Description:
Uses anthropology to investigate the moral dilemma facing Saul's daughter in 1 Samuel 19, concluding that her choice of David (over Saul) is counter-cultural.
Brief description: Dr Jonathan Y. Rowe (PhD, St Andrews) is Director of Development and Staff Tutor, South Western Ministry Training Course, UK.
Review Quotes:
"Michal's Moral Dilemma is a significant contribution to the understanding of ancient Israelite and Old Testament ethics. Rowe effortlessly combines recent research in ethics, anthropology and literary studies to provide a sophisticated and persuasive interpretation of Michal's ethical dilemma in 1 Samuel 19. A major advance in the area of Old Testament ethics, it also heralds the arrival of an important new voice in the field." --Dr Nathan MacDonald, Reader in Hebrew and Old Testament, University of St Andrews and Sofja-Kovalevskaja Group Leader, Georg-August Universität
"Jonathan Rowe opens up a familiar moral dilemma in a not-so-familiar biblical text with fresh analysis and insights drawn from anthropological and wider biblical resources. Not only does he thereby shed welcome light on an old question, challenging much received wisdom en route, but also he takes the discipline of Old Testament ethics to a level of granular textual study that should encourage further fruitful research of the same high quality in this field." --Revd Dr Christopher J.H. Wright, International Director, The Langham Partnership, International, Author of Old Testament Ethics for the People of God "[Rowe's] focus on practice theory fi ts nicely into the world behind the text, his use of a pseudo Bakhtinian theory has a world of the text focus, and the rationale for the study itself comes from the modern concerns (a desire to 'provide new perspectives upon contemporary value conflict) and hence of the world in front of the text." --Ellen White, Assumption College, Biblical Interpretation