Review of Remembering the Story of Israel: Historical Summaries and Memory Formation in Second Temple Judaism

Buster, Aubrey E. Remembering the Story of Israel: Historical Summaries and Memory Formation in Second Temple Judaism. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 350 pages, $92.90, hardcover.

Buster’s work is very technical and a thorough understanding of memory studies and summary studies will be helpful for grasping the concepts the author sets forth. However, the student should not be deterred from remembering the Story of Israel for that reason and will benefit greatly from the contributions made.

The author of the work is Aubrey E. Buster who currently serves the Wheaton College faculty as Assistant Professor of Old Testament. She received her Ph.D. from Emory University in 2018, joining the faculty at Wheaton that the same year. Buster has contributed to various publications, given several formal presentations, and is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature. Remembering the Story of Israel is her first full length book that appears to be a modification of her dissertation.

Buster clearly states her thesis on page six, “forms of storytelling matter,” meaning that the forms (a technical term referring to the field of form criticism) used in the historical summaries contained within the Hebrew Bible aid in crafting a collective and commemorative memory that shape a certain people group’s understanding of the past, present, and future. Collective memory has a certain utility that becomes readily apparent in the historical summaries of the Hebrew Bible and works towards a certain end. Three questions are asked of summaries: (1) what is remembered (content), (2) for whom are we remembering, and (3) to what ends are we remembering for (p. 24)?  Additionally, three criteria help to identify summaries: (1) they “schematize” history into an abbreviated form, (2) they create a shared set of memories for a “usable” form, and (3) they are crafted for or facilitate performance (p. 29). With these questions and concepts in mind, Buster evaluates several chapters from Psalms, 1 Chronicles 16, Nehemiah 9, and portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Buster works through these texts attempting to demonstrate that the meticulous construction of each summary aids in the continued formation of Israel through the Second Temple Period. Careful exegesis and reconstructed backgrounds enlightened by form criticism and memory studies lead Buster to conclude that “the formation of abbreviated schematic narratives remains…a useful activity in the Second Temple period” (p. 300, italics original). Furthermore, “the form of the historical summary provides ideally for the development of a shared ‘functional memory’” (p. 302). Buster deems her work useful by advancing the conversation about how communities understand themselves through their retellings of history.

Returning to the thesis, Buster contends that “forms of storytelling matter,” and states a goal of attending “to the historical summaries as a particularly useful form of cultural narrative” (p. 6, 11). Buster leaves very few if any stones unturned in establishing her argument. The concept of “form” is key to Buster, and she addresses it well by offering an introduction to form criticism within which she establishes and defines the term “historical summaries.” These forms emerge as an “arrangement of elements” that can be useful for the sake of recall in ancient Israelite history. Forms then are tied to cultural memory and demonstrate a marked influence over a certain “culture’s remembering practices in the present” (p. 17).

Buster works through these texts attempting to demonstrate that the meticulous construction of each summary aids in the continued formation of Israel through the Second Temple Period. Careful exegesis and reconstructed backgrounds enlightened by form criticism and memory studies lead Buster to conclude that “the formation of abbreviated schematic narratives remains…a useful activity in the Second Temple period” (p. 300, italics original).

There appears to be relatively few problems with her thesis. Buster well defines terms based on solid research in the field of modern memory studies. Perhaps the primary questions raised though, come from a parallel conversation regarding historical summary stories in the Scriptures. In 2013, Jason Hood and Matthew Emerson also attempted to solidify historical summaries as a compositional category under the umbrella term “Summary of Israel’s Story” (Summaries of Israel’s Story: Reviewing a Compositional Category, Jason Hood and Matthew Emerson). There seems to be agreement between Buster, Hood, and Emerson that the historical summary is better thought of as a complex compositional category rather than a genre. Yet Hood and Emerson also identify criteria for identifying historical summaries that reach a bit broader than Buster’s criteria, stretching across the Hebrew Bible as well as ancient Jewish extra-biblical literature, Christian literature, and the New Testament (Hood and Emerson, 339-340). In addition, The Words of the Luminaries (4Q504-506) is a longer document and has been classified in different ways by scholars who study summaries in the Bible. More interaction with the history of summary studies may have honed her criteria for identification of a summary. Buster had a different goal in mind as she was attempting to demonstrate how the psalm in 1 Chronicles 16:8-36 presents “an ideal social model of commemoration embedded in a narrative” (142). Still, integrating divergent conversations regarding historical summaries in ancient literature from scholars like Hood, Emerson, and various others may have expanded the conclusions concerning summary function in some way as it pertains to the compositional lengths of those summaries.

Evangelical scholars may desire to see the incorporation of the concept of ancient biblical theology, seeking a blatant tie between our modern practice of biblical theology and ancient examples of a relatively similar (if not the same) phenomenon. Tracing the redemptive historical retelling of the story of the people of God certainly has, as Buster contends, implications for our modern study of memory formation in people groups beyond Israel, but the near seamless transitioning of the abbreviated forms of Israel’s history into the hands of Christians is left unexplored in Buster’s work. Granted, Buster had to draw the line somewhere and did so rightfully, but the use of Israel’s historical summaries by figures like Stephen, the Apostle Paul, and the author of Hebrews demonstrates a certain continuity between Jews and Christians that raises additional inquiry about criteria for identification of summaries, their role as commemorative compositions meant for performance (in the case of Stephen especially who seems to be speaking off the cuff), and collective social memory regarding the incorporation of an extraordinarily culturally diverse group (Gentiles) into an established culturally isolated group (the Jews).

In sum, Buster has done a tremendous job defending her thesis with meticulous and insightful scholarship. One observation she makes on page 220 demonstrates the remarkable breadth of perspective present in her work where she unpacked the culture shaping influence that scribal alterations of Psalm 105 had on the community in distinguishing Israel from the nations. This type of insight is present on myriad pages of Remembering the Story of Israel and displays the cruciality of Buster’s work for any Ph.D. student or established scholar interested in collective memory and ancient historical summaries. Buster’s work is very technical and a thorough understanding of memory studies and summary studies will be helpful for grasping the concepts the author sets forth. However, the student should not be deterred from remembering the Story of Israel for that reason and will benefit greatly from the contributions made.