Carol A. Newsom. <i>The Spirit Within Me: Self and Agency in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism</i>

Carol Newsom’s The Spirit Within Me is a meticulous study of biblical and extrabiblical material. In this volume, Newsom proposes that Jerusalem’s conquest in 586 BC catalyzed the later development of “self-alienation.” Self-alienation occurs when “a critical aspect of the self is strongly objectified in a manner that makes it repellent and fearful, yet undeniably and inextricably a part of one’s own self” (p. 82). This development, Newsom argues, is not disconnected from earlier Hebrew anthropology. What is unique, though, is that this departs from the earlier Israelite understanding of sin as a “functional moral failure” (p. 82), which dominates most of the literature until roughly 586 BC. Instead, it views human moral failure as resulting from an “intrinsic defect” (p. 82) that can only be treated through divine involvement. While literature written during and shortly after the fall of Jerusalem identify this intrinsic defect within the nation (i.e., Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s emphases on the heart of the people), the postexilic and Second Temple literature (such as Ps 51) progressively individualize this defect (pp. 79–80). Thus, each person has an intrinsic defect that requires divine intervention (p. 79). This shift in focus catalyzes the exploration of interior selfhood, moral agency, and portrayal of self-examination in Hebrew literature (p. 114). With this change in emphasis, the self has been granted divine insight to identify personal essential depravity and materiality (p. 159).In chapter 1, “The Self in Israelite Culture,” Newsom introduces the study and cautions readers that her conclusions are not comprehensive and cannot account for the entirety of Hebrew thought. Citing anthropologist Unni Wikan, Newsom suggests that ancient Israelite conceptions of self, moral agency, and self-representation were not monolithic. Rather, people chose from various cultural models how to portray the self, moral agency, and self-representation (p. 4). Therefore, Newsom describes one particular development in Hebrew literature that represents a shift in cultural conceptions of the self and moral agency.Newsom then highlights the somatic nature of Hebrew conceptions of self and introduces the “I-Me” relationship, in which the “Me” is the object of the “I”’s self-examination (p. 7). Newsom asserts that earlier Hebrew literature explores no “I-Me” relationship. By comparison, it features “I” as the exclusive representative of the self. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC, however, a marked rise in the expression of “I” and “Me” as distinct parts of oneself occurs (pp. 21–22). Newsom emphasizes that this change does not indicate belief in a lesser personhood or cognitive ability, only that there was no strong interest in exploring an “I-Me” relationship previously (p. 21).Each of Newsom’s subsequent chapters portray this development. Chapter 2, “Agency in Biblical Narrative,” provides a taxonomy of agency within Hebrew literature. Here, Newsom concludes that preexilic Hebrew literature presupposes each person’s full moral agency and that moral shortcomings result from external impediments to the proper functioning of one’s moral agency (p. 47).Chapter 3, “Moral Agency in Israelite Perspective,” identifies the three loci of moral failure in Hebrew literature: cognition, appetite, and volition (pp. 50–51). Newsom provides three case studies on agency within the books of Proverbs, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel to prove that identifying an impairment within the nation, primarily the heart, deviated from previous accounts of moral agency. Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel’s requirement of divine heart surgery most acutely exemplifies this new shift (pp. 79–80).Chapter 4, “Sin-Consciousness, Self-Alienation, and the Construction of Interiority,” focuses on the advent of self-alienation within Hebrew literature beginning with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deuteronomy. Newsom traces this development through other biblical and extrabiblical Hebrew texts that use heart imagery and appropriate it for personal reflection on moral agency. She concludes, “These newly developing modes of praying and thinking established templates by which persons might also experience themselves differently, attending more to differentiations between subject and self and so developing a greater sense of what we have come to call the interior life” (p. 114).In chapter 5, “Rational Agency and the Birth of the Human,” Newsom reinterprets the Gen 2–3 narrative as a non-P account written in the Persian period to explain how humans, already equipped with volition and appetite, acquired knowledge (p. 117). The Gen 2–3 account read together with subsequent non-P material (the stories of Cain and Noah) decidedly state that humans will naturally bend toward evil and require divine favor to escape it (p. 126). Newsom states that this is a strong corrective to earlier Hebrew literature’s presupposition of fully functional moral agency (p. 141).Chapter 6, “The Hodayot of the Maskil and the Subjectivity of the Masochistic Sublime,” discusses how later Second Temple texts build on a misreading of Gen 2–3 to construct an overwhelmingly negative anthropology that asserts humans were created as impaired moral agents inclined toward evil, as is indicated by human materiality (p. 148). The Hodayot, Newsom explains, teaches a sort of dual subjectivity wherein a person (the “I”) is highly aware of individual decrepit nature (the “Me”) because of an infusion of divine knowledge imparted with the reception of the divine spirit (p. 145). However, whereas Ezekiel urges for the removal of the alien matter—the heart of stone—the Hodayot identifies this perverted spirit as intrinsic to humanity (p. 165).Newsom concludes her book with a summary of previous chapters, a review of the major points of her argument, and suggestions for further work in this area.That Newsom’s volume makes a significant contribution to the study of agency in the Hebrew Bible is an understatement. Her rigorous study leads me to ask the following questions meant to prompt further research. First, is there additional proof for Newsom’s dating of texts that would reinforce her argument? Second, do other postexilic texts reflect the development that she outlines, or perhaps suggest other developments in Hebrew conceptions of self and moral agency? Third, what evidence is there of a similar shift in Samaritan or wider ANE literature? Lastly, I echo an astute question Newsom herself asked: What implications do Newsom’s argument have for understanding New Testament theology and literature?