Jewish Quarterly Review

This work is more important than its title suggests. A large number of royal titles are used in the Bible, and if these were understood properly we would have a better grasp of the structure of the ancient bureaucracy as well as the wide variety of texts in which these terms are used. In addition, to the extent that the use of titles in Israel or Judah closely mirrors that of their neighbors, we might have an important window into specific points of foreign influence on Israel and Judah.

This type of study, a revised doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Jeffrey Tigay, is unfortunately out of fashion. Few biblical scholars have the detailed knowledge of Northwest Semitic languages, Akkadian, and Egyptian, and the archaeology of the ancient Near East, not to mention the critical ability to deal with biblical texts in a sophisticated way; all these tools, which Fox uses well, are needed to tackle this topic. In addition, especially over the last decade, even mainstream biblical scholarship has become increasingly skeptical about using the Bible at all as evidence for the period that it purports to narrate. Fox is certainly aware of this issue; she notes that she cannot be totally objective, but nevertheless she holds fast to "the desire to resurrect the voices of distant ancestors so that a bridge spanning from the past to the present can be built" (p. ix).

After a brief introduction and a chapter on methodology, the bulk of the work explicates nineteen titles such as and . This explication is followed by a chapter dealing with inscriptional evidence and by conclusions which summarize the likely meaning of each title, and then Fox deals more broadly with the issue of foreign influence. Useful appendices with extensive charts and tables, a long bibliography, and a set of comprehensive indices close the book. The type of indexing found is rare in many contemporary publications and makes the volume especially useful for anyone who needs to look up a particular title or wants to see the interpretation of a particular text.

Many of Fox's conclusions are uncontroversial. The more debatable issues concern understanding literally, rather than referring to a type of royal official who needs not be related to the king (pp. 43–53), and the suggestion that is a technical term, referring to a type of [End Page 695] official (pp. 72–80). I do not find the evidence she adduces fully convincing and feel that she would have done better had she been tentative in her conclusions, as she is, for example concerning the , which she notes is "most probably . . . court herald" (p. 120). Many will also question her suggestion that lists in the Deuteronomistic history are much earlier than the larger document where they are currently found (pp. 16–18), or that we may speak of "state formation" in the eleventh century with Saul as a historical king (p. 4). Yet, even in places where I find myself disagreeing, I am very appreciative of the detailed evidence adduced by Fox.

Many will see her conclusion that the royal administrative system does not reflect a clear borrowing from the outside to be the most important general claim of this book (see esp. pp. 276–80). This claim builds upon the studies of individual words, especially the observation that of all the titles, only is a "clearly foreign title" (p. 190). This particular observation is supported by a discussion of Egyptian hieratic numerals in Hebrew inscriptions, where she suggests that their shape and use likely reflect a borrowing from Canaanite tradition, rather than direct borrowing from Egypt (pp. 250–68). This is an important conclusion, since the evidence of these numerals is often used as a crucial indication of broader Egyptian influence on Israel. As a whole, Fox's observations concerning the lack of outside influence are very well...