Review in: Theology Today 2007 63: 504
Review door: Jacqueline E.
LapsleyGevonden op: http://ttj.sagepub.com/content/63/4/504.full.pdf+html
Ezekiel
Margaret S. OdellMacon, CA: Smyth & Helwys, 2005.
565 pp. $60.00.
The
Smyth &
Helwys
commentary series, to which Margaret Odell’s commentary on Ezekiel belongs,
seeks to reach a wide audience of younger Christians with scholarly commentary
on biblical texts in a user-friendly and multimedia format. Without question,
Ezekiel could benefit from considerably more understanding in the wider culture
than it presently commands. Odell is to be congratulated on producing a fine
volume that should further that laudable goal.
Odell
is associate professor of religion at St. Olaf College and has been a core
member of the seminar studying Ezekiel in the Society of Biblical Literature for
many years. The commentary is therefore thoroughly researched, providing the
reader with a coherent and eminently readable interpretation of this prophetic
book. It is well informed by the plethora of recent work on Ezekiel and related
areas.
The
commentary offers a wealth of detail on ancient Near Eastern iconography and
context (including lots of photographs) that often provides helpful background
for understanding Ezekiel. Odell explains this complex background carefully and
clearly and connects it to particular features in the biblical material. In the
“Connections” section at the end of each passage, Odell reflects theologically
on the passage, bringing Ezekiel into conversation with contemporary concerns.
These sections are often thoughtful, informative, and apt to provoke further
reflection. While reflecting on Ezekiel’s symbolic acts, for example, Odell
dissects the purity rules of our own culture and thereby illumines the ways in
which they blind us to the profundity of Ezekiel’s theology.
Despite
my general admiration of the
volume, I have a couple of reservations about Odell’s approach. My main qualm
is that the keen attention to ancient Near Eastern context leaves little room
to explore the literariness of Ezekiel’s text-how its theology is bound up in
the way the language of the text works. Odell does not adequately account for
an obvious but critical feature of the book: its strangeness. I suspect that in
Ezekiel, literariness and theology are inextricably entwined and that attention
to their intersection will help in unraveling the book’s undeniable weirdness.
Yet in this commentary, as in many others, the text of Ezekiel itself sometimes
disappears under the weight of the historical information deemed necessary to
understand it.
An
illustration of my other qualm-the way particular theories sometimes take over
interpretation-occurs in the introduction. Odell outlines her theory that the
structure of the book of Ezekiel finds its source in Esarhaddon’s Babylonian inscriptions.
She provides a long historical excursus to back this claim. The argument is
based on circumstantial historical evidence of Ezekiel’s familiarity with
Assyrian models. The effect is strained. Moreover, it is difficult to discern,
even if the idea proves tenable, how such knowledge helps the reader understand
Ezekiel’s theology in a more profound way. Exposition of the theory does not
seem to deepen appreciation of Ezekiel’s theology but becomes a distraction to
it.
The
commentary text is surrounded by various hyperlinks, each with its own icon to
indicate areas such as language-based concerns, historical issues, and
interpretations from across the ages (it also comes with a searchable CDROM). These
are sometimes helpful and illuminating. The inclusion of many visual
interpretations of Ezekiel’s visions is a welcome addition to the standard commentary
genre. For example, boxes offering thumbnail sketches of the history of
interpretation of a passage genuinely enlighten and enrich understanding. I
have a concern, however, about some of these “hip” features. Maybe because I do
not belong to the “visual generation of believers” to whom the book is
targeted, I find the fragmentation of the text into these various “boxes” to be
a bit disorienting on occasion (much in the way that postmodem pastiche can and
often tries to be). In the discussion of Ezekiel’s inaugural vision, for
instance, Odell begins with a brief reference to Calvin’s interpretation, but
then immediately the reader is “hyperlinked” to a fragment of a Rainer Maria
Rilke poem. The basic thematic connection to Ezekiel’s vision is apparent, but
the leap from one extracted thought of Calvin’s, to an extracted thought of
Rilke’s, then back to historical data of the sixth century BCE, while possibly
useful to preachers, is not an arrangement predisposed to foster genuine
understanding.
I
suspect, however, that the multitasking mode necessary to read this and other
Smyth &
Helwys
commentaries will come naturally to the “visual generation.” They will also
likely fare better with the faint peach-colored type in the hyperlinked boxes.
If they find Ezekiel more accessible and more interesting as a result, which
seems likely, then it will have been work well done.
Jacqueline E. Lapsley
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey
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