Oh to be able to do this book right!

Scholars of the Hebrew Bible generally agree that there is a corpus of books which all bring a particular theological viewpoint to Jewish history. The theology is largely expounded in the book of Deuteronomy, and the remaining books of the "Deuteronomistic History" (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) detail how following or turning away from these religious requirements has affected the success or failure of the Israelites.

The broad picture is easy, but the details are complicated indeed. The Deuteronomistic History was not written all at once; rather, the "Deuteronomist" (or Deuteronomists; there were probably several of them) worked over established materials. And even these established materials might have undergone several layers of combination and reworking. This is particularly evident in the Book of Judges, where the oldest strata seem to be individual folktales of various heroes (the Judges). These were combined. Then, most likely, they were "bookended" with various other tales of the period. Then the Deuteronomist put his spin on things. So, in this case, we have at least four stages of composition.

This book attempts, typographically, to show how all this works, using Roman type, italic type, and sidebars to show various stages in the history.

It's a brilliant idea. There are three problems. One is that the typographic system is confusing. This is probably inevitable, although it seems to me that more could have been done to make things clear. (E.g. even a sidebar saying what is what would have helped.)

The second, much more severe, problem is that not all the various layers are in fact disentangled. In 1 Samuel, for instance, there seem to be many, many sources (Ark Source, Prophetic Source, Saul Source, David Source). These are all treated as "early sources" by Campbell and O'Brien -- and hence not distinguished very explicitly even though this is the most interesting of the distinctions in the book. Yes, it's nice to know where the Deuteronomist expressed his prejudices, but it would be much more helpful to figure out whether a particular passage is intended to be pro- or anti-Saul!

Finally, there is the fact that not everyone will agree with the source assignments that Campbell and O'Brien make. This, again, is probably inevitable. But their assignments struck me as rather radical and ill-supported. To be sure, that is based on the English text (New Revised Standard Version) rather than a detailed look at the Hebrew....

None of this should detract from the cleverness of the idea. I would consider this a useful book, and have not hesitated to consult it. But when assigning sources to Samuel in my own work, I did not trust it very far. The sad fact is that, rather than being a final reference, for me at least it is merely a starting point that must always be checked. ( )