Books referred to in this review:
** you do not have permission to see this link ** by Liane M Feldman
** you do not have permission to see this link ** by Joel S Baden
It has been a scholarly commonplace since it became possible to speculate without public censure, that the Torah, or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – attributed to Moses, were in fact the work of multiple authors over hundreds of years. Everyone seems to agree there. But only there. Past that the debates begin.
The traditional scholarly view was that there were four main textual sources, the “Yahwist” and the “Elohist”, distinguished by their use of differing names for the Hebrew God, and the “Priestly” and the “Deuteronomist”, distinguished by differing religious and narrative approaches to the history of Israel. It won’t surprise anyone to find out those simple innocent days are long gone. If you want a relatively recent (2012) survey of the field and contemporary debates about the so-called “Documentary Hypothesis”, see the book I linked to above from Joel Baden.
Here I’m more narrowly focused. Liane Feldman has spent her academic career exclusively on the textual strain of the Pentateuch identified as the Priestly source. ‘The Consuming Fire’ is a popular (and reasonably priced) distillation of the scholarly work compiled in her monograph “The Story of sacrifice’, available at the usual outlets for prices, alas, fairly typical of academic publications. Prof Feldman provides a new translation and commentary on just this portion of the text. Feldman’s claim is that there is now enough of a scholarly consensus on both the “P” and the “D” sources that they can be fruitfully isolated and analyzed.
I’ve slogged through so many well nigh impenetrable scholarly texts over the years just to glean useful information that it is almost a shock to encounter a scholar who turns out to be an excellent writer! Her fifty page introduction to the translation alone is worth its weight in shekels. If you’ve penetrated the Pentateuch past the famous stories in Genesis or Exodus you know this is where most reader’s eyes glaze over. All those interminable lists! Feldman makes it all…interesting! Astounding. She clearly explains the methodology behind identifying the Priestly source, it’s context, and the literary characteristics that distinguish it. She identifies the inherent problems of translating ancient texts and when she speculates she is clear about it. I’ll get the raving over here but this is one of the best books about the Hebrew Bible I’ve ever read. If you’re at all interested this is the place to start.
The Priestly source tells the story of the foundation of Hebrew religious practice and the institution of its cult of sacrifice to Yahweh. Feldman comments that the real central character of “P” is neither Yahweh nor Moses but the mishkan, the Tabernacle, the Place of Meeting, the Dwelling Place. This structure, located in the middle of the Israelite’s nomadic encampment, is a physical place designed for Yahweh to live on earth. “P” spends a lot of time then on just how the Tabernacle is built and maintained, and the rites and observances that accompany it. The rules of purity come into play. (What you find out is that Yahweh really hates rashes.)
What originally drew me in is my interest in ancient conceptions of God. What we find out about Yahweh is very revealing. This is not the omni-God of the scholastics (omnipresent, omniscient, etc). Yahweh is an Iron Age tribal deity, awful and powerful, quick to homicidal wrath. He doesn’t know everything and loves the smell of burnt flesh. Yahweh has a body and flings consuming fire at even the most trivial infraction. Here we are light years away from even Isaiah’s God, high and lifted up. Yet there is a primal, basic quality to the depiction giving us a glimpse into a rawer less domesticated world.
Robert asked
In what I quoted above from your post, are you just speaking generally about Yahweh’s portrayal in the Hebrew scriptures or is this something that Liane specifically addresses in relation to the Priestly source?
Well here I was speaking specifically of the depiction in the Priestley Source. This is the Yahweh of the sacrificial cult. The Yahweh obsessed with purity rules. Stringent of approach. Yahweh is embodied but much bigger and stronger. Of course there are other traditions present in the Hebrew Bible that reflect this tribal sort of view of the deity. There definitely seems to be a clear trajectory of depiction from a manifest embodied Yahweh to a conception that raises the deity beyond our grasp. At that point there begin to appear intermediary figures so that by Second Temple times we find these complex well worked out Angelologies.
Also, when does she date D and P? In her introduction, does she speak at all about J & E?
In reverse, yes she gives a general overview of the current state of what she terms the “neodocumentary hypothesis”. Differentiating “J” & “E” by use of divine names has been largely abandoned. Many scholars now doubt “E” ever really existed as a separate source. These multiple sources are now mostly differentiated by the presence of narrative doublets. Meaning if you have the same story told twice with differing details then you can trace them out. Fortunately there is a lot of this kind of thing in the text. Two creation stories, two flood stories, two traditions as to how kingship came to Israel (one pro-monarchy, one anti-), etc.
Dating is an ongoing controversy. There are two major views about “P”. Late eighth to early seventh centuries BCE (during the reign of Hezekiah, perhaps?) or the Persian period, fifth – fourth centuries BCE. Or to put it another way, “First Temple” vs “Second Temple”. I won’t go into all the parameters for choosing (why cheat you out of the fun of reading?) but it’s safe to assume that however late the text was codified it makes use of earlier sources.
I have to reiterate how wonderful Prod Feldman’s intro is. It was a subject I didn’t know a lot about and I found out stuff I didn’t know!
I would be interested in how she squares the awful tribal homicidal wrathful Yahweh with the Priestly account of creation in Genesis 1.
Great minds think alike. That was precisely my first question after finishing the book. Feldman makes the connection on a literary level – What is Genesis 1 but another rather sophisticated Priestly list? – but she doesn’t really delve into the question of Yahweh’s ontological status. There does seem to be some disconnect between the Elohim of Creation and the Yahweh of the Tabernacle. Textual sources perhaps? This is my first question for her should an opportunity arise.
Here’s Prof Feldman participating in a video discussion of the “neodocumentary hypothesis”. (Well send me to Ageism re-education camp. She is much younger than I expected. Maybe I’m just getting old. Everybody in authority now is younger than me. Except for our politicians!)
In reading Leviticus, one cannot but be struck by all the animal blood being shed as well as where it’s being placed (e.g. earlobe, big toe, etc.). Any idea where this all originated?
I probably last read it more than 40 years ago during my Bible School days, and my reaction this time around, is to put it mildly, decidedly different.
If anyone has read anything they’d recommend on the origin of animal sacrifice and on the history and development of atonement, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks!
This may not be what you’re looking for but see –
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link **
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Unfortunately since they’re all academic works they range from pricey to ridiculous. In the Shadow of Moloch is older (1992) and is considered a bit of a classic at this point so you might be able to find a cheaper used copy like I did. Or just check in a good library.
I suppose it would be absurd to give a SPOILER ALERT for texts this ancient, since they’re divinely inspired and surely everyone has pored over them meticulously, right? Right. (One of the virtues of this kind of book is that it allows us to actually look at these texts in a new context and so really see them, maybe for the first time.) Nevertheless you have been warned…
My favorite episode in the Priestly Source is when the instructions for priestly garb include bells attached to their vestments. The reason? Apparently the possibility exists that the priest quietly approaching the sanctuary might sneak up on Yahweh and suprise him, inviting startled annihilation by fiery blast. Think about that for a bit.
Another fascinating nugget of information revealed by the book is exactly why Yahweh is so concerned by garments with mixed fabrics. I won’t spill the beans but it is other than what most people suppose.
Another question that has nagged at me for a while and I would ask of a Hebrew bible scholar is this –
The conclusions of archeology and histography are that it is unlikely that the Exodus took place as described in the text. But it also clear that the Conquest as described is doubtful. The evidence is that the Israelites were indigenous Canaanites that separated themselves from others through cultural practices.
It’s a bit of a relief that the genocidal slaughter didn’t actually take place as recorded. Whole cultures sacrificed to Yahweh. But given that the Conquest was a theological/historical construct, why did the writers feel they had to describe it in just that way? They were writing hundreds of years later. Why couldn’t the land be unpopulated? Or, Why didn’t the Canaanites willingly submit?
Since the Conquest story was made up, why did the composers feel compelled to portray it as a brutal invasion of the Promised land?
Since the Conquest story was made up, why did the composers feel compelled to portray it as a brutal invasion of the Promised land?
That’s an interesting question.
Just to spitball, here are some possibilities:
1) The composer just didn’t have a problem with conquest and absolute war.
2) The composer was justifying his nations brutal tactics in his own day–as if to say, look how brutal God told us to be back when we first got here.
3) The composer actually admired brutal conquest, and wanted to add some virility to the origin story. There is nothing impressive about marching into an uninhabited land.
4) Perhaps the most compelling possibility though (not at all mutually exclusive with the preceedin): It fits their God’s personality. The story of the conquest was developed within an existing cult of Yahweh–originally a war god. It is to be expected that as they further developed their mythology it would conform roughly with previously establish character of their god.
That’s a really good question.
I certainly think what Porphyry says makes a great deal of sense.
What first came to my mind was “believability.” While I can’t say I really know what the custom was way back when, my impression is that it wasn’t showing mercy to people you conquered.
The composer just didn’t have a problem with conquest and absolute war.
Yeah maybe that’s just the way things were done. That’s certainly what the Assyrians and the Babylonians did to them. Maybe if hadn’t been portrayed that way the Israelites’ claim to ownership and domination of the land wouldn’t have been taken seriously?
These are all tales told by a people who were perpetual victims of surrounding empires. The weak populations living on the natural invasion routes, like Belgium or Armenia. What would be more natural than to fantasize about your own days of glory?
Many Christians are troubled by the horrible violence of the Hebrew Bible. Suddenly Marcion doesn’t seem like such an outlier anymore. And you find this Marcionite tendency to hold the OT at arm’s length all through the history of Christianity although most aren’t willing to go so far as Marcion. I guess the most shocking aspect for readers is the mixture of what we would regard as profound poetic expression casually combined with calls for bloody revenge. See Psalm 137.
The weak populations living on the natural invasion routes, like Belgium or Armenia. What would be more natural than to fantasize about your own days of glory?
Sort of reminds me of stock character, the little scrawny guy who’s been pushed around his whole life, but likes to talk tough, or at least to imagine himself being big and tough.
Scholars who despair of the predatory academic press and who want their work to actually get out to real folks frequently make their monographs available through alternative media. Esther Hamori, who posted at this very site discussing her recent popular work, God’s Monsters, has posted her monograph When Gods Were Men: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature at the wonderful online resource, The Internet Archive. The text can be read using the IA reader or be downloaded as a PDF!
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The Yahweh of the Priestly Source is precisely one of those embodied gods of the ANE. This is a very strange perspecive for moderns who are raised with the idea of a Transcendent Immaterial Spirit. But like everything else that idea also has a history. The “embodied” god had a long run. As late as the end of the fourth century BCE we find Christian monks in Egypt that believed in an embodied God the Father and who were trained to visualize Him in meditation and prayer. The Jewish Merkabah Mystics produced an exegesis of the Song of Songs entitled Shi’ur Qomah that described the measurements of God’s Body. As their concept of god became progressively more transcendent the idea of the embodied god became more and more noxious to Jewish and Christian thinkers. (Of course Christians had the figure of Jesus to direct the impulse to physicality.) Inevitably a new heresy was born.
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