Review of Marvin A. Sweeney, Form and Intertextuality in Prophetic and Apocalyptic Literature

With Form and Intertextuality the German publisher Mohr Siebeck has provided us with a collection of Marvin Sweeney’s main essays on Prophetic and (Proto-)Apocalyptic literature. The book contains 19 articles – three of them so far unpublished – subdivided in five parts: essays concerning Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, the Book of the Twelve and (Proto-)Apocalyptic texts. In the ‘Introduction’ Sweeney positions his investigations in the tradition of Bernhard Duhm, whom he describes as the forefather of the diachronic analysis of Prophetic literature. While the main interest during the first half of the last century was on the primary words of the Prophets, research from the 1970s onwards stressed the redaction-critical perspective. Once the classification of original and editorial parts of the prophetic books has been determined, the question of intertextuality between the books appeared. This intertectuality is Sweeney’s focus. The first part, essays on the book of Isaiah, contains four articles on different phenomena. First Sweeney presents a study on the meaning of the word tôrâ in Isa 2:2-4 and in the whole book of Isaiah. Therefore he outlines the relevance of the book for the reform of Ezra in the 5 century B.C.E. While Ezra installed the Mosaic tôrâ as community rule, the Book of Isaiah conceived the tôrâ as the divine order for the community and for all nations to define Israel’s relation to them (p. 27). In regard to the parallel items of Isaiah and Ezra, Sweeney concludes that in post-exilic Judah the question of the holiness of the Jewish community in relation to God, to itself, and to other nations was a constitutive topic of the theological debate. The second essay discusses the phenomenon of multiple settings in a prophetic book with as many layers as the book of Isaiah. Sweeney lines out four editions of the book, the first dated in the late 8 century, and the last in the time of Ezra. Referring to Richter’s insight, the so-called Sitz im Leben changes to a Sitz in der Literatur by re-reading the texts in later times with different circumstances. Thus, BOOK REVIEWS