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Reading Rahab: How criticism serves itself or eats itself

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2023

John Goldingay
John Goldingay*
Affiliation:
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: johngold@fuller.edu
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Abstract

Studies of the Rahab story in Joshua illustrate how, as interpreters, we can read our interests and convictions into a text, allow it no room to protest that it did not have these interests or convictions, and give it no opportunity conversely to question the interests and convictions that we bring to it as interpreters. This raises the question whether we actually want to discover things from texts or whether we simply want to provide illustrations of and support for what we think already.

Keywords

Athalya BrennercriticismRobert CooteJoshuaOrigen of AlexandriaRahab
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , February 2023 , pp. 24 - 30
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 ‘Wide Gaps, Narrow Escapes: I Am Known as Rahab, the Broad’, in Davies, P. R. (ed.), First Person: Essays in Biblical Autobiography (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 47–58Google Scholar.

2 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Joshua, ed. C. White, trans. B. J. Brown (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2002), pp. 47–9.

3 Coote, R. B., ‘The Book of Joshua: Introduction, Commentary and Reflections’, in Keck, L. E. et al. (eds), The New Interpreter's Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 553–719Google Scholar.

4 Coote refers in this connection to Rowlett, Lori, ‘Inclusion, Exclusion and Marginality in the Book of Joshua’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 55 (1992), pp. 15–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 C. García-Alfonso works in a similar way in her more recent study of Rahab, ‘Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematic, Objectives, Strategies’, in Lozada, F. Jr and Segovia, Fernando F. (eds), Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2014), pp. 151–64Google Scholar (see esp. 158–9); see also Bird, Phyllis A., ‘The Harlot as Heroine: Narrative Art and Social Presupposition in Three Old Testament Texts’, Semeia 46 (1989), pp. 119–39Google Scholar, who works with a combination of the socio-critical and literary in the sense of narrative art.

6 Theodoret of Cyrus, The Questions on the Octateuch, vol. 2, trans. Hill, R. C. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2007)Google Scholar; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of Joshua, trans. H. Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.); Dozeman, T. B., Joshua 1–12: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Rowlett, L., ‘Disney's Pocahontas and Joshua's Rahab in Postcolonial Perspective’, in Aichele, G. (ed.), Culture, Entertainment and the Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 66–75Google Scholar; Davidson, S. V., ‘Gazing (at) Native Women: Rahab and Jael in Imperializing and Postcolonial Discourses’, in Boer, R. (ed.), Postcolonialism and the Hebrew Bible: The Next Step (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2013), pp. 69–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Vaka‘uta, N., ‘Border Crossing/Body Whoring: Rereading Rahab of Jericho with Native Women’, in Havea, J., Neville, D. J. and Wainwright, E. M. (eds), Bible, Borders, Belonging(s): Engaging Readings from Oceania (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2014), p. 148Google Scholar.

9 Crowell, B. L., ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl: Foreign Women of the Deuteronomistic History in Postcolonial Perspective’, Biblical Interpretation 21 (2013), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Russaw, K. D., ‘Reading Rahab with Larsen: Towards a New Direction in African American Biblical Hermeneutics’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 42 (2020), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar (esp. p. 4).

10 See further e.g. Runions, E., ‘From Disgust to Humor: Rahab's Queer Affect’, Postscripts 4/1 (2008), pp. 41–69Google Scholar.

11 See Wu, R., ‘Women on the Boundary: Prostitution, Contemporary and in the Bible’, Feminist Theology 28 (2001), pp. 69–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See e.g. Comte, C., ‘Sauve qui sait: l'efficace “Madame Rahab” (une approche narrative de Josue 2)’, Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 112 (2011), pp. 55–84Google Scholar.

13 A. Toczyski, The ‘Geometrics’ of the Rahab Story: A Multi-dimensional Analysis of Joshua 2 (London: T&T Clark, 2019), p. 62.

14 Biddle, M. E. and Jackson, M. A., ‘Rahab and her Visitors: Reciprocal Deliverance’, Word and World 37 (2017), p. 226Google Scholar.

15 Frymer-Kensky, T., ‘Reading Rahab’, in Cogan, M., Eichler, B. L. and Tigay, J. H. (eds), Tehillah Le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), p. 62Google Scholar.

16 Cf. Nyirimana-Mukansengimana, R. and Draper, J. A., ‘The Role of Women in Creating Safe Space for “Strangers”: Reading of Joshua 2:1–21 and John 18:15–17 from the Context of Rwandan Conflict’, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 152 (2015), pp. 96–113Google Scholar.

17 Davis, E. F., ‘Critical Traditioning: Seeking an Inner Biblical Hermeneutic’, Anglican Theological Review 82 (2000), p. 742Google Scholar.

18 See e.g. Bultmann, R., ‘Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?’, in The New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 145–53Google Scholar.

19 See H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2006).

20 Steiner, G., After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (London: OUP, 1975), p. 296Google Scholar.

21 This stance in relation to Rahab and Joshua more generally and to ḥērem finds productive expression decade after decade in the work of L. D. Hawk, who seems unable to give up worrying away at Joshua: see e.g. his commentary Joshua in the Berit Olam series (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000); and on Rahab in particular, ‘Strange Houseguests: Rahab, Lot, and the Dynamic of Deliverance’, in D. Nolan Fewell (ed.), Reading between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992), pp. 89–97; and ‘Indigenous Helpers and Renegade Invaders: Ambivalent Characters in Biblical and Cinematic Conquest Narratives’, Journal of Religion and Film 20/3 (2016), article 24.

22 My comments here overlap with James Barr's discussion of typology and allegory in Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments, 2nd edn (London: SCM, 1982), pp. 103–48.