Aubrey Buster, Remembering the Story of Israel: Historical Summaries and Memory Formation in Second Temple Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Aubrey Buster’s Remembering the Story of Israel: Historical Summaries and Memory Formation in Second Temple Judaism makes significant contributions in four areas: first, to the study of short, schematic histories in biblical literature; second, to memory studies and biblical literature; third, to study of the biblical work Chronicles, and fourth, to psalmody and prayer in Second Temple Jewish literature. Its primary question is: how did short historical accounts in various genres generate meaning in early Jewish communities? Secondarily, it asks: why did short historical accounts remain productive alongside long-form narrative histories? Grounding her claims in social sciences research, material evidence, and close readings of the biblical texts, Buster argues that short historical accounts remained productive due to their effectiveness in shaping communal memory and the way that schematic narrative enables recall. She develops these claims through the book’s two major sections, which treat 1) biblical texts and 2) non-canonical Jewish literature.
Buster pairs memory studies with attention to, as she puts it, the “formal affordances” of the historical summary. This is new for biblical studies, and it is a particular strength that the volume unifies new formalism, memory studies, and close readings of biblical texts. Insights from memory studies have been integrated in biblical research for over two decades, but the field continues to interrogate their theoretical basis and particular implementations. There is vast literature on collective or cultural memory, so careful and in-depth theoretical work that simultaneously grapples with the particularities of biblical literature remains important. Early in this volume, Buster provides a review of memory studies and its development (17-29) from Halbwachs’ early contributions to the Assmanns’ “cultural memory.” She suggests scholarship on cultural acts of commemoration (23–29) as a beneficial resource for biblicists. Remembering the Story of Israel then returns throughout to points of theory or the results of experiments on memory and recall. This approach provides a multifaceted and satisfying argument addressed to theory, literary phenomena, and communal practice in Jewish antiquity.
As a reader, I found the treatment of form, genre, and materiality to be provocative. One has to follow these threads through the whole book, so readers more familiar with New Formalism will be at an advantage. Some of the difficulty lies in the book’s complexity as it turns between social sciences research and a wide range of texts. As a result, the monograph develops in an iterative manner such that, on occasion, the first statement of a topic or issue is only later fully developed. For instance, the earliest statements distinguishing form and genre are abbreviated (81–82). Similarly, the question of material form arises early in the work (12), primarily as an analogy for literary form, but does not appear again until much later. One finds further consideration of how form differs from genre (at pp. 160–170) with close attention to the Levitical Prayer of Neh 9:5b–37. This section demonstrates how attention to genre has resulted in underreading the text; joining a review of the scholarship with explanation of the form/genre distinction is, thus, quite constructive. Material form reappears at pp. 203–211, where Buster considers the Qumran psalms scrolls and fragments and their probable roles in liturgy and private use. Like the section on the Levitical Prayer, this section is rather substantive, and one finds remarks like “forms, and in this case, physical manuscript forms, facilitate particular patterns of use” (207). The point about materiality is developed secondary to consideration of literary form and remains understated. (For instance, it is hardly present in the conclusion at pp. 300–305.) It is nonetheless quite significant. The implied question is: for an especially text-oriented field, what is the role of material evidence and studies of memory? Buster suggests material evidence is indispensable, where one has it.
It is also worth noting how the argument shifts between literary and historical claims; this is a part of studies of memory, which do not address the past as it appears in literature or as it was, but rather the ways in which communities form representations of the past and are shaped by those representations. In short, studies that invoke memory tend to make strong historical claims. In adopting “form,” Buster is aware of problematic and strong associations of form and practice in the field. For instance, she states that “form criticism… assumes an essential link between a form and its social milieu,” (14) and expresses the intent to move away from this. This is to be commended. Yet, discursively, the book drifts towards inferring practice from literary models of practices. The book suggests that audience responses to historical summaries within the Chronicler’s history “models a pattern of engagement with traditional Israelite knowledge” (152). This claim, and the accompanying exegesis, is a fascinating one, because it moves forthrightly to suggesting that there was indeed a real model for what is present in the literature. Buster remains cautious here while still signaling that these models were actualized in at least some communities (“The ideal portrait crafted in Chronicles, and the affordances of brief, performed histories as an ideal ‘form of memory,’ appear to have been realized by at least a small segment of the Judean populace” [153]). In keeping with her own criticism earlier in the book, it is clear that although the link between form and practice is not direct, such a link does exist; it is surfaced and competently interrogated in the discussion of materiality and the Qumran psalm scrolls that follows, but the same procedure is impossible for the case of literature with little or no evidence for its use (Chronicles is attested very fragmentarily at Qumran). The question for the field, then, is: how does one proceed in an inquiry about memory formation when one does not have all the necessary evidence to do so? The caution that Buster models is exemplary in this regard: generally, she leaves the literary claims as literary claims, considers material evidence, and uses them to inform the other. The volume shines when it considers the interplay between materiality and close readings of literature. But the question stands for our field as it grapples with memory studies: what, indeed, is the link between form and practice, between literature and history?
The book contributes to the study of the biblical work Chronicles (pp. 121–134). Specifically, Buster reappraises Sara Japhet’s influential theory that Chronicles does not understand the Exodus and conquest of Canaan to be significant parts—or perhaps not parts at all—of Israel’s early history. There are very few references to the Exodus and conquest in Chronicles, but Buster argues that the statistics are less significant than they appear. Here, attention to the historical summaries makes for a salient and powerful argument. References to the Exodus and conquest are commonly set in historical summaries in the mouths of significant characters. It has been established that the Chronicler uses such speeches to make theological claims instead of setting such claims in the main narrative, so the appearance of such references in the characters’ speeches is significant.[1] This argument, in both its construction and content, deserves close attention by anyone interested in Chronicles or in Judean accounts of the Exodus and conquest. The argument also sets up further research on the relationship of the genealogical materials to the narrative, which has been repeatedly addressed in the past century.[2] Buster does not consider potentially conflicting information in the genealogies (e.g., 1 Chr 7:21–22), where Ephraim and his immediate descendants are placed not in Egypt but in Canaan; she excludes the genealogical information with a cursory statement (“not counting the history recounted in the genealogies, a separate topic entirely,” 129), so the question of how to reconcile the historical summaries and the genealogies is left to the reader and further research. In short, the monograph’s contribution—that the historical summaries in Chronicles draw on a schematic history, known or expected by its readers and including the Exodus—cannot be ignored.
Finally, the book makes a significant contribution to the psalmody and prayer in the literature and practices of Second Temple Judaism. In this section, Buster relies directly on material and paratextual evidence relating to the use of historical psalms in the Qumran community (205–214); on my reading, the discussion of materiality, textual layout, and the formal features of psalms is one of the best parts of the argument, because it most substantiates the historical claims described above. Buster follows this with close attention to 11QPSa. Here, the close reading of Psalm 154 is worth noting. Buster demonstrates how the literature models an idealized community that becomes a “reference group” (227) from which to index action or behavior. (Here, as elsewhere, insights from social sciences are deftly interwoven with close discussion of texts.) Texts like Psalm 154, Buster suggests, stand in a feedback loop to the group in which they are used; the text “educates and identifies the community who recites it” (229). Preceded by the section on material and formal evidence for reading or recitation and followed by attention to the postscript זאת לזכרון as another indicator of commemorative use, the argument is compelling.
The volume is a commendable achievement. Overall, it is clear, concise, and well-argued. Buster covers a significant amount of biblical and early Jewish literature and manages to integrate a range of social sciences research. The manner in which she does so makes the book an indispensable work for those concerned with social science methods in biblical and Jewish studies. Finally, the book offers a robust argument for why historical summaries remained productive alongside longer narratives: “the historical summary is a culturally useful form of storytelling” (251). After reading this volume, I can heartily agree.
Doren Snoek is a Teaching Fellow in the Divinity School and the College at the University of Chicago.
[1] As Buster notes (128), Samuel R. Driver, “The Speeches in Chronicles,” The Expositor, Fifth Series 1.1 (1895): 241–56; idem, “The Speeches in Chronicles,” The Expositor, Fifth Series 1.2 (1896): 286–308.
[2] See Gary Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9, AB 12 (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 90–100.