Oracular Law and Priestly Historiography in the Torah

Oracular Law and Priestly Historiography in the Torah PDF Author: Simeon Chavel
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161533419
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Simeon Chavel identifies a distinct story-type in the Torah, the "oracular novella," its contours and poetics, historical background, and use. A very short story of human quandary resolved by divine law, the oracular novella depicts an incident or set of circumstances in Israel, oracular inquiry by Moses, and instruction by Yahweh. The Torah has four such stories, all in the Priestly source, about cursing Yahweh (Lev 24:10-23), Pesa? deferral (Num 9:1-14), woodgathering on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-36), and inheritance by daughters (Num 27:1-11). All four dramatize themes in the divine speeches and divinely directed activities preceding them. But each utilizes the legal climax distinctly, has a separate compositional history, and affected other biblical texts differently. Ancient sources show the oracular novellas to adapt a form of priestly activity for historiography. Together they illuminate the Priestly History deeply troping divine will as law, and highlight Judean priests cherishing oracular inquiry as the nexus of divine and human society.

Oracular Law and Priestly Historiography in the Torah

Oracular Law and Priestly Historiography in the Torah PDF Author: Simeon Chavel
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161533419
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book Here

Book Description
Simeon Chavel identifies a distinct story-type in the Torah, the "oracular novella," its contours and poetics, historical background, and use. A very short story of human quandary resolved by divine law, the oracular novella depicts an incident or set of circumstances in Israel, oracular inquiry by Moses, and instruction by Yahweh. The Torah has four such stories, all in the Priestly source, about cursing Yahweh (Lev 24:10-23), Pesa? deferral (Num 9:1-14), woodgathering on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-36), and inheritance by daughters (Num 27:1-11). All four dramatize themes in the divine speeches and divinely directed activities preceding them. But each utilizes the legal climax distinctly, has a separate compositional history, and affected other biblical texts differently. Ancient sources show the oracular novellas to adapt a form of priestly activity for historiography. Together they illuminate the Priestly History deeply troping divine will as law, and highlight Judean priests cherishing oracular inquiry as the nexus of divine and human society.

The Poetic Priestly Source

The Poetic Priestly Source PDF Author: Jason M. H. Gaines
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506400469
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Applying criteria for the identification of biblical Hebrew poetry, Jason M. H. Gaines distinguishes a nearly complete poetic Priestly stratum in the Pentateuch (“Poetic P”), coherent in literary, narrative, and ideological terms, from a later prose redaction (“Prosaic P”), which is fragmentary, supplemental, and distinct in thematic and theological concern. Gaines describes the whole of the “Poetic P” source and offers a Hebrew reconstruction of the document. This dramatically innovative understanding of the history of the Priestly composition opens up new vistas in the study of the Pentateuch.

The Story of Sacrifice

The Story of Sacrifice PDF Author: Liane M. Feldman
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 3161596366
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The sacrificial instructions and purity laws in Leviticus have often been seen as later or secondary additions to an originally sparse Priestly narrative. In this volume, Liane M. Feldman argues that the ritual and narrative elements of the Pentateuchal Priestly source are mutually dependent, and that the internal logic and structure of the Priestly narrative makes sense only when they are read together. Bringing together insights from the fields of ritual theory and narratology, the author argues that the ritual materials in Leviticus should be understood and analyzed as literature. At the core of her study is the assertion that these sacrificial instructions and purity laws form the backbone of the Priestly story world, and that when these materials are read within their broader narrative context, the Priestly narrative is first and foremost a story about the origins and purpose of sacrifice.

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law PDF Author: Pamela Barmash
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190900857
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
Major innovations have occurred in the study of biblical law in recent decades. The legal material of the Pentateuch has received new interest with detailed studies of specific biblical passages. The comparison of biblical practice to ancient Near Eastern customs has received a new impetus with the concentration on texts from actual ancient legal transactions. The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law provides a state of the art analysis of the major questions, principles, and texts pertinent to biblical law. The thirty-three chapters, written by an international team of experts, deal with the concepts, significant texts, institutions, and procedures of biblical law; the intersection of law with religion, socio-economic circumstances, and politics; and the reinterpretation of biblical law in the emerging Jewish and Christian communities. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among scholars working in biblical law.

Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism

Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism PDF Author: Nathan MacDonald
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110368714
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Are the rituals in the Hebrew Bible of great antiquity, practiced unchanged from earliest times, or are they the products of later innovators? The canonical text is clear: ritual innovation is repudiated as when Jeroboam I of Israel inaugurate a novel cult at Bethel and Dan. Most rituals are traced back to Moses. From Julius Wellhausen to Jacob Milgrom, this issue has divided critical scholarship. With the rich documentation from the late Second Temple period, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is apparent that rituals were changed. Were such rituals practiced, or were they forms of textual imagination? How do rituals change and how are such changes authorized? Do textual innovation and ritual innovation relate? What light might ritual changes between the Hebrew Bible and late Second Temple texts shed on the history of ritual in the Hebrew Bible? The essays in this volume engage the various issues that arise when rituals are considered as practices that may be invented and subject to change. A number of essays examine how biblical texts show evidence of changing ritual practices, some use textual change to discuss related changes in ritual practice, while others discuss evidence for ritual change from material culture.

Contextualizing Jewish Temples

Contextualizing Jewish Temples PDF Author: Tova Ganzel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004444793
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Jewish temples stood in Jerusalem for nearly one thousand years and were a dominant feature in the life of the ancient Judeans throughout antiquity. This volume strives to obtain a diachronic and topical cross-section of central features of the varied aspects of the Jewish temples that stood in Jerusalem, one that draws on and incorporates different disciplinary and methodological viewpoints. Ten contributions are included in this volume by: Gary A. Anderson; Simeon Chavel; Avraham Faust; Paul M. Joyce; Yuval Levavi; Risa Levitt; Eyal Regev; Lawrence H. Schiffman; Jeffrey Stackert; Caroline Waerzeggers, edited by Tova Ganzel and Shalom E. Holtz.

Ve-’Ed Ya‘aleh (Gen 2

Ve-’Ed Ya‘aleh (Gen 2 PDF Author: Peter Machinist
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 0884144844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 740

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Book Description
Sixty-six colleagues, friends, and former students of Edward L. Greenstein present essays honoring him upon his retirement. Throughout Greenstein's half-century career he demonstrated expertise in a host of areas astonishing in its breadth and depth, and each of the essays in these two volumes focuses on an area of particular interest to him. Volume 1 includes essays on ancient Near Eastern studies, Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic languages, and biblical law and narrative. Volume 2 includes essays on biblical wisdom and poetry, biblical reception and exegesis, and postmodern readings of the Bible.

Hate and Enmity in Biblical Law

Hate and Enmity in Biblical Law PDF Author: Klaus-Peter Adam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567681904
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Enmity between individuals was an ubiquitious phenomenon in the ancient world. Using the method of legal anthropology this book examines patterns of hate-driven feuding in kinship-based and segmentary societies and applies these insights to biblical law. It defines the fundamental categories of enmity, love, revenge, honor and shame in the context of feuding and it illustrates certain legal actions, such giving false witness, and shows how they are expressions of hateful relationships. Adam proposes that we should understand hate between individuals as a legal construct that becomes visible when lived out as private enmity, a social status that exhibits distinct hallmarks. In kinship-based societies, private hate/enmity was publicly declared and, consequently, was publicly known in one's own kin and beyond. Private enmity was acted out in feud-like patterns, with a flexibility that allowed opponents to choose between various measures to hurt their opponent. Acting out hate was reciprocal, and it typically escalated and swiftly expanded into one party's attempt to kill the other and to trigger a blood feud. Finally, private enmity was “transitive” in the sense that opponents at enmity naturally expected solidarity from kin and friends. Adam uses textual analysis to illustrate how the legal construct of hate informs biblical law from the Covenant Code, to Deuteronomic and Priestly Legislation, including the Holiness Code. He also demonstrates how hate forms the backdrop of conflict settlement. Ultimately, by ways of tracing back through the category of private hate and enmity, this book unpacks the meaning of the quintessential command to “Love your neighbor!”

The Making of the Tabernacle and the Construction of Priestly Hegemony

The Making of the Tabernacle and the Construction of Priestly Hegemony PDF Author: Nathan MacDonald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192543393
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
How did the Jerusalem high priests go from being cultic servants in the sixth century BCE to assuming political supremacy at some point during the third or second century? The Making of the Tabernacle and the Construction of Priestly Hegemony examines how the conditions were created for the priesthood's rise to power by examining the most important ideological texts for the high priests: the description of the wilderness tabernacle and the instructions for the ordination ritual found in the Biblical books of Exodus and Leviticus. Although neglected by many modern readers, who often find them technical and repetitive, the tabernacle accounts excited considerable interest amongst early scribes and readers, as is evidenced by the survival of them in no fewer than four versions. Untangling this intricate compositional history helps shed light on how these chapters in the Pentateuch shaped-and were shaped by-the perception of the priesthood's powers and competencies during the Persian and early Hellenistic periods. The hierarchy that is developed is more nuanced and multifaceted than previously appreciated, with Israelite artisans, community leaders, Levites and women incorporated into a complex vision of society. The ordination ritual was also transformed by scribal elites during the Persian period, appearing in no fewer than five variant forms as the role of the high priesthood and its relationship to other groups was negotiated. Using a broad, plural methodological approach that incorporates insights from sociology, ritual studies, textual and literary criticism, early interpretation, manuscript studies, and philology, Nathan MacDonald's study shines new light on the historical development, theology, and ideology of priestly texts in the Pentateuch.

Memory in a Time of Prose

Memory in a Time of Prose PDF Author: Daniel D. Pioske
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190649860
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Memory in a Time of Prose investigates a deceptively straightforward question: what did the biblical scribes know about times previous to their own? Daniel D. Pioske attempts to answer this question by studying the sources, limits, and conditions of knowing that would have shaped biblical stories told about a past that preceded the composition of these writings by a generation or more. This book is comprised of a series of case studies that compare biblical references to an early Iron Age world (ca. 1175-830 BCE) with a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence from the era in which these stories are set. Pioske examines the relationship between the past disclosed through these historical traces and the past represented within the biblical narrative. He discovers that the knowledge available to the biblical scribes about this period derived predominantly from memory and word of mouth, rather than from a corpus of older narrative documents. For those Hebrew scribes who first set down these stories in prose writing, the means for knowing a past and the significance attached to it were, in short, wed foremost to the faculty of remembrance. Memory in a Time of Prose reveals how the past was preserved, transformed, or forgotten in the ancient world of oral, living speech that informed biblical storytelling.