Review in: Interpretation
2002 56: 98
Review door: Timothy
K. BealGevonden op: http://int.sagepub.com/content/56/1/98.1.full.pdf+html
Esther
by Adele Berlin Translated by Am Oved. JPS Bible Commentary. The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2001,
169 pp. 34.95 (Cloth). ISBN 0-8276-06990.
THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS have seen an
explosion of interest in the book of Esther, a text whose ancient
Jewish-Persian context is as hard to access as its contemporary relevance is
uncanny. This new commentary is among the very best. Berlin provides a rich and
highly readable analysis and interpretation of the text and its early social
and literary contexts.
Berlin's commentary is unique in
the way it draws extensively from early Greek literature of the Persian period
as a context for understanding the Esther narrative. We see how the story world
of Esther is like and unlike other contemporary literature about Persia. At the
same time, she reads the book of Esther in relation to other biblical
narratives and early Jewish interpretive tradition. The result is an expansive
appreciation of the Esther story in relation to what comes before it, what surrounds
it, and what it inspires within the interpretive communities that inherit it.
At one point in the introduction Berlin indicates that her commentary
does not pose "questions about the roles of women versus men, the
relationships of sex and power that are in play in the story, and similar
questions that reflect modern feminist ways of reading" (p. lv). Depending
on how one approaches them, such questions need not reflect modern ways of
reading any more than trying to understand a biblical text in its original
context does. And if Berlin did in fact bracket such questions out of her
commentary, that would be
a serious problem. Indeed, the text of Esther begs that they be asked,
especially among those of us concerned with how this story world reflects and
comments on the social world of Persia in which it is set. Yet, happily, I find
that Berlin's commentary does more than it promises in this regard. The
analysis of sexual-political dynamics offers many valuable insights into the
ways gender identities and roles were constructed and represented in ancient
Persian culture as well as in early Jewish interpretive culture. Berlin does
not avoid questions about gender and power in the story world and its social
world. She does, however, expand, reframe and complicate those questions in
ways that will enable future gender studies of the text and its early contexts
to move forward in new and important directions.
TIMOTHY K. BEAL
CASE WESTERN
RESERVE UNIVERSITY
CLEVELAND, OHIO
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