Yahweh’s pesach is to take place on the fourteenth day of the first (ri’shown) month (Leviticus 23:5). The timing echoes back to the dawn of time. The waters of the flood dried up on the first of the first month (ri’shown). Passover celebrates Israel’s deliverance from the flood of the angel of death, each blood-spattered house forming an ark of safety from the storm. Passover reaches further: The end of Noah’s flood was the beginning of a new creation, and... Read more
It’s hard to find interesting work on Leviticus 23. It’s easy to find tedious critical dissections of the history of the text. One of the conundrums is in verse 2: First we read about the appointed times of Yahweh. Then at the end of the verse we hear about “my” appointed times. Who’s speaking? Two speakers, apparently, one of whom refers to Yahweh in the third person; the other who speaks as Yahweh. Is that shift really so alarming? Only... Read more
Leigh Trevaskis offers an intriguing, helpful discussion of the man stoned for blasphemy in Leviticus 24. Recent commentators have emphasized the “mixed” character of the blasphemer – son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father. While acknowledging the importance of that feature of the story, Trevaskis thinks that the emphasis should be placed on the location of the incident. The camp is the “land” of Israel in the wilderness, a holy place where Yahweh dwells among His well-organized people.... Read more
In a highly provocative VT article from 2009, Leigh M. Trevaskis points to the emphasis on Sabbath in Leviticus 23 and 25. All but one festival day is either on a date that is a multiple of seven, or on the day just after. The exception is the day of atonement, which falls on the tenth day of the seventh month. The Sabbath year occurs every seven years, and the Jubilee comes in the year after a Sabbath of Sabbaths.... Read more
Esther Lightcap Meek presents the most devastating little critiques of epistemological dualism I’ve ever read near the beginning of A Little Manual for Knowing. Epistemological dualism describes the way we “distinguish knowledge from beliefs, facts from values, reason from faith, theory from application, thought from emotion, mind from body, objective from subjective, science from art” (2). The first member of each binary are set against the “opposites,” and we strive to keep the first “purified” from the second. (Pitch-perfect description, since... Read more
Leigh Trevaskis tries to suss out the rationale for sticking Leviticus 24 (menorah, showbread, blasphemy) between Leviticus 23 (Israel’s festival calendar) and Leviticus 25 (Jubilee). He proposes a symbolic solution to the puzzle. He observes that chapter 24 begins with a reverence to “light” (v. 2), alluding back to the creation of heavenly lights in Genesis 1, lights that not only shine and rule, but mark out the seasons. Thus Leviticus 24 is, like the surrounding chapters, concerned with marking... Read more
Many scholars have concluded that the Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 is an idealized portrait of an institution that Israel never practiced. In a 2003 essay in Vetus Testamentum, Lee Casperson takes issue with this viewpoint: “There are extensive parallels in the ancient Near East, long predating the entry of the Israelites into Canaan, and there may be no fundamental reason why the activities associated with the jubilee could not actually have occurred” (286). Casperson’s main argument, though, has to... Read more
Protestant problematics about sacraments still run in the background of early modern debates about religion. In response to evidence of similarities between Jewish and “savage” Indian religion, some early modern thinkers argued that the ritual similarities were marginal to Judaism. Some thought of Jewish ceremonies as a kind of prophylactic against idolatry. James Foster (The Usefulness, Truth, and Excellency of the Christian Religion, 1731) argued that “even a ceremonious religion may answer very valuable purposes.” Given their situation and history,... Read more
In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume proposes an evolutionary progress from natural polytheism to more developed monotheism. This, he thinks, is the natural and virtually inevitable progress: “As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in ancient times, appears universally to have been polytheists” and idolaters. It makes no sense to suggest that “in ancient times, before the knowledge of letters, or the discovery of any art of science, men entertained the principles of pure theism.” Besides,... Read more
Thomas Mallon offers some qualified praise to Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place in the NYTBR. He thinks it is several cuts above today’s romance novels. He writes, “Metalious’s writing is mostly undemanding, but it’s also, often . . . not bad. Compared with Jacqueline Susann, her 1960s successor, she reads like Willa Cather.” At times, Metalious’s characterization reach heights that even Forster might have approved: “Unlike the sexual automatons of romance novels and beach books, some of Metalious’s characters are actually, by E.... Read more
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