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The Discourse of Priestly Violence As Refracted Through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature

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The Discourse of Priestly Violence As Refracted Through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature Sacred Slaughter: The Discourse of Priestly Violence as Refracted Through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Miller, Yonatan S. 2015. Sacred Slaughter: The Discourse of Priestly Violence as Refracted Through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845464 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Sacred Slaughter: The Discourse of Priestly Violence as Refracted through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature A dissertation presented by Yonatan S. Miller to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2015 © 2015 Yonatan S. Miller All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Shaye Cohen Yonatan S. Miller Sacred Slaughter: The Discourse of Priestly Violence as Refracted through the Zeal of Phinehas in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Literature Abstract The story of Phinehas’ zealous slaying of an Israelite man and the Midianite woman with whom he dared consort in public (Numbers 25) is perhaps the most notorious of a number of famed pentateuchal narratives that are marked with vigilante violence. Significantly, these narratives feature members of the Israelite priesthood or their eponymous ancestors. When reading these texts together, we uncover a consistent literary undercurrent which associates the priesthood with acts of interpersonal violence –– a phenomenon which I refer to as the motif of priestly violence. This dissertation examines the origins and discursive functions of this motif, and, employing the violence of Phinehas as a test-case, explores its interpretive afterlife in biblical and Jewish literature. I argue that likely impelling the motif of priestly interpersonal violence is the cultural memory of the violence of the sacrificial cult –– be it the violence inherent in the slaughter of animals, or the possible Israelite prehistory of human sacrifice. Despite these seemingly negative associations, the discourse of priestly violence functions as a critical legitimating component of the priestly imagination in the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, numerous biblical texts insinuate that it is violence, not the right lineage, that generates priestly identity. Exploring the - iii - Nachleben of Phinehas’ famed violence, I demonstrate how ancient readers of the Hebrew Bible recognized and were sensitive to these facets of the motif. My findings reveal that the legitimating function of Phinehas’ priestly violence continues in the Jewish literary tradition. From the literature of the Second Temple period through the rabbinic canon and continuing through the medieval midrashim, Jewish authors employed Phinehas’ violence in the service of their own discourses of group (de)legitimation. Priestly groups with questions about their pedigree, such as the Hasmonaeans, appropriated the discourse of Phinehas’ violence as a bulwark against the contestation of their priestly identity. But we also find subversive uses of Phinehas’ violence, particularly in Palestinian rabbinic texts, which question the integrity of Phinehas’ priestly lineage as well as the propriety of his lethal zeal. This serves to delegitimize the priesthood and effectively quash any lingering priestly claims to ritual leadership. - iv - Table of Contents Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................vii 0. Introduction .........................................................................................................................1 1. Methods ...........................................................................................................................3 2. A Brief History of the Development of the Israelite Priesthood......................................8 a. The Traditional View ................................................................................................10 b. The Historical-Critical View.....................................................................................11 3. Review of Scholarship...................................................................................................17 a. Priestly Violence .......................................................................................................17 b. Phinehas’ Violence and Its Nachleben......................................................................18 4. Major Findings ..............................................................................................................23 5. Plan of the Dissertation..................................................................................................26 Chapter 1: Sacred Slaughter: Introducing the Motif of Narrative Priestly Violence 1. Introduction .........................................................................................................................30 1. Definitions and Method.................................................................................................31 2. Is Priestly Violence Connected to (Animal) Sacrifice? .................................................33 3. Narratives of Priestly Violence......................................................................................38 a. Simeon and Levi’s Massacre in Shechem (Genesis 34) ...........................................38 b. Moses: The Lawmaker is the Lawbreaker (Exodus 2) .............................................44 c. The Golden Calf and the Killer Levites (Exodus 32) ...............................................46 4. The Violence of Phinehas: Numbers 25 ........................................................................51 a. Synopsis....................................................................................................................51 b. Critical Analysis .......................................................................................................54 c. Phinehas and Priestly Violence.................................................................................56 5. Conclusion.....................................................................................................................58 Chapter 2: Forgotten Fame? Inner-Biblical Memories of Phinehas’ Violence 2. Introduction .........................................................................................................................62 1. Pe’or without Phinehas: Deuteronomy 4:3 and Hosea 9:10..........................................63 2. Phinehas’ Disappearing Violence: Psalm 106:28-31.....................................................64 3. Phinehas’ Implied Violence: Joshua 22 .........................................................................68 4. Phinehas the (Priestly) General: Numbers 31:6 ............................................................71 a. The Midianite War and Priestly Violence .................................................................73 5. Summary........................................................................................................................76 6. Conclusion.....................................................................................................................77 7. Excursus: Other Biblical Phinehas Traditions...............................................................79 a. Phinehas the Priest (Judges 20:28) ...........................................................................80 b. Phinehas the Gatekeeper (1 Chronicles 9:20)...........................................................82 - v - Chapter 3: Between Exegesis and Self-Fashioning: Phinehas’ Zeal in Second Temple Literature 3. Introduction .........................................................................................................................88 1. Ben Sira 45:23-24..........................................................................................................90 2. Qumran ..........................................................................................................................93 3. Jubilees ..........................................................................................................................95 4. 1 Maccabees ..................................................................................................................96 a. Introduction...............................................................................................................96 b. Mattathias: A Latter-Day Phinehas...........................................................................98 c. Phinehas, Mattathias, and the Violence of Priestly Legitimacy..............................101 5. Philo.............................................................................................................................106 a. Introduction.............................................................................................................106 b. De Vita Mosis 1.295-304........................................................................................109
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