While there is general consensus regarding the historical provenance of the previous Biblical books I’ve reviewed, my brief research for this review reveals there is significantly more debate around Judges, with some arguing for it being entirely a latter-day product (like Deuteronomy, written long after the events it purportedly depicts and for a political purpose), others claiming it is primarily the written version of oral traditions with a contemporaneous origin, and still others positing a mixture between the two, with some elements tracing back to the historical period depicted, and others introduced at a later date. Reading it, I am inclined to agree with the compromise interpretation, as it reads overall like an interpretation and ritualizing of legends and oral histories compiled into something attempting to be cogent.
We began this review with a discussion of historicity because it seems more diplomatic than beginning with the main thought I had throughout most of Judges, which is that the Israelites of this time were kind of idiots, or are at least depicted that way. Again, and again, and again, and again they start worshipping other gods or failing to follow the Commandments, with predictable consequences: Jehovah removes His protections from them, they are enslaved and diminished by other peoples in the region, they turn back to Jehovah, and He leads them to safety and success once more, only for the cycle to repeat. This repetitious cycle constitutes most of the story of Judges, with various permutations and distinguishing details. Historians consider the titular judges to be equivalent to war-chiefs, an intermediate stage between the tribal existence of earlier times and the coming Israelite monarchy.
This is a pretty brutal book. A lot of ancient texts contain plenty of references to heinous deeds – the burning of cities, mass subjugation, hostage taking, normalized sexual violence – but they are usually either not very detailed, or references to events that are not the main focus. Many mythic-type stories are also more focused on individuals and their heroic exploits than on the large-scale doings of armies and proto-states. Even knowing the “way the world was” working in the background at this time period, amongst most peoples and places, it can be more or less set aside when reading mythical works. Judges brings it to the forefront in the form of both proto-state level violence, and intensely interpersonal violence and offense, capped by the serial gang rape in the final sequence – made more horrible, in my mind, for the way the victim is chosen.
Perhaps it is some small comfort that this could not have been commonplace in other cities at the time, else it would not have been so notable as to result in the reckoning which then occurs, and being written of in a way that comes down to us thousands of years later. The selectivity of ancient sources always makes it difficult to infer precisely what was “normal” behavior for people and peoples during this time period, although it is fair to say that respect for property and respect for persons was almost nonexistent as we understand it today – and that goes for everyone, not just for what we might call “marginalized” groups today. We can get glimpses through pieces like Judges, but limited and not necessarily of what we are most interested in understanding.
The characteristics and “physics” of the ancient battlefield are another notable area which we struggle to understand from a modern perspective, and here Judges does provide us some intriguing insight into how forces moved, how they interacted, the characteristics of routs, the tendency for casualties to be lopsided, and even insight into comparative military technologies. Numbers are considered largely meaningless in works like this, but we catch a glimpse of an army possessing “iron chariots” which is depicted a bit like we might today depict a fully modern military menacing a third-world militia.
In my unscholarly opinion, Judges reads like a return to the style of the earlier Biblical books, which is why I align with the scholars who argue for at least a historical core to the text, even if elements are later additions or much of it was transcribed from older oral traditions at a later date. Its real interest, though, lies to me in how it depicts the interactions of this early form of Judaism and its practitioners with other faiths and their practitioners. Baal in particular emerges as an apparently potent rival, a religion which must have been capable of offering something to the Israelites, considering how often then turn away from Jehovah to follow Baal instead. It is the beginning of a trend that will become much more important to history a few thousand years later – the exclusive nature of the Abrahamic faiths. Where other faiths, like the variety of practices which might fall under the Odinic pantheon, might readily accept the addition of foreign gods and related religious imports, the Abrahamic faiths contain in their foundation – “thou shalt have no other gods before me” – a exclusivity rendering them less capable of integration (note that I do not say incapable, as there are plenty of instances throughout history where various elements of the Abrahamic faiths made practical compromises, especially after Christianity became a dominant, state-sponsored religion).
I wrote in my review for Joshua that it felt like an ending to the first Biblical “sequence.” That would make Judges the start of a new sequence in the overall Bible “series,” and it rather reads that way at times. From the victories and conclusions of the previous book, we find ourselves going through a protracted low period of indulgence and failure in various forms: physical, moral, spiritual. In a few weeks, we’ll see how Ruth confronts this new state of affairs.
IGC Publishing 