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The Compilational History of the Megilloth: Canon, Contoured Intertextuality and Meaning in the Writings. By Timothy J. Stone. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2/59. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013, xiii + 258 pp., euro64.00.
Modern scholarly opinion is that the ordering of books in the Writings sec- tion of the Hebrew Bible is late, liturgical, and not stable enough to generate mean- ings that are in any way verifiable. Perhaps the Law and the Prophets form a tight sequence, but the Writings are at best a miscellaneous anthology of compositions with broad similarities and a smattering of shared vocabulary. In his revision of a doctoral thesis at St. Andrews in 2010, Timothy J. Stone attempts to counter this type of sentiment sometimes present among biblical scholars of the Hebrew Bible.
Stone contends that the books in the Writings were not only collected but al- so arranged with a particular purpose and with an awareness of a broader canonical context. To make his case, Stone zooms in on the sequence of the "five little scrolls" of Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther (the Megil- loth). Stone views the "codification" of these books "into a collection as an integral part of a canonical process rather than a formal feature that is the result of an effort to close the canon, or merely a by-product of technological advances like the long scroll or the codex" (p. 2). More broadly, Stone also seeks to provide a "historical and exegetical investigation into the poetics of canon shaping" (p. 8). Stone thus aims to bring into dialogue the history of canon formation, the hermeneutics of canonical collections, and the function of intertextuality within the Writings.
Before addressing the question of meaningful arrangement of the Writings, Stone lays the necessary groundwork for executing such an analysis. He first deals with the definitional questions about what "canon" means and what the implica- tions of the canon formation process might be for ordering and arrangement (chap. 1). He then describes the collection of the Writings (chap. 2) and also the nature of their arrangement in various textual traditions (chap....