Review of C. Sharp, Irony

1 This is a longer version of a review published in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72/1 (2010): 129-131. Review of Carolyn J. Sharp, Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature; Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009) Pp. xiv + 357. $39.95. Discussions of biblical irony are not new and are an important component of literary approaches to the Bible. As literary theory has changed, so has the study of irony and its role in the reading process. Enter Carolyn Sharp, who gives us a postmodern view of irony in the Hebrew Bible. Irony finds a new home among the postmodern modes of reading the text against itself. In a way, irony epitomizes the uncertainty of reading so characteristic of postmodernism. The identification of irony requires that the audience understand that what is said is not what is meant, or that what is meant is not what is said. Irony demands the acceptance of the notion of authorial intent, however one defines it (an authorial voice, if not the historical author; see pp. 26-27). Authorial intent, along with the role of the reader in constructing meaning, form a nexus in contemporary literary theory as well as in biblical studies where the literary and the historical approaches are coming together. S. juggles the two carefully for the most part; but ultimately she cannot keep them both in the air at the same time. S.’s definition of irony is not as simple as the one I suggested a few lines above. She states: Irony is a performance of misdirection that generates aporetic interactions between an unreliable “said” and a truer “unsaid” so as to persuade us of something that is subtler, more complex, more profound than the apparent meaning. Irony disrupts cultural assumptions about the narrative coherence that seems to ground tropological and epistemological transactions, inviting us into an experience of alterity that moves us toward new insight by problematizing false understandings. (p. 24; italics in the original) 2 This is not your father’s irony. The language here is certainly postmodern, if not the thought, though S. argues that it is not anachronistic to ascribe such thinking to ancient writers. In fact, I would add, it is essential to maintain that this was the author’s intention, or else irony would not exist. My rough translation of S.’s definition is: Irony misdirects readers for the purpose of showing them that things are not really the way readers think they are. S.’s definition raises the stakes, makes irony not simply a figure of speech, but essential to the meaning of the text. More later on the move from ancient to postmodern uses of irony. The most immediate problem is how to know that a given passage was intended as ironic. As in most acts of interpretation, there is no absolute proof, as S. admits: “the choice to infer or attribute irony lies ultimately with the reader” (p. 25). She argues, however, that “when a theory of irony can account well for significant aspects of a text’s cultural references and diction, then that theory should be considered viable, even if it can never be deemed determinative . . . .” (p. 4). So it comes down to whether S. can convince her audience that an ironic reading of the text is better than a non-ironic reading. Her examples encompass large swathes of the Hebrew Bible: the Garden of Eden story, stories of foreign rulers (Pharaoh, Abimelech, Belshazzar, Darius, Joseph, and Esther), stories of prostitutes or women who use sex in unconventional ways (Tamar in Genesis 38, Rahab, Jael, Gomer, and Ruth), prophetic texts (Balaam, Amos, Micah, and Jonah), and wisdom writings (Job, Qohelet, and Psalm 73). The concluding chapter lists additional examples. S’s analyses are informed by literary theory, feminist theory, and historical and redactional criticism; and they engage with the latest scholarship. They proceed along multiple axes; for example, in the case of the Garden of Eden story, the axes are the semantics of language, ancient Near Eastern motifs, ideological-critical examination, and diachronic inquiry into the redactional purpose of Genesis 3 1-3. The analyses are comprehensive and provocative. S. is oftentimes excellent when she discusses local ironies, but she has a tendency to totalize irony such that the irony itself becomes the message of the text; indeed, this is the point of her book. After an interesting discussion of naming, the motifs of serpent and tree, the tension between knowledge and desire, and the possible relationship between Genesis 1 and the Garden of Eden story, she sums up sweepingly : “God has made us for irony” and “Irony itself must be seen as a fundamental texture of human existence” and “The Garden story serves to authorize the ironic mode of knowing . . .” (p. 42). This seems to me more of a justification of her own project than the meaning of the Garden story. Space permits only a cursory review of some of the individual texts. I admire the section on Qohelet which builds largely on the multiple voicing in the book. That irony shapes the book (p. 198) may be true for Qohelet more than for any of S.’s other examples. Her conclusion that the view of the persona of Qohelet is meant to be rejected by the reader (p. 198, 220) is wellargued and not far from what several recent scholars have intimated. This is cutting-edge Qohelet scholarship. My broader reaction, however, is that although I am impressed by S.’s scholarship and many of her points, I am not generally persuaded by her arguments or conclusions. Even in the case of the book of Jonah, which others have read as a parody of prophecy and in which one can certainly detect irony, S. goes too far, deconstructing God as ruthless and unsparing (pp. 185186). This portrait of God seems extreme and unsupported by the analysis. Especially difficult to accept are S.’s conclusions on Esther and Ruth. S. lauds the plot of Esther “as the pinnacle of dramatic irony” (p. 65). She discusses the ironization of Esther’s Jewishness, the slaughter of the Persians, Vashti as a symbol of powerful 4 resistance (Vashti is S.’s real hero, not Esther), the establishment of the festival of Purim, and the elevation of Mordechai in the annals of foreign kings. Noting how the book of Esther undermines writing and decrees, and how it scripturalizes the institution of Purim (both points I agree with), S. then concludes that “If we take seriously the undermining of writing in this book, we see that the narrator may be communicating a skeptical view of the authority of this particular holiday over against the festivals and practices legislated on Sinai by the Holy One of Israel.” (p. 77). I fail to see why someone would write a book to legitimize a festival and then, in the same instant, undermine its authority. The ancient reader would not have confused the origin and sanctity of Purim with those of Torah festivals. The point of the book is to show that it was possible to add a new, post-Torah festival, not that a post-Torah festival should be viewed skeptically. Equally puzzling is S.’s reading of Esther as an anti-Diaspora story and an antiTorah story. “Diaspora dilutes identity. Assimilation renders one and one’s people unrecognizable [to S., Esther and Mordechai look more Persian than Jewish]. In the absence of Law [the observance of the cult in Persia] the Jews in the book of Esther have created another writing, a new ‘second-writing’ or neo-Deuteronomy that is dangerous, for it is not the word of God.” (p. 80; she goes on to compare it to the golden calf on p. 81). I don’t see how such a contrary reading of Esther could reveal its meaning better than a “straight” reading. I think S. is badly misreading the absence of Jewish observances that characterizes the book. Why doesn’t S. find irony in the possibility that the lack of mention of these observances proves that they are important for Jewish Diaspora identity? Why not conclude that the lack of mention of the Torah laws proves that its existence and acceptance is the intended reading? S.’s reading of Ruth is similarly contrary. She finds irony in the mention of “Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah” in the blessing of Obed, for in S.’s view both Tamar and Ruth bear 5 children through “prostitute-like dissembling” (p. 118); moreover, S. reads both Genesis 38 and Ruth as anti-David works. S. further supports her anti-David reading of Ruth by interpreting its setting, in the time of the Judges, to mean “in those desperate times when apostasy and brutality were the norm in Israel and heroes rapidly became anti-heroes” (p. 121), as indicating the unsavory roots of the Davidic line. Now there is plenty of irony in the David stories, and many scholars have noted David’s less-than-heroic actions, but I am not convinced that the best reading of Ruth is as an anti-David work. All Israel has roots in “those desperate times,” not only David. In her concluding chapter, anticipating the reaction of some readers, S. asks, “But is there truly so much irony in the Hebrew Bible?” She again acknowledges “cheerfully that irony lies in the eye of the beholder” but hopes that she has made her case “well enough that no reader will be able to harrumph, ‘It is just not possible that so much irony exists in the Bible.’” (p. 241). The question of quantity is relevant only if one takes irony as a figure of speech, a literary trope found in a phrase, a passage, or even an entire story. (In that case, I would certainly harrumph.) But for S., irony is not a trope but rather a hermeneutic tool, way of reading, a vehicle for interpreting the text. She reads it out of the many ambiguities, incongruities, gaps, juxtapositions, exaggerations, multiple-voicing, intertextualities, and all the other numerous deterrents to a “straight” reading – the features that interpretations have long thrived on and that postmodernists delight in using to de-center the text and question its message and its authority. Irony for S. is the new indeterminacy. Postmodernists see irony as a pervasive mode of expression, a strategy for subverting what the reader believes to be true (see S.’s definition above). And if irony is a pervasive mode of expression, then one must read with an eye to discerning that irony. Hence, irony becomes a way of reading. All well and good if one is reading a postmodern text, but what 6 about an ancient text? Is the biblical text pervasively ironic, as S. would have us think? I doubt it. I remain unconvinced of many of S.’s examples and even more so that the biblical authors intended their writings to be indeterminate, as S. thinks they did, no matter how powerful that attribute may be in driving the reader continually back to the text in an intellectual or spiritual quest (see p. 239). Not every juxtaposition or exaggeration or intertextual allusion needs to have been intended as ironic. S. may read them that way if she wishes, but that is the choice of the reader, not the intent of the author. What is the result of reading the Hebrew Bible as essentially an ironic text in the manner that S. does? Given that the ironic Hebrew Bible does not mean what it appears to mean, what, then, does it intend to say? What does it indicate about the view of life that the Bible is advocating? (“Meaning” is as important a word in the book’s title as “Irony.”) Among the points that stand out: S.’s Bible is anti-parochial and anti-xenophobic. It takes the side of the “Other.” It demonstrates that Israel was never ethnically pure, and that foreigners are at times more Godfearing than Israelites and not to be avoided or conned (see pp. 54, 61, 121). It subverts the traditional view of the election of Israel (p. 153) and of the power of the patriarchy and of the kings. And it ironizes the holy-war mentality (pp. 70, 121). S. ascribes these ideas to the post586 period, but it seems to me too coincidental that so many of the issues that contemporary readers find objectionable in the Hebrew Bible are instantly erased through an ironic reading. The Hebrew Bible has really been saying just the opposite all along. Also, in line with contemporary tastes, the Hebrew Bible is thoroughly self-critical of its own culture. S.’s postmodern ironic reading has produced a Bible whose values postmodern readers can approve of and whose mode of expression they can delight in. Nice, if you buy it. 7 The volume contains a good bibliography and an index of proper nouns (names and places) but unfortunately no index of subjects or scriptural citations. Adele Berlin, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742