A Book Review from Books At a Glance
by Kaden Classen
Does the order of the canon matter? I’ve been grappling with this question since I took Jason DeRouchie’s Old Testament I class in seminary. There, Dr. DeRouchie explained the significance of the order of the canon and the way it affects our interpretation of the books within it. He gave me a foundation, but I wanted to know more. I was excited, then, when Gregory Goswell released Text and Paratext. Not only did it explain the order of the canon; it also covered titles and chapter and verse divisions. The book seemed to be the perfect tool to build upon the foundation that Dr. DeRouchie had given me.
Goswell argues that these paratextual elements serve as implicit commentaries on the biblical text itself. The order of the books tells us how their early readers believed the books related to each other and interpreted them in light of one another. The titles tell us what the early readers believed about the books, and the textual divisions tell us how the early readers understood the flow of the text within each book. We thus read the paratext not unlike we would read Tom Schreiner’s commentary on Romans, for instance. The meaning conveyed by the paratext isn’t as explicit as an exegetical commentary, but it is just as present.
Goswell’s book is organized into three parts: “Canonical Structure,” which covers the order of the books within the canon; “Book Titles,” which covers the names of the books; and “Textual Divisions,” which covers the section, chapter, and verse divisions within books. The structure of Goswell’s book is straightforward and clear, making for an easy read. Each section surveys the relevant data, covering multiple positions. Goswell ends each chapter with a summary and a few guidelines as to how the paratextual data covered in the chapter should affect our interpretation. Because the structure of each chapter in each part is relatively consistent and varies only in content, I’ll briefly discuss each part rather than each chapter.
The first part of the book surveys the order of the books in the canon. Goswell covers the Old Testament, both its Hebrew and Greek canons, and the New Testament. He surveys a substantial number of orderings, seeking to clarify how they came about and what they tell us about how early readers understood the books. These orders can lead to insights that today’s readers might otherwise miss. For example, the placement of Hosea at the beginning of The Twelve serves as an enacted parable-summary of the coming content of The Twelve. Orders like this show us how the early readers read the Bible as a single book telling a single story and thus provide insight into how we should interpret it. We can learn from the order of the canon.
The second part of Goswell’s book covers the titles of the biblical books. Goswell argues for four purposes of titles. First, they serve to identify works, and second, they can act as guides to the subject of the work. We’re likely all familiar with these kinds of titles, as this is how titles function today. Yet, ancient titles did far more than this. They also could serve as an endorsement of sorts concerning the content (e.g. Song of Songs, referring to the greatest of all songs), and they could specify the genre of a book (e.g., Psalms). The reader may be surprised to learn that some books have markedly different titles in Hebrew or Greek than in our English Bibles, and these titles inform how early readers understood these books. For example, the Hebrew title of Deuteronomy is literally “words,” reflecting that the book contains further words of Moses rather than, as the name Deuteronomy (“second law”) would suggest, a set of laws separate from those given at Sinai (Goswell, 85).
The third part of the book covers textual divisions. While Goswell discusses the expected chapter and verse divisions, he also overviews other divisions, such as how ancient readers divided the text into paragraphs. These divisions emphasize various aspects of the books, such as how the placement of seder in the book of Joshua often coincides with comments on Yahweh’s favor on Joshua, signaling emphasis on “the theme of God’s endorsement of Joshua’s leadership” (133).
Beyond its excellent structure, the book has a number of strengths. It’s an accessible book. Goswell’s writing is clear, and he doesn’t assume that the reader knows much about paratext. He generally does not use technical words that the reader wouldn’t be familiar with, and he introduces certain aspects of paratextual features assuming that the reader is not aware of them. He explains how the Bible got chapter and verse numbers, for instance. The average reader is certainly aware that the Bible has them, and likely knows that they are not original to the text, but may not be aware of exactly who decided them and why. Goswell’s work provides the answer. If you’re looking for an introduction to the topic of paratext, Goswell’s book is an excellent choice.
Nonetheless, the book does have a few weaknesses. While its content is a helpful overview of the topic, Goswell is quite brief with many of his comments. I often found myself wishing he would say more about certain details, and I was at times left with more questions than answers. Some of this is to be expected—Goswell is surveying a vast amount of content in a small book. And yet, in a barren landscape of semi-technical volumes on paratext, I can’t help but wish that Goswell had written a book twice as long. Additional details would have been well worth the extended reading time.
My second critique is more substantial. Goswell labels this book as a book on interpretation with the subtitle: “Book Order, Title, and Division as Keys to Biblical Interpretation.” Goswell does provide guidelines at the end of each chapter as to how the paratextual feature discussed in the chapter should influence interpretation. Yet, many of these guidelines seem more like a summary of content than an actual guideline. One guideline merely reads: “The Greek placement of Chronicles after Kings has contributed to its comparative neglect” (52). This guideline in particular feels less like a guideline and more like an opinion. The guidelines can feel unsubstantial, and I sometimes felt like I was learning fun facts more than guidelines for interpretation. If you come to this book looking for practical methods in using paratextual elements in interpretation, you’ll certainly find a few, but likely not as many as you would expect from the title.
In some ways, I think Goswell is limited by his own convictions when it comes to providing practical guidelines. For instance, in several places, Goswell rejects the notion that there is a single order of the canon by which believers should read Scripture (11, et al.). That’s a healthy understanding of the canon, to a degree. We should not see the order of the canon as inspired, and Goswell’s conviction helps protect from that. Nonetheless, he also rejects a normative ordering of even the Law, Prophets, and Writings. I question the wisdom of this. There was certainly an ordering to the canon that Jesus and the apostles used, and while I agree with Goswell that it wasn’t inspired, glossing over that order as if it had minimal influence on their understanding of the Old Testament seems ill-advised. Goswell’s entire book is premised on the fact that readers of the canon assembled books in certain ways because of how they understood them. Are we to think that the New Testament writers weren’t influenced by the placement of the books? It seems better to say that the order of the Old Testament that the NT authors used is important to understanding how they read the Bible. That doesn’t mean it’s more authoritative than other orders, but it does mean that understanding the order of Bava Batra 14b is more important to right interpretation of the Bible than, say, the order of the Vulgate. If Goswell were willing to plant his flag here, I think he would find more practical guidelines for interpretation easier to provide.
All that said, I found the book helpful. It introduced me to a number of discussions within the topic of paratext that I wasn’t aware of, and the bibliography is exceptional. Where Goswell might be brief on some discussions, he nonetheless exhibits a thorough knowledge of the topic. The book is valuable given the right perspective going in. If you desire to learn details about why books are ordered the way they are and to see thorough treatments of their effect on interpretation, you’ll likely be disappointed. Goswell’s comments are overviews, and many points of interpretive insight that the orderings provide are covered in a mere sentence. Such brevity is understandable; Goswell is introducing readers not to a single order of the canon, but to all the ones we know about, and to other paratextual features. He simply doesn’t have room for substantial detail. Nevertheless, if you go in expecting an overview, the book is an excellent introduction. The bibliography is extensive, and I was delighted at the number of resources given for further study. Provided you go in with the right expectations, you’ll likely find this book a fascinating and helpful read.
Kaden Classen