Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 39:3 (Sep 1996)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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JETS 39:3 (September 1996) p. 465

Book Reviews

Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12–50. By J. Gerald Janzen. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993, 215 pp., $17.99 paper.

Janzen has written a very original and highly theological commentary, given the fact that his assignment was Genesis 12–50. From the very outset of his work, the reader is alerted to the fact that he or she is in for an unusual treat: “Genesis 12–50 everywhere presupposes the reader’s familiarity with the preceding chapters, in such a way that scene after scene [of] the ancestral narrative receives its depth and precise nuance of meaning from the way it takes up and repeats or transforms themes and images anchored in Gen. 1–11.” This makes for a most creative contribution.

Janzen also correctly argues that patriarchal religion holds a midpoint between the accounts of creation and the accounts of Mosaic religion. While the relationships between these sections is not unilinear but complex, still Janzen does not opt for a type of supersessionism that has Christianity twice removed from the patriarchs. Instead, he quips, if “the New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed,” the reverse is also true: “the Old is in the New concealed, the New is in the Old revealed!”

Occasionally one might wish to dispute one item or another. For example, the reflexive translation of Gen 12:3 appears several times: “Abram was told by Yahweh that his name would become a means by which all families bless themselves” (pp. 18, 33, etc.). Few have read, much less answered, O. T. Allis’ 1927 article in the Princeton Theological Review entitled “The Blessing of Abraham,” which demonstrates that the passive translation of the verb “to bless” is not only preferred here but is required.

At other points Janzen fields a brilliant discussion of the interpretive options but is unable to come to any conclusion. Such an example is his exegesis of Gen 15:6 (pp. 37-39). He suggests that his “interpretive uncertainty” may allow for “further insight into the meaning of the text [to] emerge … at a later time.” Jansen concludes his discussion of covenant ceremony at the end of Genesis 15 by equating the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch of Abram’s vision with representations of Abram and God. Thus instead of this being a unilateral covenant in which God obligated himself alone it becomes an act of “mutuality” (...

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