Blue Cord

The final day of the SBL began with me at the Pentateuch section. This was the second Pentateuch section that was held together with the Deuteronomistic History session. Although four presenters were scheduled, Mark Zvi Brettler and Albert De Pury were not able to attend.  So, we only heard two papers, but fortunately they were both very good.

Thomas B. Dozeman’s paper “The Golden Calf in the Enneateuch” was first.  The is probably the best paper I heard at the conference, mostly because he combined excellent scholarship and new interpretive approaches in a paper that was logically organized and easy to follow. He discussed the passages that discuss the Golden Calf: Exodus 32, Deuteronomy 9-10, and 1 Kings 12.  He argues that Exodus 32 is the latest of these and is engaged in innerbiblical exegesis on the other two texts.

This has implications for some of the work I am doing.  Obviously, Exodus 32, which is non-P, is pro-Levite and anti-Aaronid.  This would suggest that it was composed around the same time as texts such as Ezekiel 44 and the reworking of Numbers 16-18 by HS. It seems a part of a larger dialog taking place in the post-exilic period about the place of the Levites.

The second paper was “The Envisioning of the Land in the Priestly Material: Fulfilled Promise or Future Hope?” by Suzanne Boorer.  She argued that Priestly material does not continue into the book of Joshua, which leaves the promise of the land unfulfilled in the Priestly document. Although it was a good paper, I disagree with her. As I argued in a paper last year at the EABS, I think there is a good deal of P in Joshua 13-21. But I do agree with Boorer that at some point the promise of land was broken off when Joshua was removed in the process that created the Pentateuch out of the Hexateuch.

Some of the discussion surrounding the papers was helpful for my own thought process.  One idea that came to me is that the Priestly layers in Joshua might have been added by HS in the post-exilic period in order to encourage people to return to Judah/Yehud from Babylon. A focus on the land would make sense at that point.

After a quick run through the book sale, I headed to the Kansas City Barbecue place across from the Hyatt.  Some scenes from the movie Top Gun were filmed there, and being an aficionado of  barbecue I thought I should give it a try.  The barbecue was OK, but not quite up to the standards of North Carolina, although the sweet potato pie I had for desert was excellent.

I will be heading to the airport this afternoon.  I have a red-eye flight back tonight at 11:00 pm.

Next year in Jerusalem Boston!

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.

One of the interesting problems in source criticism is the fact that the P material as it now stands in Exodus has so little to say about Sinai and no mention of a covenant there. This troubles scholars, since the covenant at Sinai is supposed to be such a central idea in Israelite religion.

In their book Sources of the Pentateuch (p.43, n.55), Campbell and O’Brien list the three ways scholars have tried to explain this:

• Scholars who see P as the final redaction of the Pentateuch say that P didn’t need to have a section covering the covenant, since it was provided by JE.
• Some who see P as an independent source say P’s version of the covenant was suppressed in favor of the one from JE.
• Others who see P as an independent source argue that P focused more on the unconditional covenant with Abraham instead of the conditional covenant with Moses in order to provide comfort in the troubling times of the exile.

I have recently been rereading a forthcoming paper by Steve Cook that deals with the division of P into PT and HS (suggested by Israel Knohl). Steve argues that one of the differences between the theology of PT and HS is that PT focused on the covenant with Abraham while HS focused on Moses.

Knohl (and others such as Jacob Milgrom) argue that both PT and HS are pre-exilic. If I am reading him correctly (and remembering previous conversations accurately), Steve sees both as post-exilic. As I have argued before, I think PT is pre-exilic while HS is post-exilic. If this is the case, then it suggests a different answer to why P has no covenant at Sinai.

We need to find a reason for the lack of a P version of the covenant at Sinai if and only if we assume that PT thought the covenant at Sinai was important. But if PT is pre-exilic and focuses more on the covenant with Abraham than the one at Sinai, this could lead us to conclude that the covenant at Sinai was not very important to priestly circles in Jerusalem prior to the exile.

It is within the Deuteronomistic documents of the pre-exilic period that we have a focus on the covenant at Sinai. J also calls what happened at Sinai a covenant (Exod.19:5), but van Seters has argued that J is influenced by D. Other pre-exilic works from Judah, such as Amos and Isaiah, don’t refer to the covenant or to Sinai. HS could have picked up on the covenant at Sinai in the post-exilic period as the Deuteronomistic literature was becoming accepted in priestly circles. HS would not have needed its own version of Sinai, since it certainly had JE in hand.

While PT does not mention the covenant at Sinai, it does describe some events at Sinai. But instead of a covenant or law, Moses goes up to the mountain to receive the plans for the tabernacle in Exodus 24:15-18 (which introduces Exod.25-31, all from PT). This is exactly what we would expect priests to be interested in. The tabernacle either stands as a cipher for the temple or as a reference to a structure that actually existed inside the temple (as Richard Elliot Friedman has argued). According to PT, what the Israelites received at Sinai was not a covenant, but a cultus.

This would also explain why PT wrote the P narrative in Genesis. If PT was focused on the Abrahamic covenant as Steve argues, it makes perfect sense for it to have written a document that covered creation through Abraham.

The OT reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for today included 1 Kings 19:19-21, which reads:

So [Elijah] set out from there, and found Elisha son of Shaphat, who was plowing. There were twelve yoke of oxen ahead of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” Then Elijah?? said to him, “Go back again; for what have I done to you?” He returned from following him, took the yoke of oxen, and slaughtered them; using the equipment from the oxen, he boiled their flesh, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant. (NRSV)

As I was listening to the reading, a question occurred to me: Why did Elisha kill the oxen? Was it a sacrifice or not?

When I got home, I checked the different translations. The ESV and NASB say that Elisha sacrificed the oxen, while the NRSV and NIV both say that Elisha slaughtered them.  The Hebrew does not provide much help here.  The verb used is zabakh.  This generally indicates a sacrifice, but also could be used for common slaughter of animals.

If this passage were from the priestly layers of the OT, it would be a moot point.  All slaughter of animals was considered a sacrifice in the priestly schema.  But Deuteronomy allows for the non-sacrificial slaughter of animals (Deut. 12:13-27).  Since the 1 Kings passage is part of the DtrH, this could be either.

But Deuteronomy also states that all sacrifice must be done in Jerusalem.  Elisha is from Abel-Meholah.  Although 1 Kings 19 does not state it explicitly, it is likely that the call of Elisha took place in or near his home town, not in Jerusalem.  If Elisha is being pictured following the Deuteronomic law, then what he is doing should not be considered a sacrifice.  I would say the NRSV and NIV have the better translation in this case.

But that leaves us with out original question: Why did Elisha kill the oxen?  If it was not a sacrifice, why did he do it?  Although the passage is not explicit, I think the clue to interpretation needs to come from Elisha’s request to kiss his father and mother before following Elijah.  The slaughter of the oxen and ensuing feast seem to be the fulfillment of that wish.

Now, if I really wanted to go out on a limb, I might argue that his request to kiss his father and mother and the feast that followed were part of paying homage to his departed ancestors, since his new life would be one that took place outside of his family.  I am not feeling that brave today, so I will offer that suggestion only as a possibility.

As I mentioned previously, I have been looking at Blenkinsopp’s Sage, Priest, Prophet. I have not been reading the whole book. Instead, because of my interest in the history of the priesthood, I have been reading over the chapter on priests. I thought I would give a brief summary of the chapter here along with just a few of my own comments tossed in.

Blenkinsopp begins with a note about the lack of respect priests have usually had in biblical scholarship. Having deconstructed the ideas behind that, he moves on the discuss the sources that we have available to us when talking about priests. He then discusses the rise of the priesthood, which he sees as taking place during the pre-monarchic period, if only in an embryonic form.

He then has a helpful section on the functions that priests were expected to perform. Among these he lists:

• Carrying out ritual
• Divination (a role that was less important in Israel than in Mesopotamia)
• Teachers
• Magistrates

It is interesting to compare what he has to say about the role of priests with Iain Duguid’s treatment of the same question in his essay “Putting Priests in their Place” in Ezekiel’s Hierarchical World. Duguid is addressing the question based only on Ezekiel, but it is interesting to note how much his list resembles Blenkinsopp’s.

Blenkinsopp also discusses the issue of Aaronides Zadokites, and Levites. He notes that no preexilic tests deal with Aaron as a priest.¹  Instead, he is always Moses’ spokesman. He points out the preexilic texts always refer to Levitical priests instead. The Zadokites, according to Blenkinsopp, gain power in Babylon, due in part to the work of Ezekiel. Only then are the Levites demoted to temple servants. Later in the Persian period they begin to develop specialiations such as musicians and gatekeeps. Blenkinsopp concludes with a brief section on training for the priesthood.

This summary is very brief and does not do justice to Blenkinsopp’s treatment. For those interested in the subject, this is a must read. The book is not intended as a major discussion of the priesthood, but it does bring together Blenkinsopp’s thoughts on the subject. For the classroom, this book would be idea for an upper level undergraduate course or a seminary class, but does not quite rise to the level of something you would use in a seminar.

1. Blenkinsopp does not like Knohl’s division of P into PT and HS. I asked him about this during a break at the EABS conference last summer in Budapest, and he said he sees it as a return to older models of source criticism. [back]