Gina Hens-Piazza's The Supporting Cast of the Bible: Reading on Behalf of the Multitude is essentially a companion volume to the author’s commentary on 1–2 Kings, published in 2006. Hens-Piazza had wanted to say more about a few texts that feature characters that customarily go unnoticed and unexplored, and so put this 134-page volume together to do so.
Hens-Piazza begins with a discussion of literary theory and the way characters are shaped in novels. Postmodernist theories encourage readers to freely attend to “little” stories within a lager narrative, and to heed characters that might first appear to be “minor” (19). To draw attention to characters in the background, Hens-Piazza introduces the idea of dual “caste systems”: the system of the story world, which highlights certain characters ahead of others, and the system of the reader, who determines which characters are most worthy of attention. In the story world narrators create caste systems to flag stories that they think are most worthy of attention, but postmodern thinking permits readers to use different systems of assessment and thus to bring “background” elements to the foreground. But we readers also have our own caste systems that tell us which characters are more or less important. Building on the work of E.M. Forster and Adele Berlin, Hens-Piazza proposes four “categories” of minor characters: those who play “complementary roles,” those with “bit parts;” those with “cameo appearances,” and those who have an “implied presence.” In the remainder of the book, Hen-Piazza devotes one chapter, focusing on one passage in 1 or 2 Kings, to each category.
Second Kings 6:24–33 features two women, each with one son, and their tragic agreement. Faced with starvation during a time of war, they make a pact to eat their sons. After eating the son of the first woman, the second refuses to deliver her son to be consumed, so the first woman cries to the king to compel her neighbor to keep her word. These women appear only in three verses of this passage (27–29), but the passage is centered on them. The verses before and after address the power struggle between the warring kings of Israel and Aram, and the blame that the King of Israel places on the prophet Elisha. If we do not pay attention to these characters as well, we become complicit in their horrific violence and lose sight of the ways in which wars redefine basic human relationships.
Second Kings 5:1–19 has several servants in bit parts, including an anonymous Israelite slave girl who urges her master, the Syrian general Naaman, to seek out Elisha to heal him from leprosy. While the girl appears in only three verses, her character testifies to the power of faith in Yahweh. She has no standing and no possessions, but she holds the key to Naaman’s well-being. Naaman must become like her, humble and obedient, and in the end he even starts to resemble her, as his healed flesh resembles that of a young boy (the Hebrew term used for “young” here is the same adjective used to describe the servant girl). While we may be impressed by the conversion of the powerful general, perhaps it is the courage and wisdom of the girl in her “bit part” that should strike us most.
In her examination of 2 Kings 4:1–7, Hens-Piazza focuses on two characters playing “cameo roles:” the creditor of verse 1, and the neighbors of verse 3. These characters do not speak, and in fact exist only within the words of two other characters: a prophet’s widow and the prophet Elisha. The creditor behaves within the letter of Pentateuchal law, but applies that law heartlessly because the polices of the Omride dynasty, who rule during the period in which this passage is set, permit it. Thus, a study of the Pentateuchal policy serves to highlight the social failings of the Omrides. The neighbors, however, can be relied upon to act out of love, giving jars to the widow just because she and her children ask. So while the creditor, representing an oppressive state, creates a crisis, the community meets the crisis with love, giving the widow the resources she needs to survive.
In 1 Kings 9:10–14, King Solomon trades twenty “cities” (which, Hens-Piazza explains, were small villages) to King Hiram of Tyre for building materials and gold. This passage suggests that by economic measures Solomon made a shrewd deal, as Hiram expresses disappointment after inspecting the territory gained. But when we focus on the residents of the villages, unreferenced people with an “implied presence,” we discern negative results. When their villages are given over, their residents are cut off from Israel and so lose clan and family connections. This foreshadows the harsh evaluation of Solomon that becomes clearer in 1 Kings 11–12.
Hens-Piazza offers numerous valuable insights into each of the passages that she examines. Yet while it is often helpful to closely examine “minor” characters and their words and behavior, we need to be careful about over-reading people and story elements that have minimal description. It may be that Naaman’s slave girl is truly brave and faithful, but she might also just be repeating an idea that was popular among Israelites of her day. And while the residents of the cities that Solomon sells to Hiram may be Israelites who are cut off from their relatives as a result, the friendly relations between Hiram and Solomon may indicate a porous border between Israel and Tyre that allows people to move freely and pay homage to their preferred deity—an inconvenience, to be sure, but perhaps not quite the tragedy that Hens-Piazza reads into the story.
Nevertheless, this book is valuable for its high discussion of bible characters and characterization, punctuated by its sophisticated exegesis of select passages from Kings.
John W. Herbst is the scholar-in-residence of the Virginia Peninsula Baptist Association.
John Herbst
Date Of Review:
February 17, 2023
