An Exemplary Sinner and Penitent: A Study of Ahab’s Conversion Patterns in the Greek and Hebrew Bibles

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic and approach are valuable contributions to scholarship. The article's weakness is that the claim for a shift in attitudes towards "conversion" might be illustrated by the example of Ahab but, to hold water, requires a broader look at how questions of interiority vs. external actions are handled in the MT vs. later Hellenistic writings/thinking in general. Does the MT in general, in fact, not require an internal change in emotions/attitudes for outward actions to be efficacious? Or does the MT simply assume that outward expressions signify internal feelings (remorse, determination to change...)? Do the Hellenistic writings actually reflect a different perspective on these matters or do they simply, as is often the case in translation and interpretation, expand upon and make explicit what was implicit in the foundational text? As currently formulated, the article is rather brief and focused on this one example. But to make the case, a slightly wider treatment of how each literature handles these matters is required. 

 

A minor matter concerns the use of the term "conversion" to describe the process Ahab undergoes, and on this, the citation of an online English dictionary is insufficient and unhelpful. In normative English usage, conversion refers specifically to the switch from one religion to another. I am not certain of the extent to which "conversion" appears in the literature on the case of Ahab and others, making it the appropriate terms here. One way or the other, absent some different and better term to describe this process, use of the word conversion requires a fuller explanation. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The writing is generally good, though careful proofreading and some corrections of usage would be helpful. The word "plus" to refer to ideas added in the Greek sources is unidiomatic. There are no major issues here, but there is work to be done.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. I fully agree and have revised the article accordingly (in red). I have added a section where I explain the choice of manuscripts. I have also explained the term conversion. 

However, I insist on the term "plus", since this is a technical term used in the textual criticism.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting article. I have some comments concerning contextualization, which might strengthen the research contributions.

1. The presentation of the concept of “conversion” in the article's introduction is too superficial. Also, in the conclusion, the author refers to D. Scialabha’s approach to conversion. D.S.’s approach ought to be added to the presentation of the concept of conversion already in the introduction.

I understand that the author relates to an established discourse on the concept of conversion in antiquity, but I’m unsure whether it works for the MT material. Interestingly, the entries on “conversion” in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, the MT is not taken into consideration: Kling, David W., Pregill, Michael E., Sison, Antonio D., Spittler, Janet E., Sterling, Greg, Twomey, Jay, Wingate, Andrew, and Zohar, Zvi. "Conversion". Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception Online, edited by Brennan Breed, Constance M. Furey, Peter Gemeinhardt, Joel Marcus LeMon, Thomas Chr. Römer, Jens Schröter, Yvonne Sherwood, and Barry Dov Walfish. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1515/ebr.conversion. Accessed 2025-07-28. So, it seems the author should flesh out more about what he or she means by conversion. The concept becomes even more intriguing when it is distinguished between “negative” and “positive” conversion, in which more nuances should be added also to the “negative” one.

2. When talking about the literary presentation of King Ahab in MT and Old Greek, this should also be contextualized more by showing how this is embedded in a stereotypical presentation of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History. The storytelling in 1–2 Kings is part stereotype and partly schematized. The kings are presented as either good or bad, like “King X did what was evil (or good) in the eyes of Yahweh” or “King X turned away from Yahweh and walked after other gods.” All the kings from Israel are bad; Judah's picture is more mixed, in which Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:3 6) and Josiah (2 Kgs 22–23) appear to be particularly good. At the risk of interpreting the monarchs as typical, generalized, and generic, when attention is also paid to the individuality of their presentation, it shows that good kings might fail. At the same time, bad ones have some good qualities too. Nelson 1987: 8 explicates 1–2 Kings as “a complicated network of overlapping patterns,” highlighting chronological synchronizations of reigns, parataxis, analogy, prophecy and fulfillment, editorial perspectives on each king, apostasy, and reform. Cohn (2010) adds type-scenes, verbal repetitions and refrains, and thematic links to this list.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I am not qualified to evaluate the quality of English Language.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. I fully agree and I have revised the article accordingly (in red). I have explained the term conversion following your suggestions.

As to the second point, I fully agree with the comments. In fact bout this topic has been written quite a lot. So, I have added some bibliographical references and approached the topic from a historical critical view point. Indeed several scholars argued that v. 27 is coming from a different hand as the verses mentioned by the second reviewer. So I did not want to enter into this comparison since it could create many problems as to the redactional analysis and would require much longer discussion (maybe even a monograph).

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attached file (Reviewer Report.pdf).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. I fully agree and so I have revised the article accordingly. I have discussed the term conversion and the choice of the manuscripts. 

The differences among the B, Ant., and A are most visible in the last part of the verse. Therefore I prefer to keep all three texts and not reduce to one.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revisions to the original version greatly improve the clarity of the article, yielding a well conceived and articulated statement on an important topic. The issues I saw in the first version have all been more than satisfactorily resolved. This is well researched, well written, and convincing in its setting out of an understanding of the development of thinking about Ahab between the original Masoretic text and the later Greek translations.