Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament.

• Author: HUDDLESTUN, JOHN R.
• Position: Review

Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament. By JOHN D. CURRID. Foreword by Kenneth A. Kitchen. Grand Rapids, Mich.: BAKER BOOKS, 1997. Pp. 269, illustrations, maps. $21.99.

With this volume, a rather disparate collection of studies on various topics relating to Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, the author wishes to elucidate the many points of contact-literary, religious, and cultural-between ancient Egypt and Israel, and to emphasize, in many cases, the role of polemic in biblical texts concerning Egypt (p. 13). The book offers no overarching theme as such, although certain predispositions do emerge with respect to the author's particular approach to the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East.

Currid begins with a selective summary of past and present scholarship on Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, setting forth his own views on the implications of similarities between the two (more below). Chapters three through eight then deal with a variety of topics, including Egyptian and biblical cosmologies, the figure Potiphar in the Joseph story, the plagues, Egyptian elements in the "Serpent Confrontation" in Exodus 7:8-14, the travel itinerary in Numbers 33, and the bronze serpent episode of Numbers 21. For the author, the plagues against Egypt are not reflective of natural disasters (contra Petrie and G. Hort), nor are they a literary creation of the Yahwist (contra Van Seters and Zevit). Rather, they are to be interpreted as polemic directed at the Egyptian gods (including Hapy, Hekhet, the Apis bull, Ptah, Amon-Re, Isis, the deified vizier Imhotep, Nut, Shu, Tefnut, Senehem, Anubis, the deified Pharaoh himself), and the concept of Maat. (The author is heavily dependent on the work of others for these corr elations.) Currid repeatedly emphasizes the polemical intention of the biblical writers, but offers no clarification as to why polemic in and of itself should necessitate outright rejection of the interpretations offered by others. Indeed, he acknowledges the literary dependence of the plagues narrative on Genesis I (citing Zevit!), but seems to imply that God, not the author/redactor, structured the plagues in this fashion ("God took the creation order of Genesis 1 and reversed it in Exodus...," p. 115).

Chapters nine through eleven deal, respectively, with Egyptian influence on the United Monarchy ("there was a direct and strong Egyptian influence on the early monarchy of Israel" [p. 170]), the Palestinian campaign of the Egyptian king Shishak (the topographical list on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak confirms "the stunning historical accuracy of the biblical account" [p. 174]), and the often-postulated literary connection between Proverbs 22-24 and the Egyptian text Amenemope (Currid grudgingly admits some "vague similarities:' but concludes that the biblical author did not "plagiarize" the Egyptian text and that Proverbs 22-24 is a "thoroughly Hebrew document" [pp. 215-16]). Chapters twelve through thirteen examine divination in ancient Egypt and the historical setting of certain...