Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol.

60, Pt 2, October 2009

REVIEWS
Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 7/3 Hester. Fascicule 3. Edited by JEAN-CLAUDE HAELEWYCK. Pp. 80. Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 2006. ISBN 345 100293 0. Paper, n.p. Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 7/3 Hester. Fascicule 4. Edited by JEAN-CLAUDE HAELEWYCK. Pp. 80. Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 2008. ISBN 978 345 100294 6. Paper, n.p. Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 7/3 Hester. Fascicule 5. Edited by JEAN-CLAUDE HAELEWYCK. Pp. 120. Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 2008. ISBN 978 345 100295 3. Paper, n.p.
THE rst two fascicules in this volume of the Vetus Latina Esther were reviewed in JTS, NS 57 (2006), pp. 5713. At a time when it seems as if several volumes in this series are in the doldrums or appear to have stalled, it is particularly good to report on the completion of the Hester volume; all the fascicules have been published within a ve-year period. Jean-Claude Haelewyck of Louvain-la-Neuve is deserving of our thanks and praise. Fascicule 3 covers Esther 2:74:7 (including longer addition B 17 Latin 13:17 after Esther 3:13) and not as announced on the cover of fascicule 2; fascicule 4 covers Esther 4:76:2 (including longer additions C130 [not in strict numerical sequence] Latin 13:818; 14:119 following Esther 4:17 and D 116 Latin 15:116; i.e. a long replacement of 5:1 2 in Hebrew before Esther 5:3), again not quite the contents previously announced; fascicule 5 runs from 6:3 to the end including longer additions E 124 Latin 16:124 following 8:12 (Greek 7:21) and F 110 and F 11 Latin 10:1 11:1 following Esther 10:3 and it also has some additional notes and corrigenda to the earlier fascicules as well as an Index des te moins. The last fascicule is half as long again as a normal 80-page instalment. The diVerences in the numbering in Greek, Latin, and indeed Hebrew by themselves indicate the complicated textual and
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REVIEWS 586 literary growth of this fascinating novella. Literary criticism needs to take into account elements present or absent in the diVerent versions; textual critics will observe the variants within the Greek, within the various strands of the Old Latin and Vulgate. The 105 additional verses found in Latin 10:416:24 enhance the role of Esther, turn the Hebrew canonical story from an account leading to the inauguration of the Feast of Purim into a story that shows the eYcacy of prayer to God and tells of his saving acts and, as has been noted many times, refer some 50 times to Godconspicuously absent from the Hebrew story. (The name of God is also occasionally added in Greek and Latin to the Hebrew of, inter alia, 2:20; 4:8; 6:1). Inconsistencies between the basic Hebrew tale and the additional sections, especially sections A, E, and F, as well as contradictions, make it clear that the longer text is secondary. The distinctive layout in a Vetus Latina volume is particularly helpful in allowing us a clear visual demonstration of how this book changed (a) in the two main Greek versions included as running lines (the alpha text, called here L being GrII and following Hanharts edition of 1983this text was at one time thought to have been revised by Lucian; and the separate translation (or revision) known as the beta text (GrI) and identied here by the siglum o); (b) in the Latin (H Jeromes Vulgate translated from the Hebrew and O Jeromes additional portions taken from the Greek) even though it is suspected by modern scholars that additions A D F and possibly E originally descended from Semitic originals; and (c) the four strands of Old Latin texts as unravelled by Haelewyck and labelled R, I, F, and J (taken from MS VL 146, which is incomplete, nishing at H2, a section not in Greek at the beginning of chapter 4). In the Vetus Latina Bericht for 2007 Haelewyck draws our attention to the distinctiveness of the Latin in 4:717, where there are interesting addenda to the Greek in the Old Latin texts labelled R, I, and F. All that obviously needs to be taken into account when assessing the relationship of the Old Latin and the Greek, especially given the consensus of scholarly opinion that the Latin witnesses to an older Greek form than that found in the revised beta text. Haelewycks article The Relevance of the Old Latin Version for the Septuagint, with Special Emphasis on the Book of Esther, JTS, NS 57 (2006), pp. 43973 appeared after the publication of the rst two fascicules of Hester. In it Haelewyck convincingly demonstrates how the Old Latin can oftenand especially in Estherbear witness to an older Greek form than that found in the LXX.

REVIEWS 587 The narrative character of Esther and its ambiguous canonical status inevitably meant that it was not mined for citations. Haelewyck has tried to be exhaustive in setting out the citations that exist from antiquity. As far as Patristic quotations are concerned, there are some from Jerome, Augustine, Runus, and the Speculum, with summaries of the story found in, among other places, Sulpicius Severus and Quodvultdeus. Prosper of Aquitaine bears witness to addition F. This volume is an impressively clear display of the textual evidence. The raw materials are thus easily to hand now and these are challenging for further research into the literary history of this book. It is to be hoped that Haelewycks study will encourage others to take up that challenge.

doi:10.1093/jts/flp018
Advance Access publication 12 March 2009

J. K. ELLIOTT University of Leeds j.k.elliott@leeds.ac.uk

Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human Agency. By MARK ALAN BOWALD. Pp. xi 202. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. ISBN 978 0 7546 877 1. N.p.
MARK BOWALD, of Redeemer University College, Canada, traces the absence of references to the divine agency of the Bible to the Enlightenment and to Kant. The purpose of the book, he states, is to challenge a misleading legacy of Enlightenment epistemology (p. 19). This legacy, he claims, produced confused readings of Scripture, which failed to take account of divine agency in the inspiration of Scripture. He argues that hermeneutics since the Enlightenment marginalizes divine agency. It concentrates on the reader and the act of reading. Bowald blames especially Kants epistemology, which turns, he argues, on the distinction between opinion, belief, and knowledge. Notions about God, according to Kant, can never be more than beliefs, in that they proceed from a subjective awareness rooted in the world and ones moral nature, but do not proceed from an objective demonstration. Kant, Bowald argues, suVers from two limitations among others. First, potential knowledge of God can never be true or pure knowledge; second, we cannot rise above faith as the medium of knowledge of God.