18 Elsie Stern
parshiyot of about three chapters each.6 Including the haft arot for festivals
and special Sabbaths, there are eighty-three haft arot ranging in length from
about ten to forty verses.7 Th ese texts then, along with the fi ve scrolls which
are recited on festivals, compose the synagogue Bible.
When we compare the contents of this synagogue Bible to those of the
canonical Tanakh, striking diff erences emerge. First, the synagogue Bible
is much shorter than the canonical Tanakh. If, for simplicity’s sake, we
were to say that each haft arah was about a chapter long, we would fi nd that
the synagogue Bible consists of the Pentateuch and fi ve scrolls plus eighty
chapters of prophetic material, whereas the canonical Tanakh consists of
the Torah and the Five Scrolls plus 990 chapters of additional material: If
we exclude the Pentateuch and scrolls that are already a part of the lec-
tionary, the haft arot include only approximately 10 percent of the remain-
ing canonical material. If we consider only the prophetic books (Joshua –
Malachi in a canonical Tanakh), then the haft arot overlap with 20 percent
of this canonical material.
Second, the haft arot are not representative of the diversity of the pro-
phetic canon. Whereas in the canonical Bible, the former prophets con-
stitute a large part of the prophetic corpus, few texts from this extended
narrative are recited as haft arot. A person who reads the canonical Bible
“cover to cover” spends a lot of time engaging with the tribal prehistory
and political pasts of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In contrast, a Jew
whose Bible is the synagogue Bible only engages systematically with the
accounts of Israel’s past contained in the Pentateuch. Th is discrepancy has
a signifi cant impact on the portrait of Israel encountered by these two hy-
pothetical readers/hearers. Th e reader of the former prophets encounters
a tribal Israel who conquers the land of Canaan and ultimately establishes
two kingdoms there, organized around the political structures of kingship
and kingdom. He or she is immersed in extended narratives of political in-
trigue marked by international pressures and internal discord set in a theo-
logical framework and sporadically infl ected with explicitly theological
ideologies. In contrast, the recipient of the synagogue Bible only engages
comprehensively with the narratives of Israel’s preconquest, premonarchic
mythic past. Th e Israel of the synagogue Bible is a collective that emerges
as a people outside of the land of Israel and remains there for the dura-
tion of the sequential recited story. It is a people whose formal organization
is based on kinship and on obedience to human authorities (Moses, the
priests) who receive their authority from God, not by merit of their role
as kings. In contrast to the narratives contained in the former prophets,