Review of Mark McEntire and Joel Emerson, Raising Cain, Fleeing Egypt and Fighting Philistines: The Old Testament in Popular Music

The subtitle of this book says it all: the representation of motifs from the Old Testament in popular music is here described, primarily in the form of a host of specific examples. There are a number of books on pop music and religion/spirituality available; this book itself mentions one, ‘Call me the Seeker’, edited by M. J. Gilmour. But books on the more specific topic of pop music and The Bible are less easily found, and the present volume is a welcome addition to the short shelf of such work. The entire breadth of the Hebrew Bible and its inspiration for popular song is covered in seven short chapters: ‘The First Family’ about creation, Eden and beyond; ‘Surviving the Storm’ about the flood story; ‘Family Matters’ about the patriarchal narratives; ‘Let Me Out’ about the Exodus; ‘The High and Mighty’ about the narratives from Joshua to Kings; ‘The Poet’s Poets’ about Psalms and wisdom literature and ‘Shouting in the Wind’ about the prophetical books. Each chapter commences with a brief exegetical essay introducing the major themes of the biblical passages or books in question. These sections presuppose no familiarity with biblical scholarship, and so the book may serve the reader who comes to this particular crossroads of subjects from the popular music angle as well, although conceivably the average reader will have a certain previous interest in biblical studies. These exegetical essays focus on the coherence and narrative sequence of the prose parts of the Hebrew Bible, highlighting the recurring plot issues. The treatment of the poetic books in the last two chapters of the book, too, bear witness to a leaning toward ‘holistic’, literary readings: the Book of Psalms is primarily a composition with a literary and theological structure, and only secondarily a collection of examples of various Psalm Gattungen. And something similar goes for the relation between oracles and books in the BOOK REVIEW