sharp article on exile

7/27/2019 Sharp Article on Exile

1/18

The Trope of "Exile" and the

Displacement of Old Testament TheologyCarolyn J. Sharp

Yale Divinity School, New Haven CT 06511

That Israel's experience of exile in 587 B.C.E. was profoundly formative for the

shaping of traditions and texts in Scripture has long been recognized. What

might it mean to construct a hermeneutically sophisticated theology that is at

tentive to the powerful trope of "exile" in the Old Testament, probing diversebiblical rhetorics for their constatais of communal identity, insider and outsider

status, dislocation, and the presence and absence ofGod? For such a theology, it

would not suffice simply to say the exile was a military trauma inflicted upon

the people ofJudah by the Babylonians that generated a number of responses in

ancient Israelite literature. Nor should it be adequate to appropriate "exile" in

discriminately as a scriptural metaphor for any and all kinds of present-day

displacement without considering carefully the cultural and theological points

of disjuncture that might be being masked by such an interpretive move. A so

phisticated understanding of "exile" as tropeas a culturally freighted sign rich

in meanings, highly dependent on literary contexts and the constructions ofreaderswould need to take account of the hermeneutical complexities in

volved in theological claims of what "home" can mean and what dislocation

from "home" into "exile" can mean, both in the relevant biblical texts and in

their subsequent interpretation.

The task of biblical theology is complex. This is clear when one

consults recent tomes on the subject by Walter Brueggemann, Bernhard

Anderson, and Erhard Gerstenberger, among others.1 Anderson confidently

subsumes Israel's multiform theological beliefs and practices under the

traditional governing motif of covenant, broadly sketched in what he presents as

Noahide, Mosaic, and Davidic variations on a single theme. His approachprovides a time-honored view of Scripture that is beautifully accessible to the

beginning student, to be sure, but overwhelmingly homogenizing in tone. By

contrast, Gerstenberger underlines the diversity of theologies animating family,

clan, tribal, and monarchic social organizations in ancient Israel, arguing that

these theologies were incompatible with each other in ancient times and cannot

easily address contemporary worldviews that privilege the individual believer

and the global community.2 Brueggemann offers a brilliant process-oriented

Salter Brueggemann, Theology of the OldTestament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997); Bernhard W. Anderson, Contours of OldTestamentTheology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999); Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Theologies in the Old Tes


2/18

154 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

hermeneutic that honors diverse biblical modes of witness without allowing

them to fragment the biblical canon irreparably, pressing hard for an underlyingunity found in scriptural dynamics of testimony and countertestimony. Theserecent Old Testament theologies could not be further apart from each other intheir methods. They invite the interpreter into a Bible that in one moment seemsmajestically consistent through centuries of tradition but in the next momentappears wildly incoherent from verse to verse.

Indeed, the discipline of biblical theology seems itself to be somethingof a nomad in the conversationor parallel soliloquiesgenerated by thesetheology books, wandering uneasily from traditional foundational claims to assertions of the lack of a conceptual center in the Old Testament. It must be

acknowledged that the cultural landscape in which biblical hermeneutics wanders these days is a postmodern landscape. Intellectual discourse since theadvent of deconstruction, poststructuralism, ideological criticism, and "situated"reading strategies has encouraged our suspicion of grandiose claims and hegemonic summaries, inspired our exploration of exotic nooks and crannies ofbiblical interpretation history,3 and thoroughly complicated all manner of discussions about meaning and how we know. Whether we regard the postmodernturn in hermeneutics with joy, trepidation, or annoyance, it is the case that thesedays no alert reader of Scripture can afford an attitude of unschooled navetregarding the complexity of the task of biblical theology. The natures of literarytexts and the signifying processes of language itself have become thoroughlydestabilized. The activity of reading can no longer be taken for granted as amore or less straightforward decoding of authorial intent using natural intelligence, a bit of historical information, and a dash of competence in genreanalysis. The very notion of interpretation has become deeply complicated bothin the wondrous richness of interpretive possibilities and the potential for fierceand abiding hermeneutical contradictions.

A journey lies before those ofus who cherish Scripture. Biblical theology is stumbling and groping for ways to honor the sacred Word of God in theshifting landscape of postmodern indeterminacy. Where should we start? Thepresent essay will reflect on representative ways in which "exile" has been understood in biblical scholarship in the last thirty-five years as a means ofthinking theologically about the Old Testament. Considering the contributionsof Peter Ackroyd, Ralph Klein, Walter Brueggemann, and Daniel Smith-Christopher, I will suggest ways in which traditional views of exile and newerunderstandings of diaspora may show a way forward for Old Testament theology, not only as regards this particular theme but as regards the discipline itself,

(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001), perhaps rendering his perspective less obviously radical for

American religious tastes.3A fine example of postmodern analysis of the history of interpretation of Jonah isYvonne Sherwood's A BiblicalText andIts Afterlives: The Survival ofJonah in Western


3/18

JOURNAL OF THE NABPR 155

given its own dislocation from the familiar ideological frameworks by means ofwhich it had been formed in the twentieth century.

Changing Understandings of ExileWe begin with consideration of an influential work on exile from an extraordinarily well-respected historian: Peter Ackroyd's Exile and Restoration: A Studyof Hebrew Thoughtof the Sixth Century B.C., published in 1968. The book hadits genesis in the Hulsean Lectures at the University of Cambridge, which Ackroyd delivered in 1962, lectures whose purview is "some branch of ChristianTheology." In his preface, Ackroyd feels obliged to go to some lengths to defend the idea that Old Testament studies are a matter for Christian theology,serving notice that the historical study that follows is theological in nature. Ackroyd is interested not only in the ways in which the historical events of militarydefeat and exile may have shaped the socio-political understandings ofthe biblical writers, but also in the ways in which the writers show themselves sensitiveto the "purpose of God." Indeed, he sharply rejects the idea that historicalevents as such are the determining factor in motivating the writing of Scriptureand therefore should be the governing factor in interpretation.

The following quotation, concerning post-exilic prophecy but applicable mutatis mutandis to the period of the exile as well, is quite remarkablecoming from a scholar who is a credentialed historian:

The impulse of political crisisas in the time ofthe accession of DariusImay well stimulate the thinking of prophets such as Haggai andZechariah. But this is far from suggesting that their prophecy is the outcome of those events, for it would be equally true to affirm that theirreading ofthe events is itself determined by their apprehension ofthenature and purpose of the God in whose name they spoke, and for that theyare likely to have been much more dependent upon a continuing religioustradition than upon the impulses of a moment.5

That Ackroyd can reduce the forces of historythe political traumas of highlyturbulent times, the textures of human life in Palestine dramatically formed and

malformed by massive military prdations, extreme destabilization of security,and social upheavalas "the impulses ofa moment" speaks volumes about hisunderstanding of the exile.

For Ackroyd, the exile is the historically real but theologically almostcoincidental setting for the revelatory proclamations of those biblical writerswho were attuned to God's timeless purposes. Theology comes first: history isunderstood and represented in the Bible, for Ackroyd, as the contextual accidents through which God makes the divine Will known. Ackroyd says that theexile "was to be understood as providing a means by which the nature of Godshould be revealed, a process by which both the people on whom it was exer

cised and also the nations as witnesses of the action should come to the


4/18


acknowledgment of who he is."6

The idea of historical events as reflective of

social and political identity is almost wholly subsumed under the category oftheology: theological thinking may be influenced by events of the exile, may becatalyzed and shaped by those events, but ultimately, theological truths standapart from the contextual particulars. The biblical writers may have been peopleof their times, but what matters is that they "had the depth of insight into thenature and purpose of God to enable them to see both the meaning of what theyexperienced and the outlines of the unfolding purpose of God."7

Ackroyd works competently with the complex histories of compositionof biblical books, engaging in thoughtful dialogue with historical-critical scholars regarding dates and material evidence for historical events. He probes major

themes and issues of language in Scripture, offering careful arguments for historical cause and literary effect. His traditional (pre-deconstruction) view is thatthe theology of the biblical writers represents a simple "combining of the appreciation of real conditions with an understanding of the meaning which lieswithin them."8 Throughout his book, Ackroyd does acknowledge the rich polyphony of perspectives represented in the biblical writings, finally suggestingthat the unity of the Old Testament can be found only in the "purposes ofGod."9 He does not frame the motivations of the biblical writers as determinative, choosing instead to subordinate the realia of lived political and social lifeto the eternal will of the Divine as it was perceived by the biblical writers. Athinker of his times, Ackroyd seems to accept without question that the prophetsand other exilic writers were pointing in a reliable and transparent way to thepurposes of Godin other words, not only that it may have been the biblicalwriters' intention to do so, but that they succeeded. Ackroyd's work is a fineexample ofthe "God who acts in history" model coupled with an earnest repre-sentationalism about the ways in which literary texts signify.

Ackroyd's Exile andRestoration is a towering example of thoughtfulhistorical-critical scholarship, providing numerous cogent readings and com-mendably urging caution about drawing unsubstantiated scholarly conclusions.But Ackroyd's book also serves as a classic example of the submerged agendaof writers who locate part or all of the process of Scripture writing in the eternaltimelessness of abstract theology. Students ofthe Bible are much in Ackroyd'sdebt. But with the advance of ideological criticism in historiography and narra-tology providing increasingly refined methods for discerning the subtlemotivations of ancient authors and editors, the interpretive landscape has bynow shifted far too much for us to rely on his uncomplicated hermeneutic ofhistorical biblical writing as representing transparent access to the purposes ofGod.

Also theological in focus but quite different in approach is RalphKlein's Israel in Exile: A Theological Interpretation, published in 1979. Thisintelligent work stands as a model of pastoral analogical thinking for those who

would look to Scripture to find uncomplicated parallels to the contemporary life


5/18


of faith. Klein argues that the pressing theological questions troubling the biblical writers are questions that remain urgent for those who would understandGod's ways in the contemporary world:

[T]he questions posed by the exilic age . . . were so acute and so modernquestions of identity and the grounds for hope, questions about whoor what is the cause of Israel's malaise, questions about the continuingvalidity of symbols and symbol systems . . . questions for those who arerootless or whose future seems fruitless and fraught with conflict. Israel'sexilic theologians . . . spoke to the types of questions that challenge academic theologians, the clergy, and the nonprofessional faithful alsotoday.10

Klein ably explores a variety of biblical voices that address themselves to thetrauma of exile. We find in his work accessible descriptions of themes of judgment, suffering, theodicy, sin, covenant, and biblical anthropology. With a lighthand and eminently readable style, Klein brings source and redaction criticisminto the discussion where they can help direct our attentiveness to importantfeatures of the text.

Particularly important, Klein underlines for his readers a salient featureof exile: the experience of the silence of God. He writes:

Israel's experience of and reaction to exile greatly illuminate our own

situation in faith and culture. For us too the old answers no longer hold.. . . Frantic attempts to prove God's existence through miracles or toground faith in a precriticai view of Scripture indicate just how pervasivethe silence of God has become. No one escapes this exile.11

Klein urges the reader to understand the signs of contemporary times as pointing to God's judgment on our idolatry and exhorts us to hear the words of exilicbiblical writers anew today. We are to pray for the prosperity of contemporaryculture, knowing that "here and now is the arena of our vocation"; we are toremember our identity with a sense ofhope rather than triumphalism; we are tobe prepared to suffer as we obey our God; and we are to speak our faith boldly

into the dark corners of exilic experience.12

The appeal of the broadly confident analogizing modeled by Klein isobvious. Indeed, it has long been standard fare in church Bible studies. Butanachronism and cross-cultural misunderstanding threaten the viability of theanalogical endeavor more profoundly than many Bible study leaders seem torealize. The ease of analogy has become far more suspect in light of late-modern and postmodern challenges to the dominance of Western cultural assumptions, androcentric social norms, and industrial and postindustrialconstructions of identity based unthinkingly and completely on competition for

10R l h W Kl i l i E il A h l i l i (Phil d l hi F


6/18


economic power. One may question under what interpretive conditions it

would be possible to appropriate for ourselves ancient words spoken to pre-industrial peoples from vastly different sociological backgrounds, a mix of cultural heritages, and diverse political circumstances without our own culturalnarcissism fatally undermining the whole translational endeavor.

14

The analogizing move can very quickly become self-referential to anabsurd degree. The profound vulnerability of ancient peopleswhether semi-nomadic and at the mercy of the elements, enemies, and economic powerless-ness in earliest times, or eking out short life spans in subsistence-level villages,or buffeted by the terrible randomness of protection and exploitation under theoften brutal monarchical systemis in few ways comparable to the vastlywealthy postindustrial, highly technologically oriented lives of many Biblereaders today. And of the many more Bible readers in the contemporary worldwho do live precarious lives vulnerable to disease, famine, poverty, warfare,and exploitation, one must ask whether the discipline of biblical theology hasyet begun to welcome their voices and acknowledge their experiences of thepresence and absence ofGod. Analogy can be fruitful, but it also can suppressdifference, can falsify, can manipulate and silence those who are not like "us,"however we define ourselves.

In the work of Ackroyd and Klein, we have seen history and theologywed in a union that is decidedly nave as regards both the ideologies shapinghistoriography and the complicated nature of analogizing interpretive moves.Already during the time that Ackroyd and Klein were writing, radical shifts hadbeen taking place in English departments, with scholars employing methodsbased on deconstruction and ideological critique. These changes gradually

Gerstenberger notes the difficulty of drawing analogies between biblical traditions and contemporary [Western] life: "Two fundamental difficulties emerge for us if wewant to connect the Old Testament evidence with our present-day world. First, the atomiza-tion of society into independent individuals . . . cannot easily be brought into line with thepatriarchal (!) family ideology of the biblical witnesses. And secondly, the current understanding of a revelation from outside the world which moves some biblical texts . . . does notcorrespond either with the old faith of the family or with our scientific skepticism" {Theolo

gies, 77). Gerstenberger unfortunately does not take into account contemporary societiesother than those built on the Western urbanized model: kinship-based tribal groups in non-industrialized regions, for example, are not considered. Still, his general point holds.

14The palpable strain involved in remaking biblical texts in our own image is nowhere more evident than in Brueggemann's attempt to suggest that the wrenching trauma andwholesale destruction wreaked on Israel by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. might be comparedwith a disappointing vacation trip taken by friends: "Friends of ours went to England to bird-watch. They went to the sanctuaries of East Anglia and Kent. There were no birds! Something about a drought, or was it greenhouse? Was it natural cause or human violation, ordivine power? . . . The powers of chaos seem closer than they used to, than they used to be inJerusalem" (Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible andPostmodern Imagination [Minneapolis:

Fortress, 1993], 84-85). Brueggemann does a better job of limning parallels between biblicaldiaspora and contemporary life in "Preaching to Exiles," in Exilic Preaching: Testimony forChristian Exiles in an Increasingly Hostile Culture (ed. Erskine Clark; Harrisburg: Trinity


7/18


began to make themselves felt in the generally conservative field of biblical

studies, which tends to join larger interdisciplinary discussions about fifteenyears behind other academic departments. In biblical studies, the shift has been

noticed most sharply in the rise of "minimalist" historians who claim that much

in the Old Testament was the product of Persian- or Hellenistic-era

imaginations rather than earlier tradition.

Bitter debates have flared concerning minimalist theories that the exo

dus and the Davidic monarchy were greatly exaggerated in scope and

importance by the biblical material. The exile, too, has come in for critique, if

perhaps less famously. Ideological motivations for the return literature (notably

Ezra-Nehemiah) have been explored in light ofthe hypothesis that the "myth of

the empty land" more clearly served Persian-period political interests of a segment of the governing elite than it reflected actual historical circumstances in

Judah after 587 B.C.E. Even the stature of the exilic period itself as historically

formative for Israelite literature has been challenged. Baruch Halpern has com

mented acidly on scholars' obsession with the exile: "Were it not for the Exile,

the Bible would be no more than a pamphlet!"15 Halpern's goal is to argue for

the presence of bona fide earlier traditions in the Bible; but on the other end of

the spectrum, skeptics find even the exile itselfto be a fiction created in the ser

vice of later political rhetoric. For minimalists, textual variants and

contradictions represented in biblical traditions, problems with the feasibility of

numbers of deportees and returnees, and other historical-critical considerations

call into question the historical reliability of biblical accounts of the exile. Ideo

logical critics urge the competent reader to attend to the political question of

who might have had the most to gain in heavily politicized versions of the de

portations and return(s). Robert Carroll's work on exile may be taken as

representative here. Standing in a minority tradition of skepticism that claims C.

C. Torrey as its patriarch, Carroll sees the "exile" as largely a figment of the

biblical writers' political imagination, a narrative constructed to justify political

and social bids for power that were pressed hundreds of years after the events

the texts propose to narrate.16

These challenges to the erstwhile navet of historical criticism have

prepared the ground for Walter Brueggemann's compelling rhetorically oriented

approach. In prolific contributions to Church and academy, Brueggemann has

articulated a deep suspicion of the historical-critical endeavor while remaining

magnificently uninterested in close work with literary difficulties ofthe biblical

text. But Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament (1997) constitutes an

important advance in the discipline of biblical theology. His theological model

15Baruch Halpern, "Sociological Comparitivism and the Theological Imagination,"

in "Sha 'arei Talmon ": Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presentedto

Shemaryahu Talmon (eds. Michael Fishbane and Emanuel with Weston Fields; WinonaLake: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 53-67.

l6See Robert P. Carroll, "Exile? What Exile? Deportation and the Discourses of Di


8/18


is not built on abstract propositions or reductive summaries; instead, he speaks

of multiple core testimonies and countertestimonies. Israel's enduring claimsabout the character of God and God's relationship with Israel coexist in Scripture with rhetorics of skepticism, loss, and anger that continually challenge theconfidence of the core testimony, pointing to God's hiddenness, the ambiguityof divine action, and the occasionally overt aggression of God toward the created order.

Brueggemann's abiding interest in homiletics infuses his understandingof theology in the Old Testament, which for him must be based on speech aswitness. Brueggemann sees Old Testament theology as the apprehension of adialectical movement between biblical testimony and countertestimony, be

tween iconic and aniconic ways of understanding ancient Israelite religion,between conservative cultic and social views that establish norms and propheticviews that seek to challenge or transform those norms. While his position iscertainly not without its vulnerabilities,

17the sheer creativity of this herme-

neutical move is hard to overstate.

Brueggemann's focus on the rhetorics of intertextuality has engendereda theology of simple themes beautifully stated, broad claims passionately defended, and acute observations about what is at stake in liberal and postliberalhermeneutics. Brueggemann finds himself in sympathy with key developmentsin postmodern theories of reading, among them the emphasis on the agency and

commitment of the reader. He underlines the polyphony ofthe biblical text, arguing that the intra-biblical phenomenon of rereading older traditions in light ofnew contexts is not an accident of historical composition but, rather, constitutesan essential quality of scriptural meaning-making to which the discerning readermust attend. Brueggemann urges the importance of engaging biblical texts precisely at those sites of conflict of traditional ("centrist") interpretations andmore radical ("marginated") readings.

As is characteristic of Brueggemann's work, however, his compellingrhetoric strangely fails to engage biblical texts closely as the invested ideological utterances of embodied real peoples in ancient times. Brueggemann sees the

exile as a paradigmatic metaphor within Israel's testimony, as numerous references to it in his Theology indicate. But his view is, paradoxically enough,merely a variation on the standard, simplistic historical-critical view that hasprevailed for many decades. This view can be summed up in two statements ofhis, that "the crisis of displacement looms as definitive in the self-understandingof Judaism that emerged in the exile and thereafter," and that "the exile is amoment of enormous literary generativity, when a variety of daring articulationsof faith were undertaken."

1Brueggemann's chief contribution is in the area of

Many critiques of Brueggemann's work have been offered. References to two

critics shall have to suffice here. For a polemical assessment of Brueggemann's dismissal ofhistorical criticism and effusive style of writing, see James Barr, The Concept of BiblicalTheology: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress 1999) 541-62 For an epis


9/18


theological hermeneutics. He suggests: that biblical writers' interest in the exile

should require us to practice "double reading," acknowledging the layering ofexilic and postexilic resonances on earlier biblical traditions;19 that creation

themes may be being articulated in exilic and postexilic literature for reasons

having to do with political and theological powerlessness rather than abstract

musings on the Creator of the cosmos; and that promises of God's presence

may arise out of the exilic situation of deprivation as a strategy for transforma

tion ofthat isolation into viable new life.2 Hostile though he is to the historical-

critical endeavor, Brueggemann relies on it at many points in his thinking; yet

he never adequately engages the political and ideological struggles engendered

thereby in any detail. Also characteristically, he does not work closely with lit

erary features of the biblical texts beyond mining them for the stirring

exhortation or the evocative image.

What we see driving Brueggemann's eloquent and dangerous work is a

sweeping move toward a holistic, aestheticized notion of rhetoric. He manages

barely to skim the surface of the particular brutalities and joys of ancient con

flicts, failing to acknowledge through close textual work the embodied

ideological conflicts that empowered and silenced ancient Israelites.22 Brueg

gemann's theological picture is a persuasive sermon uttered somehow apart

from the brutal subjugation, degradation, despair, tenuous hope, and pervasive

fear that marked ancient lives both at the hands of enemies and within the Isra

elite communityitself.

This finally does not yield an understanding of exile that

honors the incarnational suffering and joys of real people. It yields, instead,

breathtaking but manipulative essays that extol the beauty of biblical language

while avoiding the difficult work of reading complicated, fragmented biblical

discourses carefully. Brueggemann does not help us to see discursive disjunc-

tures in narratives smoothed over by biblical writers who silence their

opponents; he does not help us to parse out the specifics of semantic conflicts

informing text-critical variants and theopolitical disagreements visible in heav

ily redacted texts; he does not help us to apprehend with exegetical precision the

incisive ironies that subvert the ostensible claims of many biblical discourses.

Brueggemann's distinction between core testimony and countertestimony, so

promising as a hermeneutical model, in his hands becomes an overly simplistic

polarization that often proves unusable for truly attentive exegesis.

Brueggemann, Theology of the OldTestament, 75. In his massive oeuvre, he hasbalked repeatedly and polemically at naming this as redaction criticism, preferring an aestheticized rhetorics that tries to speak of biblical voices dislocated from concrete social andpolitical contexts.

20Brueggemann, Theology of the OldTestament, 149-50.2 brueggemann, Theology of the OldTestament, 171.

22Poststructuralist criticism has shown us that the violence of texts is real, something that Brueggemann largely avoids acknowledging in the practice of his rhetoricalexegesis In the words of The Bible and Culture Collective poststructuralist critique of an


10/18


Fortunately, a recent development in biblical studies has the potential to

correct the sort of persuasive, dangerous aestheticization of biblical languageand ideologies that remains so popular with seminary students and so inimicalto close engagement with the literary complexities of the Bible. Interest is growing in analysis of "exile" from the position ofthe outsider in diaspora studies, arelatively new branch of critical inquiry shaped by postcolonial studies. Here wecan learn from Daniel Smith-Christopher, whose book, A Biblical Theology of

Exile (2002), underlines the point that the exile was a real, traumatic event inthe lives of ancient people. The vast biblical material generated in the exilic andpostexilic periods must be read with a sophisticated anthropological awarenessof subtle literary indicators involved in the production of texts under duress.

Smith-Christopher rightly notes that the presence of literary elaborations ofexile as trope in the Bible does not mean real historical trauma was notspurring the imaginations of the biblical writers.23 In the Old Testament, he seesa complex and conflicted congeries of representations of what cultural traumacan do to a people's sense of identity and understanding of their God. He arguesfor a multi-dimensional hermeneutics that moves significantly beyond objectiv-ist historical criticism, simplistic theological analogizing, and irresponsiblerhetorical aestheticism.24 He probes ideological motivations for priestly confidence in the temple in the face of its having already been destroyed ("as anexilic construct, it is clear that the temple is part of the architecture of exilic

identity and is part of the postexilic theology of recovery and identity").

25

Helooks at the florid incoherence of EzekiePs prophecies as evidence of posttraumatic stress disorder resulting from the experience of forceful colonization. Heargues cogently against our taking at face value the biblical suggestion that Persian overlords were relatively benign, suggesting that Ezra-Nehemiah andDaniel, among other texts, encode subtle strategies of resistance in the face ofPersian dominance against which overt rebellion would have been suicidal. Heexamines the functions of shaming, for example in penitential prayers and histo-riographical revisionism within biblical texts, as one of many diverse reactionsto the experience of wholesale military destruction and political disempower-ment. He suggests that contemporary readers might better understand thexenophobia of Ezra anthropologically with reference to the need to guard community purity and defend insider boundaries in "the context of minority andrefugee behaviors in circumstances of subordination."

26

Smith-Christopher's transparently logical point is often lost in intemperate debates among staunch historical critics, minimalist skeptics, and literary critics: "that 'exile'becomes a central myth in biblical literature is clear, but what I believe must also be clear isthat there is not necessarily afictional,contrived, or exaggerated event behind the use of suchinfluential literary motifs" (A BiblicalTheology of Exile [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002], 104).

24

Per Smith-Christopher, any competent "assessment of the impact of the Babylonian exile must make far more use of nonbiblical documents, archaeological reports, and a farmore imaginative use of biblical texts read in light of what we know about refugee studies,


11/18


Smith-Christopher reminds us that theology must be practiced as ethi

cal reflection on the lives of actual people who suffered and rejoiced, who aided

and harmed each other, who adopted and resisted a wide variety of social norms

in specific ways in different cultural contexts. He concludes that a diaspora eth

ics is necessary for theology to comprehend and explicate the many

representations of exile in biblical texts. This ethics must be attentive to strate

gies of survival and to indicators of the suppression of voices of resistance.

Sophisticated ideological criticism and sociologically refined analysis are re

quired to interpret the ways in which literature represents dominant colonial

cultures and the subcultures of subjugated peoples.

The primary weakness in Smith-Christopher's valuable work is his ten

dency to romanticize the Israelite exiles as a conceptually unitary group trying

to cope with disaster. In this he enjoys the company of many other scholars,

among them James Brenneman, who acknowledges the potentially coercive

nature of literary production in one breath but romanticizes the exile in the next:

The making of canons, biblical and otherwise, has been described as anact of power that can easily become coercive and oppressive. Any canonauthorized as such by its community of interpreters has the potential todemand conformity and silence debate. Any canon that does not containwithin it the seeds of its own deconstruction will become a tool ofideological and political brutality. . . . For Israel to survive, it relied onthe only indestructible element left to it: a story. This story, a book ofwords reconstituted as canon by a disarmed, dispossessed community inexile, became the paradigm judging all forms of coercive power,including those described by its own content.27

Postmodernist insights into the situatedness and particularity of every reading

should help us see that there is no single story of the exile. The "exiles" were no

monolithic community in which every member was equally disarmed and dis

possessed, all fighting in conceptually seamless solidarity against outside

oppressors who were equally monolithically inhumane.

Biblical intertextuality does not necessarily constitute a constraint on

the abuse of power, although it may perhaps serve that function in particularcases.28 The ferocious internecine strife narrated in the prose of Jeremiah alone

should be ample evidence of the conflicting views of insiders and outsiders

within a number of kinds of diasporasexiles outside the land of Judah and

within it, Israelite voices amplified or marginalized within the Babylonian dias

pora community itself, and so on.29 Gerstenberger's insistence on the plurality

and incompatibility of theologies within the Old Testament is salutary in this

James E. Brenneman, Canons in Conflict: Negotiating Texts in True and FalseProphecy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 139.

28

Brenneman reads Isa 2:2-4 against Joel 4:9-12's reworking ofthat tradition andclaims that the literary and political dynamics of canon itself authorize, indeed require, thecontemporary interpreter to take a stand with one prophet (in this case, the one for peace)


12/18


regard, and competent sociological analysis will keep this complexity continu

ally in mind.

The Displacement ofOld Testament TheologyThe significant changes over the past thirty-five years in the way in which "exile" has been understood theologically have helped us to track a paradigm shiftin Old Testament studies. Of course, older methods of approaching the biblicaltext theologically are never supplanted by newer methods in a clean and unambiguous way, nor are older attitudes toward meaning-making ever entirelysilenced. Rather, it happens that newer voices insistently speak new questionsinto the shifting and incomplete dialogues of biblical interpretation until the

conversation becomes more polyphonic and can no longer exclude those questions easily. What happens in the best practices of biblical interpretationthosepractices shaped by rigorous hermeneutical sophistication, deep insight into thecontributions of past thinkers, and creative responsiveness to new contextualunderstandingsis that expression is given to a more richly multidimensionalappreciation of what is at stake in the biblical texts themselves and their interpretation.

The default view in critical biblical scholarship since the Enlightenmenthas been historically grounded, as seen in Peter Ackroyd's exemplary work.Exile was an event in the life of an ancient Israel writ fairly monolithically,

dominant scriptural voices being allowed to speak for far larger and more diverse groups, quite often without comment by biblical scholars. Fromideologically nave historicism and the assumption of literature's transparentrepresentationalism, the interpretive move was often readily made to contemporary theological appropriation, as the work of Klein demonstrates. Butdeconstruction and ideological criticism have emphasized that writing, editing,preserving traditions, and reading are culturally freighted operations inevitablyconcerned with power. The important process-oriented rhetorical work ofBrueggemann recognizes this in theory, even if often falling far short of actualization in his exegetical practice with texts. Diaspora studies have pressedfurther the point that literature of trauma is generated not in an aesthetic vacuumbut in the real lives ofreal people. Ancient colonialist narratives and the narratives of subjugated peoples must be read with close attentiveness to subtleindicators of power and powerlessness.

What, then, are the implications of our study of "exile" s trope formore sophisticated and responsible practices of Old Testament theology in thefuture? Our growing clarity about ideologies need not leave us thinking thatintelligent reading is a practice somehow hostile to theological interests in thebiblical text or to faithful appropriation by the interpreter. This is crucially important for the church to understand. Rather, the discernment of identity andpower issues in texts and in the act of interpretation is absolutely essential to an

honoring of sacred Scripture as an incarnational divine Word spoken into thepassions and conflicts of human life.


13/18


presence of God. Such a diaspora theology would be neither abstract nor na

ively historicist. It would be ignorant neither of the sophisticated rhetoricaldynamics of complex texts nor of the real-life social and political struggles (tothe extent that we can know them) that have shaped the witnesses of Scripture.Such a diaspora theology would invite into the scope of interpretation the teeming differences of creation and cultures in history, the scandalous particularityof conflicting ancient Israelite views of identity and power, and the uncontrollable risk of being open to othernessto the foreignness of other peoples ancientand contemporary, and to the otherness of Godin the act of reading Scripture.30 Difference would be explored as not only scandalous and alien butfruitful, as not only threatening but wildly generative. Such a way of readingwould, in short, begin to practice a diasporic responsiveness in its provisionalinterpretations in multiple cultural contexts, seeing the countless wounds and

joys and misunderstandings and life-giving changes at stake each time we turnto the complicated stories of Scripture. Such reading might even be characterized as trinitarian in its practice of discerning the divine Word spoken into aninfinitely differentiated creation by the Creator, spoken into scandalous incarnational presence by the Son, and spoken into the breathtaking risk oftransformation by the Holy Spirit. I suggest that it is precisely in such diasporareading practices that Christians can begin to claim our own fundamentally diasporic identities, grafted as we are into Israel through the grace of Jesus Christ.

In this postmodern age, thinking theologically about the Old Testament

should no longer be a process of identifying broad, hegemonic themes, howeverconvenient that might be for introductory seminary lectures and hour-long parish Bible studies. What is lost in those harmonizing, simplifying movesnothing less than the character of Scripture itselfas complex witnessis almostincalculable. Thinking theologically about the Old Testament should no longerbe a process of declaring as normative the "sameness" of the ancient Israelitesso that we can domesticate them by analogy to our own lives, or worse, use ourown flawed monolithic construction as a foil for Christian proclamation. (Howoften have we heard sermons that speak of "Israel" with no qualifiers, treatingunique and dynamic witnesses from diverse Semitic communities over centuries

30Here I am troubled by the suggestion of Brueggemann that diaspora identityrightly requires staunch resistance to assimilation. He characterizes the intertextual characterof the Old Testament as an insider-only conversation: "This community [ancient Israel] thatattends so vigilantly to its characteristic phrasing knows that to host other rhetorics is, in thelong run, to give up its identity and its odd way of being in the world . . . knows that when ityields its characteristic utterance and seeks a community outside its own idiom, it quicklyends up in oppression and at risk Thus the practice of intertextuality is in the end a political acta sustained public insistence about identity, freedom, power, and responsibility,which argues against and refuses alternative insistences about the shape of public reality"

(Theology, 80). It is just this sort of reductionism in practice despite the theoretical fluidity ofhis hermeneutical model that worries me about Brueggemann's work. It is true that somevoices ofScripture strongly affirm isolationism and protection of boundaries. But other bibli


14/18


of time as a single object to be manipulated by our discourse?) A diaspora the

ology will press us to scrutinize the relations of power that form and deform ourimaginative writings and readings of "home," of journeys of displacement, andof journeys of return.

In view of postmodernism's persistent challenges to the notions ofmaster text, foundationalist claims, uncomplicated normative subjects, and innocenthermeneutics, we are left with the act of reading Scripture theologically as longing for Goda particular, embodied longing for God that bears witness toothers who long for God.

31This longing for God is no abstract doctrine, no de-

contextualized view of history, no reductive summary of themes. It is, rather, anact of witness in community that is all the more courageous because it cannot

issue in certainties: for we walk by faith and not by sight.

Performing Diaspora HermeneuticsWhat might it look like to perform a sophisticated theological reading of OldTestament texts that acknowledges diaspora as texture, context, and ideologicalforce in one's hermeneutics? Such a reading could build on Ackroyd's sensitivity to the biblical interest in the "purposes of God," while bringing ideologicalcriticism to bear on the claims and counterclaims oftexts. Such a reading mightdare to draw theologically formed analogies to contemporary contexts as Kleinhas done, while with Brueggemann acknowledging the continual pressure of

countertestimonies, reading inner-biblical dynamics of conflict and complications in the analogizing endeavor as themselves meaningful. Such a readingwould require engagement with both the persuasive power of biblical rhetoricsand the tangled particulars of this literature that presents huge technical difficulties for the act of reading. Rhetorical and technical skill would be brought intoconversation with sociological analysis of the realities of the life of ancient Israel, as Smith-Christopher has urged. A diaspora theology might raise questionsnot unlike the following, which are offered simply as provisional illustrations ofthe hermeneutical task.

1. In Gen 15, Abram hears in the midst of the extravagant promises ofGod the notice that his offspring will be slaves for 400 years. What "home" is tobe theirs, then? For so many generations living enslaved in a foreign land, the"return" to Canaan will amount to a new exile, for there will be nothing familiarin the land to which they will come. Genesis 15:13-16 writes alien status intothe very origin of the identity of the people of Abraham. And appeal to the landwill not solve the identity crisis, for this land is teeming with others: Kenites,Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites,Girgashites, and Jebusites (Gen 15:19-20). How might a diaspora theology respond to the detailed list of native peoples here, embedded and embodied asstubbornly in this text as they are in the promised land itself? This is not transparently conquest material, and we cannot assume that Deuteronomistic


15/18


conquest ideology is at work here. The list includes standard references to

peoples obliterated by the rhetoric of Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges, true.But it also includes the more mysterious Rephaim and, most troubling for sim

plistic colonialist theology, the Kenites: related to Moses himself through the

righteous Jethro (Exod 18), valorized obliquely through the heroism of outsider

Jael, the wife of a Kenite (Judg 4-5), and perhaps even connected to a paradig-

matically upright Israelite ethnic group, the Rechabites (reading 1 Chron 2:55

through the lens of Jer 35). There is no unambiguous call for slaughter here.

Instead, Gen 15 makes the remarkable claim that Abram's people will be in di

aspora in a foreign land, and then they will come "home" as strangers into a

foreign land inhabited by many others, some of whom prove later to be crucial

allies of Israel. Such are the complications of the divine promise to Abram, and

a competent diaspora theology will be deeply attentive to those complications.

2. Displacement of one group yields to displacement of another group;

return of exiles yields to the return of new exiles that displace the older return

ees. The struggle for identity as a faithful people is never solved by simplistic

appeal to "home" or return, however one constructs those notions. Ezekiel 11

understands this. The presence of God is what defines Israel as people of faith,

and the presence of God is thunderously, dangerously mobile. For Ezekiel,

"home" is now hopelessly corrupt: the abominable practices of those in charge

ofthe Jerusalem temple and local government have changed the core of "home"

identity into a loathsome thing. For Ezekiel, origins have always been untrust

worthy, even as far back as the exodus (Ezek 20): complacent traditions of

abundant divine blessing are re-narrated by this diaspora prophet as hairsbreadth

escapes from God's wrath. The only secure home, for Ezekiel, is in acknowl

edging that God is the LORD. Only that acknowledgement can construct an

abiding homenamed "The LORD is There"and old notions of exile will

finally be understood to be as meaningless as old notions of home in the pres

ence ofGod. But this prophetic promise comes at a cost. How might a diaspora

theology wrestle with the formidable challenge that Ezekiel presents to our own

cherished narratives of "home," those stories of origin upon which we base our

own identities as Christian believers and believing communities?

3. In Ruth, we see reversal upon reversal for a community identifying

itself by means of separation from home and return to a home that in the mean

time has itself become a kind of diaspora. Naomi speaks a bitter irony that

slices, razor-sharp, through simpler biblical notions of return: "I went away full,

but the LORD has brought me back empty" (Ruth 1:21). Her anger is palpable:

exile and return are not supposed to work this way. Marvelously ironic purposes

of God may be being served in the genealogy that results in King David. A

shocking degree of foreignness lies at the very heart of the Israelite monarchy:

the glorious David will trace his lineage back to this widowed Moabite woman

who makes herself sexually available to an Israelite male at midnight in a noto

rious public place. The ghosts of Lot's daughters and Tamar watch intently aswe negotiate the intertextual possibilities. A diaspora theology might grapple


16/18


with the implications of this scandalous story for our own ecclesial power struc

tures and authoritative genealogies, first conceding the inadequacy oftheological readings of Ruth that murmur blandly about God working throughunexpected means. Matthew 1 invites us to recognize that much more is at stakehere.

Epilogue: Letter to the ExilesThe enormous theological, sociological, political, rhetorical, and literary complexities of biblical texts that employ exile as trope have not yet beenadequately accounted for in Old Testament theology. Do we need another theology ofthe Old Testament, given the theological tomes written in recent years

by Leo Perdue, Brevard Childs, James Barr, and several others in addition to thevolumes by Walter Brueggemann, Bernhard Anderson, and Erhard Gerstenberger discussed above?33 Yes. We urgently need a multivocal Old Testamenttheology written by a diverse team of contributors with full recognition of thepower dynamics that play out in the writing, rewriting, reading, and rereading ofscriptural tropes of identity, home, displacement, and diaspora.34

Such a diaspora theology should be a collaborative work that lifts up avariety of theological visions in a radically responsive weave of hermeneuticsand contextual perspectives. Such a theology would name and honor hermeneutical and exegetical tensions, arguing passionately against itself within its

own pages so as to destabilize its own unanticipated rigidities and inadvertentclaims to normativity.

Such a diaspora theology might employ not a single academic dictionbut a variety offorms: scholarly chapters to be sure, but also poetry, epistles tochurches real or imagined, art, short stories, homiletical essays or sermons, perhaps liturgiesall responding to each other through the various stages offormation of the book. The theological volume I envision would, through itsradically collaborative authorial working style, its multidimensional methodologies and dictions, and its highly contextual witnesses to the living Word, striveto create openness to dialogue within its own pages about Who God can be for

all of us struggling to read Scripture faithfully in unfamiliar landscapes.Here, then, is an invitation to believers who have been shaped by commitments to diverse ethnic and cultural heritages, who have been formed byvarious issues of gender and class and race and sexual identity, who worship asthe body of Christ in liturgical traditions of many different configurations and

Leo G. Perdue, The Collapse of History: Reconstructing OldTestament Theology

(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Brevard S. Childs, BiblicalTheology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999); Barr,Concept.

34Shorter studies of diaspora in biblical studies have helped prepare the way for the

fuller Old Testament diaspora theology that I envision. See the important contributions ofFernando F. Segovia, including: "Toward a Hermeneutics of the Diaspora: A Hermeneuticsof Otherness and Engagement " in Reading From This Place: Social Location and Biblical


17/18


political structures. Might there be those among us who would dare to collabo

rate in the writing ofan interdisciplinary diaspora theology? The witness of theChristian church to the power of God's Word in the Old Testament may depend

in no small part on our creativity as biblical scholars, artists, liturgists, and

preachers in precisely this kind of theological endeavor. The exiles are waiting.


18/18

Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling,reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journaltypically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article.Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or coveredby your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding thecopyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available,or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS) collection contains electronic versions of previously

published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS

collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association.

sharp article on exile

Documents