The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel »

GREGORY MOBLEY is associate professor of Old Testament at Andover Newton Theological School.

Gregory Mobley brings a new, highly original eye to the familiar stories found in Judges, the history of Israel during the century and a half the tribes lacked a common leader, and the first and second books of Samuel, which portray the beginning of the monarchical period. From the epic of Gideon's army to the tale of Samson and Delilah to the history of David's family and the disputes surrounding the succession to the throne, Mobley compares well-known Bible stories to ancient Semitic and European heroic traditions, exposes the elements they share, and demonstrates that these heroic elements were obscured by the theologically minded editors of the Bible.

THE EMPTY MEN describes the process by which adventure stories--replete with sex, war, assassinations, sacrifice, and political intrigue--are transformed into religious lessons meant to justify the ways of God. Mobley's argument that the stories of Samson, David, and other Biblical heroes were initially related solely as entertainment before becoming fodder for sermons and theology is a controversial one, sure to attract a lot of attention in the scholarly community.

Publishers Weekly

Mobley, an Old Testament scholar who has taught at Harvard, Union Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School, sets out to reclaim the raw adventure stories in "the heroic tradition of ancient Israel" from the layers of didactic moralizing and political spin likely added by biblical writers capturing centuries-old oral traditions. After a lively and eloquent introduction, Mobley switches abruptly to dense scholarly prose. Like an archeologist on a dig, he peels back and exhaustively examines every textual detail and linguistic possibility to get to the core stories of Israelite warriors from Joshua to Joab. The bulk of his analysis devotes one chapter each to the heroes Ehud, Gideon and Samson. That so much of the book revolves around understanding the stories of these three individuals suggests that its title is off the mark. Although "empty men"-described here as the portionless younger sons or sons of secondary wives who were excluded from the economy of primogeniture and had nothing to lose-certainly figured prominently in the books of Judges and Samuel, perhaps most notably as the men who joined up with David during his exile, they are not the primary focus of Mobley's attention. This study demonstrates excellent scholarship, but lacks some coherence as a whole. (Nov. 15) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.