apocalisse di Giovanni Research Papers (original) (raw)

This commentary on the book of Judges should serve as another reminder of the scholarly importance of Spanish-language biblical research. Among the particular readers Sicre Díaz has in view for this commentary are scholars versed in historical criticism and redaction criticism. Additionally, his book also attends to interpretive issues that would indeed be of interest to literary critics, textual critics, feminist critics, and biblical theologians. Relying mainly on biblical scholarship written in German and English, Sicre Díaz opens his commentary with an extensive introductory discussion on the structure, religious-theology (religioso-teológico), and textual formation of Judges. In terms of his book's structure, Sicre Díaz easily divides Judges into three major parts, 1) Introduction (1,1-3,6); 2) History of Judges (3,7-16,31); 3) the Decline (17-21), which is a division scheme that is common in most modern Western commentaries (19 th-21 st centuries). For Sicre Díaz, the overarching religious-political message of Judges is that no system of government, neither judicial nor monarchical, guaranties well-being and peace. As he writes, it is "only the faithfulness to God (solo la fidelidad a Dios)" (55). Not uniform in Sicre Díaz's view are the interpretations that different readers may have of this message-depending on their vantage point. As he explains at the end of the book, for readers focusing solely on the book of Judges, it becomes clear that the judicial system has gone from bad to worse. Moreover, when there is neither a judge nor a king, it is "fatal" (494). Yet for those reading Judges within the context of the first prophets (Joshua-2 Kings) or the grand history of Israel (Genesis-2Kings), they are likely to conclude that the king needed is David and his eternal dynasty. In dating Judges, he follows the scholarship of Walter Gross and Yaira Amit and hence argues that the book had a very late formation. He accepts the notion that its redaction began at the end of the 8 th century, which was several centuries after the book's imagined historical context. Within this historical spectrum, Sicre Díaz argues that readers contemporary with the reign of Josiah likely would have had an optimistic view of the monarchy and the divine promise to David. Yet for Babylonian exilic readers, they likely had a negative view of the monarchy, blaming the kings for their captivity (494).