Making Wise the Simple
As usual, I have returned from the SBL meeting and find myself wanting to spend all my time doing research. No teaching, no administration, just research. I have just finished reading the first of the books I purchased at the conference, so I thought I would provide a review.
The book is Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice, by Johanna van Wijk-Bos. She is a scholar in the Reformed tradition, currently teaching at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She grew up in Belgium during World War II.
Making Wise the Simple is a reading of the Pentateuch within the Christian faith. It is not truly an introduction to the Torah, as it does not cover enough background material to fulfill that role. The book would, however, serve quite well as a secondary book in an introductory class on the Pentateuch or as a good second book to read after having taken such a class. Because she does not always follow the text in a sequential order, having a good understanding of the shape of the Pentateuch and some familiarity with the stories would be helpful in following her discussion.
Van Wijk-Bos structures her reading around the Torah’s concern for the stranger (Heb. ger), as well as widows, orphans, and any other disadvantaged group. She does an excellent job of tracing this thread through the text. She is very sensitive to listen to marginalized voices within the Torah. She is also careful to deconstruct the anti-Jewish attitudes with which Christians often approach the Pentateuch.
One of the strongest parts of the book is that she covers almost all aspects of the Pentateuch. While I do not mean to suggest that all texts are discussed, she at least manages to cover most of the topics. Whereas many Christian studies focus only on the narrative, she devotes sections to the law (the Covenant Code and Holiness Code are both given treatment) as well as to sections of Exodus where the construction of the tabernacle is detailed. If there is any one section that gets short shrift, it is Deuteronomy, although she does use it as a foil for other texts on occasion and she does deal with the question of genocide against the Canaanites.
The criticisms I have of the book are minor, although not insignificant. Van Wijk-Bos uses her own translation of the text, which at times can be quite idiosyncratic. She preserves Hebrew word order to show the rhythm of the text, but this comes out awkwardly at times. She also divides the texts into strophes, even in prose passages. In some cases, she also emends the text to support her reading. The most egregious case of this is when she changes Exodus 23:3 to read “You must not privilege the great” when the Hebrew reads “You must not privilege the poor.”1 There is no textual evidence for such an emendation, although she cites the same wording in Leviticus 19:15. While I agree with her that showing favoritism to the great is more likely than showing it to the poor, there is no a priori reason to rule out a prohibition of showing favoritism to the poor, since favoritism in either direction is problematic (cf. Jam.2:9). Van Wijk-Bos also overstates that extent to which love for the stranger and marginalized is the central them of the Torah. While I certainly agree it is a theme, it seems to me that there are other themes that are just as strong.
Despite these problems, Making Wise the Simple is an enjoyable reading of the Torah. The author manages to produce a reading that is sensitive to women’s issues in the text without coming off as anti-male. She places the Torah firmly within the context of the covenant, something that is far too often overlooked in Christian readings of the Pentateuch.
- Van Wijk-Bos, Making Wise, 189. [back]
On November 27th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Interesting. Her title must be an allusion to Ps. 19.
I happen to be in the middle of working on a 5-6 week bible study booklet on the Torah Psalms for a class on preaching the Psalms. One of the assumptions of the study is that Torah is important for Christians, and that by shaping the Psalter as he/she did, the editor was making the point that the Psalter is to be understood as torah (i.e. instruction). I guess the most difficult thing is understanding how (or if) we ought to appropriate torah this side of the cross. Christ makes plain that he is not doing away with the law, probably no one would deny that we must still be instructed by God. But many Christians read Paul as saying that the law is no longer necessary and only leads to death.
Anyway, thanks for the post.
On November 27th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Thanks for the info on your book. As the project is due tomorrow I won’t have time to utilize it for this study but I am curious if you deal with the Torah Psalms? McCann and others argue that by introducing the Psalter with a Torah Psalm and by structuring it into five books the editor meant to convey something, namely the Psalter is also torah.
Any thoughts from an OT scholar?
On November 28th, 2006 at 12:54 am
I am just finishing up a semester of using Making Wise the Simple in a Pentateuch course for undergraduates and graduate students. I have mixed feelings about the book. I chose it as the main textbook in the course because Van Wijk-Bos tries to integrate both academic study of the Torah and theological reflection on the Torah, from a Christian point of view—exactly the sort of thing my students need.
However, I now wish that Van Wijk-Bos had provided more of an overview, and had given more “airtime” to themes other than “preference for the poor.” I’m not convinced that her treatments of other themes, and of problems like the fact that the Torah itself presupposes and even advocates slavery, are really quite adequate for what I want a textbook to do for a course. I would definitely rate it as “above average,” but not as “excellent,” for my purposes as in a university classroom. I guess my biggest complaint was that by the end of the book you suspect that Van Wijk-Bos can only sound one or two notes (this is not fair to the full range of her publishing, but represents the specific phenomenon of this book).
Kevin has already pointed out a couple of problems with Van Wijk-Bos’s translations, the biggest being that they are sometimes so unusually cadenced that they actually interfere with the point she is trying to make due to distraction. Also of interest is the way that Van Wijk-Bos identifies certain principles in the Torah as what she calls “outer markers,” and then uses these “outer markers” to argue for moral/ethical stances precisely opposite of those actually taken in the Torah itself.
My review would therefore have to be “mixed.” Good points, weaker points.
On November 28th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Thanks for your comments, Chris. It is good to hear a review from someone who has actually used it in class. You touched on some of the points that I had noticed but didn’t write up in the review, such as her treatment of slavery. Overall I think it is a good book, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a stand-alone textbook for a class.