The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode of Production by Stephen P. DunnReview by: Larry StillmanJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1984), p. 767Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601915 .

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Brief Reviews 767

of rabbinic exegesis. Not long ago, virtually all modern scholars would dismiss as fantasy the rabbinic principle that Scripture has three levels of meaning: pefat (surface meaning), dera? (homiletical meaning) and sod (mystical meaning). But Tournay, as an interpreter of the Song, shrewdly sees actual merit in such apparent fantasy (p. 1 16).

CYRUS H. GORDON

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode of Production. By STEPHEN P. DUNN. Pp. xiv + 154. London: ROUTLEDGE &

KEGAN PAUL. 1982. $9.95.

This book is one of a number of recent studies concerned with the history and development of an influential and con- troversial concept in Marxist historical science, the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) (see Anne M. Bailey and Joseph R. Llobera, The Asiatic Mode of Production [Lon- don, 1981]; Marian Sawer, Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production, [The Hague, 1977]). Marx and Engels never devoted an entire work to the delineation of this social formation. Rather, their ideas must be gathered from a variety of sources, stemming from different stages in their intellectual development. Consequently, their ideas about this precapitalist stage of development have been sub- jected to a wide variety of interpretation.

Dunn has attempted to trace the fate of the AMP as an intellectual and historical concept in the USSR, with particular reference to the study of the Ancient Near East. The help of 1. M. Diakonoff, the Leningrad Assyriologist, is acknowledged by Dunn (p. ix). Because of Diakonoff's co- operation and Dunn's discussion of Diakonoff's theoretical writings, this book recommends itself to those interested in Soviet Assyriology and oriental studies in general.

As Dunn demonstrates, the AMP disappeared in Soviet writing because of general ideological and political tendencies in the 1920s and 30s. Marx had noted that among the features characteristic of the AMP were despotism, and general social stagnation. Russia had been one of those societies which had AMP characteristics; no wonder then that the new Soviet regime was not interested in promoting this conception of its own society. To cover for the loss of the AMP as a stage in early history, the slave-mode of production was promoted as a universal stage in human society. The works of V. V. Struve and Diakonov as well as their students reflect this position (I. M. Diakonoff, ed., Ancient Mesopotamia: Socio-economic History [Moscow, 1969]).

According to Dunn, only in the 1960s was this orthodoxy challenged, in an atmosphere more conducive to debate than to dogmatic assertions. Scholars such as G. A. Melekshvili

and Iu. 1. Semenov offered pioneering critiques of the pic- ture of the ancient world offered by Struve or Diakonoff.

Despite the usefulness of Dunn's book to those concerned with the state of Soviet historical thinking, this book, as with similar studies, does not deal with the problems associated with Soviet interpretation of primary or source materials. Until we have studies combining the talents of Marxist histo- rians such as Perry Anderson (Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, [London, 1975]) with the textual researches of scholars such as Diakonoff or 1. J. Gelb in socio-economic history, coming to terms with the problematic posed by Marx's discussions will remain a futile quest.

LARRY STILLMAN

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Colour Terms in the Old Testament. By ATHALYA BRENNER.

Pp. vi + 296. (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament; Supplement Series, 21.) Sheffield: JSOT PRESS. 1982.

"So, what colour are lentils?" If it is not frivolous to say so, this question is one of the

best in Brenner's book. However artless in formulation, it at least asks for information that is available, abundant, and public; we can hope for an answer to this one.

The book poses other questions that are apparently broader and more important. What are the color terms in Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, how may they be more accurately defined and understood, and what development was there in the system of ancient Hebrew color terms? (An appendix extends the inquiry to modern Hebrew.)

The trouble is that there are no answers to these questions- none that are any better than those we have always had. There is too little evidence of the right sort. Brenner has evi- dently assembled all the biblical evidence here, yet even the reader who is used to working in the narrow confines of the Hebrew Bible may well be surprised at how little this amounts to. The commonest color term is labdn "white," occurring 24 times, with 5 occurrences of derivatives. Inspection of these shrinks the useful number, for some 18 occur in Leviticus, where the term describes a certain appearance of the skin. Doubtless the whole exiguous corpus of biblical color terms could be still further reduced by similar procedures. Thus if there is little biblical material, there is very little useful mate- rial. Though Brenner includes in the study the names for paints, dyes, cosmetics, writing materials, etc. (in many cases with little justification) it does not help swell the body of evidence in a significant way.

Brenner does discuss new methods of approach to the study of systems of color terms, drawing on modern linguistics and anthropology. But the promise implied is not realized in the

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