The Journal of Religion

of Songs), but they d o not know how we can recognize genuine female voices (as opposed to women characters as the spokespersons of male authors). Whereas all authors deal in some way with the Bible's gender bias, few are resistant readers. Jane Schaberg's expos6 of how Luke "legitimate[s] male dominance" (p. 275) illustrates the necessity of reading against the grain lest we be taken in by the text's ideology (in this case, its attention to women). Noteworthy also are Carol Newsom's analysis of Job, in which she treats patriarchy as a gender construct, and Judith Sanderson's critique of Amos-both successful responses to the challenge posed by books where women are rarely or not at all mentioned. Amy-Jill Levine's nuanced reading of Ruth, a book about women, unsettles Katharine Doob Sakenfeld's sanguine view of Ruth as a "powerful challenge to [the] negative perspective on foreign women [in Numbers 251" (p. 47) and leaves it to readers to decide "whether this book affirms Ruth or ultimately erases her" (p. 79). Other, less resistant approaches also yield refreshing results; for example, Susan Niditch's folkloristic approach to Genesis; the "cautious" (p. 86) sociological approach of Jo Ann Hackett to Samuel, taken up by Susan Ackerman on Isaiah; and the generally critical assessment of "Paul," especially by Jouette Bassler, Joanna Dewey, Mary Rose D'Angelo, and Pheme Perkins. Perhaps it is too much to expect subersive, or even highly critical, positions to be taken in a volume intended for "laywomen, clergywomen, and students" (p. xvii), who will, no doubt, welcome its appearance (such sensitivity to the perniciousness of prophetic imagery of female infidelity and chastisement, e.g., does not appear in the standard commentaries). Men will also find a different angle of vision here. But how different? A one-volume commentary is restrictive and tends to normalize interpretation. Too much attention is given in this volume to the traditional commentary feature of summarizing the contents of the book under discussion and the usual critical questions (date, authorship, sources, historicity, etc.). Perhaps the commentary format is unsuitable for feminist criticism, in which case we will have to settle for women writers focusing on portrayals of women in biblical literature, at least for now. J. CHERYL E XUM, University of Sheffield. EHRMAN, BARTD. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. xiii+314 pp. $45.00 (cloth). While it is well known that "heretics" such as Marcion and Tatian tampered with the text of the New Testament (the former revising Luke, and the latter introducing Encratite readings), the fact that their proto-"orthodox" opponents also changed the New Testament's text is often overlooked. This oversight is incomprehensible from a textual, historical, or theological perspective, for even the simplest apparatuses (UBS30r4 provide abundant examples, or Nestle-Aland260r27) and the alterations have been extensively discussed in commentaries (e.g., A. H. M'Niele, V. Taylor, J. M. Creed) and in various special treatments (among others, the studies of A. Resch). Bart D. Ehrman, Professor of New Testament at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reemphasizes the fact of pious corruptions in this cleverly titled book. While none of the individual readings are new (many, in fact are discussed in Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary [Stuttgart, 1971]), the virtue of Ehrman's study is to place them in their proper theological setting. As the subtitle

Book Reviews
indicates, the study limits itself to evidence related to christological issues. The core of the book consists of four c h a ~ t e r seach . devoted to corru~tions executed to combat a particular heterodox christology: against (1) adoptionists, (2) separationists (a term Ehrman coins to describe gnostic and subordinationist christologies), (3) docetists, and (4) patripassianists. To make his case that the orthodox "corrupted" the text, Ehrman must first establish that the "heterodox" reading was earlier. Some examples from his chapter on antiadoptionist changes include: at Luke 2:33 some manuscripts replace "Uesus'] father and mother marvelling" with Joseph and his mother marvelling" (the change removes the objectionable idea that Jesus had an earthly father); in Luke 3:22 Ehrman argues that the more ancient reading includes the full text of Ps. 2:7 "you are my son; today I have generated you" (the italicized portion is suppressed in later manuscripts, presumably because it was too "adoptionist-friendly"). In general-though not in every case-Ehrman's argumentation proves his point. This should not be surprising, however, since many of these "heretical" readings have long been recognized as more primitive than their orthodox corruptions: indeed, they are sometimes printed as the preferred text. For example, UBS3a"d4/N-A26and27 all adopt "father" over 'Joseph" in Luke 2:33, for exactly the reasons stated by Ehrman; the HuckGreeven Synopse (1981) and the New Jerusalem Bible (1990) print the adoptionist version of Luke 3:22 as their text precisely because it is the earliest, best-attested version of the text. Ehrman's study is well written. It serves a useful purpose in demonstrating how textual variants are often the result of theological prejudices and proves once again that the "orthodox" did not hesitate to revise the received text when it did not suit their needs. "Orthodox" corruptions are still imposed by modern translators: there is no asher or k a (Maseretic Text) or h6s (Septuaguint) at Exod. 7:l: Moses is "a god," not, as our pious translators tell us, "like/as a god." Philo, Justin, and Aphrahat knew this; today the "orthodox" lie about it. Ehrman's evidence could have been strengthened by including evidence from cross-synoptic comparisons. Unlike manuscript variants, where there can be disagreement over which form came first, there is general agreement (pace the Griesbachians) on Marcan ~rioritv. In the ~arallels to Mark the heavv , hand of the "orthodox" corruptor is often more patently evident than in the textual variants adduced by Ehrman. For example, at Mark 10:17-18, the rich young man asks Jesus, "'Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."' In Matt. 19:16-17, however, the man asks: "'Master, what good deed must I do to possess eternal life?' Jesus said to him, 'Why do you ask me about what is good?'" While Mark's (and Luke's) text precludes Jesus' divinity, Matthew's does not. In the same pericope Matthew omits Mark's homoerotic verse, "But looking at him, Jesus loved him" (Mark 10:21; noteworthy since the "Secret Gospel of Mark" demonstrates that homoerotic stories about Jesus circulated in the late second and early third centuries). While Mark reports the centurion's confession as "In truth this man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39), Matthew omits the word "man," once again suppressing Mark's low christology. (The modern "orthodox" corruptors have been at work again: while the Revised Standard Version correctly omits "man" from Matt. 27:54, the New Revised Standard Version inexplicably-and without any manuscript support-interpolates it!) This book will be useful for senior seminars and beginning graduate students. For those who do not realize that the driving force behind nontrivial textual variants is doctrine, the book will be an eye-opener. It also demonstrates once again
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The Journal of Religion

that the most reliable guide to the development of Christian theology is the everchanging text of the New Testament. WILLIAM L. PETERSEN, Pennsylvania State University. HILL,CHARLES E. Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Future Hope in Early Christianity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. xvii+236 pp. $59.00 (cloth). It was once commonplace-and perhaps still is in some circles-to interpret the development of eschatology in the early Church from chiliasm or millennialism (a temporary, earthly, Messianic kingdom of about 1,000 years in which the righteous reign) to an immediate rapture to heaven after death. Charles Hill rejects that interpretation of early Christian eschatology by showing that two patterns of hope were present from the inception of Christianity: first, chiliasm or millennialism, which combines with an eschatology of the individual that posits a subterranean existence of the souls of the righteous until resurrection and the Messianic age; and, second, nonchiliasm, which combines with an individual eschatology of a heavenly translation of the soul immediately after death. In both patterns of orthodoxy (= nongnostic), resurrection of the body at some point intime is assumed. Early Christian views of hope involving either the cosmos or the individual are sufficiently obscure to daunt the researcher; by coupling the two, Hill leads us through murky waters indeed. Hill begins with Irenaeus, who establishes the two patterns of hope in Against Heresies 5.30. There Irenaeus rejects the views of both certain orthodox Christians and gnostics that "the righteous go immediately after death into the presence of God in heaven" (p. 14), in favor of the view that the righteous must wait in "infernal abodes" until "the resurrection of the just and the reign of the millennium," which serves as a kind of training ground, preparing the righteous to "apprehend God and his glory" (p. 17). According to Hill, Irenaeus probably shifted to this view as a result of his battle with gnostics; for the chiliastic reign assumes "the goodness of the material creation," and the preresurrection subterranean abode of the righteous counters "Gnostic pretensions to a super-celestial existence after death" (p. 188). Papias, Justin, Tertullian, Commodianus, Victorinus, Lactantius, and perhaps a few other ante-Nicene fathers share Irenaeus's pattern of hope. After a brief review of Pharisaic-ApocalypticJewish sources, which couple chiliasm (a temporal kingdom not necessarily of 1,000 years) with a subterranean intermediate state for the dead-a state that Hill proposes to be an essential defining characteristic "of the eschatology we call chiliasm" (p. 63)-he reviews the other pattern of hope. Hill places authors in this second camp primarily on the basis of their view of individual hope: if they assume an immediate rapture of the dead into heaven, then he can assume that they are not chiliastic. On those grounds, he so classifies Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Melito of Sardis, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian, among others-even though most of them indicate little or nothing about their view of a millennium. On the basis of Hill's classification of early Christian writers into one of his two "patterns of hope," we can see that there was no significant shift from chiliasm to nonchiliasm in the first three centuries. Moreover, in the New Testament itself, all writers-including the author of the Book of Revelation-seem to "favour only an immediate presence with Christ in heaven" and, therefore, are nonchili-