Blue Cord

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]

This was generally a slow year for me in terms of books at the SBL, owing to the fact that I am currently somewhat underemployed. I did manage to pick up some books, so I thought I would list them here.

• Kittredge, Cynthia Briggs. Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John. Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars Study Series. Harrisburg, Penn.: Morehouse Publishing, 2007.

This is the latest book in the Conversations with Scripture series. My book on the legal material in the Pentateuch was released in this series last year. I got this one for free because I am on the editorial board for the series. Cynthia’s book is being sent to all the Anglican bishops who will be attending Lambeth, since the Gospel of John is going to be the subject of their Bible study for the conference. If you are looking for books to use in parish Bible studies, I would urge you to consider this series. The books that are out so far are Revelation, The Law, Parables, and The Gospel of John.

• Van der Toorn, Karel. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.

This book was the subject of one of the Hebrew Bible and Cognate Literature sections this year. I tried to go to the session, but it was overflowing with people. I will have to settle for reading the book.

• Watts, James W., ed. Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. SBL Symposium Series. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.

This book has been out a while, but I haven’t picked it up until now. I find the idea of Persia commissioning the Torah to be unlikely, but I thought I would give it a shot. Apparently many of the contributors to this book also find it unlikely, but the SBL Symposium Series always goes a good job of exploring issues such as this.

• Nihan, Christophe. From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe 25. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007.

This is the book I am most looking forward to reading. As I mentioned in a previous post, I heard Nihan speak at one of the Pentateuch sections. The book is an expanded form of the author’s dissertation at University of Lausanne, Switzerland, under Thomas Romer. It was a bit more than I had planned to spend, but I did get an author’s discount since my own dissertation was published in this series. As it turns out, the author’s discount at Mohr Siebeck is larger than the standard convention discount for their books, so that made it a little more affordable. It still cost more than a paperback book has a right to cost. Nihan apparently draws on Israel Knohl’s ideas, which have been so helpful in my own work.

• Roncace, Mark, and Patrick Gray. Teaching the Bible through Popular Culture and the Arts. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.

This is the second book on which Roncace and Gray have collaborated. Their first, Teaching the Bible: Practical Strategies for Classroom Instruction, was very helpful. Both books offer practical classroom exercises for teaching classes in the Bible. As the title suggests, this volume contains activities that draw on television, movies, music, poetry, and literature as a way to help students understand elements of the biblical text.

In addition to the bibliobloggers lunch, I also attended a couple of sections. The first was the Pentateuch section.  I heard the tail end of Konrad Schmid’s paper “The Emergence and disappearance of the Separation between Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic History,” all of Thomas Romer’s paper “How Many Books (teuchs): Pentateuch, Hexateuch, Deuteronomistic History, or Enneateuch,” and all of Erhard Blum’s “How to Determine the Scope of Literary Works in Genesis to Kings.” Blum was not present, so his paper was read by David Carr.  These guys always deliver very dense papers, so I am hoping to be able to get copies of the papers to read and digest at length.

It was then off to a meeting with Jim, who graciously agreed to chat with me about starting a publishing company.   This was followed by a quick stop at the first biblical law section, where I heard Henning Graf Reventlow’s paper “Canaanite Cultic Law and Its Yahwistic Repainting in Leviticus 1-16, Shown by a Close Reading of the Chapter Leviticus 1.”  I was an interesting paper which tried to remove Israelite elements in Leviticus 1 in order to recover a Canaanite layer.  He argues that the basis of biblical cultic law was pre-Yahwistic.  I wasn’t convinced.

The evening consisted of the Yale reception from 7:00-8:30 and the Johns Hopkins reception from 9:00-11:00.  Both were enjoyable, but I couldn’t socialize the way I wanted to due to my laryngitis.

Today wasn’t the most exciting day I have ever had at the SBL.

I started off the day by listening to one paper at in the Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah section.  It was Mark Leuchter’s paper, “The Prophets and the Levites in Josiah’s Covenant Ceremony.” I wanted to hear it because of my interest in the history of the priesthood.  It was a good paper, although not exactly on the topic I was hoping.

I then headed over to the book fair.  The only book that really caught my attention was Christophe Nihan’s From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus. I saw it when looking for my own book at the Mohr Siebeck exibit.  Apparently they only bring books for two years, and because my was published in 2005, they didn’t bring it this year. I would love to get Nihan’s book, but even with the convention discount it is $112.

After lunch with a friend from Abingdon, I tried to go to the Hebrew Literature and Cognate Literature section on “Karl van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.” It was packed to overflowing, so I didn’t bother trying to push my way in. Fortunately, both this section and the 4:00 one were in my hotel, so I just came back up to my room for a while.

At 4:00 I went to the first of four Pentateuch sections.  This was a good section.  My favorite paper was entitled “Of Animals and Nations: The Reception of Dietary Laws in P, D, and H.” It wasn’t until the Q&A session after his paper that I realized it was Christophe Nihan, who wrote to book I mentioned above.  Another good paper was Mark K. George’s paper, “Israel’s Tabernacle as Modification of Priestly Creation.” He argued that the construction of the tabernacle is the completion of the creation begun in Genesis 1.  In contrast to the gods who build the temple at the end of creation in Mesopotamian myths, in P the tabernacle building in Exodus 25-31 and 35-40 are the conclusion to creation.  This could dovetail nicely with my discussion of the covenant at Sinai and what Moses received there according to P.

I finished the evening with a nice dinner with two good friends from seminary, one from the largest US state and the other from the second largest.