Blue Cord

We concluded our trip today. After 2,800 miles through sixteen states, we arrived back in northeast Massachusetts this evening.

I haven’t blogged on the trip since day 5 when we were in Chattanooga, so here is a brief overview of the last five days.

Wednesday we headed up to Jonesborough, TN, where my mother and step-father live. We stayed with them until Saturday. The highlight was Friday evening, when my parents threw a surprise party for my son, who had turned ten back on April 13. Since he was not with me then, it was nice to be able to celebrate his birthday.

On Saturday we drove as far as Washington, DC, where we stayed with a friend of mine from seminary. Today, we got up bright and early and got on the road for the final day of travel. As I was driving trough Philadelphia, it occurred to me that it would be nice for the kids to have a chance to stretch their legs. So, I got off the interstate long enough for us to stop by the Liberty Bell. The kids had never seen it before, and the last time I saw it it was in a different building. The new pavilion, built in 2003, is about three times as large and has a nice exhibit about the history of the bell.

For those who don’t recall, the bell has an inscription around its top. The first line reads, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The quote is taken from Leviticus 25:10, which refers to the Jubilee Year that Israel was to observe every fifty years. It is thought that one of the reasons this inscription was chosen was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the chartering of Philadelphia. Of course, the liberty that is intended by Leviticus 25:10 is not political liberty. Instead, it is freedom from slavery and debt. Every fifty years, slaves were to be allowed to go free and land was to be returned to its original owner. Given that slavery was accepted in the colonial period and the Founding Fathers believed strongly in private property, it is somewhat ironic that they used this verse.

Most people have heard of the Phelps cult, a group that has become notorious for picketing the funerals of gay men, funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and pretty much any other event which they can somehow connect (no matter how weakly) to homosexuality. Today they picketed the University of Wisconsin, where three students were killed in a fire. The announcement on their website said

Thank God for three more dead students! God sent the Fires! These brats are the fruit of america [sic], and God is punishing you by cutting them off. You were blessed by God with those children, and you raised them to be bastards and whores. You taught them that God is a liar, that it is okay to be gay and He loves you anyway. You failed to teach them about the Wrath of God.

If you don’t know them, you can either (a) consider yourself lucky, or (b) check them out on their website at www.godhatesfags.com. I am not going to link to their website, lest the link increase their rating on search engines.

I first encountered the Phelps group when they were trolling on a Baptist discussion list back in 1994. When they picketed the Episcopal convention in Philadelphia a few years later, I managed to sneak through the police line that had been set up to protect them. While they were holding up their reprehensible signs, I held up mine that said, “God Loves Gays.” Unfortunately, the picture at the right is the only shot available of the event. It was taken back when digital cameras took pictures at 64 kilopixels.

A friend of my sent me a link to a site that is taking a different approach. It is similar to something I do whenever I teach Leviticus, but they have taken it to a new level. They are staging counter-protests with signs that announce God’s judgment against that other abomination: shellfish. After all, we can’t afford to pick and choose the verses we apply, and a much larger percentage of Americans eat shrimp than engage in homosexual activities (such as nude shuffleboard). These counter-protesters hold up signs that say “Stop the Shrimp-Eater’s Agenda” and “Love the Shrimper — Hate the Shrimp”. Check out their site at www.godhatesshrimp.com.

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature contains a review of Calum Carmichael’s book Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives. I had not heard of this book, but the blurb in the RBL (presumably taken from the publisher’s description) states:

The origin of law in the Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Until recently, the historico-critical methodologies [sic] of the academy have yielded unsatisfactory conclusions concerning the source of these laws which are woven through biblical narratives. In this original and provocative study, Calum Carmichael — a leading scholar of biblical law and rhetoric — suggests that Hebrew law was inspired by the study of the narratives in Genesis through 2 Kings. Discussing particular laws found in the book of Leviticus — addressing issues such as the Day of Atonement, consumption of meat that still has blood, the Jubilee year, sexual and bodily contamination, and the treatment of slaves — Carmichael links each to a narrative. He contends that biblical laws did not emerge from social imperatives in ancient Israel, but instead from the careful, retrospective study of the nation’s history and identity.

While I would not say that historical-critical methods (not “methodologies”!) have yielded unsatisfactory results, I am always open to a new theory. But just on the basis of this blurb, the theory sounds highly implausible. I didn’t have time to read Reinhard Achenbach’s entire review (which is in German), but the concluding paragraph is rather scathing. He states in one place that “in the entire book, there is not one philological or literary-historical proof to convince one of the position put forth.” Not exactly high praise.

Although I am usually glad to see a new book on Leviticus come out, I think I will have to pass on this one.

I am almost finished with chapter two of From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch. In this chapter, Nihan moves from source criticism to a discussion of the structure of Leviticus. He critiques prior ideas about its outline. Among these are several theories that see Leviticus structured in a ring centering on Leviticus 16, such as that proposed by Mary Douglas in Leviticus as Literature. Personally, I have never found such ring theories to be particularly convincing for Leviticus, as I have trouble imagining the authors and redactors working this way, especially given the amount of complexity some scholars have seen in the ring structure.

Nihan does not like the ring structure either. Instead, he proposes a threefold division into chapters 1-10, 11-16, and 17-27. This is nothing particularly new. What is new, however, is his discussion of the narrative logic that lies behind this division.

Nihan points out that Exodus ends with an unresolved issue: the gap between God and the people of Israel. As Nihan puts it,

After the completion of Israel’s sanctuary . . . Moses is not allowed inside the tent specifically because the latter is filled with the divine presence . . . . In other words, although he is present among his people as promised in 25:8 and 29:45, Yahweh cannot be approached, even by Moses, and the gap between God and man remains insuperable. [emphasis original]¹

Leviticus begins with this gap in place, but God begins to speak to Moses from within the tabernacle for the first time. Leviticus 1-7 give the rules for approaching God with sacrifices, and this culminates in Moses and Aaron being admitted to the tabernacle in Leviticus 8-9.

A similar problem is raised by Leviticus 10, namely the unauthorized sacrifice of Nadab and Abihu. Their offerings pollute the tabernacle, both because they offer unholy fire and because their corpses are found within the confines of the sacred space. Leviticus 11-16 provides the solution for this. It contains laws that are intended to prevent the contamination of the tabernacle (and later the temple), and it ends with the ritual that cleanses the temple from any defilement that may occur.

Finally, Nihan points to an interesting theological move that Leviticus makes. In Exodus, God appears on Mt. Sinai at times of God’s choosing, and then only Moses may approach (at least in P). With Leviticus 16, however, this changes:

[F]inally, Aaron is permitted inside the inner–sanctum (16:13ff.), where Yahweh appears to him inside the cloud (cf.16:2b?, ?), thus recalling the previous encounter between God and Moses on the mountain in Ex 24:15-18. — except that Aaron has now replaced Moses in the role of the communities mediator, and that this encounter is no longer unique but part of a yearly ritual (cf.16:29, 34a). [emphasis original]²

This is a remarkable reading of Leviticus, and it casts a wonderful light on P’s theology concerning the role of priests within the community of Israel.

1. Nihan, Priestly Torah, 90. [back]
2. Nihan, Priestly Torah, 105. [back]

I am currently reading Christophe Nihan’s From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch. This book was my big purchase at the SBL, and the more I read of the book the more I am glad I bought it. The book is very well written, clearly organized, and beautifully argued. The topic of the book is the composition of Leviticus (I can hear the collective yawn from the majority of my readers), but in dealing with this subject Nihan has to deal with broader issues in source criticism.

I am currently in the second chapter, where Nihan is dealing with the question of the extent of the Priestly Document.¹ Working backwards through Deuteronomy and Numbers, he finds no suitable ending to P in those texts. He then skips Leviticus and moves to Exodus. A large section of this chapter is devoted to arguing that Exodus 25-31 as a whole are a part of the original P document instead of being from several redactional hands (with a few exceptions). Within this section, however, he finds no suitable ending for P. This means the ending must be in Leviticus, as he will no doubt argue in subsequent chapters.

One of the issues he addresses is whether Exodus 35-40 were a part of the P document or are later additions. Israel Knohl has argued that PT sees the tabernacle as being built by Moses while HS views it as the work of all the people.² Nihan disagrees, and points to Pola’s argument that P frequently contains “execution formulas” in which commands from God are paired with passages in which the command is carried out.³ He argues that it would be odd to find the command to build the tabernacle without also having a report of its completion.

I am not completely convinced either way, although I still lean towards Exodus 35-40 coming from HS. I can easily see some short expression of completion in PT that has been expanded into a larger section by HS. I think the theological differences between 25-31 and 35-40 are stronger arguments than an expected execution formula.

This whole topic feeds into a post I made prior to the SBL about the covenant at Sinai in the Priestly Document. If the ending of P is found in the building of the tabernacle or in the consecration of the priests in Leviticus 8-9 (as Nihan argues), then the setting up of the cultus would be the one of the main goals of P. It would fit nicely with Mark George’s idea that the completion of the tabernacle is the completion of creation.⁴ This ending would also explain why P is focused more on the Abrahamic covenant than one at Sinai as Steve Cook has argued.⁵

1. Nihan views P as a document, and not as a redaction the way Frank Moore Cross and others have seen it. [back]
2. Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 64–66. [back]
3. T. Pola, Die ursprünglich Priesterschrift, WMANT 70 (Neukirchen–Vluyn, 1995), 116ff. [back]
4. Mark K. George, “Israel’s Tabernacle as Modification of Priestly Creation,” paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, 2007 (San Diego). [back]
5. Stephen L. Cook, “Holiness Versus Reverence: Two Priestly Theologies; Two Priestly Schools” (forthcoming). [back]