Book Reviews

Employing from the start in the Introduction a direct and conversational tone, Guest brings exciting and up-to-date methods to bear on the text of Judges along with explorations of more traditional readings. Guest’s dynamic style creates a refreshing sense of the immediacy and importance of the aims and methods used. Using object relations theory, to begin with, Guest deprivileges the standing of the deity’s perspective on all the described conflicts with Israel, treating him as “a parent character” so that his relationship with “his offspring” may be scrutinized and analyzed from a more even-handed perspective. Moreover, refusing to accept an opposing position to confessional approaches to the same issues, Guest seeks a complementary role for the two modes. Thus, agreeing with the deity’s point of view in the narration, and especially where horrific violence is recorded, may no longer be considered to be the default position (p. 3), he notes that for some commentators, the concomitant questioning, or forming of different understandings of the motives and reliability of narrators, editors and redactors becomes extremely problematic, leading them to shy away from psychological approaches completely. Furthering these aims, Guest suggests an unlinking of exegeses of these texts from the concept of ‘theology’ and—following Clines (1995) and Carroll (1991)—addresses rather ‘“he ideology of implied authors” (p. 5). Guest recognises that the notions of transference—the urge to agree with the author’s viewpoint—and countertransference—the urge to resist being so manoeuvred—are highly relevant to the approaches used. Having said that, Guest nonetheless maintains that a study of the actions and motivations of the deity remains to some extent an exercise in theology and regards the imagined scribe as doing his best to provide authentic “God-talk” in his writings. In fact,