Bedouin Culture in the Bible.

• Author: Miglio, Adam E.

Bedouin Culture in the Bible. By CLINTON BAILEY. New Haven: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2018. Pp. x + 278, illus. $55.

Clinton Bailey is an ethnographer who has worked for decades among the Bedouin of the Egyptian Sinai and the Negev regions of Israel. He has published on various aspects of these Bedouins' culture, including their poetry, proverbs, and legal practices. Many cultural aspects of the Bedouin he is so familiar with are presented in his book, and they are used as a lens through which to read the Hebrew Bible. The results are vivid narratives that are engaging and interesting. Bailey's expertise with Bedouin culture is evinced by his wide-ranging engagement with this culture and by his clear and concise explanations, which are accompanied by choice anecdotes and illustrations. While on specific points biblical scholars may debate Bailey's understanding of a particular text, his insights are numerous and always thought provoking.

In the body chapters, the book compares the economic, material, social, legal, religious, and literary components of modern Bedouin culture with practices described in the text of the Hebrew Bible. In each of these chapters the author begins with his area of expertise, the Bedouin culture, and then introduces biblical sources as points for comparison or contrast. A few well-chosen, black-and-white photos accompany the lucid prose of the book's main chapters, furthering its overall appeal. A final chapter concludes with reflections on how the biblical authors might have acquired knowledge that is so similar to aspects of modern-day Bedouin culture and a related appendix engages with the "Midianite hypothesis" (see Blenkinsopp 2008).

There are many interesting aspects of Bedouin practices recounted in the book that illuminate those envisioned in the Hebrew Bible. For example, in the chapter entitled "Bedouin Culture in the Biblical Home" the author vividly recounts the Bedouin use of animal skins made from sheep or goat for holding water or churning bags to prepare drafts of buttermilk, one of their traditional drinks. His description is marked by personal anecdotes about his experiences among the Bedouin that invigorate his presentation of the ethnographic details and help to facilitate the comparisons with the biblical text. For example, his discussion of the Bedouins' love for buttermilk recalls an occasion in which "an old shepherd ... on coming out of the heat into a tent where I was present--drank a draft...