A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament. By Mark J. Boda. Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Pp. 622. $59.50.
Abstract
This essay argues that evidence suggests that shamanistic-type healing experts were found in ancient Israel, and that the kind of healing rituals show similarities to other such shamanistic practices in other contexts. Hebrew Scriptures provides evidence for a range of designations for such persons dedicated to the mediating office between humans and the divine, some of which have certainly been involved with the art of curing. Narrative and prophetic literatures offer some illuminating evidence for healing specialists. Particular attention is paid to supplicatory psalms in the Old Testament which suggest the mediating role of healing experts. Further comparisons with Sumero-Babylonian professional rites and Navajo healing chants establish the likelihood of the presence and activities of such shamanistic-type healing experts in ancient Israel.
The subject for your consideration in the present paper is one which has recently attracted attention, and which is of necessity destined to arouse controversy. I do not desire to weary you with dry details which must be carefully investigated and verified, or to make any reply to adverse criticisms, which as yet have served to show that the most careful demonstration of every point in a new thesis is required by modern scholarship. There are three separate questions to be considered, each of which might demand a volume by itself, and each of which might be independently considered. First, who were the Hittites? What do we know about them, and what bearing has such knowledge on general questions of history and ethnology? Secondly, what are the hieroglyphic texts of Northern Syria and Asia Minor? Is there any reason to suppose that all or any of them are the work of Hittites? and how are they to be deciphered? Third, what bearing have the two preceding studies on the Old Testament historical notices of the Hittites? Do they serve to support the general historical accuracy of the Hebrew Scriptures, or the reverse? I propose to confine my remarks in this paper chiefly to the first of these questions. The second has less bearing on history, and requires a great amount of study yet to lead to a solution.
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