5* Review for ‘In a Milk and Honeyed Land’ by Marsha Randolph

September 17, 2012 RichardAbbott Leave a comment

Late yesterday evening I had some good news. I discovered an email telling me that that Marsha Randolph had uploaded a 5* review of In a Milk and Honeyed Land to Amazon as well as her own blog.

Her review title and some extracts follow:
“A great book to sit by the fireplace and read”
“This novel is both intellectually and spiritually challenging… In a nutshell this book is about change. It is the growth and development (or lack thereof) of one community particularly as it relates to one of the characters; Damariel… aids the reader in developing a better understanding of 1200 BC history thus a better appreciation of Old Testament scripture…”

Marsha’s blog article may be found at
http://marsharandolph.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/book-review-in-a-milk-and-honeyed-land-by-richard-abbott/, and the Amazon review is at
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FK2FIQN352HQ/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1466921668&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books

It will also appear on Goodreads within the next few days.

book copies, Writing

Some new places to browse ‘In a Milk and Honeyed Land’

September 12, 2012 RichardAbbott Leave a comment

The last few days have seen some more opportunities opening up for In a Milk and Honeyed Land, both online and in the real world.

First we have kindlemojo (http://www.kindlemojo.com/2012/09/12/milk-honeyed-land/) who have placed it in their ‘Historical Fiction’ collection.

Then Daunt Books (http://www.dauntbooks.co.uk/) have taken copies in their Hampstead and Belsize Park branches, which are the two nearest to where I live here in north London.

Let’s hope they both do well…

book copies, Writing

Kephrath and a matrilineal society

September 5, 2012 RichardAbbott Leave a comment

I have been asked a couple of times why I chose to make the society that lived in Kephrath and the other three towns in In a Milk and Honeyed Land a matrilineal one. As Damariel says to the Egyptian priest Senenptah while in Gedjet (Gaza) “we reckon descent through the mother”. But more than that, houses in the four towns are the property of women rather than men. It is not the same as a matriarchy, where women rule the culture, though the two may in some places have gone hand in hand. The book makes clear that the four towns were customarily ruled by a male chief, and that those who served as seers and priests did so as married couples. Both sexes play key parts in the day-to-day organisation of the towns, but nevertheless households are defined by the oldest woman there, not the oldest man.

There are a couple of answers to this, depending if one is talking about the historical basis or the narrative purpose. History first. It seems clear from numerous archaeological findings, chiefly religious amulets and the like, that women in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (about 1800-1200BC approximately in the ancient near east) were regarded with much more equality and played a much more significant role in social decisions than was the case in the Iron Age (1200BC through to Roman times). So, since I am writing about a society that was still living in a Late Bronze style, I wanted the place of women to be recognised as crucial by the townspeople themselves. In this sense, chief Mahur-Baal’s desire to turn the four towns into a male-dominated kingdom was a little ahead of his time – by about the year 1000BC similar kingdoms were in place all around the region, including ancient Israel, and judging from archaeological relics, women then occupied a much more subordinate position.

We have no specific evidence as to whether the Gibeonite towns really did have a matrilineal society, and such detailed evidence is unlikely ever to be brought to light. The accounts in the Hebrew Bible of Jacob’s trip out to Mesopotamia contain some hints that this was the practice further east, at least in some places. For example, Jacob moves into his new wife’s house to live there, rather than setting up his own household or taking her back to his own father’s home. But the details here can only be seen through the editorial choices of the later scribes who collated earlier traditions into what we now call the Bible, and the process has left us with only some of the information we would like.

From a narrative point of view, the choice presented some challenges. First and foremost, it meant making sure that I stayed true to that particular vision of the society, and avoided slipping into a “normal” perspective. There were a great many times when I found that I had written that someone went to “his” house rather than “her” house. So the choice involved a lot of self-discipline, and discovering just how entrenched some verbal habits can be.

As well as that, keeping the roles of both men and women central as regards the culture of the four towns – while also keeping their roles quite different in other ways – has always seemed to me a key ingredient of the description of the land as ‘flowing with milk and honey’. The phrase evokes a setting of lavish and unashamed femininity, and serves in the Bible as a balance to what seems to some people a very male-centric world view. To make the land flow with milk and honey, I chose to have the four towns live in a way that defines the family households in terms of women.

So the choice seemed to me to be a credible one in terms of the history of the Gibeonites, and was definitely one that fitted the vision of their society that I wanted to portray. Let me know what you think! To buy In a Milk and Honeyed Land in kindle and other ebook formats, or in soft-cover and hard-cover, check out http://www.kephrath.com/WhereToBuy.aspx.

Review, Writing

BlueInk review for ‘In a Milk and Honeyed Land’

August 20, 2012 RichardAbbott Leave a comment

Here is the complete text of the Blue Ink review I received a few days ago for In a Milk and Honeyed Land. Of course I don’t agree with the reviewer that the beginning was slower than need be, and I was a little disappointed that there was not some more recognition of the embedded poetry in the book. However, it was gratifying to get a positive review from Blue Ink, with some great little snippets for me to use in publicity material: “…the author is an authority on the subject, and it shows through the captivating descriptions… the story grabs hold of the imagination… eventually satisfies as a love story, coming-of-age tale, and historical narrative“.

All in all I was happy to get this endorsement of the book and hope to get many more positive reviews like it!

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Set 3,000 years ago in ancient Canaan, In a Milk and Honeyed Land tells the story of a young priest, Damariel, and his small village tribe, as they learn life’s lessons of love, loss, sacrifice, and growth. The story follows Damariel from boyhood to adulthood, as he is trained for and then becomes the village seer, taking him through romantic relationships and travels to nearby cities filled with the cultural diversity of the era. A narrative of everyday life as it might have been for early settlers in what is now Israel and Palestine, the story seamlessly mixes history with fiction.

Like The Red Tent, this book aims to complete a missing story in the Hebrew Bible, that of the very beginnings of Israeli settlement. With a Ph.D in Old Testament and Egyptian poetry, the author is an authority on the subject, and it shows through the captivating descriptions of the ancient rituals, songs, village life, and even a battle scene. A confusing introduction of the villagers, their professions, and their connections at the start of the book slows the plot in a way that keeps it from taking root at first. However, as Damariel grows and the characters become familiar, the story grabs hold of the imagination. Despite a sluggish beginning, In a Milk and Honeyed Land eventually satisfies as a love story, coming-of-age tale, and historical narrative.

Anyone unfamiliar with ancient Middle Eastern history should read the postscript before starting the book, as it includes a brief history of the time period and the common names for the ancient terms used in the book, which are helpful to a reader’s understanding and enjoyment of the book.

This novel is likely to appeal to those interested in historical fiction, especially Middle Eastern and Biblical history.

(Reviewed: June 2012)
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I don’t yet have a direct link to this review, but the Blue Ink home page web address is http://www.blueinkreview.com.

In a Milk and Honeyed Land may be purchased online – see http://www.kephrath.com/WhereToBuy.aspx for a list of vendors.
Or ask your own local bookshop to obtain a copy – ask by title or else ISBN number:

Paperback: 978-1-4669-2166-5
Hardcover: 978-1-4669-2167-2
e-Book: 978-1-4669-2165-8

Writing

Book review – “Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel”

August 5, 2012 RichardAbbott Leave a comment

This is a book review I placed on Amazon (uk) for Christopher Rollston’s fine book. The complete title is in fact Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age but that seemed a little too long for the post title!

The Amazon.co.uk link to this book is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Literacy-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1589831071/.

I was very happy to give this a 5* review, and here follows my comments…
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Christopher Rollston, and would happily recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of ancient near eastern writing. Anyone who has been following Rollston’s academic publications or blog articles will find few surprises, but a wide range of his ideas on iron age writing are gathered together in a convenient way. It has also provided the opportunity to give up to date (as at c.2010) descriptions of the relevant archaeological finds, many of which include line drawings of the items.

The book has two main sections, followed by a short discussion of the difficult issue of how to (and when not to) make use of pieces acquired from unknown or unidentified locations – an issue Rollston has campaigned on for some time now.

The first main part describes the collection of relevant source materials, from the eleventh century through to the sixth BCE. The geographic range is from Phoenicia through Israel to trans-Jordan. This section includes brief forays into topics which Rollston has investigated in more depth elsewhere. For example, there is a short passage outlining his disagreement with Sass concerning the date of the Phoenician royal inscriptions. Now, this highlights one of the minor weaknesses of the book. If you were interested in this matter (and it affects the reconstruction of the chronology of the ancient near east) you would not find enough in this book to satisfy you. There are plentiful references to help you find out more, but the summary in the book itself is so short that if you had not known about the issue previously, you could easily pass it by without realising its import.

Also in this first main section, there is a great deal of description, with diagrams, of the evolutionary development of particular letter shapes. This is in support of Rollston’s main contention, that Hebrew did not emerge as a distinctive written script until the ninth century. He is careful to separate this from the question of when Hebrew might have emerged as a distinct spoken language, and gives several examples of how one written script may represent several spoken languages (for example, all of the many contemporary languages which use the Latin alphabet). But about written Hebrew, his ideas are very clear. For example, he says that before the middle of the ninth century BC “there is nothing distinctive of Old Hebrew… the Old Hebrew script had not yet been developed“, and again, “Old Hebrew became a distinct national script during the ninth century… [it’s creation was]… a nationalist statement, not merely an evolutionary development.” He argues that the early written items which predate this and have been found within the borders of Israel use the Phoenician script, not Old Hebrew, but without that fact having a necessary connection to the ethnicity of the writer.

This will again come as no surprise to those who have followed his work, and Rollston is careful to point out those scholars who disagree with him, and give the main reasons for both positions. He comes over throughout the book as a fair and generous debater, though methodical and determined as regards his own views.

The second main section looks at the social position and training of the scribe, and the general level of literacy skills in the population at large. Once again his arguments will surprise no-one who has read his previous work. Writing, he holds, was the province of a skilled elite, trained in a variety of necessary talents. He is prepared to accept the existence of a wider group of people with very low levels of skill, perhaps able to read a few key words related to their job, or to roughly scrawl their name. However, he does not accept the older view that literacy was commonplace in an iron age society using an alphabetic script. Drawing on modern insights into the process of how literacy develops in childhood, as well as the ancient record itself, he argues his case persuasively. To be literate in the ancient world, whether using the newer alphabetic or the older syllabic scripts, required mastery of a range of skills, and demanded accuracy and consistency of production. This took time, and training.

This naturally flows into his high view of the office of scribe itself, which is best expressed in his own words: “the Old Hebrew epigraphic record reflects depth, sophistication, and consistency… most consistent with the presence of a mechanism for the formal, standardized education of scribal elites in ancient Israel.”

To sum up, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel is clearly written, and engaging in its range of topics and presentation. It seems to me to be highly accessible to a general audience, and readers who are not interested in the specific details of letter shapes can still readily follow the basic arguments that these support. Some readers may be disappointed that there is not more new material contained in its 171 pages, or more speculative advance into some issues relating to the production of complex and extensive literature in the first half of the first millennium BC. However, it is a very convenient and well-resourced summary of his stance on matters that interest him – and indeed me. I am very happy to have purchased it and have no hesitation in recommending it to others.

On a personal note, readers of my (fictional) work In a Milk and Honeyed Land will recognise that many of the assumptions there about the role of the scribe, and the general level of literacy, owe a great debt to Rollston’s work. I am very happy to see that he has reaffirmed and indeed strengthened his position on these matters in this book!
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book copies, Poetry, Writing

‘In a Milk and Honeyed Land’ and ancient poetry (2)

July 24, 2012 RichardAbbott Leave a comment

The last blog entry looked at a simple example of a parallel couplet:

Joe cooked the main course
Mary made the sweet

They are called parallel because matching words are placed at the same place along each line – Joe and Mary, cooked and made, and main course and sweet. This time we’ll look at some variations of this simple pattern that poets in the ancient world used to give flexibility and interest to their work.

One way was to drop the verb from the second line, and use the “extra space” gained by doing that to add some description for one or other of the remaining words. The technical term for this is “verb deletion”.

So we could have

Joe cooked the main course
Mary the special sweet

Joe cooked the main course
Skilful Mary the sweet

In both cases the logic of parallel lines means that you do not really need the verb made on the second line – the pattern of the first line makes it obvious what is going on. The use of an adjective here means that something more of a background story can be hinted at. So the second of those examples suggests that the two of them divided up the jobs because Mary was particularly adept at desserts. But if instead we said:

Joe cooked the main course
Time-pressed Mary the sweet

then the background issue is not that of skill, but of opportunity.

Perhaps the most important ancient world variation on the parallel couplet is called chiasmus, from a Greek word with the broad meaning of crossing over. To do this, we reverse the order of the second line:

Joe cooked the main course
The sweet was made by Mary

Now, instead of corresponding parts being in the same place on their lines, they swap over. Joe is at the start of the first line, Mary at the end of the second. Main course ends the first line, sweet starts the second. If you were to join the matching pieces of each half of the couplet with straight lines, then a simple parallel couplet would have these lines going vertically down the screen or page. With chiasmus, the lines form an X on the page or screen, the Greek letter chi (as in chi-asmus).

As well as giving some variation for the sake of interest, and avoiding an endless series of parallel couplets, chiasmus also gives the poet a chance to give some overall shape to the poem. It is quite common to have a couplet using chiasmus at the centre of a poem, or at some other logical place where there is a turning point of mood or action. Perhaps if we were to write the rest of the Joe and Mary poem, the first half might be all about Joe, and the second half all about Mary, with the chiasmus helping to make the changeover. In this way, the poet can also indicate more serious changes, such as from defeat to victory, sin to repentance, despair to hope, and so on. It can be a very compact and versatile way to indicate a change of situation. Sadly, many modern translations of the Hebrew Bible and other ancient poems do not keep the particular pattern of chiasmus, but change the word order back into direct parallel lines.

In a Milk and Honeyed Land includes some fragments of poetry using these variations. Both kinds can be found in the oath that Damariel swears to Nepheret shortly after they set out towards Kephrath. He starts with chiasmus:

Listen, all you gods of the nations,
in the divine assembly take note.

He then moves on to verb deletion, omitting the verb in the second half of the following couplet and lengthening the description of himself to a short phrase:

Record the words of Damariel,
the oath of the son of Yeresheth.

He completes the verse part of his promise with another chiasmus:

Nepheret’s freedom was bought for her pleasure,
and for her own delight has she been released.

Of course, these words were not supposed to be carefully crafted and designed poetry, but part of a promise he made up on the spur of the moment outside Gedjet (modern Gaza). I have assumed that the habits of speech and rhythm that he knew in his “professional” life would spill over into parts of conversation that he might consider to be formal, such as this promise.

There are actually a great many examples of chiasmus scattered through the book, as it is a literary device that I am very fond of. Some, like the examples above, are embedded in a poem or portion of direct speech, but many others can be found in the descriptive text. Still others can be found on a larger scale again. See how many examples you can find where chiasmus is used to steer and shape the plot.