The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Harvard Semitic monographs) [Hardcover]

Patrick D. Miller Jr. (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (June 27, 1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674212967
• ISBN-13: 978-0674212961
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,779,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A pass on this one, December 5, 2009

By 

E.L.B. (Kansas City, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Harvard Semitic monographs) (Hardcover)

For Miller the function and imagery of Yahweh as a divine warrior in the heavenly army he commands is a very important connecting piece in the theology of Israel. He compares and contrasts this theology with notions of divine warfare in other ancient religions. There is a good overview of the Ugaritic pantheon (less of anything else) and he concludes that Yahwism took over the ideal of the divine warrior from early conceptions of El and Baal, kings of the gods in Canaan. In the process he argues from early and late poetry, prose, and prophecy.

In a later study by Miller on Ugaritic theology and its relation to theology in Israel he wrote: 'Probably as well as anywhere in the ancient world one can see here that interrelationships of the various views of the divine realm while perceiving also that the desire to order and understand those relationships is a self-conscious need and activity of the culture itself and not merely a device and fetish of modern scholarship.' ('Aspects of the Religion of Ugarit' in Miller, Hanson, McBride, eds. [1987] Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, p. 54) To a certain point this might be true, yet I don't see how Miller's study of Yahweh as divine warrior escapes the label of 'fetishlike'. It preoccupies itself with and suffers from over-analyzation, is high on rhetoric, and certainly in some ways is a theological apparatus of Miller's own devices. Therefore, it seems little material to a real conception of Yahweh and holy war in historical Israel. It's a study of imagery for the sake of imagery. More theology than history. There's little surprise then that the 'Concluding Implications' are barely nine pages and those are mainly repetitive. Although there are sometimes insightful aspects to this monograph (nearly half of it being extended 'footnotes'), it's one that can be skipped...unless you also have a fetish for this sort of thing.