Many homes in the United States have Bibles called The Holy Bible or The Holy Scriptures. How the Bible Became Holy tells the story of how the Bible came to be regarded as authoritative. In this accessible and capacious survey, Satlow rejects the notion that what would later become the Bible's centerpiece (in general terms, some forerunner of the Pentateuch or Torah) generally gained religious authority by the sixth century BCE. Instead, it is his premise that “Jews and Christians gave to the texts that constitute our Bible only very limited and specific kinds of authority until well into the third century CE and beyond” (3). Satlow distinguishes three types of what he calls “textual authority”: “normative authority” for dictating norms; “literary authority,” namely the scribal practice of using earlier texts; and what he labels “oracular authority,” namely the capacity to deliver messages.

The first part of the book surveys developments from 922 to 350 BCE. In this period, the Bible's authority was mostly literary or scribal. The story begins with the northern kingdom of Israel as the political and cultural superior polity relative to Judah. In the wake of the fall of Israel, many of its cognoscenti came to Judah, thus offering expertise in a variety of areas, including textual production. At that point, texts were not yet “sacred.” Scribal copying was the center of textual production, and in this context, new works were modeled on older ones. It is in this general sense that “literary authority” was the dominant mode of authority down through the fourth century.

The second part of the book addresses the situation from about 350 to 100 BCE. In this period the Bible became a foundational literary or cultural text, like Homer's works. Just as the first part of the book uses the Bible to tell the story of textual authority, this part surveys many of the Jewish works created in this period, notably Ben Sira, 1 Enoch, and the Aramaic Testament of Levi, as well as their responses to Hellenistic thought. The cultural text that the Bible was in the process of becoming was perceived in some circles as a collection of “holy books” (1 Maccabees 12:9). The claim of David Carr (Writing in the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 269) that the Hasmoneans developed Hebrew Scriptures as “a counterpoint” to what he calls “Greek textuality” in order to cultivate “a pro-Torah, anti-Hellenistic image,” would have fit nicely into Satlow's story. Pharisees and Sadducees in this period used the Bible as a normative source in order to ground their claims. For Satlow, the use of the Bible in these circles does not mean it possessed authority more broadly, and he also questions whether the public reading of Torah texts actually took place. Still it might be thought that even as the Bible's use by these groups served to lend it greater authority, the fact that it represented a common basis of debate for both groups, not to mention to the broader audience that they vied to persuade, is suggestive of the text's authority for all involved.

The third part looks at Christianity and the early rabbis from the turn of the era to about 200 CE. In this period, the synagogue served to broaden knowledge of the Bible (prior to this period, Satlow believes that knowledge of Scripture was generally very meager). This trend began with the inclusion of the reading of scriptural passages in the Jerusalem temple, considered a “somewhat radical move to tie the otherwise silent cult to the verbal recitation of written texts” (196). With the establishment of synagogues, scriptural reading became a regular practice, and Jews began to receive greater exposure to Scripture. Jesus had attained a knowledge of Scripture that was “ad hoc, aural, and disjointed” (201). (In reading this discussion, I wondered how substantial this knowledge was, and how one would know.) Following the approach of the other parts of this book, this section tells the Christian story through a survey of several New Testament works and early Christian authors, such as Justin Martyr, Marcion, and Irenaeus. There is also a discussion of Josephus as well as a rather thin summary of the early rabbinic story. The early church witnessed a “fierce battle” over the authority of the Jewish Scriptures as to whether they were oracular or normative or both. The rabbis forged a view that both elevated written Scripture and relativized its authority through the notion of the Oral Law. The written scriptural text became (in a rather off-key expression) “like a snow globe to be admired and cherished” (259).

This survey does not do justice to the book, but I hope it is indicative of its great breadth. The style of the book is very accessible. The story, essentially one of elites, power, and authority, is told clearly, and at many points it is thoughtful. Most centrally, I found the typology of textual authority helpful. I will focus my remaining remarks on the book's first part, concerning the biblical period, as this is my field.

Four general observations are in order. First, the book relates the story of the Bible's textual activity and authority within Israel's larger history, as conveyed by the biblical books themselves. This procedure is problematic, yet inevitable at least to some degree given the meagerness of extra-biblical sources for ancient Israel. At a minimum, the procedure is worthy of greater recognition and theoretical reflection than what the introduction provides. Second, given the book's title, I missed a theoretical discussion of the nature of both holiness and authority and their interrelations, and how both impinged in different ways and times on the emergence of various books that came to comprise the Bible. Third, Satlow rightly notes the trauma of the sixth-century destruction of Jerusalem and the deportations. In understanding what would become the biblical canon, it is important to note that many of its works were charged by the trauma of these experiences and were arguably produced or expanded in their wake; in the postexilic context they were also read and (re)written in relation to one another across their diverse parts. It may be that the bulk of what would become the Hebrew Bible was born out of the traumatic experience of the sixth century. This point is not brought out adequately.

Fourth and more fundamentally, Satlow's emphasis on “literary authority” for the biblical period is important, but he also shows how this period witnessed signs of other forms of textual authority. For example, readers learn: “Narrative, language, and the cult were all strategies that helped unite the diverse Israelite population into a single entity” (25). Satlow does not see this activity as only an elite one; it is characterized also as “bottom-up.” Thus the story that Satlow tells for this period indicates that the texts in question held some social or political force that went beyond “literary authority.” Satlow also hints in this direction when he speaks of one of Isaiah's oracles adding “weight to his other, more cryptic oracles” (36); clearly such “weight” is not a matter only of scribal models. Satlow also refers to the new “religious authority” of a written scroll in the time of Josiah (44), such as Deuteronomy, which “was to be read as a divine oracle” (47). He adds: “Writing grew to carry numinous quality” (49). The role of teaching is mentioned in association with Ezra (69), who is said to claim the text's normative authority (84). Scribal activity does lie at the center of textual production in this period.

It is thanks to these sorts of observations that readers can see the complicated, multilayered story about textual authority in this period, in particular how normative and oracular authority began to emerge in different ways and times in relation to literary authority. Satlow's discussion might have related these observations more explicitly to his categories of textual authority. A central question revolves around the texts' emergent signs of normative authority in relation to the larger context of literary authority as well as the desire on the part of scribal (often priestly) circles to expand the text's normative and oracular authority beyond such elites. (In passing, I would note that “biblical” texts known orally both inside and outside such elites may be an important aspect of the issue that is simply too difficult to gauge without more evidence.) Questions of normativity were indeed issues for the scribal-priestly circles that transmitted biblical law and other works in this period, as parsed by Michael Fishbane's 1985 book, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, a rather seminal work surprisingly missing from Satlow's discussion. Thus the idea of what “literary authority” entailed included other forms of textual authority already within this initial period. On this score, engagement with Carr's Writing on the Tablet of the Heart, not to mention a flurry of other publications on scribalism in this period, would have aided the discussion. Detecting the signs of these various forms of textual authority as well as working out their relations in a more explicit manner remains a desideratum. Satlow's narrative marks a good start in this direction.

The story that Satlow tells is necessarily simplified, with nuances, some not insignificant, at times lost in the discussions of religion and history. The footnotes provide some further backstory (they are, however, fairly thin for the scope of what the book addresses). Furthermore, some generalizations call for more documentation. At the same time, the book also offers some rather nice touches, for example, the notion that Hezekiah naming his son Manasseh served to engender the allegiance of the northerners coming into Judah (32).

Despite the reservations that I have expressed, I admire the book's vast scope and easy style. No one scholar is a specialist in all the areas addressed in this book. It is perhaps inevitable that specialists may object to the presentation of their own areas covered by the book. By the same token, all readers, specialists and nonspecialists alike, may benefit from this book. Its theoretical importance lies in the three models of textual authority, which offer a useful typology for thinking about the development of what would emerge as the Bible. Thanks to the great breadth of his story as well as its many intriguing details, Satlow issues a very welcome invitation to readers interested in how the Bible became authoritative.