Bible Review

In Margaret R. Miles, Image as Insight (Boston: Beacon, 1985), p. 38.

Psalm 106:48 is a doxology that rounds off the whole of the fourth book of the Psalter (Psalms 90–106). Psalm 106 itself concludes with a prayer for salvation in verse 47

E.g., P. Volz, Jesaia II (Leipzig: A. Deichertsche Verlagsbuchhardlung, 1932); R. N. Whybray, Isaiah 40–66 (London: Oliphants, 1975).

This brief analysis of the prayer’s structure could be reinforced with many details regarding the repetition of key words and phrases and other similar devices. For a more detailed treatment, see my Ezra, Nehemiah (Waco: Word Books, 1985), pp. 300–319, and “Structure and Historiography in Nehemiah 9, ” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Panel Sessions; Bible Studies and Ancient Near East, ed. D. Assaf (1988), pp. 117–131.

That they did is hinted at. Some of Lamentations may have been used in this way. Jeremiah 41:5 refers to some such activity at the site in the immediate aftermath of its destruction and Zechariah 7:1–7 and 8:18–23 indicate that penitential liturgies may have been held there throughout the Exilic period by “people of the land” (Zechariah 7:5).

A notable exception is the German monograph of E. Janssen, Juda in der Exilszeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956); see also Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration (London: SCM, 1968).

Bernal, Black Athena, pp. 1–10; Bernal, “Black Athena and the APA,” pp. 17–18. Bernal’s own model for his “models” is from the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. 1970)

Cyrus Gordon, The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (New York: Norton, 2nd ed. 1965), p. 5.

Bernal, Black Athena, p. 443