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High Church Classicism

Last updated on: February 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a recent PhD dissertation from Florida State, Margaret Armstrong traces the connections between the Oxford movement and Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. Harrison “practiced a wild, emotional brand of High Churchism and that its traces linger in her letters and her autobiography and further that its ritual and ceremony provided the emotional spark for her life’s work as evidenced in Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion” (218). Armstrong writes that Harrison’s methods of searching for... Read more

Bringing up the Cud

Last updated on: February 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

To be accounted clean, land animals have to “chew the cud.” The Hebrew for “chew” is alah, to bring up or to ascend. That’s quite literal. Animals that chew the cud swallow, and then regurgitate the food back to the mouth to chew. By the time we get to Leviticus 11, though, alah has taken on a host of associations. Its noun form is the name of the first offering in Leviticus 1, the olah. Within Leviticus 11 itself, the... Read more

Voluntary Impurity

Last updated on: February 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a contribution to Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law, Leslie Cook helpfully traces the differentiations of Leviticus back to the divisions of creation. In the creation accounts, God is differentiated from human beings and human beings from nature by “body, blood, food, time, and space” (44) and these same elements form the “building blocks” of Levitical ritual. Cook, however, errs in the way she distinguishes violations of holiness and contracting impurity: “holiness has to do with things... Read more

Pity the Subversive

Last updated on: February 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Frank Kermode summarizes Alain Robbe-Grillet’s experimental novel, In the Labyrinth, in his The Sense of an Ending: “the soldier who is the central figure only slowly emerges (in so far as he does emerge) from other things, the objects described with equal objectivity, such as the mysterious packet he carries (why is it mysterious? that is a conventional expectation, to be defeated later) or a street, or wallpaper. The soldier has a mission; as you expect to hear about it you are... Read more

Beard Envy

Last updated on: February 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Beard envy is rampant, Serena Solomon reports, and some men are taking action: “The thick, flowing beards adorning hipsters from Williamsburg to Park Slope are driving follicly-challenged New Yorkers to a little-known but growing field of plastic surgery – facial hair transplants. Whether they’re filling in a few gaps or doing a complete beard construction, New York City doctors who specialize in the procedure said they’re seeing a growing number of men paying as much as $7,000 to pump up their beards.” I’ve... Read more

Anthropologizing the Anthropologists

Last updated on: February 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his Taboo, Fritz Steiner observed that the discovery of Polynesian taboo customs was a “Protestant discovery” (50). Admitting that this was a historical accident, he still thought it worth remarking, and thought it contained a clue to 19th-century obsessions with taboo: “The problem of taboo became extraordinarily prominent in the Victorian age for two reasons: the rationalist approach to religion and the place of taboo in Victorian society itself.” Unlike the Age of Reason, the Victorian age attended to “the... Read more

Ritual and Moral Defilement

Last updated on: February 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his first book, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, Jonathan Klawans explores the complex relations of sin and impurity in biblical law and later Jewish thought. He distinguishes between “ritual defilement” that arises from unavoidable natural processes and “moral defilement” that arises from sin. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, he summarizes some of his findings as follows: “Ritual defilement concerns those things that threaten the status vis-a-vis the sanctuary of the individuals directly affected. Those who are ritually defiled, those whom they... Read more

God the Priest

Last updated on: February 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Klawans helpfully reminds us of the pre-preparations for sacrifice (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple). To offer an animal, an Israelite has to have one, and it has to be unblemished. Worshipers begin by being shepherds and herdsmen, and they have to be careful ones. Careful like Yahweh: “Israel’s theologizing frequently depicts God performing precisely that [shepherding] role vis-a-vis Israel, tending the flock. . . . As Israel is to Israel’s herds and flocks, so too is God to Israel, the... Read more

God the Priest

Last updated on: February 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Klawans helpfully reminds us of the pre-preparations for sacrifice (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple). To offer an animal, an Israelite has to have one, and it has to be unblemished. Worshipers begin by being shepherds and herdsmen, and they have to be careful ones. Careful like Yahweh: “Israel’s theologizing frequently depicts God performing precisely that [shepherding] role vis-a-vis Israel, tending the flock. . . . As Israel is to Israel’s herds and flocks, so too is God to Israel, the... Read more

Separation to God

Last updated on: February 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Klawans (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple) is disturbed by the gap between studies of biblical purity and studies of sacrifice. Mary Douglas proposed that Levitical purity was not primitive, but systematic, symbolic, and socially functional. Even those who are unconvinced by her proposals has to take Levitical purity seriously as a meaningful system. The same is not true for studies of Levitical sacrifice, which continue to focus on questions about the origin of sacrifice that are, Klawans rightly says, strictly... Read more

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