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traditions of revising laws in torah, February 13, 2008
Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy & the Holiness Legislation by Jeffrey Stackert (Forschunmgen Zum Alten Testament: Mohr Siebeck) Jeffrey Stackert explores literary correspondences among the penta¬teuchal legal corpora and especially the relationships between similar laws in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (Lev 17-26).
Through an analysis of the pentateuchal laws on asylum, seventh-year release, manumission, and tithes, he argues that the Holiness Legislation depends upon both the Covenant Collection and Deuteronomy. The author also elucidates the compositional logic of the Holiness legislators, showing that these authors employ a method of literary revision in which they reconceptualize source material according to their own ideological biases. In the end, the Holiness Legislation proves to be a "super law" that collects and distills the Priestly and non-Priestly laws that precede it.
By accommodating, reformulating, and incorporating various viewpoints from these sources, the Holiness authors create a work that is intended to supersede them all.
This study explores literary correspondences among the pentateuchal legal corpora and especially the relationship between similar laws in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (Lev 17-26, the so-called "Holiness Code," as well as significant parts of the Priestly source elsewhere in the Pentateuch). Resemblances between these legislative sources range from broad structure to fine detail, including the treatment of similar topics, correlations with regard to sequence of laws, and precise grammatical and lexical correspondences. Nevertheless, the nature and basis of their similarities persist as debated points among biblical scholars, whose theories for explaining such issues range from direct, literary dependence of one text upon another (with chronological priority afforded to any of the respective sources) to the complete independence of the different legal corpora.
Through a comparative examination of the legal topics of asylum, seventh-year release, manumission for slavery, and tithes, this study argues that the Holiness Legislation depends upon both the Covenant Collection and Deuteronomy. It also elucidates the compositional logic of the Holiness legislators in their interaction with their source texts, showing that these authors do not simply replicate pre-existing legal content. Rather, they employ a method of literary revision in which they reconceptualize source material according to their own ideological biases.
In the end, the Holiness Legislation proves to be a sort of "super law" that collects and distills the several law collections that precede it. By accommodating, reformulating, and incorporating various viewpoints of these sources, the Holiness authors create a work that is intended to supersede them all.
The potential benefits of reconstructing a text's compositional logic are substantial. Ideally, such an analysis provides a window on the intellectual world of the revisionary author, thereby contributing to the larger pursuit of understand¬ing what the Bible is and what its contents meant in antiquity. Moreover, such an assessment provides a point for comparison with other examples of ancient literary revision, both biblical and extra-biblical, providing important data for understanding ancient literature. Finally, because all of the evidence employed in such an argument is readily accessible, the narrative created to describe the later author's exegetical composition can be easily evaluated.
The core of this analysis appears in Chapters Two through Four, where Stackert addresses the topics of asylum, seventh-year release and manumission, and tithes in their various appearances in the pentateuchal legal corpora. In these chapters, Stackert focuses attention primarily upon the biblical texts themselves and argue for a direct literary relationship between topically related laws. However, his concern goes beyond simply demonstrating that a direct literary relationship exists among these texts. This study seeks to make a larger statement concerning the biblical authors' method of revision. The final chapter of this book brings together these various methodological observations in order to offer a more comprehensive view of pentateuchal legal revision and especially the intent of biblical legislators toward the source texts that they reconceptualize.
Beyond identifying examples of direct literary dependence and describing the extent of the connections between the texts in question, Stackert attempts to reconstruct what David P. Wright has termed the "compositional logic" of the revising authors -- the manner in which these legislators use their sources and the reasoning that undergirds their legal reformulations. The compositional logic extends from an author's broad reconceptualization of his source to the mechanical details of rewriting his literary forebear. Thus to describe the compositional logic of a revisionary text is to attempt to reconstruct its author's modes and progressions of thought as he creatively engaged his source. As Wright notes, such a task involves a measure of conjecture, but the availability of both source and receptor text compels at least an attempt at describing the process of literary revision.
The exception to the mode of legal composition in the Bible seems to be the non-Holiness Priestly legislation, which, unlike other pentateuchal law, does not exhibit a direct literary relationship with other attested biblical and extra-biblical legislation. P is strongly self-oriented and does not seem to employ a discernable revisionary method for its legal composition. In this way, P can be viewed as unique among pentateuchal law collections, although this observation does not necessarily support the view that P was originally an esoteric or hidden document. What can be said is that the Holiness Legislation, through its simultaneous revision of existing Priestly law on the one hand and the Covenant Collection and Deuteronomy on the other, creates a thoroughly "learned" composition, a sort of "super law" that collects and distills the several law collections (CC, D, P) that precede it. By accommodating, reformulating, and incorporating various viewpoints from these sources, the Holiness authors create a work that is intended to supersede them all.
The discussion leads to the conclusion that reconciliation of topically related laws, and the supplementary view of their composition, are inextricably linked to and are the effects of redaction and canonization. In the pre-redactional/ pre-canonical setting of Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation, these issues are foreign and even illogical. Thus, while providing important clues for under¬standing biblical texts, post-biblical material cannot be an absolute lens through which earlier material is to be understood. The Covenant Collection and its reuse of the Laws of Hammurabi serves as evidence of this view, as do the examples of revision from Deuteronomy and the Holiness Collection examined in this study.
While it is not clear that the Deuteronomic legislators knew or recognized that the Covenant Collection was itself a revision of pre-existing ancient Near Eastern law, it is clear that Deuteronomy did not introduce its method of inter¬pretive revision in ancient Israel. Rather, Deuteronomy stands as the inheritor of both the content and the compositional method of its legal patrimony, the Covenant Collection. The Holiness legislators, then, who reconceptualize the Covenant Collection and Deuteronomy, exploit the precedent of their sources to introduce further revisions aimed at undermining the existing legal tradition. The production of legislation in ancient Israel is thus shown from its inception to be an exercise in bringing forth "treasures both new and old" (Matt 13:52; cf. Song 7:14), a practice continued and developed further in the post-biblical interpretive tradition.
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