"The Levite in your gates": The Deuteronomic redefinition of Levitical authority

Journal of Biblical Literature

Volumn 126, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 417-436

  Leuchter, Mark ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 63149135797     PISSN: 00219231     EISSN: 19343876     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/27638446     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. For the political and social dimensions of Deuteronomy, see S. Dean McBride, "Polity of the Covenant People: The Book of Deuteronomy," in A Song of Power and the Power of Song: Essays on the Book of Deuteronomy (ed. Duane L. Christensen; Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 3; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993), 62-77
2. Marvin A. Sweeney, King Josiah: The Lost Messiah of Israel (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 137-69
3. For an overview of scholarship, see Mark A. O'Brien, "The Book of Deuteronomy" CurBS 3 (1995): 95-128
4. Thomas C. Römer, "The Book of Deuteronomy," in The History of Israel's Traditions: The Heritage of Martin Noth (ed. Steven L. McKenzie and M. Patrick Graham; JSOTSup 182; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 178-212
5. Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 5; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1-122
6. See Gerhard von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy (trans. D. M. G. Stalker; London: SCM, 1953), 11-24 (Levitical sermon form), 66 (Levitical authorship)
7. See also Jack R. Lundbom, "The Inclusio and Other Framing Devices in Deuteronomy i-xxviii," VT46 (1996): 314-15, for a recent adjustment to von Rad's theory
8. Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
9. Marc Z. Brettler, "Α Literary Sermon' in Deuteronomy 4," in A Wise and Discerning Mind: Essays in Honor of Burke O. Long (ed. Saul M. Olyan and Robert C. Culley; BJS 325; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 33-50
10. Sweeney, King Josiah, 151-53
11. Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, "'Until This Day' and the Preexilic Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History," JBL 122 (2003): 201-27
12. Levinson, Deuteronomy, passim
13. th Century BCE: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability," in Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (ed. Baruch Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson; JSOTSup 124; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 52-53
14. On shared clan-based shrines, see Halpern, "Jerusalem and the Lineages," 52-53, 58, 59
15. See also Lawrence E. Stager, "The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel," BASOR 260 (1985): 20-22
16. Jeffrey Stackert has recently argued that the elders retain a judicial function in the Deuteronomic legislation ("Why Does Deuteronomy Legislate Cities of Refuge? Asylum in the Covenant Collection and Deuteronomy," JBL 125 [2006]: 42-43, esp. nn. 44-45). Stackert is certainly correct to question the logic of a total replacement of traditional village/clan figures in matters of local justice; however, a distinction should be drawn between juridical and executive functions, the latter of which more appropriately describes the characterization of the elders in Deuteronomy. In this way, the Deuteronomic legislator would be able to establish a federal presence on the regional level without completely marginalizing familiar regional fixtures or institutions. See below for additional discussion
17. See Alexander Rofé, "The Organization of the Judiciary in Deuteronomy," in The World of the Aramaeans, vol. 1, Biblical Studies in Honour of Paul-Eugène Dion (ed. P. M. Michèle Daviau et al.; JSOTSup 324; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 96-98
18. Moshe Weinfeld, "Judge and Officer in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East," IOS 7 (1977): 65-88
19. Rofé, "Judiciary," 97
20. See, e.g., Ehud Ben Zvi, "Introduction: Writing, Speeches, and the Prophetic Books - Setting an Agenda," in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and M. H. Floyd; SBLSymS 10; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 6-16
21. For the royal appointment of these figures, see Halpern, "Jerusalem and the Lineages," 78-79
22. William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 91-117
23. see also David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 112-22
24. Schniedewind, Book, 101-4
25. and Norbert Lohfink ("Die Sicherung der Wirksamkeit des Gotteswortes durch das Prinzip das Schriftlichkeit der Tora und das Prinzip der Gewaltenteilung nach der Ämtergesetzen des Buches Deuteronomium [Dt 16,18-18,22]," in Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistichen Literatur, vol. 1 [SBAB 8; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990], 305-23) have noted that these two passages appear within the same rhetorical unit that deals with the theocratic and juridical dimensions of the state, though they offer dramatically disparate readings of this unit
26. For the syntactical features of w. 10-11, see Mark Leuchter, Josiah's Reform and Jeremiah's Scroll: Historical Calamity and Prophetic Response (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2006), 35-36. The unit forms a mini-chiasmus of its own, fusing the notion of juridical declaration and written preservation of that declaration as a teaching
27. Rodney K. Duke has argued that the terminology does not relate exclusively to the pre-Deuteronomic cultic activity of Levites ("The Portion of the Lévite: Another Reading of Deuteronomy 18:6-8," JBL 106 [1987]: 199), but this position is tenuous
28. For a critique, see Mark S. Smith, The Pilgrimage Pattern in Exodus (JSOTSup 239; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 257-58 n. 122
29. Leuchter, Jeremiah's Scroll, 21-36
30. See Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11, 10-12
31. Z. Ben-Barak, "The Mizpah Covenant (I Sam 10,25): The Source of the Israelite Monarchic Covenant," ZAW 91 (1979): 30-43
32. See Geo Widengren, "What Do We Know about Moses?" in Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honour of Gwynne Henton Davies (ed. John I. Durham and J. R. Porter; London: SCM, 1970; repr., Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983), 37-40
33. James W. Watts, "The Legal Characterization of Moses in the Pentateuch," JBL 117 (1998): 422-26
34. Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) 82-138
35. See also James Muilenburg, "Baruch the Scribe," in Proclamation and Presence, ed. Durham and Porter, 215-20, for comments on the general trend toward literacy and scribal culture in the seventh century B.C.E
36. Sandra L. Richter, The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology: Lešakken šemô šām in the Bible (BZAW 318; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003), 127-84
37. For an Aramean parallel relying on this same Akkadian semantic construct, see D. M. Gropp and T. J. Lewis, "Notes on Some Problems in the Aramaic Text of the Hadd-Yith'i Bilingual," BASOR 259 (1985): 46
38. The familiarity with Assyrian culture in Judah during this period is well attested through epigraphic evidence and its direct influence on Israel's literary culture. See Bernard M. Levinson, "Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition? A Response to John Van Seters," in In Search of PreExilic Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. John Day; JSOTSup 406; New York/London: Continuum, 2004), 293-97
39. Peter Machinist notes Isaiahs reliance on Assyrian propagandistic inscriptions in "Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah," JAOS 103 (1983): 727-34
40. For an overview, see Jana Pečírková, "The Administrative Methods of Assyrian Imperialism," ArOr 55 (1987): 166-71
41. For Judah's experience as a vassal state, see Mordechai Cogan, "Judah under Assyrian Hegemony: A Reexamination of Imperialism and Religion," JBL 112 (1993): 403-14
42. Patricia Dutcher-Walls addresses the influence of Neo-Assyrian political structures on Josianic policy, and specifically in Deut 17:16-17 ("The Circumscription of the King: Deuteronomy 17:16-17 in Its Ancient Social Context," JBL 121 [2002]: 612-15)
43. See, however, Marvin A. Sweeney, "The Critique of Solomon in the Josianic Edition of the Deuteronomistic History," JBL 114 (1995): 607-22, for a different background and reading
44. Pečirková, "Administrative Methods," 169-71
45. Dutcher-Walls, "Circumscription," 611-12
46. For the Assyrian sponsorship of provincial cults, see Grant Frame, "The 'First Families' of Borsippa during the Early Neo-Babylonian Period," JCS 36 (1984): 67-80
47. For the appointment of governors from the subjugated peoples, see Pečírková, "Administrative Methods," 174
48. Pečírková, "Administrative Methods," 168, 174
49. See Baruch Halpern, "Why Manasseh Is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition," VT 48 (1998): 501-3
50. See the detailed discussion by W. Boyd Barrick, The King and the Cemeteries: Toward a New Understanding of Josiah's Reform (VTSup 88; Leiden/Boston/Cologne: Brill, 2002), 189-93
51. Though only three verses are dedicated to the narration of Josiah's Passover, the prolepsis presupposes the centrality of the event in the consciousness of the reader and the deliberate intention of the author in highlighting this fact, building on an earlier account. For an earlier stratum of the account, see Lauren Shedletsky, "Josiah's Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement: A Phenomenological Approach to 2 Kings 23" (Ph.D. diss.; New York University, 2004), 159-200
52. For prolepsis as an editorial/compositional device, see Brian Peckham, "Writing and Editing," in Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. A. B. Beck et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 369-71
53. See Richard H. Lowery, The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah (JSOTSup 120; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 153-55
54. Norbert Lohfink, "Der jungend Jeremia als Propagandist und Poet: Zum Grundstock von Jer 30-31," in Le Livre de Jérémie: Le prophète et son milieu, les oracles et leur transmission (ed. P. M. Bogaert; BETL 54; 1981; repr., Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 351-68
55. Ulrich Schroter, "Jeremias Botschaft für das Nordreich, zu N. Lohfinks Uberlegungen zum Grundbestand von Jeremia xxx-xxxi," VT 35 (1985): 312-29
56. See also idem, "Why Is the Song of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy?" VT 57 (2007): 295-317, for the old poem in Deuteronomy 32 as emerging from the Shilonite tradition
57. See Howard Jacobson, "Jeremiah xxx 17" VT 54 (2004): 398-99
58. See, e.g., Geoffrey Parke-Taylor, The Formation of the Book of Jeremiah: Doublets and Recurring Phrases (SBLMS 51; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 70
59. Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 583
60. William L. Holladay, "Elusive Deuteronomists, Jeremiah and Proto-Deuteronomy," CBQ 66 (2004): 67-68
61. See Sweeney, "Critique of Solomon." Though Deut 16:18-18:22 (and 17:14-20 in particular) ostensibly limits the power of the king to engage in jurisprudence, Josiah's interests are indeed served throughout the entire Deuteronomic law code, and the laws that define the monarch's role are situated precisely in the center of Deut 16:18-18:22
62. For a general discussion of northern traditions in Deuteronomy, see Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11, 10-13, 44-57
63. See John Day, "The Destruction of the Shiloh Sanctuary and Jeremiah vii 12, 14," in Studies in the Historical Book of the Old Testament (VTSup 30; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 87-94. The dispersal of Shilonite tradents is evident in later passages in 1 Samuel, as they surface in Naioth (1 Samuel 19), in Nob (1 Samuel 22) and eventually, of course, in Jerusalem under David. 1 Kings 14 reports that a contingent of Shilonites regrouped and maintained a presence at the remains of the old shrine, though there is no indication that the Shiloh of Jeroboam's day was an active cult site
64. For Hosea's connection to a marginalized northern Levitical order (the outstanding prototype of which would have been the Shilonites), see Stephen L. Cook, "The Lineage Roots of Hosea's Yahwism," Semeia 87 (1999): 154-59
65. For odier oracles that draw from Jeremiah's Levitical background, see Marvin A. Sweeney, review of Martti Nissinen, C. L. Seow, and Robert K. Ritner, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (WAW 12; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003)
66. Review of Biblical Literature (2005), www.bookreviews.org
67. Scholars generally recognize the commonalities between Jeremiah 36 and 2 Kings 22, which establishes parallels between Jeremiah's Urrolle and the (Deuteronomic) law book of Josiah's day. The scribes who interact with the Urrolle in Jeremiah 36 fulfill the Deuteronomic charges for Levites to administer the tôrâ to the king (Jer 36:20-24; cf. Deut 17:18-20) and for the public (Jer 36:10; cf. Deut 31:9-13). This follows a larger pattern within the book that characterizes the Shaphanide scribes (and their associates such as Baruch) as executors of Levitical responsibilities. J. Andrew Dearman makes brief allusions to this connection ("My Servants the Scribes: Composition and Context in Jeremiah 36," JBL 109 [1990]: 409 n. 16, 418 n. 39), but does not discuss its role in the larger rhetorical aim of the Jeremianic corpus
68. For a full discussion, see Leuchter, The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26-45 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
69. Dearman, "My Servants the Scribes," 418-21
70. The locus classicus for Levites as scribal instructors is the narrative of Nehemiah 8. See Michael Duggan, The Covenant Renewal in Ezra-Nehemiah (Neh 7:72b-10:40): An Exegetical, Literary, and Theological Study (SBLDS 164; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 122
71. Mark S. Smith notes that Levites are responsible for the redaction of the Psalter ("The Levitical Compilation of the Psalter," ZAW 103 [1991]: 258-63), and the Chronicler highlights the scribal and administrative role of the Levites on the regional level (1 Chr 26:29; 2 Chr 17:7-9; 19:5-7; 34:13), making explicit the implicit dimensions of the earlier Josianic literature
72. Evidence for these alternatives emerges in both the Jeremiah and Ezekiel traditions (Jer 44:15-19; Ezek 20:39). See also the recent discussion by Elie Assis, who notes the uncertainty regarding any traditional Israelite form of covenant/covenant behavior following the deportations to Babylon and literary strategies for addressing the problem ("Why Edom? On the Hostility Towards Jacob's Brother in Prophetic Sources," VT 56 [2006]: 14-19)
73. Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2000), 26-41
74. See also idem, "The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered," JBL 115 (1996): 432-36
75. Levine's analysis confirms some aspects of earlier studies regarding the antecedents of "synagogues" during the exile or even during the late preexilic period. See Jacob Weingreen, From Bible to Mishna: The Continuity of Tradition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 115-28
76. Ernest W. Nicholson, Preaching to the Exiles: A Study of the Prose Tradition in the Book of Jeremiah (New York: Blackwell, 1970), 132-35
77. Stephen L. Cook has arrived independendy at a very similar conclusion, identifying Levite scribes with the exilic Deuteronomistic circles ("Micah's Deuteronomistic Redaction and the Deuteronomists' Identity'' in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-euteronomism [ed. L. S. Schearing and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTsup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999], 228-31)
78. Geoghegan, "'Until This Day,'" 225-27
79. For Ezekiel's polemic against the Deuteronomistic tradition, see Scott W. Hahn and John S. Bergsma, "What Laws Were 'Not Good'? A Canonical Approach to Ezekiel 20:25-26," JBL 123 (2004): 217-18. Considering Ezekiel's antipathy toward Deuteronomy and the exilic polemics that developed between the Zadokite and Deuteronomistic camps, we are justified in viewing Ezek 1:1-2 as referring back to the year 622 as the beginning of the end for Judah from a Zadokite perspective
80. For a discussion of the competitive traditions during the exile, see Paul D. Hanson, "Israelite Religion in the Early Post-Exilic Period," in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (ed. Patrick D. Miller et al.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 485-506
81. The Deuteronomistic History begins with Deuteronomy and emulates its essential principles, while the Priestly Pentateuch ends with Deuteronomy and subordinates it to Zadokite discourses and themes; see Leuchter, "Song of Moses," 300
82. For the Zadokite redaction of the Pentateuch, see Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 95, 103
83. The redaction, however, should not be attributed to the Holiness School. See Saul M. Olyan, "Exodus 31:12-17: The Sabbath according to H, or the Sabbath according to P and H?" JBL 124 (2005): 201-9
84. For a discussion of the tensions between Levites and Zadokites in the Restoration era, see Gabriele Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History from Ezekiel to Daniel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 52-55
85. On Malachi's diatribe against the Zadokites, see Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 332-33
86. The antecedents of Ezra's activity in the Deuteronomistic tradition are discussed by Timo Veijola, "The Deuteronomistic Roots of Judaism," in Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume; Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (ed. Chaim Cohen, Avi Hurvitz, and Shalom M. Paul; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 459-78
87. See also Duggan, Covenant Renewal in Ezra-Nehemiah, 122