Blue Cord

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature contains a review of Maria Brutti’s The Development of the High Priesthood during the Pre-Hasmonean Period. I had not heard of this book. It is published by Brill, but since I am not independently wealthy I cannot afford books published by Brill, so I rarely go by their exhibit at SBL meetings. I was excited when I saw the title, however, because of my interest in the history of the priesthood. I am not as concerned with the period that this book covers (301–152 BCE), but knowing the state of the priesthood at the point would make it possible to work backwards into the periods that do interest me.

Unfortunately, the book review, written by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, does not leave me hopeful about the book’s usefulness. Here is her opening paragraph, which sums up what she has to say in the rest of the review:

This erudite and meticulously researched book, the author’s revised doctoral thesis from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, leaves the reader with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the book constitutes a wealth of information about the pre-Hasmonean high priesthood. The author is very well read, confidently citing Anglo-Saxon, German, French, and Italian research, and she is fully in command of the primary Greek sources. On the other hand, the book is somewhat unsatisfactory. After reading the book, I have undoubtedly become more knowledgeable about the state of research in the field of the pre-Hasmonean high priests, but I do not know very much more about the high priests. Brutti does not pursue a specific thesis, nor does she advance a particular theory pertaining to the role of the Jerusalem high priests during the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid periods. Rather, the book is descriptive, as it outlines what we can or, more often, cannot know about the tasks and roles of the high priesthood during these time periods. Caution is a virtue, but this book is overly cautious, leaving the reader ever so slightly disappointed. [emphasis mine]

While I appreciate a good review of the literature and a survey of the data as much as the next scholar, those are only the first two steps in scholarship. Analysis is only the beginning. At some point we have to do a synthesis. It sounds like Brutti never gets around to that step. The italicized sentence in the paragraph above is particularly damning. When we read a book, we ultimately want to find out about the topic at hand, not just about the state of research on the subject.

I don’t think this book would be on my “to buy” list for the SBL this year even if I could afford it.

The SBL just announced a new book that I will have to pick up at the annual meeting this fall. It is entitled The Chronicler’s Genealogies: Towards an Understanding of 1 Chronicles 1–9. For most people, the endless lists of who begat whom and who forgot to begat are rather boring, but I love them. Although beset with problems, those genealogies provide lots of information about the priesthood in the postexilic period. In fact, I own Gary Knopper’s commentary on 1 Chronicles 1–9, but I never got around to buying the volume dealing with the rest of the book. Who needs a bunch of commentary on narratives when you could be reading about genealogies!

At the SBL meeting in 2006 I picked up Alice Hunt’s book Missing Priests: The Zadokites in Tradition and History. I wrote a review of it on this blog a couple of months later. While the book does make some good points, I ultimately did not agree with the conclusions. Hunt argues that there are no Zadokites until the Hasmonean period because she sees no stress on Zadokites prior to that, while I would say they were around in the preexilic period, but because of their position of power they did not need to justify their position.

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature has a review of Missing Priests by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer. Tiemeyer has a slightly more positive view of the book, so if you are looking for a review with a different take on the book, check it out.

I received word this morning that my proposal for a paper at this year’s SBL meeting has been accepted for the Pentateuch section. The paper is on the demotion of the Levites in PT and HS. It builds on some of the work that Steve Cook has done on interbiblical exegesis between the Torah and Ezekiel. I wrote about half this paper in the summer of 2006. Unfortunately, I got busy with other things and never got around to finishing it. It will be interesting to dive back into the topic at some point this summer.

The connection between the story of the golden calf episode in Exodus 32 and the setting up of the golden calves by Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12:25-33 is well-known. One of the stories is dependent on the other, although the direction of dependence is still debated. The problem has been discussed in a number of places, but I wanted to draw out some implications of these stories for the history of the priesthood in ancient Israel.

There are three elements of the Exodus 32 story that bear on the priesthood. One is the anti-Aaron story that forms a main element of the story. It is unclear whether there was an original form of this story that did not include Aaron,¹ but in the story as it is currently found he is an inseparable part of the narrative. The second element of the story that bears on the priesthood is the pro-Levite story in Exodus 32:25-29. This story is an etiology for the service of the Levites as priests.² Noth judged this story to be a secondary addition to the original J narrative.³

It seems likely that these two elements came together at a time when there were two priestly factions vying for control. Obviously, that does not narrow the time frame that much. Opposition between the Aaronides and the Levites seems to have begun at least as early in the monarchy, Eli may also have been an Aaronide. The Aaronides, who were probably a sub-set of the Levites, rose to a position of prominence in Jerusalem and soon became the only priests who were allowed to serve in the Jerusalem temple.⁴ The rest of the Levites were left serving in other cities. This would mean that all the priests in the northern kingdom of Israel were Levities, at least originally.

We are told in 1 Kings 12:31 that Jeroboam appointed non-Levitical priests to serve at his shrines in Dan and Bethel. This pulls in the third element of the Exodus 32 story that bears on the history of the priesthood: the critique of the golden calf.  If we are looking for pro-Levite / anti-Aaronide authors who would have reason to critique golden calves, then the Levites in the north are the obvious choice. From their point of view, the story scores points against multiple adversaries: it critiques the religious practices of Jeroboam while painting the Aaronides in a negative light.

This means this story in its present form must have originated between 930-722 BCE. Some of the traditions are probably older, and this phase of the development of Exodus 32 may have been oral instead of textual. But to me these three elements indicate that the story in Exodus 32 is of northern origin and is based at least in part on the reforms of Jeroboam. It provides a brief but tantalizing glimpse into the development of the priesthood in the 9th-8th centuries BCE.

1. Aaron is barely mentioned in the parallel account in Deuteronomy 9:8-21. He shows up only in v.20 and his sin is unclear. [back]
2. Why Durham says that this story does not justify the Levites ordination as priests is unclear. John I. Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary 3 (Dallas: Word, 2002), 432. [back]
3. Martin Noth, Exodus, trans. J.S. Bowden, Westminster Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 245. [back]
4. Zadok and Abiathar were both Aaronides, although Abiathar and his descendants were banished from Jerusalem for supporting Adonijah against Solomon in 1 Kings 2:26-27. [back]