James L. Crenshaw: an Appreciation

James L. Crenshaw: An Appreciation David Penchansky University of St. Thomas It is my great pleasure to have participated in this volume to honor my teacher, Professor James Crenshaw, and to offer this appreciation. I will here review Crenshaw’s remarkable impact on the field of biblical criticism. Whirlpool of Torment1 is my favorite book written by any scholar of the Hebrew Bible. In Whirlpool Crenshaw looks into the very face of the Bible’s presentation of terror before and abandonment by God, a literary world in which God is the hunter and torturer of people. Examin- ing well-known texts such as Abraham’s offering of Isaac (the Akedah), Jeremiah’s bitter accusations against the deity, and Qoheleth’s despair, Crenshaw does not whitewash what he reads. He uncovers a rich tradition of narrative, legend, and other materials in diverse genres, a tradition that portrays the Israelite God as terrible, dangerous, and capricious—that is, as completely unfair. But these texts in Crenshaw’s deft hands never render one hopeless. Rather, in human response to such a God (or perhaps I should say, human response to God so rendered), Crenshaw finds possibilities of redemption, sometimes through a plain realism, sometimes through protest, sometimes through a cleansing despair. In these texts an act of God on human behalf always remains a possibility. Crenshaw sanctifies this kind of God-talk by rooting it firmly in the texts of the Hebrew Bible. Most commonly, these passages, or entire books in the case of Job and Ecclesiastes, have been explained away by 1. J. L. Crenshaw, A Whirlpool of Torment: Israelite Traditions of God as an Oppressive Presence (OBT; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). ix x David Penchansky linking them with interpretations that agreed with the standard Jewish and Christian theological formulations that God is all good, all benevo- lent, all faithful, dependable, and reliable. In Whirlpool, Crenshaw breathes life into these ancient literary figures (Abraham, Jeremiah, Job, Qoheleth, and the anonymous poet who wrote Psalm 73), and makes their concerns, their questions, ours. Cren- shaw listens to these minority voices in the Hebrew Bible because in this way Israelite thinkers penned their response to dire pain—the pain of human disaster and the pain that results from the loss of meaning. This interest in minority voices creates an added dimension to an un- derstanding of the Hebrew Bible, a dimension lacking in standard formulations and official pronouncements. Crenshaw gravitates to wisdom literature, which has always stood out as a distant relative to the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Von Rad, in his Old Testament Theology,2 tried to make wisdom literature a part of Israel’s an- swer to its experience of the divine covenant, but Crenshaw, in his work Old Testament Wisdom3 (which displaced von Rad’s Wisdom in Israel 4 as a basic textbook) always allowed wisdom to have its own distinctive voice, its own distinctive intellectual world. Even the most traditional of wisdom texts (Proverbs 10–21, for instance) claims that human observation and commonly received traditional proverbs are sources of correct un- derstanding and behavior, rather than direct revelation, as one finds with Moses and the prophets. The more marginal expressions of wisdom literature ( Job, for instance) are known to have questioned the most deeply held beliefs of the Israelite people. Throughout the history of ancient Israel, wisdom writings and wisdom teachings provided a counterweight to some of the other prevailing theological movements in Israel. Whether they origi- nated from a definable class of sages or a commonly held intellectual tradition, Crenshaw does not say, but he leaves no doubt that they offer an alternative voice. In that voice Crenshaw hears and articulates better than any other contemporary scholar of the Hebrew Bible the notion of 2. G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology (2 vols; New York: Harper, 1962–65) 1.355–453. 3. J. L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981). 4. G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972). James L. Crenshaw: An Appreciation xi sacred doubt. He hears their protests that human suffering is unfair and that something must be done about it. For this reason, Crenshaw once said to me in a discussion that the Panglossian pronouncements in Psalm 37 (“I was young. Now I am old. I have never seen the righteous for- saken or their seed begging bread”) is “the song of the blind.” The sages tended to doubt many of the traditional teachings in ancient Israel. Similarly, Crenshaw doubts much in the intellectual tradition of his community or field. His work reflects an antipathy to any rigid, global formulation he encounters. Three of his most important contributions specifically undermine commonly assumed notions among the academy of Old Testament / Hebrew Bible scholars. For instance, von Rad in Wisdom in Israel suggests that a major intellectual enlightenment took place during the reign of King Solomon. This was for von Rad the social environment in which a class of sage-teachers flourished and wrote much of what we regard as wisdom.5 Supposedly, this enlightenment was responsible for so-called Royal wisdom and for philo- sophical/theological wisdom. Crenshaw, in Old Testament Wisdom,6 looks for evidence in the Bible for this enlightenment but finds that von Rad sewed together a patchwork of assumptions from scant evidence. Crenshaw never addresses exactly why von Rad would make such a blunder, but the notion of a Solomonic enlightenment fits very well with nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century German notions of na- tionhood and the evolution of intellectual advancement. Crenshaw de- constructed von Rad’s thesis and, as a result, he changed the way people spoke of the relationship between early Israelite monarchy and wisdom literature. Second, some scholars in the 1960s and 1970s took a different tack. Rather than trying to make wisdom conform with covenant theology and complaining when it did not, they conformed much of the rest of the Bible to wisdom. They found wisdom everywhere. For instance, they saw it in the Garden of Eden narrative (Genesis 2–3) with its tree of wisdom (the knowledge of good and evil) and its serpent. They saw it in the stories of Joseph and Daniel that were regarded as models of sapiential court behavior. They noted that the book of Hosea employed 5. Ibid., 15–16. 6. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, 52. xii David Penchansky certain wisdom terms. When Crenshaw examined the specific claims of these scholars, he found in each case that what they regarded as char- acteristically wisdom was simply part of the general Israelite intellectual pool. Rather than forcing other parts of the Bible to fit into a wisdom mi- lieu, Crenshaw allowed the wisdom corpus to remain an ambiguous and difficult part of the Hebrew Bible. Further, Crenshaw himself embodied many of the intellectual principles put forth in the sapiential way of thinking, including a willingness to question prevailing assumptions, insisting on measuring them on the basis of human experience and observation. Crenshaw—and the sages—maintained a healthy skepticism against the sweeping claims of others. Third, Crenshaw also challenged the notion of the presence of formal schools and teachers in ancient Israel. This too has been an attempt to make wisdom fit in with the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Wisdom writings were regarded as the textbooks of the schools, both elementary (portions of Proverbs) and more advanced (the book of Job, Qoheleth). In each of these three cases (Solomonic enlightenment, wisdom in- fluence, and ancient Israelite schools), Crenshaw affirms the different- ness of Wisdom literature, and he decries those who see in the Bible a mirror of their own time. Crenshaw pleads, not for his own specific global reconstruction, but for an acceptance of ambiguity and silence with regard to some of these important questions. Crenshaw discusses sacred doubt in the wisdom corpus; he chron- icles its every permutation. Emotionally and intellectually he was there when Job’s experience appeared to deny the law of retribution. Job had conformed to the moral requirements (he was “perfect, upright, fearing God and avoiding evil”), but his life was shattered so that Yahweh might win a bet. Crenshaw was there also in the despair of Qoheleth (“All is emptiness, wind”) and Agur (“There is no God at all, and I am power- less” as Crenshaw translates Prov 30:1).7 Crenshaw created a safe space for doubt and questions, whereas many other scholars seek to smooth over difficulties and harmonize dif- ferences. Yet, there is more to Crenshaw than skepticism. In his recently 7. Ibid., 203. Page is 1 line short James L. Crenshaw: An Appreciation xiii published book of sermons, Trembling at the Threshold of a Biblical Text,8 he consistently affirms the possibility of redemption and transformation in the world and the troubled reality of divine presence. The editors of any Festschrift hope it will be an expression of the honored scholar’s legacy. Crenshaw’s legacy is secure. I have arranged the following list of his contributions, in no particular order, in the rec- ognition that it is only representative and that the legacy is still growing: • He works always in the richness and polyvocality of Scripture. • He therefore affirms and illuminates the distinctive voices within the wisdom tradition of ancient Israel. • He elevates the notion of sacred doubt as a central concern of the Hebrew Scriptures. By implication (and some discussion) he vali- dates the possibility of faithful human doubt within the Christian and Jewish traditions, as modeled by certain figures and texts within the Bible.

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