RBL 02/2007
Penchansky, David
Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005. Pp. xii + 108.
Paper. $19.95. ISBN 0664228852.
K. L. Noll
Brandon University
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
This is an odd book. Apparently, the target readership consists of theological students
and interested religious laity. However, Penchansky assumes that his readers possess
background information that beginners are unlikely to possess. To follow the book’s lead,
the reader will have to know undefined jargon such as “the Deuteronomist” (15), be
reasonably aware of the number and nature of Iron Age Canaanite deities, and even have
some understanding of esoteric historical reconstructions such as the now-dated
hypothesis that a historical King David combined old Jebusite religious traditions with
Israelite motifs (67–74). But if the book fails as an introductory text, it is clearly not
intended for advanced students and specialists, since it never attempts to offer new
insights or go beyond the conventional thinking of mainstream scholarship.
The thesis of the book is unclear. Explicitly, Penchansky seeks to show that the anthology
of literature now known as the Jewish Bible contains gods and goddesses other than the
primary deity, Yahweh (xi, xii, 51, 63–64, 91). However, even Penchansky seems to be
aware that this is too mundane to merit a new publication, so the reader is offered
glimpses of a bolder second thesis. He wants to argue that Israelite religion did not evolve
in a straight line from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism but that all types of
theism remained live options among Jews until at least the third century B.C.E. (xii, 39, 51,
This review was published by RBL 2007 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
62, 65). I say that he “wants to argue” this thesis because he does not actually argue it.
Rather, he merely asserts it at intervals, making little attempt to offer the reader a
coherent reconstruction of the complex history of religion that would be necessary to
sustain the thesis. (Nor does Penchansky bother to interact with recent scholarship that
would have assisted his cause, such as H. Niehr, “Religio-Historical Aspects of the ‘Early
Post-Exilic’ Period,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious
Tradition in Exilic and Post-exilic Times [ed. B. Becking and M. C. A. Korpel; OTS 42;
Leiden: Brill, 1999], 228–44; K. L. Noll, “The Kaleidoscopic Nature of Divine Personality
in the Hebrew Bible,” BibInt 9 (2001): 1–24; E. A. Knauf, “Elephantine und das
vorbiblische Judentum,” in Religion und Religionskontakte im Zeitalter der Achämeniden
[ed. R. G. Kratz; Gütersloh: Kaiser, 2002], 179–88.)
Underneath the explicit thesis and the less explicit thesis, there appears to be a third
agenda, and this, I suspect, is the real purpose of the book. Penchansky includes a brief
introduction (ix–xii) and conclusion (91–92) in which he implies that the biblical portrait
of deity is somehow authoritative for his own religious life, and the discovery of an
alternative to monotheism in its pages seems to be a welcome revelation for him.
“Monotheism,” he asserts, “must not be construed as the final destination of theology”
(91). Rather, the polytheism that Penchansky has discovered in the Bible “persists in
pulling the church (and others) back from the abyss of monism, a horribly frigid place
where nothing moves” (91). I confess that I have no idea what this means, but I suppose
that it is meant to be gospel tidings for Penchansky’s theology students, for he
characterizes it as a “subversive reading” that “challenges twenty-five centuries of
tradition”( 91). Stuffy orthodoxy shall be overcome by the vitality of theistic plurality.
Meanwhile, Penchansky seems uninterested in the ancient dead scribes who invented the
various representations of deity that crowd the pages of the Jewish Bible, nor does he treat
the ancient dead culture in which these representations have their raison d’être. If this is
to be an introductory text for theology students, then Penchansky is obligated to discuss
the social, economic, political, and environmental factors that gave rise to these particular
kinds of theism. Yahweh was a patron god within a patronage society, and what he does
and says are the kinds of things that a patronage society permits its patron god to do and
say. The gods with whom Yahweh interacts owe their existence to various aspects of
ancient Canaanite culture (which is, of course, Israelite culture), the culture that defined
the morality and the cosmology affirmed by every Hebrew scribe. Penchansky mentions
none of this, so his student will be left with a kind of abstraction, a vague discussion of
evolving god-concepts that seem to emerge sui generis and disappear without a trace.
Yahweh’s struggle with other gods “astounds” (11) Penchansky because he makes no
attempt to ground the texts in the real world that was Iron Age Canaan.
This review was published by RBL 2007 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Penchansky’s theological categories appear to be incoherent. Perhaps it is not this
reviewer’s place to judge the personal religious affirmation of another, but it seems to me
that theology is valid only if it expresses itself in words that even a nontheologian can
hope to understand. Penchansky writes, “I want to define monotheism more broadly. I
want to include in my definition of monotheism those Israelites who worshiped Yahweh
exclusively while acknowledging the existence of other gods” (xi). The obvious question
is: Why? Scholarship has a perfectly adequate term for that second group: monolatry. The
reader discovers why Penchansky expresses this need for an idiosyncratic definition of
monotheism later, when he asserts that the requirement of every Christian is to affirm
monotheism (92). Thus Penchansky wants to remain a Christian and to expand the
boundaries of monotheism to include a theism more to his own liking. This is like the
Christian who pays lip service to the Nicene Creed while cheerfully defending an Arian
definition of the Trinity. Why not permit ancient dead people to have been who they
were and to have expressed their theism as they have done, and simply accept that
modern theisms will not necessarily coincide with ancient categories of thought?
The book contains numerous errors that should have been corrected prior to publication.
For example, King Ahaz is called Asa on page 4. King Josiah is placed in the “early”
seventh century on page 83. Transliteration of Hebrew appears to be incorrect in a
number of instances (e.g., ix, 25, 27). The hypothesis of a Deuteronomistic History
(which Penchansky treats as a fact rather than a hypothesis) is incorrectly equated with
the entire Former Prophets on page 77. However, these minor errors pale by comparison
with the book’s central flaw. It presents a poorly conceived thesis, a shallow survey of
scholarship, and, ultimately, an inadequate introduction to a fascinating field of research.
Penchansky’s theology students deserve better.
This review was published by RBL 2007 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.