Journal: Bulletin for Biblical Research
Volume: BBR 17:2 (NA 2007)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BBR 17:2 (2007) p. 331

Book Reviews

Antony F. Campbell. Joshua to Chronicles: An Introduction. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2004. Pp. 267. ISBN 0-664-25751-8. $29.95 cloth.

This book, written by a professor of OT at Jesuit Theological College in Parkeville, Australia, sets out to address the concerns of the people who find themselves unable to read “Exodus past chapter 25, find Leviticus off-putting, and have been prevented by the beginning and end of Numbers from ever looking at the middle” (pp. 5-6). Having published prolifically and productively on Hebrew narrative for many years, Campbell steps back from his academic research to publish an introductory textbook for beginning students.

Unfortunately, it begins with armchair psychoanalysis, condescendingly labeling all students interested in matters of history and historicity as “fundamentalists” hiding behind the text to “escape (their) doubts” (pp. 11-12). He suggests that an overwhelming need for “certainty” among these students renders them incapable of learning much about the Bible. Because they tend to be driven by unconscious and unidentified “personal needs” (here the author cites J. Barr’s well-known book, Fundamentalism), these students often fall prey to “muddled thinking” when they ought to be examining the reasons behind their “veiled dishonesty” (p. 12). Whew! One wonders after such a diatribe whether this professor, like others of us, has simply tangled with one stubborn conservative too many. An editor should have caught this paragraph and deleted it; all it does is begin the book on a defensive note.

Campbell views Joshua–Chronicles not as “history” but as “texts in which thinkers within Israel sought to interpret the people’s experience” (p. 7). He does not believe that these texts are the “official interpretation authorized by ancient Israel,” only texts that “Israel in due course recognized as its canonical Scriptures” (p. 7). Methodologically, he claims to want a “marriage between these two realms of study: the historical-critical and the literary” (p. 9), but it does not take long to figure out who really “wears the pants in the family.”

Robert Boling writes of our “passion for dating.” It is a passion that I do not share. Nor is this book concerned to back up faith with facts. The Bible does not witness to such a concern, in Campbell’s view. The Bible affirms faith and calls for faith. It seldom appeals to facts to turn faith into knowledge (p. 9). Provocative and (in some cases) baseless claims of this sort deserve more than a cursory review by Campbell (the Bible does not “witness to such a concern” at all?), yet on the basis of these claims the book proceeds to lay out what Campbell thinks are the major themes o...

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