

within and outside of academic circles. He defends the documentary

hypothesis, but at the same time he alerts his readers to the remaining
difficulties surrounding the composition of the Pentateuch.

Raymond F. Person, Jr.

Ohio Northern University
Ada, OH 45810
r-person@onu. edu

NOW CHOOSE LIFE: THEOLOGY AND ETHICS IN

DEUTERONOMY. By J. Gary Millar. New Studies in Biblical
Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998. Paper, $24.00.

This volume is part of a series intended for an audience of Christian lay

people and preachers who want to "understand their Bibles better." The
series is written from "within the framework of confessional
evangelicalism" (p. 9). This particular volume is a revision of J. Gary
Millar's DPhil thesis written under the direction of John Barton.
After a brief survey of previous attempts at writing Old Testament
ethics, Millar produces chapters on 1) Ethics and covenant, 2) Ethics and
journey, 3) Ethics and law, 4) Ethics and the nations, and 5) Ethics and
human nature. Some brief conclusions, a bibliography, and indexes of
authors and scriptural passages follow.
As might be expected in a series of this nature, little if any new ground
is broken. To claim that the author of Deuteronomy highlights the journey
motif or stresses the family or to claim that the author demands obedience
to God are hardly new concepts. One would have hoped that Millar would
have made the effort to explain what the content (or possible content) of
"obedience" might mean for a contemporary audience. Rather, Millar
explicitly claims to avoid the hermeneutical jump to the present and
discusses only in general terms what this move might mean even in terms
of the book of Deuteronomy itself.
Millar does make two observations that might well have provided the
basis for such a discussion. Millar argues for the "embeddedness" of the
ethic of the Old Testament. This concept might provide the beginnings of a
discussion of an ethic that insists on contact between the ethic and the
situation of the person acting. But Millar follows his discussion of the
importance of context with a refusal to take on the admittedly difficult task
of embedding the material of Deuteronomy within its own historical
context. In addition, he is often critical of those who follow what he terms
the "conventional traditio-historical approaches" (p. 39), approaches that
specifically seek to explicate these very contexts.

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Hebrew Studies 42 (2001) 337 Reviews

He claims, "I make no assumptions at the outset about a particular

setting" (p. 39), but in fact does so. Throughout he operates on the
assumption that the historical setting presented by the author is literally
(not literarily) true. In fact, the "integrated reading" that he claims as his
own approach contains a not-so-subtle critique of any scholar who posits a
historical context other than that of the text's story-line. He also presumes,
in explicating the theology of the book, that the book is a response to a
direct experience of "God" on the part of the author (or at least the nation).
He does this without ever attempting to establish the historical context(s) of
the author(s). In addition, Millar frames the discussion in particularly
Christian terms?not a surprise given the audience of the work, but not a
viewpoint that a critical study of the book of Deuteronomy would presume.
Thus he seems to betray his own observations about embeddedness. It is
very doubtful that this sort of uncritical reading will be broadly accepted
beyond the rather narrow community of his presumed audience.
A second potentially valuable observation that Millar makes in his
review of other scholars is that any exposition of ethics within the Bible
must take into account the diversity of ethical viewpoints found there (cf.
e.g., his critique of B. Birch on p. 30). This would seem to be a valuable
insight and one that would support an ethic that valued diversity of
viewpoint as a constituent part of the ethical system. Yet this insight is
betrayed when at the beginning of his study he states that his goal is to^
overcome the criticism that has "blinded many people to the extent of the'
literary and theological coherence of the book" and to give an account of
the ethics of Deuteronomy which highlights the "high degree of unity" he
believes is found in the book (p. 39). What now has happened to the
diversity of viewpoint which is disallowed before the study even begins?
Millar's claim that it is not his goal to apply this material to modern life
(p. 19) seems to be disingenuous and even dangerous. What sort of ethic
results from his conclusion about the attitude of the book toward "the
nations"? "All things Canaanite are repudiated, and it is clear that Israel
must act to purge its environment of pagan influence" (p. 155). He attempts
to mitigate the obvious implications of this statement by claiming that, in
fact, these words are only "theological preaching (his emphasis), urging
Israel on to wholehearted obedience" (p. 156). On the next page, in his
discussion of tr?n (herem), he claims that the author is "concerned to see
Israel established in a land purged of Canaanite idolatry as painlessly as
possible" (p. 157). Since Millar believes these to be texts that reflect
historical reality, one might ask for whom it was "painless"? Certainly not
for historical "Canaanites." His own value of the embeddedness of the text
demands that he define (and not simply assume) who the "Canaanites"
really are. But in fact his assumptions keep him from taking the

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Hebrew Studies 42 (2001) 338 Reviews

"Canaanites" seriously. They are only cardboard folks who will be

"painlessly" removed to make way for the Israelites' superior dispensation!
The danger of this sort of talk becomes (or should become) even more
evident when he begins to characterize Israel. The "entire course of their
journey has been an unmitigated disaster, for they are habitually
disobedient" (p. 168). They are "a sinful people, a terminally stubborn (my
emphasis) nation who are not qualitatively different from the Canaanites"
(p. 169). Israel has a "flawed nature" (p. 173) which is met by an "absence
of forgiveness" (p. 173). Israel is "in need not of moral instruction but of
surgery" (p. 177). The only hope, according to Millar, is "that a subsequent
covenant may make for a real change of heart in Israel" (p. 173).
"Solutions must wait until the day when God intervenes to establish a new
covenant, which deals not just with the changing situations in which Israel
finds herself, but with the moral perversity which is inherent in her
character" (p. 182).
To use this sort of rhetoric, even when claiming that one is not talking
to the contemporary scene, should be no less troubling in an author writing
at the end of the twentieth century than it was by an author at the end of the
seventh century B.C.E. (or earlier, if Millar's uncritical literalism is to be
accepted). The problematic nature of the ethics of both authors should
concern anyone who actually cares about the nature of biblical ethics. As
someone who studies texts, Millar can hardly claim that these words carry
no power. What ethic do they convey?
Robert D. Haak
Augustana College
Rock Island, IL 61201
rehaak@augustana. edu

JOSHUA. By David M. Howard, Jr. The New American Commentary,

vol. 5. Pp. 464. Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1998. $29.99.

Perhaps the easiest way to communicate the character of this

commentary is to contrast it with a few others recently published. Richard
Nelson's Joshua (OTL; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1997, pp.
2-3), for example, states that "Joshua is fundamentally a theological and
literary work. Hardly any of the material it preserves is of the sort that can
be directly used for historical construction." The present volume
vigorously challenges this position:
For many scholars, especially in recent years, the Book of Joshua...is almost
worthless as a source of historical information.... However, not only are such
approaches antibiblical in most respects, but they also founder methodologically in

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