Eating the blood: Saul and the witch of Endor

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Volumn 22, Issue 73, 1997, Pages 3-28

  Reis, Pamela Tamarkin ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950506906     PISSN: 03090892     EISSN: 14766728     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030908929702207301     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. P. Cox, 'Origen and the Witch of Endor: Toward an Iconoclastic Typology', ATR 66 (1984), p. 144
2. R. Brown, J. Fitzmyer and R. Murphy (eds.), The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 173
3. W.A.M. Beuken, ' 1 Samuel 28: The Prophet as Hammer of Witches', JSOT 6 (1978), p. 13
4. J.P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel (3 vols.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), II, p. 620
5. J. Ades, 'Samuel, Whear 'Ast Tha Been Sin' I Saw Thee?', in V. Tollers and J. Maier (eds.), Mappings of the Biblical Terrain: The Bible as Text (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1990), p. 263
6. U. Simon, 'A Balanced Story: The Stern Prophet and the Kind Witch', Prooftexts 8 (1988), p. 165
7. A. Schulz, 'Narrative Art in the Books of Samuel', in D. Gunn (ed.), Narrative and Novella in Samuel: Studies by Hugo Gressman and Other Scholars, 1906-1923 (JSOTSup, 116; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), p. 156
8. D. Gunn, The Fate of King Saul (JSOTSup, 14; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980), p. 109
9. Ades, 'Samuel, Whear 'Ast Tha Been', p. 266
10. On the basis of Hittite, Ugaritic, Assyrian, and Sumerian parallels, H. Hoffner defines as a ritual pit used for communion with the deceased (pp. 385, 392). A (v. 7) is a woman who possesses such a pit ('Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ÔB', JBL 86 [1967], p. 394)
11. F. Cryer says that is 'a famous puzzle' and that 'has something to do with knowledge, but of what sort it is impossible to say' (Divination in Ancient Israel and its Near Eastern Environment: A Socio-Historical Investigation [JSOTSup, 142; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994], pp. 260-61). The common understanding of these terms in 1 Sam. 28 is that they refer to a human medium for communication with the dead, and that is the sense in which I use the word 'witch'
12. See, for example, Fokkelman, Narrative Art, p. 597 n. 1
13. and R. Klein, I Samuel (WBC, 10; Waco: Word Books, 1983), p. 271
14. E. Bloch-Smith says, 'A cult of the dead appears to have been a significant and ongoing component of Israelite and Judahite society' (Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead [JSOTSup, 123; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992], p. 127)
15. Lewis says that 'necromancy was widespread throughout Israelite society and not just in Canaanite enclaves' (Cults of the Dead, p. 113)
16. D. Edelman ascribes Saul's disguise to martial caution and cites others who agree (King Saul in the Historiography of Judah [JSOTSup, 121; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991], p. 242)
17. J. Grintz, '"Do Not Eat on the Blood": Reconsiderations in Setting and Dating of the Priestly Code', ASTI 8 (1972), pp. 78-105
18. Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed (trans. M. Friedländer; repr.; New York: Dover, 1956 [1904]), p. 362
19. Ramban (Nachmanides) Commentary on the Torah: Leviticus (trans. C. Chavel; New York: Shilo, 1974), p. 307
20. See R. Alter's chapter, 'The Techniques of Repetition', The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 88-113
21. P.K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB, 21; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), p. 423
22. Beuken, 'Hammer of Witches', p. 9
23. Fokkelman, Narrative Art, p. 606
24. S.R. Driver says, 'Clauses a and c are almost identical; and the verse is decidedly improved by the omission of one of them' (Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel [repr.; London: Oxford University Press, 1966 (1913)], p. 218)
25. Samuel's formulaic repetition of God's name fails to influence Saul, but, when Abigail employs the sevenfold reiteration in 1 Sam. 25, mentioning the name of God in v. 26 (twice), v. 28 (twice), and vv. 29, 30, 31, she successfully deters David from bloodshed (my paper, 'Cupidity and Stupidity: Woman's Agency and the "Rape" of Tamar', forthcoming in JANESCU [1997])
26. Saul may have fasted on the eve of battle to engage God's support, according to Edelman, but 'His reasons for not eating seem to have been deliberately shielded from the audience to raise the question of his intentions' (King Saul, p. 249)
27. Whether or not prostitution was an actual concomitant of sorcery, the interweaving of sexual and death cult imagery is ubiquitous throughout the Bible. See Lewis, Cults of the Dead, pp. 149-50, 158
28. Simon,'Balanced Story', pp. 164-67
29. K. Spanier says, 'Saul was rebuked by Samuel for resorting to teraphim for the purpose of divination (1 Sam. xv 23)' ('Rachel's Theft of the Teraphim: Her Struggle for Family Primacy', VT 42 [1992], p. 406)
30. Teraphim are defined as ancestor figurines used for divination and cultic inquiry directed to the dead. See H. Hoffner, 'Hittite Tarpiš and Hebrew Terāphim', JNES 27 (1968), p. 66
31. Spanier, 'Rachel's Theft', pp. 405, 410
32. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial, p. 121
33. K. van der Toorn, 'The Nature of the Biblical Teraphim in the Light of the Cuneiform Evidence', CBQ 52 (1990), pp. 204, 213, 215, and 222
34. M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 497
35. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, p. 183
36. J. Milgrom ('Profane Slaughter and a Formulaic Key to the Composition of Deuteronomy', HUCA 47 [1976], pp. 1-2) excepts only Deut. 12.15, 21. In these two cases alone he believes the word refers to secular slaughter for food. In 1 Sam. 28 he believes indicates some undefined but permissible ritual slaughter and sacrifice, for he finds it unlikely 'that the witch of Endor would have prepared a profane [secular] meal before the very king who troubled himself to improvise an altar on the battlefield so that his troops would not be guilty of profane or illicit slaughter (I Sam. 14.32-35)'. Though Milgrom thus agrees with me that the witch proffers a ceremonial oblation rather than a domestic repast, he considers the witch's sacrifice lawful
37. A. Berlin, 'Point of View in Biblical Narrative', A Sense of the Text (JQRSup; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983), p. 112
38. See also Sternberg's chapter on 'Gaps, Ambiguity, and the Reading Process', The Poetics, pp. 186-229
39. Alter says, 'Where the narration so abundantly encourages us to expect... repetition, on occasion the avoidance of repetition, whether through substitution of a synonym or of a wholly divergent word or phrase for the anticipated reoccurrence, may also be particularly revealing' (The Art of Biblical Narrative, p. 180)
40. Å. Viberg defines a legal symbolic act as 'a non-verbal act which fulfills a legal function when it is performed under the proper circumstances' (Symbols of Law [Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992], p. 9)
41. Viberg, Symbols of Law, p. 75
42. Josephus, Ant. 6.14.4, 7