Dean Andrew Nicholas Livres

In the middle of the nineteenth century American clipper ships astounded the maritime world with their amazingly swift passages to and from faraway seaports, bringing back exotic and valuable cargoes of tea, spices, and silk. Of all those clippers, only one the Maine-built snow squall, whose bow section was rescued from the remote Falkland Islands by the Snow Squall Project in the 1980s.This book begins (and ends) with an unusual volunteer archaeological expedition in the aftermath of the Falkland War but quickly becomes a maritime detective story, as snow squall's story is pieced together further with information gleaned from shipping lists, newspaper accounts, disaster books, and diaries. Her world turns out to be a fascinating one, from the laying of her keel at the Butler yard in South Portland in 1851; to her captain's problems with storms, unruly crews, and attempted piracy; her owner's attempts to keep her profitable when news of her markets thousands of miles away was months old, and her cargo wouldn't be delivered until months later; and her last captain's heroic efforts to repair his badly damaged ship after going aground near Cape Horn in 1864.

Dean Nicholas' creative and original work is a fine interdisciplinary effort, and also a good illustration of the interplay between synchronic and diachronic methods in biblical studies. Instead of treating biblical tricksters as a purely literary phenomenon, Nicholas asks two probing questions: what does cross-cultural study reveal about the social function of the trickster? And what cultural and historical circumstances would induce the Israelites to valorize trickster-heroes? Nicholas has conducted a thorough survey of anthropological literature on tricksters, which he applies to the biblical narratives under consideration. He develops a model derived from Victor Turner's work on the rite de passage, correlating its tripartite pattern with the mythic function of the trickster. He then examines several biblical narratives to determine whether or not they conform to the pattern. Careful analysis shows that Pentateuchal narratives do, while deuteronomistic narratives do not. This striking conclusion is complemented by Nicholas's discernment of previously unrecognized trickster motifs in the opening chapters of the book of Exodus. In accounting for the pervasiveness of the Turnerian trickster in Pentateuchal narrative, Nicholas rejects the view of the pattern as a vestige of a bygone era or a manifestation of primitive mentality. Instead, he argues that the redaction of the Pentateuch itself must be associated with a situation in which Israel found itself marginalized, and thus identified with the trickster. During the Exile and in the post-exilic period, as the biblical canon was in formation, the trickster motif was an apt expression of Israel's self-definition. According to Nicholas, the cognitive dissonance induced by grand prophetic promises contrasted with pathetic reality induced the people to see themselves as tricksters, caught 'betwixt and between', always on the threshold of better things that were just out of reach. His arguments merit the attention of all serious students of biblical literature. (Elaine Ravich, Professor of Jewish Studies and Provost, Jewish Theological Seminary; Professor of Bible, Union Theological Seminary)