Blue Cord

I was doing some research today on the priestly lineages, basically just looking at the evidence in the Old Testament.  My reason for doing this is because I have been working on the material pertaining to the priests in Ezekiel 40-48, where priesthood is limited to the descendants of Zadok.  I got to wondering what would have happened to all the Aaronids who were not descendants of Zadok.  What was their status after the exile?

It is interesting to note that nowhere in the Old Testament is there any indication of descendants of Aaron other than the Zadok line.  The Pentateuch gives us information about the four sons of Aaron: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, Ithamar (Exod.6:23).  Nadab and Abihu died when they offered unholy fire (Lev.10:1-2).  Eleazar’s line is traced one more generation down to Phinehas.  None of the other descendants of Eleazar are mentioned.  Ithamar is given no line.

We do get a line of Eleazar given in 1 Chronicles 6, which gives one male ancestor per generation, tracing Eleazar all the way down to Zadok (and beyond).  No lineage is given for Ithamar there, but it notes that Ahimelech was in the line of Ithamar.  This means that by the time of David [insert minimalist / maximalist debate here] the only two lines are Eleazar and Ithamar, who are represented by only one person in the period, namely Zadok and Ahimelech respectively.  Ahimelech and all his sons save one are all killed by Saul at Nob (1 Sam.22).  The remaining son, Abiathar, was one of David’s priests, but he supported Adonijah instead of Solomon and was banished to Anathoth (1 Kngs 2:26-27).  From that point on, all priests are Zadokites.

In other words, by the time we get to Ezekiel, there is no such thing as a Aaronid who was not a descendant of Zadok.  So when Ezekiel divides the priests into Zadokites and Levites, there is no one left out.  The difference is that before the exile, both Zadokites and Levites may be priests, though only Zadokites can be priests in Jerusalem, except in the reforms of Deuteronomy.  After the exile, because of the work of Ezekiel and the reformulation of the laws by HS, Zadokites are priests, while the Levites are only temple servants.

This probably means that we should read Aaron as a cipher for all Zadokite priests during the monarchic period.  Since these would have been the only priests acceptible to the group that wrote the P layer of the Pentateuch, at least in Jerusalem.  If so, it is interesting that there is not a more negative view of the Levites serving in the countryside.  Of course, the view of the Priestly layer that only Aaron’s descendants can be priests (i.e., Zadokites) sort of leaves out the Levites without having to directly mention them.  It in only in HS that we get a direct prohibition of Levites serving as priests.

Chris Heard at Higgaion has a good summary and review of a new book entitled Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and and Threatens America: An Evangelical’s Lament by Randall Balmer.  He brings out a number of good points, especially the section on how Baptist have abandoned the seperation of church and state.  This was something that bothered me greatly when I was a Baptist, since Baptists were the ones who have historically fought hardest for such seperation.

It is interesting how the Internet has changed our interaction with books.  Although I would love to read this book, I know I will never get around to it.  But I have absorbed the gist of the book by reading the blog of another scholar who actually didn’t read the book but listened to it on tape.

All of us go down to the dust; Yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. — Book of Common Prayer, Burial of the Dead (Rite II)

It is with sadness at his absence and rejoicing in his presence with the Lord that I report the death of Aiden Kavanagh, professor of liturgy in the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale Divinity School. The following is from his published obituary:

Aidan J. Kavanagh, professor emeritus of liturgics at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, died July 9 at his home in Hamden, CT. He was 77. A Benedictine monk, Kavanagh was among the first faculty hired at the Institute soon after its move to Yale from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1973. On two occasions, Kavanagh served as acting director of the Institute, and in 1989-90 he was acting dean at Yale Divinity School, the first Roman Catholic priest to lead the School.

Though a renowned liturgical scholar himself, Kavanagh was not one to leave development of liturgical forms to the academic elite or to church leaders. For Kavanagh, it was the interaction of everyday Christians with the world that gives rise to liturgies that reflect and sustain a public order of life and meaning within the chaos of human existence. His influence was critical in the United States to the appropriation of the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

On the occasion of Kavanagh’s retirement from the Institute in 1994, Kavanagh’s former student Thomas Schattauer, now a professor at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, IA, recalled the imaginary and commonplace “Mrs. Murphy” who stood at the center of the Kavanagh universe. “In the world according to Aidan,” Schattauer noted, “she (Mrs. Murphy) possesses more liturgical wisdom than any liturgical scholar or reformer and more liturgical authority than any priest or pope.” Kavanagh, said Schattauer, continually taught that “the holy things of the liturgy did not ‘drop from Heaven in a Glad BAG.’”

Kavanagh was born in Mexia, TX, on April 20, 1929, the son of Joseph and Guarrel (Mullins) Suttle. Born Joseph Michael, he later adopted the surname of his foster father, Joseph Kavanagh. He attended the University of the South in Sewanee, TN from 1947-49. He later attended St. Meinrad Seminary, a German Catholic seminary in Southern Indiana, from which he earned an A.B. degree in 1957, the year he was ordained to the priesthood. His passion at the time was moral theology — a passion that often found its way into his teaching of liturgy. However, it was Kavanagh’s vow of obedience to a Benedictine superior at St. Meinrad that set him on his life’s course, when his abbot chose to send him to the Theologische Fakultaet at Trier, in then West Germany, to study liturgy. He earned an S.T.D. degree there in 1963, graduating with highest honors. Along the way, he had also received an S.T.L. from the University of Ottawa in Canada.

Kavanagh began his academic career teaching liturgy in the school of theology at St. Meinrad’s. In 1966 was named an associate professor of liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. He rose to the rank of professor in 1971. In 1972-73 he was a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School, and in 1974 he left Notre Dame to become acting director at the Institute of Sacred Music.

His seminal work, On Liturgical Theology, has been viewed as significant for establishing what came to be called his “theology of the congregation,” illuminating the experience of people in the pews and the way they worship. In that book, he wrote that liturgy should be “festive, ordered, aesthetic, canonical, eschatological and, above all, normal.” His Elements of Rite: A Handbook of Liturgical Style, continues to be used as a primary study guide for priests and other ministers.

Kavanagh described himself in On Liturgical Theology as “a living paradox.” He wrote, “The creature of a deeply sacramental tradition who works professionally in the symbolic liturgical expression of that tradition, he tries to affirm and commend the embrace of the world which that tradition and its liturgical expression would convey to others of Christian faith met for worship. Simultaneously, however, his own monastic engagement whispers in his ear that such an embrace must be undertaken not with reluctance but with a certain wariness. He is one in whom the tension between love of God’s world and adamant critique of what we have made of it has taken on living form, reinforced by professional commitment to both sides of the tension.”

A funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m. (EST) on July 14 in the church at the Saint Meinrad Archabbey, 200 Hill Drive, St. Meinrad, IN. Preceding the Mass, and beginning at 6:30 a.m. in the Archabbey Church, will be a public visitation. Burial in the Archabbey Cemetery will follow the Mass, and a lunch for all guests and the community will then be held.

On July 13, at 7 p.m., a procession to the Archabbey Church with the Office of the Dead will take place, followed by a public visitation time in the church until 9 p.m.

Many people who are not specialists assume that there is one text of the Bible and that all we need to do is make translations. This is far from the case. We have multiple texts for the Old Testament, most of which come from quite a while after the original manuscripts.

For those who are interested — and all my students should be interested — Tyler F. Williams at Codex has just finished a series on textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Textual criticism is the process by which we compare and group manuscripts in order to decide which textual variations are the earliest. In other words, it is how we decide what the Bible said (or get as close as we can). It is a three part series and I encourage you to read it all. I especially want to draw your attention to the third entry, which discusses the actual manuscripts of the Old Testament that we have.

I am pleased to announce a new addition to the biblioblogosphere.  Stephen L. Cook from Virginia Theological Seminary has started a blog entitled Biblische Ausbildung (”Bible Training” for those of you who don’t speak German).  Steve is an excellent scholar.  We were classmates from Yale, though Steve was halfway through with his Ph.D. when I started my M.Div.  I look forward to hearing what he has to say and I encourage others to visit his site.