Developments in Genre between Post-Exilic Penitential Prayers and the Psalms of Communal Lament.

• Author: McCollum, Adam C.
• Position: Book review

Developments in Genre between Post-Exilic Penitential Prayers and the Psalms of Communal Lament. By RICHARD J. BAUTCH. Academia Biblica, vol. 7. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2003. Pp. xiv + 201. $33.95 (paper).

This work, the author's dissertation written at Notre Dame under the direction of Joseph Blenkinsopp, traces changes in the forms of confessional prayer after the exile. After an introductory chapter, in which he traces previous scholarship on form criticism and discusses methodological and text dating issues, the author focuses on three passages from the Hebrew Bible: Isa. 63:7-64:11, Ezra 9:6-15, and Neh. 9:6-37. In each of these three chapters Bautch offers his translation of the text in question, a discussion of text-critical questions, context of the passage, comparisons in tabular form of the Masoretic Text (MT) with some ancient versions, and a look at the Sitz im Leben of each text. In the author's own words, the book "investigates form-critical issues related to genre development and considers their theoretical implications ... [and] moves systematically from an examination of a prayer's literary form to a consideration of its setting or context" (p. 12). The author takes his initiative, of course, from Gunkel's work on the psalms but is informed by subsequent research (see pp. 8-17). Indeed Bautch is to be praised for his rather full treatment, or at least his thorough attention, to the scholarship dealing with the biblical passages under study. He places his study very much in the context of the growth of Judaism after the exile and this, too, is an aim of the book (p. 19 n. 80). The communal laments used in the research for comparison are Pss. 44, 74, 78, 79, and 80, four of which belong to the group of Psalms attributed to Asaph, a group generally dated to before or near the exile and therefore "sufficiently established to influence the later composition of post-exilic prayers of penitence" (p. 25). The author chose the biblical texts under investigation because he dates them all to the late sixth or fifth century B.C.E.

In chapter 2, on Isa. 63:7-64:11, table 1, where Bautch displays information from a comparison of ancient versions of the text in question, he claims that the LXX and 1QIs[a.sup.a] contain additions to the part of Isa. 63:10 in the MT, but this is not the case, as his table itself clearly shows; perhaps it is a misprint in the Greek and Qumran columns. Similarly for 63:15, he cites the Greek...