A theological introduction to the Old

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A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament
A Theological Introduction
to the Old Testament

Mark W. Hamilton

1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hamilton, Mark W., author.
Title: A theological introduction to the Old Testament / Mark W. Hamilton.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press USA, 2018. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017032763 (print) | LCCN 2018005571 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190203139 (updf ) | ISBN 9780190865160 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190203115 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Old Testament—Theology. | Bible.
Old Testament—Introductions.
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 For Samjung, Nathan, and Hannah

Yosi son of Yoezer, the man from Saredah, says,

“Let your house be an assembly point for the wise. Powder yourself with
the dust of their feet and drink their words in gulps.”
(Pirqe Abot 1:4)
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi

1. Introduction 1
2. The Pentateuch in Brief 11
3. “In the Beginning”: The Book of Genesis 15
4. Rescue and Renewal: The Book of Exodus 33
5. On Holiness and Life: The Book of Leviticus 54
6. In the Desert: The Book of Numbers 65
7. On Memory and Action: The Book of Deuteronomy 82
8. Israelite Historiography 97
9. A New Land and a New People: The Book of Joshua 105
10. Seeking Order Amid Chaos: The Book of Judges 117
11. The Model Convert: The Book of Ruth 132
12. God, King, and People: 1–​2 Samuel 139
13. The Triumph and Tragedy of Monarchy: 1–​2 Kings 157
14. Rethinking Israel’s History: 1–​2 Chronicles 180
15. Ezra and Nehemiah: Finding Life After Death 193
16. The Queen of Comedies: The Book of Esther 201
17. Poetic and Wisdom Texts 207
18. God as Defendant and Plaintiff: The Book of Job 211

vii
viii Contents
19. The Praises and Laments of Israel: The Book of Psalms 222
20. Proverbs: Wisdom and the Order of the World 241
21. Ecclesiastes: Doubt as an Order of Faith 253
22. Love in the Air: The Song of Songs 261
23. Introduction to the Prophetic Books 267
24. Isaiah, the Prophet of Salvation 273
25. Not Just a Weeping Prophet: Jeremiah 290
26. Mourning a Lost World: The Book of Lamentations 308
27. Ezekiel, the Prophet of the Rebuilt Temple 314
28. Keeping Faith in a Distant Land: The Book of Daniel 331
29. The Twelve Minor Prophets 342
30. The Secondary Canon 369
31. What’s It All About? 386

Index of Biblical References 389

Subject Index 415
Acknowledgments

Many minds play a role in writing a book of this sort, and many deserve thanks. First,
I wish to thank the many students who have discussed the texts of the Old Testament
with me over the past two decades. Their names are too numerous to list, but their faces
run through my brain, and I recall them with affection and gratitude. The numerous
anonymous reviewers of the book in its various stages also contributed much to its clar-
ity and usefulness. Robert Miller and Steve Wiggins of Oxford University Press enabled
the publication of this project and encouraged its completion. Josiah Peeler has read and
commented on successive versions of the book, always to good effect and with cheer-
fulness. My children, Nathan Hamilton and Hannah Hamilton have not only suffered
through their father’s obsessions with teaching old texts to young people but have also
read large parts of this book with an eye toward its improvement. They have unstint-
ingly given of their knowledge of music and science far exceeding that of their father,
often with results that improve this book, and more importantly my life. Most of all,
I thank my wife and partner, Dr. Samjung Kang-​Hamilton, who believed in this work
even through difficult patches in writing it.

ix
Abbreviations

Biblical Books

Genesis Gen Joel Joel

Exodus Exod Amos Amos
Leviticus Lev Obadiah Obad
Numbers Num Jonah Jon
Deuteronomy Deut Micah Mic
Joshua Josh Nahum Nah
Judges Judg Habakkuk Hab
Ruth Ruth Zephaniah Zeph
1–​2 Samuel 1–​2 Sam Haggai Hag
1–​2 Kings 1–​2 Kgs Zechariah Zech
1–​2 Chronicles 1–​2 Chron Malachi Mal
Ezra Ezra 1–​2 Esdras 1–​2 Esdr
Nehemiah Neh Tobit Tob
Esther Esth Judith Jdt
Job Job Baruch Bar
Psalms Ps Epistle of Jeremiah EpJer
Proverbs Prov 1–​2 Maccabees 1–​2 Macc
Ecclesiastes Eccl Sirach Sir
Song of Songs Song Wisdom of Solomon Wisd
Isaiah Isa Prayer of Manasseh PrMan
Jeremiah Jer Matthew Matt
Lamentations Lam Mark Mark
Ezekiel Ezek Luke Luke
Daniel Dan John John
Hosea Hos Acts of the Apostles Acts

xi
xii List of Abbreviations
Romans Rom Jude Jude
1–​2 Corinthians 1–​2 Cor Revelation Rev
Galatians Gal
Ephesians Eph
General Abbreviations
Philippians Phil
Colossians Col BCE Before the Common Era
1–​2 Thessalonians 1–​2 Thess CE Common Era
1–​2 Timothy 1–​2 Tim CH Chronistic History
Titus Tit DH Deuteronomistic History
Philemon Phlm ET English Translation
Hebrews Heb LXX The Septuagint or ancient Greek
James Jas translation of the Hebrew Bible
1–​2 Peter 1–​2 Pet MT Masoretic Text, the standard text
1–​3 John 1–​3 John of the Hebrew Bible
 1 Introduction

While most people skip over the introductions to books, you have chosen to be bet-
ter than your peers and read the beginning. Congratulations on your intelligent decision!
There is an old Israelite aphorism that appears in the book of Ecclesiastes (also known
as Qoheleth), “Of making many books, there is no end. And much study wearies the
flesh” (Eccl 12:12). The author (or editor) of the ancient book makes an ironic comment
on the work as a whole, as if to say “there are too many books in the world, and here’s
another one.” Not that there is anything wrong with either wearying the flesh in a good
cause or publishing another book, as long as it helps the reader in some way. How should
this book help you while not wearing you out?

Why So Many Bible Translations? And How to Choose One

All or part of the Bible has been translated into almost three thousand languages, far more than
any other book. Christians began translating it into English beginning in the ninth century
or even earlier, and that work has only grown over time, so that English versions are more
numerous than in any other language. For several centuries, the dominant translation was
the King James Version (published 1611), which has had an enormous influence on American
and Commonwealth culture. If you’ve ever been saved by the “skin of your teeth” or seen the
“handwriting on the wall,” you can thank the wordsmiths who made that great translation four
hundred years ago. Today’s readers of English have many options, from easy-​to-​read versions to

1
2 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament

the midlevel literacy versions like the New International Version or English Revised Version to
more complex renderings such as the New Revised Standard Version. Each has strengths and
weaknesses, and several different theories of translation inform them, but each strives to render
the biblical text as faithfully as possible.

To begin, consider what this book is not. It is not a substitute for the Bible itself.
Nothing can equal the experience of sustained, careful, reasoned, and thoughtful study
of the sacred book shared by Jews and Christians (and honored by Muslims, but that’s
another story). Rather, this work invites the reader to examine the biblical text itself.
Consider this a sort of guidebook. No guidebook can be a substitute for seeing the Grand
Canyon or the Aurora Borealis, but learning a little geology or astronomy can enhance
the experience. No textbook can substitute for the original biblical text, with its gorgeous
poetry, gripping prophetic critique, and thrilling or bewildering stories.
To continue, then, what is this book? It is a handbook on the literary, historical, and
especially theological dimensions of the biblical text. It is designed to provoke conversa-
tion, perhaps even dissent or dismay, and thereby make us better readers and, one hopes,
better persons. And because the Bible is most of all a collection of texts about the deepest
concerns humans have—​who is God? Who are we? How do we relate, if we can? How
should we live?—​reading it presents a demand upon the reader not easily reduced to
mere understanding of ancient data. All literature, properly approached, makes demands
on the reader. The Bible does so most of all.
Read this book, then, with your Bible open. Choose a good translation (or more than
one). All the translations in this book are the author’s own, so yours may differ from it in
various ways.

Things to Watch For

Now for a little housekeeping. Each chapter of this book tries to situate a particular bib-
lical book in its historical setting or settings, to consider how it works as literature, and
what it says about key theological commitments of ancient Israel and modern Christian
(and to some extent, Jewish) readers. The book is intended to have an ecumenical fla-
vor: it considers the text from several angles, both drawing on the long history of inter-
pretation of the Old Testament in the church and synagogue, and trying to address the
most crucial questions that the text raises about the nature of God, humankind, reli-
gion, creation, politics, and, in short, the things contemporary readers most care about.
The key is not to silence the voice of the biblical text but to interrogate it in the deepest
possible ways.
Along with these large-​scale features, a few terms deserve to be named at this point

• The Old Testament calls God by a range of names, in part because the Bible
merges different ancient traditions with varying understandings of God, and
 Introduction 3
in part because the creators of the Bible wished to emphasize the ultimate
inability of human beings to define God straightforwardly in terms of one
name or attribute or another. The proper name is Yhwh, represented in
ancient Hebrew manuscripts by the four letters yodh-​he-​vav-​he (‫)יהוה‬, also
called the Tetragrammaton, and probably originally pronounced “yah-​
veh.” English translations often render this name as “the Lord,” following
a very ancient practice (at least as early as the third century bce) that
sought to prevent blasphemy by avoiding the divine name. This textbook
tries to honor both the Hebrew original and the long-​standing practice of
reading a substitute for it by printing the divine name as Yhwh. The Hebrew
Bible also uses the name Elohim about 2,600 times, El about 237 times,
and various other names occasionally. This textbook prints Yhwh for the
Tetragrammaton and the traditional English word “God” elsewhere except
when making a special point, in which case the original Hebrew name
appears.
• Hebrew words appear occasionally in the text when their appearance helps give
a flavor of the biblical text. The system of transliteration works this way:

aleph ᵓ bet b gimel g he h vav w

zayin z khet ḥ dalet d yodh y kaph k
lamed l mem m tet ṭ samek s ayin ͑
pe p tsade ṣ nun n resh r sin ś
shin š tav t qoph q

Long vowels are marked with a macron, so ā, ē, ī, and ō represent the vowels
in “father,” “they,” “machine,” and “though.” (Think about how vowels work in
French or Spanish, and you’ll be close!). The Hebrew letter khet (ḥ) is hard, as in
the “ch” “chorus,” and shin (š) represents the “sh” sound, while tsade (ṣ) has the
ts sound (as in “cats”).
• bce and ce—​dates in this book follow the most current scholarly convention
“Before the Common Era” and “Common Era.” Note that the years themselves
are the same in the older system bc and ad (“Before Christ” and “Anno
Domini” or “In the year of the Lord”).
• Pullout boxes appear throughout the text to pursue topics of historical or
literary interest.
• Footnotes are kept to a minimum, but suggestions for further reading at the
end of each chapter should benefit students who are writing papers or who
simply want to learn more. They may also help professors at times.
• Each chapter includes a few sources for further reading. Some will be more
technical than others.
4 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament
Some Key Terms and Ideas

Before tracing the Bible’s story and considering the arguments it makes, one must first
clarify some of the key concepts about it. What is the Bible, first of all? Answering that
deceptively simple question depends on other considerations, and in part, the clarification
of other terms, such as canon and Scripture, which are not identical but still overlapping.

Canon
The first term, canon, is perhaps the most complex, because any discussion of it must
consider texts as both “an authoritative voice in written or oral form that was read and
received as having the authority of God in it” and “a perpetual fixation or standardiza-
tion, namely, when the books of the Bible were fixed or stabilized.”1 The collection of
sacred texts has authority—​it shapes behavior of individuals and groups—​in the religious
communities using it, whether Jewish or Christian (or Muslim, for the Qur’an). Even this
last formulation is ambiguous, because it could refer to the stabilization of a single book
or to the fixing of a collection with clear boundaries. For our purposes, the term canon
denotes the collection itself, not the exact form of a given text within it, since manu-
scripts copied by hand inevitably contain slight (or sometimes not so slight) variations
from one another. To recognize the Bible as a canon is to acknowledge that the various
parts of it interact with each other and color how readers interpret each part.
What does one call this collection of sacred texts, then? The answer to that depends on
who is doing the calling. Jews often speak of the Miqra (“what is called out or spoken”)
or Tanak. Most Christians speak of the Old and New Testaments, the former being the
collection they share with Judaism. Modern scholars speak of the Hebrew and Greek
Bibles or the First and Second Testaments or the Former or Latter Testaments in order to
acknowledge that the various collections in play overlap and also that each group using
them deserves respect. This volume uses these terms more or less interchangeably and
without prejudice.
Yet there is a conceptual problem here because different groups that use these col-
lections include different texts within it. Not only do Jews and Christians differ about
what goes into the collection, but Samaritans, for example, venerate only the first five
books (the Pentateuch), while Christians disagree among themselves as to whether
the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books belong in or out. The Ethiopian Church,
uniquely, uses the ancient work 1 Enoch (written in several stages from 200 bce to 200
ce or even later) and other ancient texts. So canon cannot be a straightforward concept.
Moreover, the variation in content leads to some variation in belief and practice. For
example, whether a person believes in purgatory or not depends in part on which texts he
or she thinks have canonical status.
At the same time, however, the existence of variety should not obscure an important
level of agreement. Both Jews and Christians have regarded the vast majority of other
books as noncanonical, not necessarily bad but definitely less important. And they have
 Introduction 5
agreed on the basic ideas that fit within the canon (the unity and oneness of God, the elec-
tion of Israel, the emphasis on justice as the root of piety, and so on). The surface plural-
ism underscores a deeper unity. And so one must take account of both factors—​diversity
and unity—​without overemphasizing one or the other. To overemphasize diversity can
cause one to lose a sense of the crucial ideas of the Bible and their development. To over-
emphasize unity can lead to fanatical support of positions that, again, lose perspective.
Moreover, in addition to the theological issues surrounding the idea of canon, his-
torical issues must be considered. While many details of the development of the biblical
canon remain obscure, a few things are clear enough. Until the second or third century
ce, when Christians and others began using a newfangled invention called a codex (a
book bound as ours are today), a “bible,” then, was simply a cabinet full of scrolls that
a worshiping community, a synagogue or, later, a church, used in worship, meditated
upon, and wrote commentaries, sermons, and prayers about. Different cabinets held dif-
ferent books (Table 1.1).
Some Jewish communities also included additional works in their cabinet of scrolls,
such later works as 1–​4 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, and Tobit. These documents,
discussed more fully in Chapter 30, became part of most Christian collections of sacred
texts as well. Because many (most?) early Christians after the first century ce were Greek-​
speaking gentiles, they used the ancient Jewish texts that had been translated into Greek,
including this larger collection. Thus the earliest Christian lists of sacred books that
have survived—​from Origen in the early third century ce and Eusebius about a cen-
tury later—​include the books that modern Western Christians usually speak of as the
Apocrypha or the Deuterocanonical books.
Amid all this complexity, we should recall an important fact. Finding the limits of the
canon has historically been less important than ensuring healthy teaching in the church’s
or synagogue’s life. The primary theological and moral concerns of these communities
did not revolve around determining precisely which books came in and which stayed out,
but around the overall theological picture or what Christians often call a “rule of faith”: a
basic pattern of belief and practice rooted in the Bible but not dependent on a literal,
restrictive reading of it.
The need for precision became most acute during times of crisis. For Jews, it meant
rejecting the Old Greek translation (the Septuagint or LXX) for the synagogue and a
growing emphasis on the Masoretic Text (MT), the Hebrew text standardized in the
first century ce and preserved to the present, as well as translations derived from it.
For Christians, defining the boundaries of the Old Testament, or rather defending its
importance to their faith, took on urgency in the second century ce because of internal
disputes surrounding an eccentric Roman church theologian, Marcion of Sinope. A con-
vert to Christianity, Marcion apparently sought to free his new faith from its Jewish past
by accepting the widespread gentile critique of the Old Testament’s portrayal of God
as a morally defective, ignorant being who could not be the good creator of the uni-
verse worshiped by Jesus Christ. Law and grace, he believed, could not coexist. At least
Table 1.1
Old Testament Canonical Lists
Masoretic Text Septuagint
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
Judges Judges
1–​2 Samuel Ruth
1–​2 Kings 1–​4 Kingdoms
Isaiah 1–​2 Chronicles
Jeremiah 1–​2 Esdras1
Ezekiel Esther
12 Minor Prophets Judith
Tobit
1–​4 Maccabees
Psalms Psalms
Job Odes
Proverbs Proverbs
Ruth Ecclesiastes
Song of Songs Song of Songs
Ecclesiastes Job
Lamentations Wisdom of
Solomon
Esther Ben Sira (or
Ecclesiasticus)
Daniel Psalms of Solomon
Ezra-​Nehemiah 12 Minor Prophets
1–​2 Chronicles Isaiah
Jeremiah
Baruch
Lamentations
Epistle of Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Daniel
Susanna
Bel and the Dragon

1
2 Esdras = a revision Ezra and Nehemiah.
CAPTION: Greek and Hebrew biblical manuscripts before the Middle Ages
arrange the books in different ways except in the Pentateuch, which always
takes the same order.
 Introduction 7
according to his opponents, Marcion rejected not only the Hebrew scriptures that other
Christians venerated but also most of what became the New Testament as well (since the
latter quotes the former on virtually every page), leading him to honor Paul as the only
true apostle and an expurgated version of Luke as the only true gospel. Nor was his work
the last time that some Christians sought to dissociate themselves from Judaism and the
Hebrew Bible: the German Christian movement of Nazi Germany is the most notorious
and extreme example of an unfortunate trend on the margins of Christianity. Even today,
many people wrongly believe that the God of the Old Testament differs radically from
the God of the New.
The Christian Church in general has gone another direction, agreeing with the earli-
est followers of Jesus—​all Jewish adherents of a Jewish messiah, after all—​that the ear-
lier texts of Israel belonged in the church and, indeed, were indispensable to its spiritual
health. The early Christians’ retention of a connection to Israel has shaped both faiths to
this day. Even if the boundaries of the Jewish and Christian canons differ, both collec-
tions function as scripture (sometimes “Scripture,”) that is, as written texts performed
orally and studied (in many media) in religious settings in ways that shape communities
and their beliefs and practices.

Scripture
Now to a second term: scripture. From the Latin verb scribere (“to write”—​hence the
English words “scribble,” “script,” and “scribe”), the term simply denotes something writ-
ten, especially a sacred text. In the great monotheistic religions that derive ultimately
Israel—​Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha’i—​key sacred texts have a unique author-
ity in their parts and as collections. True, the understandings of the origins and con-
tent of these texts vary considerably, but the notion that the followers of these faiths are
Peoples of the Book (to use the Muslim expression) is an important insight into their
workings. Attention to the Qur’an (for Islam) or the Kitab-​i-​Iqan (for Baha’i) lies well
beyond the scope of this book, but suffice it to say that the phenomenon of a book reli-
gion, a religion for which a single text carries unparalleled authority in faith and morals,
is not unique to Christianity or Judaism. The idea that the one God would communicate
fairly clearly with human beings through the medium of prophets, whose words could be
preserved in writing, is a corollary of a belief that God has a profound interest in the well-​
being of human beings in every aspect of their lives. Thus the sacred texts do not func-
tion primari­ly as talismans that work on the divine realm, but as documents that human
beings must understand and somehow implement. The question is, how?

The Bible as an Interpreted Document

How does one understand a text? It depends on both the text and the reader. Consider an
elementary example from contemporary life:
8 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament
“Mark struck out at home”
Assuming I know English (and recognize that the text is in English), I quickly realize that
it has a subject (“Mark”) and a verb (“struck out”), as well as a reference to a location (“at
home”). But what does the text mean? Since it seems fragmentary, I want to know about
the larger conversation of which it is a part. Does the sentence come from a report of a
baseball game (Mark, a batter, missed contacting the ball safely three times in a row and
thus was put out)? A romance novel (Mark, a frustrated lover, failed to impress his wife
sufficiently to receive an amorous response)? A crime report (Mark, a deranged person, beat
on his house with a crowbar)? Is Mark a person in history, a fictional character, an ancient
deity? No text exists by itself but only in association with other moments of communica-
tion, thickly layered in an interpreter’s experiences.
Interpretation becomes more complex when the text we are encountering comes to us
only in written form, and in a dead language to boot. Customs, beliefs, and practices that
the text assumes without much explanation have grown obscure. Even the act of trans-
lating the text from, in our example, Hebrew or Aramaic to English or another modern
tongue, requires a great deal of knowledge, not just of grammar and vocabulary but of
literary forms and techniques. When the text is an extremely complex one, such as the
Bible, the work becomes all the more difficult, as well as all the more rewarding.
The academic discipline of interpretation is called hermeneutics. It relates closely to
the task of exegesis, which is the attempt to explain what a text said in its earliest discern-
ible context. However, hermeneutics goes beyond that fundamental task, or as Antony
Thiselton puts it,

whereas exegesis and interpretation denote the actual processes of interpreting

texts, hermeneutics also includes the second-​order discipline of asking critically
what exactly we are doing when we read, understand, or apply texts.2

Sometimes scholars speak of the “hermeneutical circle” or “hermeneutical spiral,” which

is simply the recognition that anyone reading a text brings to it his or her own presup-
positions, experiences, memories, and imagination. The act of interpreting a text involves
a sort of dance of the readers with the text. The dance has three dimensions, so to speak.
First, the “ideal reader” of the Bible, for whom the texts were created, is not the solitary
individual “objectively” reading a text. (Such a reader is imaginary anyway, an unfortu-
nate by-​product of the Enlightenment’s admirable attempts to eliminate prejudice and
ignorance.) Rather, the best reader of these texts is the one who attends to them with
great care, engaging them with a critical eye and also with some degree of willingness to
hear what they seek to say. At one level, such a requirement would be true of the reader of
any great work of literary art, yet it is doubly true of religious texts like the Bible because
they insist on trying to form their readers in particular ways. Something happens to us
when we read them.
 Introduction 9
Second, the most brilliant readers of the Bible through the centuries have understood
it to engage the profoundest questions human beings ask, and indeed, to point to God.
As the great New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann (1884–​1976) stated:

The Bible does not approach us at all like other books . . . . We come to know it
through the Christian church, which put it before us with its authoritative claim.
The church’s preaching, founded on the Scriptures, passes on the word of the
Scriptures. It says: God speaks to you here!3

Today one might qualify Bultmann’s statement in various ways in part because the pressure
on religious claims he responds to does not always rise to the level he experienced under
the Nazis, the time at which he said this. Yet the basic insight that the collection we call
the Bible survives because Jews and Christians read it for meaning in the lives of their com-
munities is relevant to its interpretation. Critical scholarship can, and often does, go hand
in hand with an attitude of reverence and attentive listening for the key claims of the text,
not only claims about the nature of reality but claims upon the commitments of readers.
Third, contemporary readers of the Bible may operate as precritical, critical, or post-
critical interpreters. Most Jews and Christians before the eighteenth century could be
called precritical, not because they were not intellectually serious, for they often were,
but because they did not question the basic veracity of the biblical text. Or if they did
question its literal sense (a move very common among some interpreters such as the
ancient Christian school of Alexandria), they did so in order to find a deeper spiritual
sense. However, beginning in the sixteenth century with such thinkers as Baruch (a.k.a.
Benedict) Spinoza (1632–​1677), scholars asked whether the historical and scientific
claims that a literal reading of the Bible would stand up to careful scrutiny. A major
insight of this approach has been the recognition that the Bible is, whatever else it may
be, a human work making arguments and reflecting ideas that have a location in time and
space. In more recent times, a postcritical reading has become possible. In such a strategy,
of which there are many variations, the interpreter recognizes that the Bible has a history
and that many of the historical motivations of its creators can be identified within the
stream of human experience (it did not drop out of heaven). Yet she also seeks a deeper
theological truth, a “nevertheless,” according to which the biblical text speaks to some
deeper reality shaped by God and available to human beings through the medium of the
text itself, properly read.
A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament—​the very book that you are reading—​
attempts a postcritical approach. On the one hand, it takes seriously the findings of mod-
ern research and seeks to understand how and why the various biblical books came into
being. On the other hand, it seeks to interpret those books in terms of a hermeneutics of
sympathy, that is, from a point of view that wishes to understand the theological argu-
ments that those books make on their own terms, with an eye toward the sort of readers
they endeavor to create.
10 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament
Two basic hermeneutical lines of inquiry shape much of this textbook. The first is the
relationship between tradition and imagination. The biblical texts are highly imaginative
as they employ numerous literary genres and techniques, often in surprising ways. The
level of artistry is ordinarily of the highest sort. At the same time, the ancient Israelite
writers did not set the same premium on originality that has become indispensable since
the Romantic movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rather,
all ancient authors (Israelite or not) felt themselves answerable to a public that expected
certain things. The goal was not to be novel but to be creative within the bounds of exist-
ing practices. They did not confuse the new with the good. The biblical texts thus come
out of what one might call traditioned imaginations: their creators followed the rules
of the time while creating great art, much as Shakespeare borrowed plot lines and struc-
tures while writing his plays, or Michelangelo sculpted within the context of Renaissance
conventions while transforming them from the inside out. The interplay of tradition and
imagination will appear time and again in this work.
The second hermeneutical lens can be called divine-​human synchrony. The Bible says
things about God and humans that reflect a coherent and accurate view of both. To be
clear, one may acknowledge that various statements in the Bible about facts of human
history or natural science need not be taken as fact in a strict sense, often because they
were not intended to be. The real world does not have a storehouse for hail ( Job 38:22),
and daylight does not exist independently of the sun (Gen 1:3–​5), for example. A very
literal-​minded reading of the Bible will thus often mistake its poetic register and seri-
ously misunderstand it. Yet when it speaks of human sinfulness and divine love, of the
relationship of covenant with its obligations and affections, among other topics, it speaks
of the deepest things humans can know. At least this is the thesis that this book will test.
Welcome to the conversation!

Notes

1. Lee McDonald, The Biblical Canon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 55.
2. Antony C. Thiselton, Hermeneutics: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 4.
3. Rudolf Bultmann, Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann, ed. and trans.
Schubert M. Ogden (New York: Living Age/​Meridian, 1960), 168.

For Further Reading

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. 13 vols. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1949–​1962.

Graf Reventlow, Henning. History of Biblical Interpretation. 4 vols. Translated by Leo G. Perdue
and James O. Duke. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009–​2010.
Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
 2 The Pentateuch in Brief

Imagine again the cabinet in the synagogues of the first century ce. In every Jewish
and Samaritan community the core texts for worship and study were the five scrolls of
Torah, usually known by their Greek name the Pentateuch (Genesis–​Deuteronomy).
Early interpreters of these texts attributed them to their major character Moses (often
calling them the Books of Moses) even though the books themselves do not explicitly
claim him as their author. (Exod 17:14 and 24:4 refer to shorter works by him.) By the
first century, Jews and Christians spoke of the Pentateuch as the books of Moses or the
law of Moses (see Mark 12:26; Luke 24:44) without worrying about the great prophet’s
precise role in composing the books.
Early on, however, careful readers of the Pentateuch noticed certain problems with the
assumption that Moses had written all of it. Thus the Babylonian Talmud, a vast collec-
tion of Jewish law and lore compiled from earlier sources in the sixth century ce, reports
rabbis who wondered how Moses could have written the story of his own death in Deut
34.1 (Answer 1: he wrote it through prophecy, weeping. Answer 2: he did not write it, but
rather Joshua picked up the pen where Moses had left off in Deut 33.) Several centuries
later, the Spanish rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (1092–​1167) observed anachronisms in the
Pentateuch such as “The Canaanite was then in the land” (Gen 12:6) and “Og’s bed is
still in Rabbath-​Ammon” (Deut 3:11). However, neither he nor anyone else tried to work
out the implications of such facts because their interests lay with reading the Bible for its
ideas about God and human behavior.
11
12 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament
During the early modern period careful readers concluded that the Pentateuch con-
tains many statements that seem in tension with each other. Who created the world, for
example? Is the deity’s name Yhwh or Elohim or Yhwh Elohim? Whom did Cain marry
(Gen 4:17) if his family were the sum total of the human race? Did Noah bring into
the ark a pair of each animal (6:19; 7:9) or seven pairs of some animals (7:2–​3), and did
the flood last 40 (7:4, 17), 150 (7:24), or 375 days? And why, after the Flood, did the
mountains appear in the middle of the season that Israel would celebrate as the Feast of
Tabernacles (Gen 8:5; see Lev 23:39–​43; Num 29:12–​38)? If Gen 36:31 lists Edomite kings
who predated Israelite kings, does this statement imply that Israelites already had kings?
And so on it goes.
At the same time, in spite of all these minor difficulties, the Pentateuch is not just a
hodgepodge of stories, laws, and poems. Rather, the five books contain a clearly struc-
tured story that begins with the whole human race and zooms in on one family that
soon becomes a nation. The episodes of the story fit together, not like a modern novel
with prolonged explorations of the motives and values of the individual characters, but
through a process often called gapping, in which each vignette offers just enough detail
to help it make sense and leaves enough unexplained to make it interesting and worth
reading. There is a highly cultured narrative art at work in the Pentateuch that is different
from modern expectations but sophisticated on its own terms. The Pentateuch combines
many sorts of genres together into an integrated whole.
Since the seventeenth century, many scholars have tried to identify both the coher-
ence and incoherence of Genesis–​Deuteronomy by referring to sources of some sort.
Since ancient people had no notion of copyright or plagiarism, the ancient authors could
sometimes quote those sources or allude to them or simply incorporate them en masse.
And this is what modern scholars concluded had, in fact, occurred in the Pentateuch. In
some ways, such a hypothesis should not be very surprising. All literary works use sources,
and most authors have in their heads a great many books that they have read. That is
why modern people invented the footnote as a way of honoring their sources (as well as
bedeviling unsuspecting university students!). Modern scholars have typically thought of
the sources of the Pentateuch in two ways.
One idea, called the Documentary Hypothesis (DH), combines at least two, and
more likely three or four, fully worked out documents recounting Israel’s earliest his-
tory. The sources were usually identified as J for the Yahwist ( Jahwist in German), E
for the Elohist, D for the Deuteronomist, and P for the Priestly Source. According to
the Documentary Hypothesis, the Pentateuch’s duplicate stories, different viewpoints,
and changes in literary style derived from the disparate origins of different sections of
the book.
Other scholars, meanwhile, have argued for something more like a Fragmentary
Hypothesis, according to which different texts come from many locations and coalesce
only late in the evolution of the book. In this view, there are still two major layers of the
Pentateuch, a Priestly layer (P) and a nonpriestly layer (non-​P, or everything else). These
 The Pentateuch in Brief 13
two layers interacted with each other until they were combined into one grand work
sometime during the fifth or fourth century bce.
It would be hard to know how many contemporary scholars hold each view, and in
some ways the dispute always involves assumptions that are hard to test. Remember the
old optical illusions from introductory psychology classes? Is the object a duck or a rab-
bit? A vase or two people facing each other? These hypotheses are a bit like that.
What we know for sure is that much of the Pentateuch has a strong interest in the
sacrificial worship in sanctuaries (so it’s priestly), and much does not (so it’s probably not
priestly). Yet the stories in Genesis–​Deuteronomy, not to mention the laws, come from
different times and places, and thus reflect different viewpoints on a range of issues.
At the same time, the creator(s) of the first five books of the Bible worked to place
these materials together in a coherent whole that made sense. The process of composition
was conservative in that it allowed the tensions between various texts to survive rather
than smoothing things out. (Hence all the minor problems pointed out earlier.) Yet it
was also highly creative, because it fashioned a theological world out of all the disparate
raw material with which it worked. The Pentateuch is an authorizing story, a text that
both explains how Israel came to be and argues for a way of life that it should adopt,
preserve, and celebrate.
The Pentateuch works by juxtaposing stories and laws, so that the thoughtful reader
could use each to interpret the other. Consider first the stories: biblical narrative, in the
Pentateuch and elsewhere, consists primarily of short vignettes woven together to form
a comprehensive story. Unlike other literatures, Israel’s does not emphasize the interior
state of the character, but rather reveals the character through action and brief speech,
usually with just enough conversation happening to reveal the characters’ inner world.
How does one read such stories, then?
J.P. Fokkelman suggests ten productive questions to ask of any narrative texts:

1. Who is the hero?

2. What is the quest in which the hero engages?
3. Who are the helpers and opponents?
4. Where does the narrator intrude in the text?
5. Does the narrator keep to the chronology of events or alter it in some way?
6. Where is time skipped?
7. Is there a plot?
8. Where are the speeches, and what do they say?
9. What surprising choice of words appear in the text?
10. Where does the unit start and stop, and how are the divisions indicated?

This list opens up an understanding of the Bible as a literary creation, and will be useful
to us throughout this book. But we should also add some deeper questions that illumi-
nate the Bible as a theological work:
14 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament
1. What are the moral values of the characters? Of the narrator?
2. What vision of God is in play? Are there several visions? How do these cohere
with other views within Scripture?
3. Where does the narrator challenge our own views of reality? How do we
respond to that challenge?
4. How does the interplay of values within a text shape our own conversation
about values?

Questions such as these allow the reader or hearer of a given biblical story or of the
narrative as a whole to place the text in dialogue with his or her deepest understandings
of reality.
Narrative, and now law. As the discussion of Exodus–​Deuteronomy will show, the
legal traditions of Israel take a very particular shape when the Pentateuch situates them
within a narrative context. Instead of being just a set of rules about human interactions—​
already necessary and valuable in their own right—​the laws of the Pentateuch become
part of Yhwh’s story of redeeming Israel. Torah—​divine instruction or law—​becomes a
vehicle for perpetuating the deity’s grace in the structures, habits, commitments, and val-
ues of a people. This combination of norm and story, of what has been and what should
be, constitutes the generative dynamic, the capacity for survival and flourishing that char-
acterizes Israel’s life in the past and today. Now to enter into these texts.

Note

1. B.Baba Bathra 15a.

For Further Reading

Baden, Joel S. The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
Fokkelman, J. P. Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 1999).
 3 “In the Beginning”
T H E BO OK OF GENESIS

Key Text: And Yhwh said to Abram, “Go from your land and your birthplace and your family
to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and bless you. And I will
make your name great [i.e., make your reputation outstanding], and it will be a blessing. I will
also bless those blessing you and curse those denigrating you. In you, all the families of the earth
will be blessed.” (Gen 12:1–​3)

In reading any book, one of the first questions to ask is, “what’s it all about?” In asking
this about the first book of the Bible, Genesis, or in Hebrew “In the Beginning” (bĕrēʾšît),
the answer reveals the main subjects of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch.
At one level, Genesis concerns the migration of a single family (with an extended intro-
duction of their forebears), the ancestors of the people of Israel, as they moved from
Mesopotamia to Canaan to Egypt. The story concerns their adventures and misadven-
tures, and offers a colorful panorama of polygamous families as they encounter internal
and external challenges. At that level alone, Genesis is a great story worthy of the count-
less retellings it has undergone through the centuries in art, music, and literature.
But there is something of significance here, for Israel understood its own story as a
theological exploration of its place in a larger world. Genesis serves both as a background
story for the events of Exodus and settlement that follow in Exodus–​Joshua, and offers
a justification for Israel’s possession of its land (Canaan its older name, and Palestine the
one the Romans gave it much later, naming it after the Philistines).

15
16 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament

The Primeval Story in Outline

A.
Creation of the world and the human race (1:1–​2:25)
B.
The loss of paradise (3:1–​24)
C.
The expansion of humanity (4:1–​26)
D.
Genealogy of the antediluvians (5:1–​32)
E.
Extraordinary humans (6:1–​4)
F.
The flood: humanity destroyed (6:5–​8:22)
G.
Blessings and curses (9:1–​29)
1. Blessing Noah and humankind (9:1–​17, 28–​29)
2. Curses on problematic people (9:18–​27)
H. Genealogy of the postdiluvians (10:1–​32)
I. The Tower of Babel (11:1–​9)
J. Genealogy of Shem (11:10–​26)

Some of the main theological ideas of the text are expressed in the blessing that Yhwh
gives Abram in Gen 12:1–​3:

And Yhwh said to Abram, “Go from your land and your birthplace and your family
to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and bless you.
And I will make your name great [i.e., make your reputation outstanding], and it
will be a blessing. I will also bless those blessing you and curse those denigrating
you. In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

The divine promise sets forth most of the major themes in Genesis: migration, family and
its preservation, blessing, conflict and convergence with outsiders, and the inheritance of
the promised land. The interplay of these elements will shape most of the stories that fol-
low. Genesis thus depicts men and women struggling to find themselves and God, often
in a world in which others, with other motives and histories, pursue different goals.

Narrative Structure

The book of Genesis has two major sections, each with several subsections. The first
major unit includes chs 1–​11, often called the Primeval Story because it lays out Israel’s
understanding (or one of its understandings) of the origins of the world and many of
the human cultural practices in it. Although the section includes a variety of stories and
genealogies, it does have a logical flow.
Much of this material has parallels in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. However,
Israel did not mindlessly borrow from its neighbors, nor, conversely, did it always seek to
correct their viewpoints. In other words, Genesis and other biblical texts reveal Israel’s
ongoing attempts to work out a coherent worldview from the raw materials of the
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 PLATE XXX

TURTLE-HEAD.—C. glabra.

Common Dodder. Love Vine.

Cuscuta Gronovii. Convolvulus Family.

Stems.—Yellow or reddish, thread-like, twining, leafless. Flowers.—White, in

close clusters. Calyx.—Five-cleft. Corolla.—With five spreading lobes. Stamens.—
Five. Pistil.—One, with two styles.
Late in the summer we are perhaps tempted deep into some
thicket by the jasmine-scented heads of the button-bush or the
fragrant spikes of the clethra, and note for the first time the tangled
golden threads and close white flower-clusters of the dodder. If we
try to trace to their source these twisted stems, which the Creoles
know as “angels’ hair,” we discover that they are fastened to the bark
of the shrub or plant about which they are twining by means of small
suckers; but nowhere can we find any connection with the earth, all
their nourishment being extracted from the plant to which they are
adhering. Originally this curious herb sprang from the ground which
succored it until it succeeded in attaching itself to some plant; having
accomplished this it severed all connection with mother-earth by the
withering away or snapping off of the stem below.
The flax-dodder, C. Epilinum, is a very injurious plant in
European flax-fields. It has been sparingly introduced into this
country with flax-seed.

Traveller’s Joy. Virgin’s Bower.

Clematis Virginiana. Crowfoot Family.

Stem.—Climbing, somewhat woody. Leaves.—Opposite, three-divided.

Flowers.—Whitish, in clusters, unisexual. Calyx.—Of four petal-like sepals.
Corolla.—None. Stamens and Pistils.—Indefinite in number, occurring on
different plants.
In July and August this beautiful plant, covered with its white
blossoms and clambering over the shrubs which border the country
lanes, makes indeed a fitting bower for any maid or traveller who
may chance to be seeking shelter. Later in the year the seeds with
their silvery plumes give a feathery effect which is very striking.
 PLATE XXXI

TRAVELLER’S JOY.—Clematis
Virginiana.

This graceful climber works its way by means of its bending or

clasping leaf-stalks. Darwin has made interesting experiments
regarding the movements of the young shoots of the Clematis. He
discovered that, “one revolved describing a broad oval, in five hours,
thirty minutes; and another in six hours, twelve minutes; they follow
the course of the sun.”

Sweet Pepperbush. White Alder.

Clethra alnifolia. Heath Family.

A shrub from three to ten feet high. Leaves.—Alternate, ovate, sharply

toothed. Flowers.—White, growing in clustered finger-like racemes. Calyx.—Of
five sepals. Corolla.—Of five oblong petals. Stamens.—Ten, protruding. Pistil.—
One, three-cleft at apex.
Nearly all our flowering shrubs are past their glory by
midsummer, when the fragrant blossoms of the sweet pepperbush
begin to exhale their perfume from the cool thickets which line the
lanes along the New England coast. There is a certain luxuriance in
the vegetation of this part of the country in August which is generally
lacking farther inland, where the fairer flowers have passed away,
and the country begins to show the effects of the long days of heat
and drought. The moisture of the air, and the peculiar character of
the soil near the sea, are responsible for the freshness and beauty of
many of the late flowers which we find in such a locality.
Clethra is the ancient Greek name for the alder, which this plant
somewhat resembles in foliage.

Thorn-apple. Jamestown Weed.

Datura Stramonium. Nightshade Family.

Stem.—Smooth and branching. Leaves.—Ovate, wavy-toothed or angled.

Flowers.—White, large and showy, on short flower-stalks from the forks of the
branching stem. Calyx.—Five-toothed. Corolla.—Funnel-form, the border five-
toothed. Stamens.—Five. Pistil.—One. Fruit.—Green, globular, prickly.
The showy white flowers of the thorn-apple are found in waste
places during the summer and autumn, a heap of rubbish forming
their usual unattractive background. The plant is a rank, ill-scented
one, which was introduced into our country from Asia. It was so
associated with civilization as to be called the “white man’s plant” by
the Indians.
Its purple-flowered relative, D. Tatula, is an emigrant from the
tropics. This genus possesses narcotic-poisonous properties.

Wild Balsam-apple.
Echinocystis lobata. Gourd Family.

Stem.—Climbing, nearly smooth, with three-forked tendrils. Leaves.—Deeply

and sharply five-lobed. Flowers.—Numerous, small, greenish-white, unisexual; the
staminate ones growing in long racemes, the pistillate ones in small clusters or
solitary. Fruit.—Fleshy, oval, green, about two inches long, clothed with weak
prickles.
This is an ornamental climber which is found bearing its flowers
and fruit at the same time. It grows in rich soil along rivers in parts
of New England, Pennsylvania, and westward; and is often cultivated
in gardens, making an effective arbor-vine. The generic name is from
two Greek words which signify hedgehog and bladder, in reference
to the prickly fruit.

White Asters.
Aster. Composite Family (p. 13).

Flower-heads.—Composed of white ray-flowers with a centre of yellow disk-

flowers.
While we have far fewer species of white than of blue or purple
asters, some of these few are so abundant in individuals as to hold
their own fairly well against their bright-hued rivals.
The slender zigzag stems, thin, coarsely toothed, heart-shaped
leaves, and white, loosely clustered flower-heads of A. corymbosus,
are noticeable along the shaded roadsides and in the open woods of
August.
Bordering the dry fields at this same season are the spreading
wand-like branches, thickly covered with the tiny flower-heads as
with snowflakes, of A. ericoides.
A. umbellatus is the tall white aster of the swamps and moist
thickets. It sometimes reaches a height of seven feet, and can be
identified by its long tapering leaves and large, flat flower-clusters.
A beautiful and abundant seaside species is A. multiflorus. Its
small flower-heads are closely crowded on the low, bushy, spreading
branches; its leaves are narrow, rigid, crowded, and somewhat hoary.
The whole effect of the plant is heath-like; it also somewhat suggests
an evergreen.

Boneset. Thoroughwort.
Eupatorium perfoliatum. Composite Family (p. 13).
 Stem.—Stout and hairy, two to four feet high. Leaves.—Opposite, widely
spreading, lance-shaped, united at the base around the stem. Flower-heads.—Dull
white, small, composed entirely of tubular blossoms borne in large clusters.
To one whose childhood was passed in the country some fifty
years ago the name or sight of this plant is fraught with unpleasant
memories. The attic or wood-shed was hung with bunches of the
dried herb which served as so many grewsome warnings against wet
feet, or any over-exposure which might result in cold or malaria. A
certain Nemesis, in the shape of a nauseous draught which was
poured down the throat under the name of “boneset tea,” attended
such a catastrophe. The Indians first discovered its virtues, and
named the plant ague-weed. Possibly this is one of the few herbs
whose efficacy has not been over-rated. Dr. Millspaugh says: “It is
prominently adapted to cure a disease peculiar to the South, known
as break-bone fever (Dengue), and it is without doubt from this
property that the name boneset was derived.”

White Snakeroot.
Eupatorium ageratoides. Composite Family (p. 13).

About three feet high. Stem.—Smooth and branching. Leaves.—Opposite,

long-stalked, broadly ovate, coarsely and sharply toothed. Flower-heads.—White,
clustered, composed of tubular blossoms.
Although this species is less common than boneset, it is
frequently found blossoming in the rich Northern woods of late
summer.
 PLATE XXXII

BONESET.—E. perfoliatum.

Climbing Hemp-weed.
Mikania scandens. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—Twining and climbing, nearly smooth. Leaves.—Opposite, somewhat

triangular-heart-shaped, pointed, toothed at the base. Flower-heads.—Dull white
or flesh-color, composed of four tubular flowers; clustered, resembling boneset.
In late summer one often finds the thickets which line the slow
streams nearly covered with the dull white flowers of the climbing
hemp-weed. At first sight the likeness to the boneset is so marked
that the two plants are often confused, but a second glance discovers
the climbing stems and triangular leaves which clearly distinguish
this genus.
 Ladies’ Tresses.
Spiranthes cernua. Orchis Family (p. 17).

Stem.—Leafy below, leafy-bracted above, six to twenty inches high. Leaves.—

Linear-lance-shaped, the lowest elongated. Flowers.—White, fragrant, the lips
wavy or crisped; growing in slender spikes.
This pretty little orchid is found in great abundance in
September and October. The botany relegates it to “wet places,” but I
have seen dry upland pastures as well as low-lying swamps profusely
flecked with its slender, fragrant spikes. The braided appearance of
these spikes would easily account for the popular name of ladies’
tresses; but we learn that the plant’s English name was formerly
“ladies’ traces,” from a fancied resemblance between its twisted
clusters and the lacings which played so important a part in the
feminine toilet. I am told that in parts of New England the country
people have christened the plant “wild hyacinth.”
The flowers of S. gracilis are very small, and grow in a much
more slender, one-sided spike than those of S. cernua. They are
found in the dry woods and along the sandy hill-sides from July
onward.
 PLATE XXXIII

LADIES’ TRESSES.—S. cernua.

Green-flowered Milkweed.
Asclepias verticillata. Milkweed Family.

Stem.—Slender, very leafy to the summit. Leaves.—Very narrow, from three to

six in a whorl. Flowers.—Greenish-white, in small clusters at the summit and along
the sides of the stem. Fruit.—Two erect pods, one often stunted.
This species is one commonly found on dry uplands, especially
southward, with flowers resembling in structure those of the other
milkweeds. (Pl. .)
 Groundsel Tree.
Baccharis halimifolia. Composite Family (p. 13).

A shrub from six to twelve feet high. Leaves.—Somewhat ovate and wedge-
shaped, coarsely toothed on the upper entire. Flower-heads.—Whitish or
yellowish, composed of unisexual tubular flowers, the stamens and pistils
occurring on different plants.
Some October day, as we pick our way through the salt marshes
which lie back of the beach, we may spy in the distance a thicket
which looks as though composed of such white-flowered shrubs as
belong to June. Hastening to the spot we discover that the silky-
tufted seeds of the female groundsel tree are responsible for our
surprise. The shrub is much more noticeable and effective at this
season than when—a few weeks previous—it was covered with its
small white or yellowish flower-heads.

Grass of Parnassus.
Parnassia Caroliniana. Saxifrage Family.

Stem.—Scape-like, nine inches to two feet high, with usually one small
rounded leaf clasping it below; bearing at its summit a single flower. Leaves.—
Thickish, rounded, often heart-shaped, from the root. Flower.—White or cream-
color, veiny. Calyx.—Of five slightly united sepals. Corolla.—Of five veiny petals.
True Stamens.—Five, alternate with the petals, and with clusters of sterile gland-
tipped filaments. Pistil.—One, with four stigmas.
 PLATE XXXIV

GRASS OF PARNASSUS.—P.
Caroliniana.

Gerarde indignantly declares that this plant has been described

by blind men, not “such as are blinde in their eyes, but in their
understandings, for if this plant be a kind of grasse then may the
Butter-burre or Colte’s-foote be reckoned for grasses—as also all
other plants whatsoever.” But if it covered Parnassus with its delicate
veiny blossoms as abundantly as it does some moist New England
meadows each autumn, the ancients may have reasoned that a plant
almost as common as grass must somehow partake of its nature. The
slender-stemmed, creamy flowers are never seen to better advantage
than when disputing with the fringed gentian the possession of some
luxurious swamp.
 Pearly Everlasting.
Anaphilis margaritacea. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—Erect, one or two feet high, leafy. Leaves.—Broadly linear to lance-

shaped. Flower-heads.—Composed entirely of tubular flowers with very numerous
pearly white involucral scales.
This species is common throughout our Northern woods and
pastures, blossoming in August. Thoreau writes of it in September:
“The pearly everlasting is an interesting white at present. Though the
stems and leaves are still green, it is dry and unwithering like an
artificial flower; its white, flexuous stem and branches, too, like wire
wound with cotton. Neither is there any scent to betray it. Its
amaranthine quality is instead of high color. Its very brown centre
now affects me as a fresh and original color. It monopolizes small
circles in the midst of sweet fern, perchance, on a dry hill-side.”

Fragrant Life-everlasting.
Gnaphalium polycephalum. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—Erect, one to three feet high, woolly. Leaves.—Lance-shaped. Flower-

heads.—Yellowish-white, clustered at the summit of the branches, composed of
many tubular flowers.
This is the “fragrant life-everlasting,” as Thoreau calls it, of late
summer. It abounds in rocky pastures and throughout the somewhat
open woods.
Note.—Flowers so faintly tinged with color as to give a white effect in the
mass or at a distance are placed in the White section: greenish or greenish-white
flowers are also found here. The Moth Mullein (p. 152) and Bouncing Bet (p. 196)
are found frequently bearing white flowers: indeed, white varieties of flowers
which are usually colored, need never surprise one.
 II
YELLOW

Marsh Marigold.
Caltha palustris. Crowfoot Family.

Stem.—Hollow, furrowed. Leaves.—Rounded, somewhat kidney-shaped.

Flowers.—Golden-yellow. Calyx.—Of five to nine petal-like sepals. Corolla.—None.
Stamens.—Numerous. Pistils.—Five to ten, almost without styles.

Hark, hark! the lark at Heaven’s gate sings,

And Phœbus ’gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs,
On chaliced flowers that lies:
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty is—
My lady sweet, arise!
Arise, arise.—Cymbeline.

We claim—and not without authority—that these “winking

Mary-buds” are identical with the gay marsh marigolds which border
our springs and gladden our wet meadows every April. There are
those who assert that the poet had in mind the garden marigold—
Calendula—but surely no cultivated flower could harmonize with the
spirit of the song as do these gleaming swamp blossoms. We will
yield to the garden if necessary—
The marigold that goes to bed with the sun
And with him rises weeping—

of the “Winter’s Tale,” but insist on retaining for that larger, lovelier
garden in which we all feel a certain sense of possession—even if we
are not taxed on real estate in any part of the country—the “golden
eyes” of the Mary-buds, and we feel strengthened in our position by
the statement in Mr. Robinson’s “Wild Garden” that the marsh
marigold is so abundant along certain English rivers as to cause the
ground to look as though paved with gold at those seasons when they
overflow their banks.
 These flowers are peddled about our streets every spring under
the name of cowslips—a title to which they have no claim, and which
is the result of that reckless fashion of christening unrecognized
flowers which is so prevalent, and which is responsible for so much
confusion about their English names.
The derivation of marigold is somewhat obscure. In the “Grete
Herball” of the sixteenth century the flower is spoken of as Mary
Gowles, and by the early English poets as gold simply. As the first
part of the word might be derived from the Anglo-Saxon mere—a
marsh, it seems possible that the entire name may signify marsh-
gold, which would be an appropriate and poetic title for this shining
flower of the marshes.

Spice-bush. Benjamin-bush. Fever-bush.

Lindera Benzoin. Laurel Family.

An aromatic shrub from six to fifteen feet high. Leaves.—Oblong, pale

underneath. Flowers.—Appearing before the leaves in March or April, honey-
yellow, borne in clusters which are composed of smaller clusters, surrounded by an
involucre of four early falling scales. Fruit.—Red, berry-like, somewhat pear-
shaped.
These are among the very earliest blossoms to be found in the
moist woods of spring. During the Revolution the powdered berries
were used as a substitute for allspice; while at the time of the
Rebellion the leaves served as a substitute for tea.

Yellow Adder’s Tongue. Dog’s Tooth Violet.

Erythronium Americanum. Lily Family.

Scape.—Six to nine inches high, one-flowered. Leaves.—Two, oblong-lance-

shaped, pale green mottled with purple and white. Flower.—Rather large, pale
yellow marked with purple, nodding. Perianth.—Of six recurved or spreading
sepals. Stamens.—Six. Pistil.—One.
The white blossoms of the shad-bush gleam from the thicket,
and the sheltered hill-side is already starred with the blood-root and
anemone when we go to seek the yellow adder’s tongue. We direct
our steps toward one of those hollows in the wood which is watered
by such a clear gurgling brook as must appeal to every country-loving
heart; and there where the pale April sunlight filters through the
leafless branches, nod myriads of these lilies, each one guarded by a
pair of mottled, erect, sentinel-like leaves.

PLATE XXXV

MARSH MARIGOLD.—C. palustris.

The two English names of this plant are unsatisfactory and

inappropriate. If the marking of its leaves resembles the skin of an
adder why name it after its tongue? And there is equally little reason
for calling a lily a violet. Mr. Burroughs has suggested two pretty and
significant names. “Fawn lily,” he thinks, would be appropriate,
because a fawn is also mottled, and because the two leaves stand up
with the alert, startled look of a fawn’s ears. The speckled foliage and
perhaps its flowering season are indicated in the title “trout-lily,”
which has a spring-like flavor not without charm. It is said that the
early settlers of Pennsylvania named the flower “yellow snowdrop,”
in memory of their own “harbinger-of-spring.”
The white adder’s tongue, E. albidum, is a species which is
usually found somewhat westward.

Celandine.
Chelidonium majus. Poppy Family.

Stem.—Brittle, with saffron-colored, acrid juice. Leaves.—Compound or

divided, toothed or cut. Flowers.—Yellow, clustered. Calyx.—Of two sepals falling
early. Corolla.—Of four petals. Stamens.—Sixteen to twenty-four. Pistil.—One,
with a two-lobed stigma. Pod.—Slender, linear.
The name of celandine must always suggest the poet who never
seemed to weary of writing in its honor:
Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there’s a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story;
There’s a flower that shall be mine,
’Tis the little celandine.

And when certain yellow flowers which frequent the village roadside
are pointed out to us as those of the celandine, we feel a sense of
disappointment that the favorite theme of Wordsworth should
arouse within us so little enthusiasm. So perhaps we are rather
relieved than otherwise to realize that the botanical name of this
plant signifies greater celandine; for we remember that the poet
never failed to specify the small celandine as the object of his praise.
The small celandine is Ranunculus ficaria, one of the Crowfoot
family, and is only found in this country as an escape from gardens.
 PLATE XXXVI

YELLOW ADDER’S TONGUE.—E.

Americanum.

Gray tells us that the generic name, Chelidonium, from the

ancient Greek for swallow, was given “because its flowers appear
with the swallows;” but if we turn to Gerarde we read that the title
was not bestowed “because it first springeth at the coming in of the
swallowes, or dieth when they go away, for as we have saide, it may
be founde all the yeare; but because some holde opinion, that with
this herbe the dams restore sight to their young ones, when their eies
be put out.”

Celandine Poppy.
Stylophorum diphyllum. Poppy Family.
 Stem.—Low, two-leaved. Stem-leaves.—Opposite, deeply incised. Root-leaves.
—Incised or divided. Flowers.—Deep yellow, large, one or more at the summit of
the stem. Calyx.—Of two hairy sepals. Corolla.—Of four petals. Stamens.—Many.
Pistil.—One, with a two to four-lobed stigma.
In April or May, somewhat south and westward, the woods are
brightened, and occasionally the hill-sides are painted yellow, by this
handsome flower. In both flower and foliage the plant suggests the
celandine.

Downy Yellow Violet.

Viola pubescens. Violet Family.

Stems.—Leafy above, erect. Leaves.—Broadly heart-shaped, toothed. Flowers.

—Yellow, veined with purple, otherwise much like those of the common blue violet.

When beechen buds begin to swell,

And woods the blue-bird’s warble know,
The yellow violet’s modest bell
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below,

sings Bryant, in his charming, but not strictly accurate poem, for the
chances are that the “beechen buds” have almost burst into foliage,
and that the “bluebird’s warble” has been heard for some time when
these pretty flowers begin to dot the woods.
 PLATE XXXVII

DOWNY YELLOW VIOLET.—V.

pubescens.

The lines which run:

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet,
When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh,

would seem to apply more correctly to the round-leaved, V.

rotundifolia, than to the downy violet, for although its large, flat
shining leaves are somewhat conspicuous, its flowers are borne
singly on a low scape, which would be less apt to attract notice than
the tall, leafy flowering stems of the other.
 Common Cinquefoil. Five Finger.
Potentilla Canadensis. Rose Family.

Stem.—Slender, prostrate, or sometimes erect. Leaves.—Divided really into

three leaflets, but apparently into five by the parting of the lateral leaflets. Flowers.
—Yellow, growing singly from the axils of the leaves. Calyx.—Deeply five-cleft, with
bracts between each tooth, thus appearing ten-cleft. Corolla.—Of five rounded
petals. Stamens.—Many. Pistils.—Many in a head.
From spring to nearly midsummer the roads are bordered and
the fields carpeted with the bright flowers of the common cinquefoil.
The passer-by unconsciously betrays his recognition of some of the
prominent features of the Rose family by often assuming that the
plant is a yellow-flowered wild strawberry. Both of the English
names refer to the pretty foliage, cinquefoil being derived from the
French cinque feuilles. The generic name, Potentilla, has reference to
the powerful medicinal properties formerly attributed to the genus.

Shrubby Cinquefoil. Five Finger.

Potentilla fruticosa. Rose Family.

Stem.—Erect, shrubby, one to four feet high. Leaves.—Divided into five to

seven narrow leaflets. Flowers.—Yellow, resembling those of the common
cinquefoil.