Customer Reviews

Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Library of Ancient Israel)

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I started Ms. Niditch's "Oral World and Written Word" with something of an attitude after other books on the composition of the Bible had left a jargonesque, overcomplicated, underexplained taste in my brain. I was expecting more of the same. However, I was soon won over by the clarity of Nidich's thinking, the order of the presentation and the strengths of her arguments. The overall thrust of the book is to examine the nature of literacy in the very ancient world, to distinguish it from modern notions of literacy, and to consider how the interplay of oral culture and writing exhibits itself in the Bible. Perhaps the best thing I can say here is that this tiny volume is causing a major shift in my thinking. While she does not pretend to comprehensive knowledge of the process of compiling the Bible, she does raise a number of practical considerations against the Documantary Hypothesis variatons that I daresay the authors of purely literary theories have never even remotely thought of. Wherever you stand, this book is worth reading. I only wish there were more of it!

This book has opened my eyes to the reality of what Susan Niditch calls the oral-literary continuum, as opposed to the popular notion of a clear division between oral and written culture. I really believe this book is a must read for anyone who seriously wants to understand the bible and the historical process.

Susan Niditch challenges that contemporary approaches neglect the oral aspect of Israelite literature. Niditch vividly illustrates the problems of contemporary assumptions about ancient textually and argues for determining the genre of ancient Israel, through understanding the oral aesthetic which is found throughout the text, rather than impose Western categories upon the writing. Her primary thesis is that that the literature of ancient Israel is not able to be appreciated without determining the aesthetic and the worldview of the biblical text.

Susan Niditch's argument is founded on the concept that we err if we perceive oral and written cultures, oral and written literatures, as incompatible. The premise that oral compositions are simplistic and composed by illiterates or that written works of ancient Israel found in the palaces of kings are comparable to written works of today assumes that oral works are a primitive form of communication and therefore become extinct once written literature is available. She proposes that the oral register found within the Hebrew text is not a simple evolutionary process from oral to written communication. Rather the written and oral interplay together to form this oral register. Key features within the text are the use of metonym (according to Foley's work), where words and phrases evoke known traditions greater than the immediate content. Repetition, epithet, patterns and reoccurring formulas are therefore essential elements, not evidence of multiple editors enlarging the original unsophisticated oral fable over extended time.

This is a great challenge to the redactors concept of multiple editors and later additions to the original author's text. Her appreciation of the original Hebrew literature makes the Old Testament understandable and therefore relevant to life today.