Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch

Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the PentateuchAuthor(s): STEPHEN A. GELLERSource: Prooftexts, Vol. 12, No. 2 (MAY 1992), pp. 97-124Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20689330 .

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STEPHEN A. GELLER

Blood Cult Toward a Literaiy Theology

of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch

THIS ESSAY IS AN ATTEMPT at a literary theology of a major theme in the Priestly Source of the Pentateuch, often identified by scholars with the final redaction of that work,1 By "literary" is meant an approach that

proceeds directly from analysis of the complete text in its present form,

synchronically, as it were; and not diachronically, through primary con cern with the history of the text, the compositional strands that may underlie the final edition. It has no doctrinal constraints, no theological agenda. The only presuppositions are those of the "literary approach" itself. The chief assumption relevant to this study is that an edited text like the Pentateuch is an honorable thing, with its own type of coherence and

literary intentions; that editing is as creative a literary task as composi tion, with equal authorial integrity?especially in ancient works in which the line between authors and editors is often very faint.

The Pentateuch is, then, not a mere concatenation of haphazardly edited strands, as most source criticism implies by its focus on discrete ness rather than cohesion, on ferreting out the vaguest suspicions of

disunity in the text with inquisitorial zeal. Such critical discrimination is

historically interesting and valid in itself; but it bears about as much relevance to true literary interpretation as X-raying a canvas to discover the successive layers of overpainting does to aesthetic appreciation of the artist's achievement. And the priestly editor of the Pentateuch was indeed an artist, producing not a patchwork aggregate signifying nothing, but a

PROOFTEXTS12 (1992): 97-124 ? 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



98 STEPHEN A. GELLER

work meaningful in the whole, a tapestry more than the sum of its woven

strands, a truly fit object of literary analysis. It might be argued that such coherence as one claims to find in an

edited work exists only in the mind's eye, as the product of ingenious exegesis, and does not exist in fact But what is a literary "fact" itself except a construct of interpretation? Even source criticism is a literary activity, as its most gifted practitioners have always known. It, too, cannot

escape the iron curve of the hermeneutical circle, and can claim a role in

science and scholarship only to the extent it is aware of its own ultimate dependence on literary sensibility. Indeed, if anything has title to the status of "fact" in multilayered ancient texts like the Bible it is surely only the final, completed form before us, not hypothetical strands isolated with acumen often as arbitrary as the most far-fetched literary analysis. To

deny the interpretational legitimacy, even primacy, of the whole over its

parts is to deny a work like the Pentateuch, the expression of a millen

nium of Hebrew history, thought and literary art, its right to be heard as a

unity, to bind it forever in Lilliputian conceptions. Atomism has been at work on the Bible long enough. It is time for literary analysis to see what can be achieved through the principles of cohesion, synthesis and order.

It is therefore inherent to this study that little reference be made to the theoretical prehistory of the Pentateuch as a whole or the Priestly Work in

particular. No distinctions will be made between hypothetical 1, 2, P3 ... etc. It is largely irrelevant to the task at hand whether precedes or

follows D or H, or any other reconstructed source. Concern for possible earlier strands will mainly be limited to how the final priestly redactor

might have construed them, what they meant to him, not their original authors centuries earlier, authors who themselves were primarily compilers of yet earlier traditions. Discussion will frequently violate the

discrete boundaries drawn by source criticism and other historical

disciplines so that the meaning of the editor may emerge in its historical context, as a theological expression of its own age. It is for the reader to

judge whether the result is an egregious Overinterpretation of an

essentially incoherent composite text that has no valid claim to be viewed as a whole, or a meaningful attempt to penetrate the truly creative dimension of a supreme example in world literature of editing as art.

1

For most readers of the Bible the territory of the Priestly Writer, centering in Leviticus and adjacent regions of Exodus and Numbers, is a dark and bloody ground: dark because of its impenetrable mass of ritual

detail, the endless description of the desert tabernacle, the obsessive



A Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch 99

concern with impurity and cleanliness, all of interest, perhaps to the anthropologist and psychologist of religion, but remote from the light of reason; and bloody because dominating all the ritualia is a sacrificial cult that attains to an almost Aztec infatuation with blood. It is sprinkled, splashed, poured and smeared on altars, persons, on the veil of the Holy of Holies, even, once a year, on the Ark of the Covenant itself. No other

people of the ancient Near East had a sacrificial system in which blood played so prominent a role.2 One can imagine the sights and smells in the sacred compound. Surely it was irony that moved the later Rabbis to declare that one of the greatest miracles of the destroyed temple was this: that never was a single fly seen in its precincts!3

Unfortunately, (the common rubric for the Priestly Writer or Writers as literary "source") cannot be dismissed either by believers or by scholars as a distant Tibet, peripheral to biblical religion. As final editor of the Pentateuch, according to the compositional hypothesis still accepted in some form by most scholars, is responsible for the completed edition of the work. Despite the fact that much of it consists of passages quoted from earlier sources, the most revered section of the Hebrew Bible must be viewed as his creation.

But even as editor, artist and thinker, receives few compliments. His own passages, with the exception of the elegantly austere creation story at the beginning of Genesis, are viewed as vapid and dry compared with the primitive, glowing tales of the ancient Yahwistic writer. Fs favorite device for limning his editorial framework is the famous genealogies of "begats," so quaintly irrelevant to moderns. His conceptual world does not seem to extend beyond the ritual. No one would parrot today the extreme opinion of Wellhausen that represents the late, degenerate stage of biblical religion in which the lofty prophetic idealism has fos silized into the killing letter of cultic law, mechanical, spiritless, as bloodless as the rites prescribed are bloody. Nevertheless, something of the Protestant prejudice against cult still survives to the extent that it seems incredible to many interpreters that such a mountain of tedious ritualia could ever produce more than a mouse of a real idea. That from its midst there emerges the high peak of the "Holiness Code," with its injunction to "Love thy neighbor as thyself," must seem an accident of nature rather than a result of considered thought. In sum, to the sympa thetic reader of the Bible, is a Problem.

The intellectual problem represented by has nothing to do with the embarrassment he may cause to belief or to taste?both outside the realm of scholarly inquiry?but with the puzzling contrast between the clearly extensive ideational process implied by his massive editorial compositional activity as creator of the Pentateuch and his reticence to verbalize his underlying concepts. certainly has ideas but he rarely presents them openly. His motto seems to be, "Never explain!" His idea




of a "reason" for a commandment is "You shall be holy as I, the Lord am

holy," or even a laconic "I am the Lord."4 To be sure, glimmers of a theology can be sensed from the structure

impresses on the Pentateuch. He presents history as a sequence of

"covenants," which for him consist of divine promises issuing in a

regulation relevant to the later cult. The first two, the Noahide covenant

of Genesis 9 and the Patriarchal covenant of Genesis 17, are sealed by

"signs," the rainbow and the rite of circumcision, respectively. The

Passover sacrifice of Exodus 12-13 anticipates the final, culminating Sinai

covenant, which has structured to center on the revelation of the vast

ritual establishment of shrine, clergy and sacrifice. With its elaborations, ramifications and (perhaps) later additions, it occupies fully a third of the Pentateuch. The core of the entire composition is the stretch from Exodus

40 to Leviticus 9: the "Glory" of the divine Presence descends on the completed desert shrine, built on the "model" of the heavenly palace and itself the icon of the future temple, and "rests" (ptf) in the Holy of

Holies. God reveals the details of the basic sacrificial system, which, in a

set of complicated dedicatory rites, is initiated by Aaron and his sons. The

Glory confirms Its satisfaction by sending Itself forth as a tongue of flame, which consumes the offering on the altar. For the Priest there could be no higher expression of human proximity to deity than the Indwelling of the Presence in the shrine as the smoke of "propitiating savor" (rrtrrc ) ascends.

But how does the smell of sacrifice "propitiate"? ascribes to most

cultic acts an expiating or atoning (IM) function. But how do they work this effect? One sees that he maintains the tightest possible control in

molding the prehistory of the cult to his own ends. In passages he

composed himself, he allows no sacrifice before Sinai, and has so edited rituals in earlier materials as to bend them to his own needs. But what are

those ends and needs? Wellhausen suggested that the special prominence of the "sin-offering" ( ) and "guilt-offering" (Dtf ) in the cultic code manifests a preoccupation with sinfulness that he thought reflected the

religious crisis of the Exilic and Post-Exilic age. It is certain that has edited the primeval history of Genesis 1-11 to focus on the increase of human crime, culminating in the "corruption" of the generation of the Flood. It has long been surmised that the generally descending ages attained by the primeval patriarchs are somehow related to this flourish

ing of sin. But is more reticent than any other biblical tradition about putting the logic of his theological reasoning into words.

The logic of the prophets can be phrased in crystal antitheses: sin is death, obedience is life. The covenant tradition in its Deuteronomic stage becomes almost garrulous in expressing these essential oppositions. Deuteronomy is studded with arguments, explanations, justifications. The intellectual Wisdom tradition is similarly explicit in its reasoning.




Despite the complexity of argumentation and rhetoric in books like Job and Qohelet, despite the distortions imposed by later piet?stic editors and the vagaries of textual transmission, no one doubts that these Wisdom

works are attempting to manifest ideas. But seems almost immune from

logic and contemptuous of explanation. Despite the glut of wordy details, seems inarticulate. His most significant silence is in regard to the meaning of the

sanguinary sacrificial cult, which forms the huge core of the Pentateuch.

Especially troubling is the apparent inconsequence of the bloody rituals, the lack of explanation as to how they "propitiate" the deity. Can this

miring in grisly ritual be an expression of transcendent monotheism? To be sure, offers practically his only "explanation" of a commandment in

regard to the "atoning" effect of blood: Israel is prohibited from consum

ing bloody meat because "I have assigned it for making atonement for your lives on the altar";5 but there is no overt statement about how blood achieves this saving result. The problem of is not so much that he is so reticent as the intimation one receives, in view of the obvious complexity and sophistication of his editorial endeavor, that this reticence is some

how willed, in some peculiar way intrinsic to his message. seems to be aiming at a theology of indirection.

The "problem" of P, then, becomes one regarding his form of expres sion, or, rather, the connection he seems to imply between form and

meaning. For this reason, an approach to F s ideas must be primarily literary rather than ideational. Despite all the admitted dangers of herme

neutics, the road to the dominant theology of the Pentateuch as a whole

lies through exegesis. P, more than any other biblical author, reveals what

he has to say through how he says it. Fortunately, has provided a paradigmatic example of his indirect

method of expression amounting almost to a "control" for exegesis. Reference is to the famous, unexplained juxtaposition of Sabbath and shrine in Exodus 31 and 35. The passage is crucial to Fs theology and the

manner of presentation so obviously premeditated that there can be no

question of coincidence or accident. Exodus 24-31 consists of the detailed instructions for the building of the desert tabernacle, 35-40 of the account of their performance. Attached to the end of the former and the beginning of the latter complex in a manner that suggests an editorial frame around the intervening chapters, Exodus 32-34, the account of the Golden Calf

apostasy and the restatement of the Ten Commandments as a "cultic

decalogue," are two Sabbath injunctions. The first, Exod. 31:12-17, comes

out of the blue, so to speak, without transition from the tabernacle

pericope. Israel shall keep the Sabbath "... because it is holy... for in six

days the Lord made heaven and earth but on the seventh he ceased {roty) work and restored Himself." The "explanation" of itnitatio dei is of P's

usual cryptic sort. The second injunction in Exod. 35:1-3, equally without




transition to the tabernacle material that follows, is shorter and adds two

further injunctions: the Sabbath violator shall be executed and no fires may be kindled on the sacred day.

What is the meaning of these peculiar juxtapositions? Prominent in both the account of the construction of the shrine and the prohibition of labor on the Sabbath is the term "commission" (nz??ti). The Rabbis saw in this verbal link a clue to the divine Author's intent?for He works as

indirectly as ?to indicate that whatever types of activity were employed to build the tabernacle were precisely those forbidden on the Sabbath: the

thirty-nine roK1?1? a .

However, it can easily be demonstrated that this specific purport is a

reflection of the larger intent of P. He specifically terms the Sabbath a

"sign" of divine creation. Those familiar with ancient Near Eastern myth

recognize immediately that Fs true aim is to suggest by indirection a link between shrine and creation, with the Sabbath as an intermediary device. The juxtaposition is not "unexplained"; it is rather inevitable and

necessary. Here we can penetrate to Fs motives. Common in many ancient

myths was the belief that creation was completed by the construction of the palace of the creator, the mythical double of which was the earthly shrine. In Mesopotamia, Marduk sealed his kingship over the gods by slaying the sea monster Tiamat, forming the world from her carcass, and

constructing his royal palace, the great shrine of Esagila at Babylon. The aim is to join cult and creation in the mysterious transmutation of time

and space effected by myth. A similar pattern is attested at Ugarit and, most importantly, in many passages in the Hebrew Bible outside Fs Pentateuch.6 Yahweh was apparently believed to have defeated Sea

(Judge River, Leviathan, Rahab, Twisted Serpent, etc.) and, after creating the cosmos, to have established the "shrine of His dominion": "He built

His shrine like the heights; like the earth He founded it forever" (Ps. 78:69). Reference here is to the Solomonic Temple, which Israel, like its neighbors, believed to be a replica of the divine abode in heaven.

Now, it is well known that Fs own creation narrative "demytholo gizes" ancient traditions considerably, even polemicizes against them.7

Obviously cannot have a "shrine" built on the seventh day of creation, on the ancient mythical model, since essential to his system is the entire revelation of cult at Sinai. Yet he obviously is unwilling to renounce

completely all linking of shrine and creation. The very language of the construction of the tabernacle contains literary allusions to creation.8

More importantly, cosmic associations were a historic aspect of the shrine and its contents: the altar named "divine mountain"; the brazen "sea," etc.9 The Rabbis termed the "foundation stone" under the altar the fundiment of the whole world.10 Therefore employs the "sign" of the

Sabbath as a literary means of linking creation and shrine, myth and




history. The abrupt juxtapositions in Exodus, far from confusing those who comprehend the underlying intent, serve to bring Fs literary tactic into sharper focus. Whatever may be the prehistory of the Sabbath, or its function in Israel's ancient cult, in Fs literary theology it performs the function of a bond of cosmos and cult, both loosening and tightening the constraint of myth. This key example shows that despite all theological " demythologization" wants to retain something of the ancient mythical

roots of the cult; and that he means to attain this goal through literary manipulation, above all through placement?juxtaposition?and subtle allusion. The employment of the term ^ ^ for labor on the shrine, for work on the Sabbath and for God's acts of creation is only one expression of his underlying aim.

2

So Fs "silence" is part of a literary strategy to deal with a theological stance that straddles myth and history. A fuller understanding of Fs method of expressing underlying concepts will emerge from analysis of a passage crucial to the most objectionable aspect of his system to moderns, the role of blood manipulation in the sacrificial cult. For the passage in

question one may recite a litany of centralities: has positioned it at the center of the central book of his Pentateuch. It describes a rite at the central shrine, in Fs religious geography at the center of the chosen "nation of priests." That rite involves penetration to the innermost recess of the shrine, the Holy of Holies. It follows, if such clues have any meaning, that the passage is the gateway to the hidden sanctum of Fs

theology, hidden from casual gaze by the veil of literary strategem. Reference is to the rites of the Day of Atonement described in

Leviticus 16.11 On this one day of the year the High Priest, in a state of the most absolute purity, was to venture into the Holy of Holies with a bowl of blood. In later times, they said a cord was attached to his belt so that the other priests, now far away in the courtyard, could drag out his body from the adytum should he die of what he saw there; for not even for this task could they themselves enter. On that day, all believed, the Glory Itself became visible enthroned on the cherubim wings that formed the lid of the Ark of the Covenant.

After strict ablutions the High Priest donned garments of purest linen. They then led before him two goats. Lots were cast and one goat

was designated "Azazel's," the scapegoat, the other the "sin-offering" of the community, the "people's goat." But before working atonement for the people, the High Priest himself and his dan must first receive expiation. How else could he appear as a mediator? So they slaughtered a

bull as his own "sin-offering," and it was with a bowl of its blood that he




entered the shrine first. He proceeded through the empty halls to the small incense altar before the curtain of the Holy of Holies. Taking some

coals from it in a pan, together with incense, he drew aside the veil and

stepped into the Presence. What happened next is not clear. According to the text he was to place

the incense on the coals, immediately raising a cloud that would, it is

assumed, protect him from the searing fire, which was the physical manifestation of the Glory, and which had been known to shrivel the

unshielded. He was then to sprinkle with a single finger some of the bull's blood once directly on and seven times before the "atoning lid" (nn*33) of the ark, expiating his sins and those of his priestly house. But surely these

ritual operations were performed with trepidation by the priest. Surely his eyes dimmed with tears from the fumes of incense. Considering that

he carried in one hand the smoldering censer, in the other the bowl of blood, the decorous "sprinkling" must be conceived of more as a splash

ing or even flinging of blood at the enthroned Presence.12 It is difficult to believe that he could have gazed clear-eyed at God, who, in any case, said He would appear "in the cloud"; though whether reference is to that of the theophany itself or of the censer is as hidden from us as the deity no doubt was from the streaming eyes of the High Priest.

This ordeal had now to be repeated with the blood of the "people's goat," thus purging the shrine and expiating the community's sins. The

High Priest then took a bowl of blood, both that of the bull and of the goat, smeared it on the horns of the main altar and sprinkled it on the rest.

So he made atonement for the altar. Next they led before him the scapegoat. He placed his hands on its

head, made confession, and so made it the bearer of all Israel's sins. The

beast was then released under the supervision of a designated man to the

goat-demon Azazel13 in the desert, the "cut-off region." There its fate is unknown. Later it was said the man hurled it from a cliff. Others said he

merely chased it into the wilderness.

Finally, the High Priest doffed his blood-splattered garments, bathed and donned the usual sacred raiment. He then offered up a normal

"burnt-offering" (nbty), again "for atonement," along with the fat of the bull and the "people's goat." The rest of those "sin-offerings," together with the soiled linen garments, was cremated outside the sacred

precincts. In this complex congeries of rites involving several animals, entrances

to the shrine, sprinklings and smearings of blood, confession of sin, various ablutions and cleansings, etc., there are in fact only two that are

unique to that most sacred day: the entrance into the adytum to sprinkle blood and the mysterious mission of the scapegoat. Although the assem

blage of individual ritual acts attains a density unparalleled in the other




yearly ceremonies, these two rites alone must be viewed as bearing the

special meaning of the Day of Atonement. From one point of view the pair represents a hendiadys, a ritual

merism. If one eliminates the bull of the priestly //sin-offering,/ as prepa ratory to the communal rite of expiation with the "people's goat," then the fact that the latter and the scapegoat are the same species may be Fs

way of indicating the essential oneness of the day's diagnostic rites: one

goat penetrates, as blood, into the extreme sanctity of the Holiest Place; the other is expelled to the outermost extreme of the cultic realm, the "howling chaos of the wilderness," the region "cut off" from God.14

But from another point of view, there is an essential difference between the two special rituals: that in the sanctum is a climactic extension of the regular procedure with "sin-offerings," part of the normal cultic language, so to speak; but the scapegoat is truly unique. Nowhere else in the Bible is a beast said to "bear away" sins in a manner that is clearly conceived of as physical, in what seems like a curious relic of "primitive" magic; for whatever the significance of "laying on of hands" may be in other rites, there is no question that the scapegoat actually carries away sinfulness "into the desert."

It therefore seems reasonable to see in the bloodless scapegoat rather than in the bloody act in the Holy of Holies the truly central and essential atoning ritual of the holiest day. The clear message of language and form is, however, against such a supposition. Rather, it is the blood rite that considers crucial; and it is precisely its links to the regular cult that enables him to use it as the epitome of a sacrificial system, the main aim of which is, to P, the expiation of sin. The blood act, rather than the picturesque scapegoat ceremony, is to centermost to the centralities of the Day of Atonement.

This conclusion emerges unmistakably from the language employed to describe the functions of the two rites. While the scapegoat is said to bear on its head "all the transgressions (nt?ijj) of the Israelites, and all their rebellious acts ( ?), whatever their sins may be,"15 only the blood ritual is stated to "make atonement for (by n?3) the shrine from all the impurities (niK?p?) of the Israelites and from their rebellious acts (Dirytf?)/ whatever they may be."16 Despite the similarities^ only the blood rite is said to "atone" on the very Day of Atonement. On this point, at least, eschews ambiguity.

Finally, provides a literary clue to indicate to the perceptive reader that he wants attention to focus primarily on the climactic encounter in the Holy of Holies. Leviticus 16 begins with a reference to the unhappy fate of Aaron's two eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu. According to the story in Leviticus 10 they were cremated by a flame that proceeded from God because they proffered "strange fire," probably an improper incense

offering. Accordingly, Leviticus 16 opens with the warning:




The Lord said to Moses after the death of Aaron's two sons when they approached before the Lord and died, the Lord said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, your brother, not to enter the shrine to the place behind the curtain, to the

atoning lid of the ark, at [just] any time, so that he not die; for in a cloud I shall

appear over the atoning lid. Rather, this is how he shall enter it."

There then follows the full ritual of the Day of Atonement. The reader's attention is naturally drawn to anticipate that part of the following ritual that in fact requires "approaching God" most intimately: the high priestly entrance to the Holiest Place where, also, an incense rite is involved. This

anticipatory emphasis on the danger faced by the priest really serves to put in the foreground the blood ritual he braves the Presence to perform. By making the ceremonies of the atoning day appear to be somehow consequent to the death of the hapless priests of Leviticus 10, indirectly but forcefully indicates his true priority: expiation through blood.

What, then, does the scapegoat signify to P? As suggested above, it may serve to double the expiating process as a merism, perhaps also

functioning as a public counterpart to the main blood rite in the hidden sanctum. It is even possible to detect a polemical note of the type favors. It is worth noting that he employs for the scapegoat not the compound term used everywhere else for the goat as sacrificial animal, nny -pytp

"billy of the goats" or the like, but a simple "V?yt27. The other half of the

compound occurs in transmuted form in the name of the destination of the scapegoat, Azazel, probably a goat deity or demon. Send the goat to the Goat! Can this be Fs way of banishing not only transgression but also the whole realm of magic represented by the clearly sympathetic scape goat rite to the desert, the "cut-off" realm of magic and superstition? Since in the very next chapter, Leviticus 17, uses the same term, simple Tyfc;, to refer to "satyrs," i.e., desert-dwelling demons he declares to be the objects of Israel's illicit worship up to this time, the imputation of a

partially polemical intent to Fs treatment of the scapegoat rite, perhaps the original ceremony of the day, seems at least possible. And it is also conceivable that the scapegoat performs yet another polemical function intrinsic to Fs theology. Since he explicitly states that the goat "bore off" Israel's transgressions, it is clear that the latter were physically present only in that beast, not in the "people's goat," whose blood was carried into the Holiest Place. That blood contained no physical pollution of sin; nor, by extension, does the blood of any offering. Else how could any blood come in contact with the shrine?17 Surely the contact of the impurity of sin with the purity of sanctity would, like the collision of

matter and anti-matter, destroy the cosmos! So what actually "atones" is only the blood. In effect, the later Rabbis

were correct in stating that "without blood there is no atonement."18

Despite the fact that allows a few rites and even objects to work expiation bloodlessly,19 and that some sacrifices, especially the ancient




"peace-offerings" (D^) are never said to achieve atonement, the thrust of his system is definitely toward the blood-atonement connection. Even the "whole offerings" (rthy), also of the highest antiquity, are ascribed an

atoning function,20 let alone the "sin-" and "guilt-offerings," which form the patent core of the system. If not Fs invention, they are substantially his center of interest. It is for this reason that the ultimate "sin-offerings" on the Day of Atonement can be us?d as a guide to Fs entire blood sacrifice theology.

3

The answer to two questions must now be essayed: what exactly is this "atonement, expiation" effected by the cult? And how is it that blood is the essential medium for attaining it?

Hebrew kapper, for which English "atonement" ("at-one-ment") and

"expiation" ("making pious, appeasing") are more convenient labels than

translations, is a term whose meaning must be deduced from the kinds of context where it is used. The proposed etymologies are so contradictory, and their employment in Fs advanced theology doubtlessly so far removed from the original sense (like the English terms), that exegesis

must determine the significance.21 It is likely that the nuance of the term differs according to different theological environments.

At least two nuances may be inferred from careful study of the very

Day of Atonement itself. Scholars have long debated what it is that day actually achieves. After all, the aim of much, even most, of the regular cult is also to attain "atonement." It seems a priori that the Day of^Atonement proper must work some additional, perhaps higher degree of expiation.

may provide an indirect indication that he intends different levels and nuances of kapper. As noted above, after the extremely elaborate

expiation rites of the day, achieving total purgation, the High Priest is bidden to don his usual vestments and offer "burnt-offerings" for himself and the people "for atonement" Surely this is gilding the lily! However, this seemingly anticlimactic ritual detail is significant. The priest is, in fact, resuming the regular cult immediately, whose general function is also atonement, in Fs view. Since Israel has hardly had time to accumu

late polluting sinfulness, seems to be trying to intimate that the type of expiation achieved by the daily cult differs from the special type attained through the rites of the most sacred day. What is that heightened type of atonement?

An essential clue seems to be that while the expiatory sacrifices of the

regular cult are often said to effect "forgiveness,"22 that term is not

employed in Leviticus 16 to describe the results of purgation from "impurity" on the Day of Atonement. Milgrom suggested that the




extraordinary action of that day was directed at cleansing the shrine from the residual effects of a "miasma" engendered by all sin, which was

attracted magnetically, as it were, to the shrine.23 It was not removed by those expiatory rites carried out for individuals, but required an addi

tional, communal act of purification. In effect, the function ascribes to the blood of the "people's goat," cited above, might better be translated as

"making atonement for the shrine from all the impurities (= miasma) of the Israelites caused by their rebellious acts."

This essentially mechanical interpretation is not inconsistent with the

personal, emotional level implied by "forgiveness." On the contrary, the

logic of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel requires that

sins be more than merely "forgiven." It is a known fact that, despite the

proverbial expression, it is impossible really to "forget" offenses one has

supposedly "forgiven." The memory of the crime remains as a shadow on

future relations. When two people begin to quarrel, each soon resurrects the full inventory of "sins" the other has committed in the past. For the covenant to remain effective, God must wipe out completely this residual effect of sin?indeed, a possible original sense of kapper is "rub, wipe out"?and so renew the pristine nature of the bond. For this process an

expression like "purgation of impurity" would then be a priestly meta

phor. In any case, it is certain that intends some nuance of restoration to

pristine originality, because of the very reference to the Nadab and Abihu

tragedy. By placing an allusion to the fate of the two priests at the beginning of

Leviticus 16, achieved his goal of focusing the reader's attention on the scene in the Holiest Place, despite the abundance of potentially distract

ing detail surrounding it in the chapter. But the same allusion achieves another aim: it connects the repeated, yearly cultic event of the Day of

Atonement to the entire context of the Nadab and Abihu story, the account of the unique historical circumstance of the original dedication of the tabernacle, the image of all shrines.

The pericope of Leviticus 8-10 recounts the complicated series of

initiatory rites at the newly completed shrine. The ceremonies end with a

spectacular theophany. states at the end of Leviticus 9 that a tongue of flame proceeded from the divine Glory and consumed the offerings on

the altar. The meaning is similar to that of the miraculous event later on

Mount Carmel: the fire represents absolute divine acceptance not only of the sacrifice, but, in Leviticus 9, also of the entire cultic establishment. Nor

was the effect of this wonderful holocaust transitory. Since the fire on the altar was, according to Fs regulations, never allowed to die, it remained, like the "eternal light" within the shrine, a permanent guarantee of the Presence. In a sense, the visible sight of the column of smoke arising from the sacred compound was, for all ages, a counterpart of the "pillar of fire

and cloud" that guided Israel in the wilderness. is no Zoroastrian fire




worshiper, but the holy flame, drawn from traditional theophany imagery, is for him the essence of God's actuality in the cult. The flames visible to Israel represent that One in the Holy of Holies visible only once a year to the High Priest, and then only furtively, as a side-glance through a cloud of incense.

The "strange fire" offered by the errant priests and their incineration by divine blaze emanating, it is implied, from the altar or the Holiest Place, or both, follows immediately upon the fiery miracle described above. The immediate juxtaposition of fire as blessing and as punishment serves as a reminder not only of the danger faced by priests in their duties but also of the twin nature of the divine Presence in the midst of Israel as favor and as "wrath" ( ^ ).24 As often, the hint of danger suggests the hidden power of the numinous. From this point of view, the fate of Nadab and Abihu is not incidental to the dedication of the shrine but intrinsic and essential to it. Something of the sort had to occur.

The High Priest faces the same threat on the Day of Atonement when he brings blood and incense into the Presence. The allusion to the events of Leviticus 10, and beyond that chapter, of Leviticus 8-9 and, ultimately, of the descent of the Glory on the tabernacle in Exodus 40, results in

forging a firm link in the reader's mind between the yearly ritual and the historical acts of the Mosaic age.25 Fs meaning is unmistakable: the Day of Atonement restores the shrine to its original state of purity on the day of dedication, when it was a fit repository of the Glory of the Presence. The purity of that day was beyond time itself. Owing to the connection of the shrine to creation, the Day of Atonement may be said to leap over all

history and return the cult to a state of closeness to God mankind

experienced only before the rebellion in Eden. For the shrine to require rededication implies that it had acquired

some taint, for which a "miasma" of impurity is an explanation fully consonant with ancient cultic notions, and P's method of incorporating them theologically. However, the purgation of the Day of Atonement

must not be viewed simply mechanically. Rather, has woven it into

history and cosmos as a radically culminating event. In the context of his

theology, "atonement" effected by the regular actions of the cult really means "attaining forgiveness," but that extraordinary degree achieved on

the holiest day means even more than "restoration." The only adequate translation is "re-creation."26

Even as he has linked the Day of Atonement to the events of Israel's

stay in the desert, has modified, perhaps even nullified, history with myth. In fact, the "re-creative" effect of temple purgation is typical of the

ancient Near Eastern mythical-religious complex, taking place precisely in the kind of New Year ceremony that the Day of Atonement undoubt edly was originally27 So Fs radicalism is, in truth, a reflection of a deep conservatism.




But possesses one innovation: nowhere else in Israel's cultural

sphere was this complete purgation achieved with lavish display of blood. attains "re-creation" through the sanguinary sacrificial cult.

Sacrifice to him retains only limited aspects of its usual ancient sense of

gift or communion with the deity. Only in Israel's cult, as presented by P, did a god grant "atonement" by being confronted with drops and smears of blood. We must now attempt to answer the second question posed above. If "atonement" to means in some contexts "forgiveness," in

others "re-creation," how is it that both functions came to be represented specifically by the blood of sacrifice?

4

It may be a matter of some chagrin to moderns to realize that it is not in the abstract-sounding concept of "re-creation" that proceeds most

beyond other ancient theologians, but in the unique role he assigns to blood. The sacrifices are not for him what Maimonides thought (and hoped): a fossil of paganism, at best a concession to win the masses

gradually over to the lofty inexpressibility of pure monotheism. Rather, blood rites, in fact, the very gore itself, are the essence of the ruling idea in

Fs theology. What does blood mean to P? Of course, it is inherently a powerful

substance to which no human being is capable of being indifferent. is no

doubt drawing at some deep level on this universal significance of blood. Furthermore, blood has a magical, ritual function of some type in almost

all cultures. There is every likelihood that wishes to appropriate the suggestive power of blood as apotropaic symbol, as indeed he does through the bloody Passover sign that wards off the "Destroyer." But

blood goes much farther into the marrow of Fs system. Two major aspects are palpable: has both demythologized blood

and simultaneously woven it into history in such away as to resurrect

within Israelite monotheism a new expression of the primeval realm of

myth. The first aspect has been described most forcefully by Milgrom, who holds that in Fs expiatory theology blood plays the role of a neutral "ritual detergent" effecting purgation.28 It is certain that avoids any

thing that suggests any magical power in the substance itself, or even, as

noted above, any physical contamination by sinfulness. On the other

hand, it is precisely in regard to the atoning function of blood that presents his only true "explanation" of the cult. He does this in a manner

typical of his method of literary indirection, attaining a level of ambiguity so intense, so complete as to be his obvious intent.

The explanation occurs in Leviticus 17, i.e., juxtaposed to Leviticus 16.

However, the aim of the juxtaposition seems to be much clearer than it




actually is?quite the opposite of the situation in regard to Sabbath and shrine in Exodus 31 and 35. On the surface seems to offer a simple explication of the meaning of blood sacrifice. In Lev. 17:10-12 God states that He will "turn his face" against the individual (#9J) who consumes

bloody meat because "the life (tf 9}) of the flesh is [in] the blood, and I have assigned it to you on the altar to make atonement for life (#9}), for it is the blood which makes atonement for the life (ttf?j). Therefore I declare to the Israelites, every individual (#93) among you: don't eat blood." Here P, so mean with explanation, turns suddenly wordy to the point of excess.

Obviously he is attempting to present a kind of syllogism based on the various meanings of the term #9}: "soul" (= "individual"), "life,"

"appetite"?perhaps going back ultimately to the sense "throat," site of

the blood-carrying arteries whose severing brings death but also, to

"clean animals," transformation into licit meat. The syllogism consists of a

set of equations:

#9} = blood #9} of animal = #93 of human Therefore: blood of animal = #93 of human

That is, since life is blood, and both beasts and humans have both life and blood, consequently the blood of the former can substitute for the life of the latter on the altar.

Since "substitute" is, in fact, also one of the attested nuances of kipper, it is reasonable to hypothesize that is implying a variation of a

"primitive" substitution theory of sacrifice. Humans incur guilt through

transgression, for which, in grave crimes, their lives would be forfeit to

God. However, He has graciously instituted a sacrificial cult through which the life-blood of beasts will ransom that of humanity. Blood, as now, in effect, a sacral substance is prohibited since its use is restricted to

the cult. Such a "simple" interpretation of Fs intentions would be a serious

distortion of his theology. The latter is far more subtle and complicated than a "substitution theory" would allow. In the first place, the prohibi tion of blood in Lev. 17:10-12 is no novum. Students of the Bible know that it echoes a similar injunction in Gen. 9:4: "Flesh whose life is its blood

may not be eaten," a law that is substantially the same as that in Leviticus 17. The point of the latter passage is that blood is now proscribed because of its new role in the cult.

Secondly, has structured his material in such a way as to step back

from an imputation of simple substitution. He placed the blood prohibi tion and "explanation" of the sacrificial cult not directly after Leviticus 16, where it would, indeed, be most liable to the substitution interpretation, but loosely juxtaposed to an intervening passage, Lev. 17:1-9, which

enjoins a new law of slaughter.29 "All animals, even those destined




primarily for meat, are to be brought to the shrine for sacrifice. All slaughter away from the shrine (except for hunting?hunters, like Esau, are likely to be an unruly lot) incurs "blood-guilt." declares it to be the equivalent of idolatry, offerings to the "goat-demons" of the desert. In

effect, there is no profane slaughter; at the very least, all meat is at the level of the ancient "peace-offering," the communal sacrifice, the flesh of

which was consumed by the worshipers. This mention of "blood-guilt" ( ) is clearly aimed at establishing a

certain kind of context for interpreting the blood (n^) prohibition of the next section. Moreover, that context is presented as involving not just sacrifice, but also plain meat slaughter. The arrangement of themes in Leviticus 16 and 17, roughly: atonement by blood-slaughter for meat atonement by (prohibited) blood, is intended as a whole to evoke the connection to Genesis 9 and, in general, the complicated ending constructs to the Hood narrative. In other words, wants readers to view his "explanation" of the sacrificial cult not only in its context in Leviticus but also in relation to what for him is the key part of the Primeval History.30 It is the complex, not individual parts, that bears the true

meaning of his theology, whose subtlety and complexity rival that of its manner of presentation.

If the Sinai cult is to a new dispensation, the old one is represented by the series of events and divine pronouncements at the end of the Flood story. As usual, the editor makes his meaning by juxtaposing passages from the older sources JE (in Genesis 8) and his own comments (in Genesis 9). The passages in Genesis 8 are especially crucial to P's

theology, and their significance to him has generally escaped scholars

through their lack of attention to Fs creative role as editor. In Genesis 8 Noah emerges from the ark and offers a sacrifice of

"clean" animals whose "propitiating savor" (rrirna rpn?a pun on Noah!) God smells. could hardly have been indifferent to such language, since it so clearly foreshadows technical terms of the Sinai cult. Apparently

moved by the odor, God delivers a remarkable statement: He will never

again punish the world for main's crimes, since "the inclination (literally: "mold") of his heart is only evil from his youth." He reconfirms the eternal order of nature.

then adds his own contribution in Genesis 9. God blesses Noah in words that evoke the command to Adam to "be fruitful and multiply!" But the post-diluvian world is no Eden. God places the "fear" of mankind on the beasts, who may now be killed and eaten. In Genesis 1 both beasts and humans had been assigned vegetation only. Before human sin, the world was a paradise in which there was neither carnivore nor prey, a condition the later prophets look to see restored in the Messianic Age, when once again "the ?on will eat straw like the ox."31 After the Flood, God allows the "crack in the mold" of humanity, its evil urge, to be




reflected in a concession to eat meat. Perhaps He hopes human aggression will spend itself on the beasts (who, for their part, are allowed happily to consume those humans they can catch) rather than on the kinds of homicide initiated by Cain and climaxing in the violence ( }) of the generation of the Flood. God then declares that shedders of blood must henceforth receive the commensurate penalty administered by man

rather than God: "Who sheds blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed"; the pun on "blood" (D^) and "man" ( ) adds to the blood centeredness of the statement.32 Finally, He makes a covenant with Noah, the sign of which is the rainbow. Its play of colors represents the divine

Glory Itself. In this context the prohibition of blood is laden with historical and

theological import. There is no denying that at some level it represents a

universal human fascination with the appalling, bloody process by which a fellow creature becomes "meat." Perhaps there is a hint that by refraining from blood (= "life") it is as if no life had been taken, a

comforting fiction. Maybe there is an intimation that even through licit slaughter humanity incurs a degree of "blood-guilt."33

But once again, has sublimated the universal to the requirements of his own theology. To him blood is, in the "old dispensation" of Noah, a symbol of human sinfulness. In the "new dispensation" of Sinai it is to become the means of atonement for sin.

Through the entire complex of themes in Genesis 8-9 (sacrifice, human sinfulness, slaughter, blood, covenant) anticipates the same

complex in Leviticus 16-17, to which he adds in the latter the novum of the atoning function of blood. No ingenuous "substitution" role will do; it is the whole complex that blood represents, first as a sign of sin, then as a

medium of redemption. That the same substance plays both roles in successive stages of his theology may be regarded as a p?radox, but no

more than the one represented by the grammatical inversion by which qal , "sin," becomes in Hebrew piel , "remove sin"!34 In literary terms presents the core of his theology in two "wings,"

representing the two dispensations. The Noahide Covenant in Genesis 8-9 points back to Genesis 1, Fs creation story, both by the restoration of created order and the lifting of the original limitation of food to vege tation. The other "wing," the Sinaitic Covenant, is represented by Leviticus 16, the heart and epitome of Fs blood atonement system, and Leviticus 17. The explicit connection is through the slaughter-blood prohibition complex of the latter chapter. Leviticus 16 is linked, as we saw,

through reference to Nadab and Abihu to Leviticus 8-10, the dedication rites of the tabernacle; and, ultimately, to Exodus 40, the descent of the Glory on the completed shrine. Since, as we also saw, the shrine is joined, through the institution of the Sabbath, to creation, both "wings" of Fs structure reconnect, forming, in effect, a kind of closed structure:




Creation-Flood Sinai Theophany

Genesis 1 (creation) (Sabbath)

Exodus 40 (shrine)

t Leviticus 8-10 (dedication of shrine)

? Genesis 6-9 (flood

sin

slaughter blood

? Leviticus 17 (slaughter blood

atonement)

Leviticus 16 (atonement for a shrine/cosmos)

covenant

The interval between the two halves of this structure in the Primeval

History of Genesis and the Sinaitic Covenant of Exodus-Leviticus is

bridged by a series of events edited by in which sacrifice and blood play an increasingly significant role. The first is the Patriarchal Covenant of Genesis 15 and 17.35 As usual in material he employs before Sinai, presents the actual blood sacrifice in a quotation from the older sources:

in Genesis 15 Abraham slaughters an entire inventory of sacrificial animals, and God, in a fiery theophany, binds Himself to a covenant by walking "between the pieces." This ancient treaty rite is so remote from

anything in his own cult that has no compunctions about citing it. His own statement of covenantal promise in Genesis 17 also involves a kind of

sacrifice: the "sign" in the flesh of circumcision. Of course, the latter is a

blood rite, even though prefers not to mention the "drop of blood" aspect; perhaps because of the objectionable associations implied by the

fragment does allow as a kind of prologue to the account of the Exodus

(chapter 4): God attacks Moses whose life is rescued by his wife's timely circumcision of their son and touching of his foreskin to Moses's "leg,"

reciting: "You are my bridegroom of blood through circumcision!"36 The next stage is the Exodus.The blood of the paschal lamb rescues

Israel by serving as a smeared "sign" of Israelite households to be

"leaped over" by the divine "Destroyer." It is for that sacrifice that

presents for the first time a full cultic list of requirements, anticipating the Sinaitic system directly. In the material cites from the sources, he includes the blood rite of Exodus 24: Moses seals the covenant by sacrificing and sprinkling the "blood of the covenant" on the people. This

sequence of events at key positions, each associated with a cultic regula tion, keeps the blood-sacrifice-covenantal theme firmly in the reader's

mind until he reaches Fs Sinaitic cultic system.




To recapitulate the answers to the two questions posed above:

(1) "atonement" means to the attainment of "forgiveness" in the regular cult, and of cosmic "re-creation" in the shrine-purifying ceremonies of the

Day of Atonement; (2) blood is central because, as the dread-inspiring essence of the acts of slaughter/ sacrifice, it is the most potent symbol of the pattern of sin/atonement that associates with those acts.

The theology inherent in the literary pattern of themes linked by association, allusion and juxtaposition may be summarized as follows: God's original creation was, he soon realized, flawed by man's tendency to sin. When the accumulation of crime became unbearable, God returned the world to watery chaos. But Noah, the chosen new Adam, also bore the fatal flaw. So after the Flood, God, moved to pity perhaps by Noah's sacrifice, temporarily patches his creation. He "accepts" the crack in the human mold and makes provision for limiting its destructiveness. Homi

cide, the gravest crime of the generation of the Flood, will be punished by man himself. He may kill beaste and eat their flesh, but must refrain from their true "life," the blood. By Sinai God has devised a more satisfactory

method of repairing creation. The very same elements that represented a

concession to human evil now are turned to the benefit, not only of man, but also of God. Through blood sacrifice "atonement" in its various

meanings is attained, purging the world of sin. Through the rites of the Day of Atonement, the shrine, and through it the cosmos, returns in a

kind of jubilee, to the perfection of original creation before man's flaw became apparent. God is unable or unwilling to correct the flaw by destroying humanity and beginning anew. The whole pattern is therefore a cyclical act of reparation, in which God requires human cooperation.

There is no point in asking just how it is that blood actually attains this cosmic end. Certainly aims at excluding the possibility of a simple substitution of animal for human life. Since the taking of the life of beasts is itself a sign of sinful?ess, so simple a motive as substitution would

merely compound the crime. Rather, slaughter is incorporated into the entire literary-theological complex. Simply put, slaughter does not enter the cult to become "sacrifice"; rather, the cult absorbs bloody slaughter, transmuting both the latter and itself. The prohibition of all profane slaughter in Leviticus 17, though it seems like an afterthought, in fact

marks the crucial transition. It is best to regard the action of blood as the kind of mystery to which all priestly cults ultimately appeal.

5

It is more profitable to discuss two further questions: (1) Why F s

emphasis on a blood cult that, if not his actual invention, was certainly placed by him in a historical-theological framework in a manner



116 stephen a. geller

unattested for any other ancient cult? (2) Why his clumsy, indirect, ambiguous manner of expression through complicated series of juxta positions, allusions, inferences? Both questions are, in fact, one; for Fs concentration on the role of blood and his peculiar "inarticulateness" are

aspects of a single problem, what might be termed Fs dilemma. Fs dilemma is partially that of all pre-Greek thinkers. Without the

intellectual language the Greeks developed to express abstract thought in

chains of logic, and without the exact, restrained prose of discourse the Greek thinkers labored so long to forge, thinkers of the ancient Near East clothed their intuitions in clusters of images, associations and metaphors. They could certainly think abstractly, but all expression had to be con crete, and therefore, to moderns who are the callow inheritors of Hellenic

logic, seems incompetently roundabout and rambling, with many uneven

edges and protruding, primitive gargoyles. We have spoken of Fs "theol ogy" and "system"; but both terms are, in truth, anachronistic.

Fs difficulty in expressing his intention is, as we noted at the

beginning of this essay, far greater than that of other biblical authors. Deuteronomy is also pre-Greek, yet presents arguments in powerful chains of the kind of rhetoric out of which Greek logic was later to

develop. One cannot escape the impression that complicates his prob lems of expression, even in a strange way wills them. He seems often to

be aiming precisely at ambiguity and imprecision. His true dilemma is less the difficulty of linguistic expression of his ideas than the peculiar religious position he found himself in. The ambiguity of expression reflects an ambiguity of theological stance.

Whatever Fs date of activity, there is no doubt that it fell during that

period from the seventh to fifth centuries b.c.e., when Israel, like its

neighbors, undertook a r??valuation of its classical traditions. During this "axial age" all institutions were forced to redefine themselves or perish. In Israel there were three dominant expressions of the process of rein

terpretation: the Deuteronomic Movement, which first formulated a

complete statement of absolute, transcendent monotheism; the Wisdom

School, which wrestled with the problems of theodicy and the role of the individual in the community; and the theological activity of the Priestly

Writer(s), whose final product was the completed Pentateuch, with its

dominan?y cultic orientation. Fs primary dilemma was his strained relationship to the Deutero

nomic, covenantal tradition. Whether knew the actual book of Deu

teronomy or not, or any of the specific Deuteronomic laws, there can be no question that he was aware of the central dogma of that movement: the

absolute oneness of God reflected in the total centralization of worship at one shrine, the Jerusalem Temple.

Deuteronomy expresses its doctrine of divine transcendence in a

formula as abstract as the age could achieve: not God Himself, but His




"Name" "rests" ( ) in the shrine. God dwells in heaven; indeed, as

Solomon says in the speech the Deuteronomist wrote for him at the dedication of the Temple, He cannot "dwell" (ntity on earth! Even the highest heavens cannot contain Him completely!37

This "Name" theology is quite unacceptable to in its Deuteronomic form. He sets up to compete with it a "Glory" theology:38 the divine Presence descends on the shrine. But it does not "dwell" (atp?) there; rather, like Deuteronomy's "Name," it "rests" (pr?f) in the Holy of Holies.

Whether this descent is permanent or occasional is unclear?and intended to be so. In fact, never commits himself in regard to the extent and duration of the divine Presence in the shrine. This seeming indecision contrasts with the clarity of the Deuteronomic viewpoint, but had little choice. His position was difficult.

Traditionally, ancient cults reflected an implicit theology of divine immanence at the temple and therefore on earth. The shrine was the god's "house," the sacrifices his "food," the priests his "servants," etc. Much of this terminology was taken over by Israel. What might be termed the "Old Cult" of the Solomonic Temple was modeled after Canaanite practices, even as the building was constructed by Tyrians. What is unclear is the nature of the beliefs associated with the cultic institutions. Because bread was said to be placed "before the Lord" did that mean He was believed to eat it? No doubt the Old Cult already adapted Near Eastern cultic notions to Israel's religion, which was at that stage defi

nitely monolatrous at least. Most scholars believe the king played a

central role in the Old Cult as proprietor, so to speak, of the shrine, which was technically his private chapel. Some even hold that the monarch, as

(adopted) son of God, was believed to mediate between his people and the deity. In fact, both and the Deuteronomic School have so edited

materials relating to the Old Cult in the Bible that its exact nature will always be obscure. One thing, however, seems clear from the negative polemics of the prophets: God was believed, at least by the common

people, to actually dwell at the shrine. Whatever adjustments it may have made in the ancient cultic patterns, Israel's Old Cult implied some degree of divine immanence.

The developing Deuteronomic theology of transcendence cate

gorically excluded any type of immanence. What it really thought the "resting" of the divine "Name" rather than the actual Presence at the shrine meant is quite unknown. In principle Deuteronomy is uninterested in the workings of the cult except as they impinge on its stance on centralization of worship.

The dominance of Deuteronomic theology left the priests in a terrible bind. Without immanence the sacrificial cult was virtually meaningless? a cult on which their livelihood depended. Sacrifice to God's "Name" is a weak pillar on which to rest a cult. Deuteronomy was unconcerned: it




viewed the shrine as the house of the Word; the Holy of Holies contained the Ark of the Covenant with the tablets of the Law, the Name Itself is the

object of prayer. The priests needed something more substantial than "words, words, words."39

views it as his task to rescue as much immanence as he can for a cult that now has to accommodate itself to a strict monotheistic dogma of transcendence. He must on the one hand accommodate his theology to

Deuteronomic thinking, on the other hand resist it. This dual necessity explains the willed imprecision of his form of expression, his supposed "inarticulateness." It also accounts for the dominant role assigned blood.

radically restructured the Old Cult. He certainly amputated the role of the monarch completely, proceeding further on this point even than

Ezekiel, whose vision of the cultic establishment so resembles in many other respects. The old New Year festival is dissected and redistributed among a colorless "Day of Acclaim" (nyru?), the Day of Atonement and Festival of Booths, probably because of its dominan?y royal associations in the Old Cult, still preserved indirectly by the rabbinic New Year. If the king was earlier believed to be a link between divine transcendence and

humanity, a symbol of immanence in his person as "son" of God, will have none of so direct a mediation. His method is more subtle.

Fs studied imprecision is evidenced by that central scene in the Holy of Holies, through his seeming "failure" to commit himself to the actual Presence of God, i.e., immanence, at that moment. It is usually held that views the shrine as a place of "meeting" the Deity. The whole cult loses its rationale if God is not physically present to legitimate the holiness of the shrine at least on the Day of Atonement. And does state that God appears "in" or "as" a "cloud" on the lid of the ark. But it is never made clear whether the shielding cloud is that of the theophany itself or if it is produced by the incense borne by the High Priest. As Haran noted, that God is physically present is to a large extent a matter of faith.40 By this useful ambiguity, manages both to compromise with the Deuteronomic demand of absolute transcendence and to intimate sufficient immanence to allow the old cultic statements that rituals are performed "before the Lord" still to make some sense.

The role of blood on that occasion is also symptomatic of Fs theologi cal endeavor. Deuteronomy would allow no direct, physical contact

between man and God. But Fs instructions that the High Priest sprinkle blood of the "sin-offerings" on and before the "atoning lid" of the ark implies that some of that substance may actually touch the deity "appear ing" over it. Indeed, as suggested above, it is difficult to see how the High Priest could, in the smoky, confined atmosphere of the Holiest Place, have avoided insuring that no blood fell on the Glory. Even an intimation that it did would, of course, act as the ultimate justification of the sacrificial cult: a kernel of the true immanence that lay at the heart of all pagan cults,




manifested in the image of the god in the sanctum of their temples. Of course, shrinks from stating that God is touched in this manner, a reservation reinforced by his purposeful ambiguity in regard to the actual Presence at that scene.

This is the true mystery of mysteries in Fs cultic theology: the role of blood in the Holy of Holies on the day that restores the shrine, and the cosmos, to the original purity of unsullied creation. All the myriad potencies of blood as symbol merge and strengthen the meaning has worked toward through his theology: blood as sign of sinfulness becomes the agent of re-creative purification. It is entirely consonant with Fs

method that the actual nature of this operation remains as obscured from view as the scene in the Holiest Place itself. Does blood work magically, theurgically compelling the deity? Is it totally void of mythical power, a "ritual detergent"? Neither implication can be negated decisively. But in terms of Fs theological manipulation of history, specifically the link forged between the atonement cult and the Noahide dispensation, it is difficult to believe that the reader is not intended to suspect that the blood may not "touch" God in the figurative as well as the physical sense.

Perhaps it recalls His original decision to accept human faults, after Noah's sacrifice, and not disturb created order again on account of them.

Perhaps it only "moves" Him in the way that, according to Dante, love "moves" heaven and all the stars, as a mysterious compound of physics and emotion. But it is clearly to Fs benefit to remain ambiguous about what was undoubtedly indistinct to him, in any case: the degree to which blood manipulation on this occasion, and by extension in the whole cult, was theurgic. The mere hint that it was suffices to provide a physical rationale for the whole system.

Fs "inarticulateness," his lack of explicit explanation and justification is primarily rooted in the dilemma of embedding a hint of immanence in transcendence. Only in this way could the cult be rescued, and sacrifices continue on a new theological basis. Simply put, knows that to explain would defeat his aim, because one can never truly reconcile Deutero nomic transcendence with the cult in any logical manner. Only through inference, through the poetry of imagery, can one achieve what is essen

tially an emotional harmony of opposites. is aware of the fact that the inevitable trend of transcendence is to

remove the deity further from human comprehension. The only link is through a "covenant" of words. Deuteronomy is the beginning of the

process of the deification of the abstract Word as sacred canon. The shrine would be superseded eventually by the synagogue, the house of the Word as prayer. practically excludes the Word from his cult. He quite abstains from mentioning prayer, and even "confession" plays a secondary role. There is no question that reflects a growing awareness of the necessity to restrict myth; his attempts at demythologization evidence his participa




t?on in the trends of the "axial age." But attempts to save as much as

possible of the power of myth, its appeal to the emotions, through emphasis of the principle of the physical41 Through actions, substances and symbols hopes to build a shrine for immanence in the abstract realm of official transcendence. These physical manifestations, whether

they continue elements of the Old Cult or reflect Fs restmcturing of it, allow a multiplicity of interpretation through Fs theology of ambiguity.

From this point of view, Fs choice of blood as the prime cultic symbol was inevitable. In practical terms, it allowed priests to retain their sacrifi cial dues. The variety of interpretations of its potential significance allowed all levels of opinion, from the masses to the Wisdom thinker, to find a level of meaning corresponding to personal inclination. The power of symbols evaporates once they are explained. Unexplained, they become a focus of unity. In terms of theology, blood allows to construct

his historical process of gradual cultic revelation, thereby linking myth and history, nature and revelation. Above all, blood is the most powerful of all physical substances in its emotional impact; that alone would make it central to a thinker determined to exalt the principle of the physical.

6

To a large extent, the theological-cultic endeavor of marks a protest

against Deuteronomic transcendence and insistence on the primacy of the

Word. By incorporating Deuteronomy in his Pentateuch P, hoped to

compromise it by compromising with it. By detaching from the Penta teuch the main conquest traditions, thereby disrupting the pattern of

promise and fulfillment implied by the narrative of the older sources, by ending with Moses' death on the threshold of the Promised Land, changed the framework of Israelite history. By inserting the great mass of

his cultic laws at Sinai, outweighing by far the amount of legislation quoted from the old sources, tried to capture revelation itself for his cultic synthesis. In short, intended his interpretation of the primacy of

the physical should be able not only to maintain itself, but even triumph. The irony is that while Fs literary creation, the Pentateuch, did

become sacred canon in Judaism, it was Deuteronomic transcendence that

prevailed. In seeking a role for the mythical and magical, expressed

through the physical, was representing the past. The future belonged to abstract Word. To be sure, the "theocracy" of the Restoration carried Fs

cultic system into practice, the whole bloody cult. There were many

complications: the enormous backup of sacrificial lambs at Passover

required heroic efforts of exegesis to enable the priests to cope. But the

Temple remained as revered national symbol of the community. Gradually, however, the theological logic of the situation worked

itself out. As the synagogue and prayer developed and expanded their




sway the sacrificial cult became more and more isolated. The priesthood, conservative and often corrupt, became alienated from the people. By rabbinic times the alienation found expression in the conflict of Sadducees and Pharisees, adherents, respectively, of the priestly and non

priestly approaches. Pharisaic, rabbinic Judaism marks the ultimate triumph of Deuter

onomy and the Word. The Rabbis had more respect for the structure of the Temple as symbol than for its personnel. Although later rabbinic literature delights in exegesis of the laws of the cult, the Rabbis sought constantly to exalt the role of prayer, until even the Temple had to accept a

synagogue on its premises. The destruction of the shrine is presented in

rabbinic tradition as a national tragedy, but immediately its religious place was taken by the liturgy. The frequent hopes for the restoration of the sacrificial cult in the prayers became primarily an expression of

messianic nationalism. Certainly, even those Rabbis on friendly terms

with their Roman overlords did not press them to restore the shrine. As for blood, beyond its relevance to the laws of profane slaughter, Judaism had no interest in it. As a religion, it abhors blood.

But Christianity did take up some of Fs central concerns, placing sacrifice and blood in a central theological position, albeit with much reinterpretat?on. Messianism is alien to P; but the redeeming blood of the

Lamb, the wine of the Eucharist, which miraculously becomes the blood of God, the blood of the New Covenant?all these give to Christianity an involvement with blood alien to Judaism. How ironic it was that Jews, innocent of religious concern with blood, should be the victims of

Christian bloody-mindedness through the obscene blood libel. And of course Christianity, armed now with the tools of Hellenic logic, took up Fs concern for reconciling immanence with transcendence through a

doctrine of incarnation that, like much of P's material, had ancient mythic roots, but that, unlike Fs avoidance of reasoning, raised speculation to

dizzying heights of verbal virtuosity. One can scarcely conceive of contemplating the mysterious function of the iota separating homoousios from homoiousios!42

But perhaps the truest heirs of Fs overall endeavor were mystics in both religions, whose central concern has always been God's relationship to the cosmos, and to a sinful humanity. Like P, they found language and

images in ancient myths and even theurgy. Some of their search for the divine spark in creation is foreshadowed by God's first words of creation,

according to P: "Let there be light!" He thereby transmitted some of the aura of his Glory (for what other source of light was there before the creation of the heavenly bodies?) to his creation. It is perhaps no accident that the most "mystical" chapter in the Hebrew Bible, the detailed theophany description of Ezekiel that so fascinated the later mystics, occurs in the work of the only prophet with a vision of the cult approx




imating Fs. Above all, like , the mystics knew the value of enshrining mystery behind a veil of silence.

7

is far from the mechanical ritualist and bungling editor he seems to be to unsympathetic readers. In his use of blood as central symbol he

anticipates the man-redeeming blood of the Christ and of the Tau robolium. Indeed, it is perhaps not altogether anachronistic to view him as an exponent of the first true mystery cult. In comparison with the later

systems, is, of course, rudimentary, hesitant, riddled with inconsisten

cies, perhaps confused in regard to his own purpose. Yet his embryonic theology possesses some of the grandeur of the mythical world view it

attempts, contradictorily, both to supersede and preserve. In his blood cult God and man become partners in the task of purifying the cosmos,

represented by the temple, of enaimbering sin. If that sin is engendered by the flaw in humanity, its ultimate cause is the imperfection of God's initial creation. So each, God and man, helps to redeem the other. In this

sense, man, like God, deserves his Sabbath rest; and it is only right that man be enjoined to be holy as God, his flawed creator, is holy.

Department of Bible The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

NOTES

1. This essay is a companion piece to my study of the covenant tradition, "The Sack of

Shechem: The Use of Typology in Biblical Covenant Religion/' Prooftexts 10 (1990): 1-15. I wish to thank Professors Tzvi Abusch and Raymond Scheindlin for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the essay.

2. See especially Dennis J. McCarthy "The Symbolism of Blood and Sacrifice/' Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969): 166-76. Note especially his conclusion (p. 176): "The general explanation of sacrifice in terms of blood as life and so somehow divine would still be

relatively late and specifically Israelite." The closest ancient parallel, although very rudi

mentary would seem to be Greek sacrificial practice; see Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The

Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley 1983), chap. 1, especially p. 5.

3. M. Avot 5:5.

4. Lev. 19:2,3,4, etc., statements characteristic of H, an earlier stage of priestly activity, or later, according to Israel Knohl, "The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Sabbath and the Festivals," HUCA 58 (1987): 65-117.

5. Lev. 17:11.

6. See Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, 1973), chap. 6; Mary Wakeman, God's Battle with the Monster (Leiden, 1973); and, more recently, Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (San Francisco, 1988).




7. For example, as Cassuto pointed out in From Adam to Noah (Jerusalem, 1953) the

reference in Gen. 1:21 to the creation of the great sea monsters is a polemic against the

popular creation myth recounting the divine battle with Sea.

8. For a recent discussion with references, see Bernd Janowski, S?hne als Heilsgeschehen. Studien zur S?hnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR in Alten Orient und im Alten

Testamente (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1982), pp. 309-13. Of course, the midrash noted the link

millennia ago. 9. See William F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1946),

pp. 147-50, and Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil pp. 90-99.

10. Even shetiya, cf. Tanhuma Qed., Yoma, etc.

11. Since this study deals with the text of Leviticus 16 on the level of the final redaction, it takes no account of the complicated prehistory source critics discern using the often

hairsplitting techniques of that discipline. In particular, the distinction between a hypotheti cal second and third layer of editing seems forced; cf. the typical treatment by Elliger in

Leviticus (T?bingen, 1966), pp. 200-1.

12. M. Yoma 5 states that the High Priest should put the censer down; but since the

blood ceremony was to be performed in a "whipping" manner (kematslij), contact with the

Deity was in any case unavoidable, if He was in fact present. 13. On Azazel see H. Tawil, "The Prince of the Steppe: A Comparative Study/' ZAW 92

(1980): 43-59 and Baruch A. Levine, Leviticus (Philadelphia, 1989): 250-53.

14. Lev. 16:22, mn fix. Cf. the protest of David that by expelling him from the

Promised Land Saul is in effect telling him to worship other gods. 15. Lev. 16:21.

16. Lev. 16:16.

17. See the comments of Milgrom in "The Modus Operandi of the Hatt?H: A Rejoinder," JBL 109/1 (1990): 111-13, especially part 7, p. 113.

18. Bab. Tal. Yoma 5a; Zeb. 6a.

19. Such as the "money of atonement" (or "ransom," Exod. 30:15-16), etc.

20. Lev. 1:4.

21. Such, after an exhaustive examination of the linguistic and comparative evidence, is also the conclusion of Janowski in S?hne als Heilsgeschehen, p. 102.

22. Lev. 4:20, 31, 35; 5:10,13,18, 26; etc.

23. J. Milgrom, "Israel's Sanctuary: The Priestly 'Picture of Dorian Gray'," RB 83 (1976):

390-99; reprinted in Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology (Leiden, 1983), pp. 75-84. 24. Num. 1:53; 18:5.

25. Even if Lev. 16 was originally after Lev. 8-10, the prevailing source-critical view

point, it is unlikely that the significance of the Day of Atonement was originally limited to

the priestly clan; or, as suggested recently by N. Kiuchi in The Purification Offering in the

Priestly Literature, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 56 (Sheffield, 1987), that it was specifically Aaron's guilt that was transferred to the scapegoat.

26. On the term and idea, see Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil,

chap. 8.

27. On the Near Eastern parallels, see R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel Its Life and Institutions, trans, by John McHugh (New York, 1961), p. 508; J. Milgrom, "Two kinds of hattfiX" VT 26 (1976): 333-37, especially, p. 336; reprinted in Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology, pp. 70-74.

28. J. Milgrom, "The Biblical Diet Laws as an Ethical System," Interpretation 17 (1963): 288-301; reprinted in Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology, pp. 104-18; note also "A

Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11" in the same volume, pp. 96-103. See also David P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity (Atlanta, Georgia, 1987).

29. Milgrom in "A Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11" notices the force of the juxtaposi tion, but his conclusion is different from the one offered here.




30. T?kva Frymer-Kensky, "Pollution, Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel," The Word Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth

Birihday, ed. Carol L. Meyers and M. O'Connor (Winona Lake, 1983), pp. 399-414, notes the

special significance of the Flood to P; see especially pp. 409-10. 31. Isa. 11:7.

32. The pun was noted by the Rabbis: adorn hari'shon damo shel ha'olam, Jer. Sabb. 11:5b; see the article on dam by Kedar-Kopfstein in TDOT, p. 235.

33. Milgrom's position in "A Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11." 34. A "paradox" noted also by B. Zohar, "Repentance and Purification: The Signifi

cance and Semantics of hattpt in the Pentateuch," JBL 107/ 4 (1988): 609-18, p. 615. The

privative nuance is not uncommon in the piel; cf. Gesenius 52h.

35. Except, perhaps, for the adam-dam pun noted above.

36. See my "The Struggle at the Jabbok The Uses of Enigma in a Biblical Narrative," Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 14 (1982): 37-60.

37. 1 Kings 8:27. 38. See especially Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford,

1972), pp. 191-209. 39. F s creation by the Word is no exception since it echoes ancient conceptions as far

back as the "Memphite theology" of the third millennium b.c.e. (unless the latter is, as many claim, a late forgery).

40. Since, as he observes, even the High Priest sees nothing when he enters the

adytum, owing to the cloud of incense he first raises with the censer; Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, 1985), p. 178.

41. As often, von Rad's intuitions are prescient: "There must have been forces and

spheres in old Israel which stood guard particularly over the material aspects of observ

ances-which could not be dissolved by any spirituality... there is a realm of silence and

secrecy in respect to what God works in sacrifice. So it is no wonder then that has nothing to say about the way in which God takes knowledge of sacrifices"; Old Testament Theology, vol. 1, trans, by D. M. Stalker (New York & Evanston, 1962), p. 260.

42. As Evelyn Waugh in Helena portrays Constantine's mother doing as she soaks in her bath.



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Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch