Eryl W. Davies

This is a well written and thought provoking contribution to the discussion of how to deal with ethically challenging OT texts. The book is relatively brief (the main text is 147 pages) and well structured. The ample bibliography and Davies' extensive use of it indicates a breadth of scholarship, though at time he is in danger of exaggerating an authors position in order to fit it into his structure.

The structure of the book is commendably clear. The opening chapter sets up the problem - there are bits of the Bible which are morally repugnant to the modern reader. Davies pics on one particularly troubling passage - the destruction of the Canaanites described in Josh 6-11, and in the following 5 chapters he goes on to discuss five approaches (Evolutionary, Cultural Relativist, Canonical, Paradigmatic and Reader-Response) and use their handling of Josh 6-11 as a case study, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

Apart from seemingly occasionally to fail to appreciate the nuances of the some of the approaches, there are two significant weaknesses to the book, which are related. The first is to criticise methods because they are not readily accessible to the average modern reader. But if there were methods of dealing with this very knotty problem which were readily accessible to the modern reader we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. The second issue is related to this - a failure to appreciate the Ecclesial dimension of interpretation. This is nowhere clearer than in his rather paradoxical critique of canonical approaches where he challenges the fixedness of the Canon - but again, if we could write our own canon the problem would disappear.

Overall, however, it is well worth a read by anyone interested in this question, not least for its very extensive coverage of much of the literature already available on this question.… (mais)