The latest Review of Biblical Literature is now available. It includes a decent review of Ingrid Hjelm’s Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition by biblioblogger Jim West. That Jim enjoyed the work is apparent from his first sentence, though I have to balk at one of his concluding lines: “Those who would date the Hebrew Bible to the Hasmonean era now have a significant weapon in hand with which to wage the ongoing battle over biblical historiography.” I personally find it quite difficult to conceive of the Hebrew Bible undergoing major revision during the Hasmonean era (134-63 BCE) — let alone being written during that period. This is especially considering that most of it was already translated into Greek by that time! (See my “Towards the Date for the Old Greek Psalter,” in R. Hiebert, C. Cox, and P. Gentry (eds.), The Old Greek Psalter: Studies in Honour of Albert Pietersma [JSOTSup 332; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001] 248-276).

Also noteworthy in this issue are two reviews of Walter Brueggemann’s Worship in Ancient Israel: An Essential Guide and two reviews of George J. Brooke’s excellent work, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.

The reviews are as follows:

• Walter Brueggemann, Worship in Ancient Israel: An Essential Guide. Reviewed by Thomas Kraus and Baruch A. Levine
• Sarah J. Dille, Mixing Metaphors: God as Mother and Father in Deutro-Isaiah. Reviewed by Marjo Korpel
• Ingrid Hjelm, Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition. Reviewed by James West
• Jeremy Corley and Vincent Skemp, eds., Intertextual Studies in Ben Sira and Tobit. Reviewed by Thierry Legrand
• George J. Brooke, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. Reviewed by Joerg Frey and Thomas Kraus