Description
Book SynopsisThe first five books of the Hebrew Bible contain a significant number of texts describing ritual practices. Yet it is often unclear how these sources would have been understood or used by ancient audiences in the actual performance of cult. This volume explores the processes of ritual textualization (the creation of a written version of a ritual) in ancient Israel by probing the main conceptual and methodological issues that inform the study of this topic in the Pentateuch.
This systematic and comparative study of text and ritual in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible maps the main areas of consensus and disagreement among scholars engaged in articulating new models for understanding the relationship between text and ritual and explores the importance of comparative evidence for the study of pentateuchal rituals. Topics include ritual textualization in ancient Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia; the importance of archaeology and materiality for the study of text and ritual in ancient Israel; the relationship between ritual textualization and standardization in the Pentateuch; the reception of pentateuchal ritual texts in Second Temple writings and rabbinic literature; and the relationship between text and ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Dorothea Erbele-Küster, Daniel K. Falk, Yitzhaq Feder, Christian Frevel, William K. Gilders, Dominique Jaillard, Giuseppina Lenzo, Lionel Marti, Patrick Michel, Rüdiger Schmitt, Jeremy D. Smoak, and James W. Watts.
Trade Review“The contributions to Text and Ritual in the Pentateuch contrast the relationship between text and ritual in ancient Israel with that of other ancient Mediterranean and Western Asian societies and thus gain new insights for the challenge of reconstructing the performance of ancient rituals from written sources.”
—Thomas Hieke,author of Die Genealogien der Genesis
“This volume is an important and timely contribution to the scholarly study of ritual texts and procedures in the Pentateuch and the Hebrew Bible as a whole. Important scholars in the field labor to advance the application of ritual studies, biblical intertextuality, rhetorical analysis, ancient Near Eastern comparative material, and related postbiblical literature to understanding the texts and ritual procedures in the Pentateuch.”
—Richard Averbeck,Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
“Text and Ritual in the Pentateuch is a rich collection of data and interactions with scholarship, and the numerous insights in this volume make it an important resource for advanced students of pentateuchal ritual texts.”
—Roy E. Gane Andrews University Seminary Studies
Table of ContentsPreface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Christophe Nihan
Chapter 1. Rituals in the Spells of the Book of the Dead in Ancient Egypt
Giuseppina Lenzo
Chapter 2. Between Utterance and Dedication: Some Remarks on the Status of Textuality in Greek Ritual Practices
Dominique Jaillard
Chapter 3. Inscriptions and Ritual Practices in the Neo- Assyrian Period: The Construction of a Building as an Example
Lionel Marti
Chapter 4. Between Text and Ritual: The Function(s) of the Ritual Texts from Late Bronze Age Emar (Syria)
Patrick Michel
Chapter 5. The Textualization of Priestly Ritual in Light of Hittite Sources
Yitzhaq Feder
Chapter 6. Diversity and Centralization of the Temple Cult
in the Archeological Record from the Iron II C to the Persian and Hellenistic Periods in Judah
Rüdiger Schmitt
Chapter 7. Texts Are Not Rituals, and Rituals Are Not Texts, with an Example from Leviticus 12
James W. Watts
Chapter 8. The Texture of Rituals in the Book of Numbers:
A Fresh Approach to Ritual Density, the Role of Tradition, and the Emergence of Diversity in Early Judaism
Christian Frevel
Chapter 9. Speaking with a Divine Voice: The Rhetoric of Epistolary Performance in Numbers 6:22–27
Jeremy D. Smoak
Chapter 10. The Ritual Texts of Leviticus and the Creation of Ritualized Bodies
Dorothea Erbele-Küster
Chapter 11. The Reception of Ritual Laws in the Early Second
Temple Period: Evidence from Ezra- Nehemiah and Chronicles
Julia Rhyder
Chapter 12. Text and Ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Daniel K. Falk
Chapter 13. “And They Would Read Before Him the Order
for the Day”: The Textuality of Leviticus 16 in Mishnah Yoma,
Tosefta Kippurim, and Sifra Aḥare Mot
William K. Gilders
List of Contributors
Index of Ancient Sources
Subject Index
