The Love Command in Leviticus

chapter 2 The Love Command in Leviticus

1 Introduction

Our quest begins in Leviticus where the earliest attestation of “love your neigh- bour” is found. Modern English commentaries often bemoan the fact that the study of Leviticus lies in obscurity, but the recent scholarly output belies such a bleak picture. In addition to some of the landmark German commentaries,1 a number of English works with various foci have appeared.2 Recent studies continue to pursue the traditional aim of Pentateuchal Criticism, that is, to ascertain the compositional-redactional history of the Pentateuch in

1 August Dillmann, Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus, Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament 12 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897); Arnold B. Ehrlich, Leviticus, Numeri, Deutero- nomium, vol. 2 of Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel: Textkritisches, Sprachliches und Sach- liches (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909); Martin Noth, Das Dritte Buch Mose, Leviticus, ATD 6 (Göttin- gen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963); idem, Leviticus, trans. J.E. Anderson, OTL (London: SCM, 1965); Karl Elliger, Leviticus, HAT 4 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1966); Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Das dritte BuchMoseLeviticus, ATD 6 (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993); idem, Leviticus, trans. Douglas W. Stott, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996); Rolf Rendtorff, Leviticus, BKAT 3 (Neukirchner-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2004); Thomas Hieke, Levitikus, 2 vols., HthKAT 6 (Freiburg: Herder, 2014). 2 J.R. Porter, Leviticus: A Commentary, Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Baruch A. Levine, Leviticus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989); John E. Hartley, Leviticus, WBC 4 (Dallas: Word, 1992); Gordon J. Wenham, Book of Leviticus, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); Samuel E. Balentine, Leviticus, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991); idem, Leviticus 17–22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 3A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); idem, Leviticus 23–27: A NewTranslation with Introduction and Commentary, The AnchorYale Bible 3B (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2001); idem, Leviticus:ABookof Ritual and Ethics, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); Nobuyoshi Kiuchi, Leviticus, ApOTC 3 (Down- ers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2007); Ephraim Radner, Leviticus, SCMTheological Commentary on the Bible (London: SCM, 2008); Mark W. Elliot, Engaging Leviticus: Reading LeviticusTheologi- cally with Its Past Interpreters (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). For surveys of scholarship on Leviticus, see: Philip P. Jenson, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World, JSOTSup 106 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992); Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 4–11; Wilfried Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus, BibInt 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1–35.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004366886_003 20 chapter 2 tandem with the more general history of ancient Israel.3 They attempt to detect source-critical divisions or redactional layers in Leviticus to delineate the book’s diachronic development, sometimes without paying much atten- tion to its literary dimension.4 In response, a number of literary studies search for the book’s structural integrity and examine the relationship between law and narrative in Leviticus and, more broadly, in the Pentateuch as a whole.5

3 On Pentateuchal Criticism, see: G.I. Davies, “Introduction to the Pentateuch,” in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 12–38; Ernest Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002); Thomas B. Dozeman, Thomas Römer, and Konrad Schmid, eds., Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch? Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings, AIL 8 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2011); Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz, eds.,ThePentateuch:InternationalPerspectivesonCurrentResearch, FAT 78 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Jan C. Gertz et al., eds., The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America, FAT 111 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). See also Baden’s work that attempts to refine and advance afresh the Docu- mentary Hypothesis. He holds that the Pentateuch contains four distinct sources and a single redactor. Joel S. Baden,The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypoth- esis, AYBRL (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). 4 Noth’s (in)famous comment perhaps encapsulates this point: “In its transmitted form, this codex [i.e., Lev 19] is indeed remarkably diverse and disordered … the different departments of life are arranged very much at random.” Noth, Leviticus, 138. 5 For example, Douglas points out that Leviticus defies the modern sense of “literariness.” She argues, “Our modern convention of reading requires a strong linear connection. An archaic legend is judged obscure by a later generation unfamiliar with the genre, when the narrative thread is weak. If it is a legal text, it will be judged coherent according to the strength of the logical thread. Neither complaint is lodged against Leviticus. It is not obscure or incoherent, but it is highly repetitious. It is likely to be misunderstood if taken to be a list of cultic instruc- tions whose background of thought needs to be explained, instead of a profound theological treatise in its own right.” Mary Douglas, “Poetic Structure in Leviticus,” in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom, ed. David P. Wright, David Noel Freedman et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisen- brauns, 1995), 243. Also see: idem, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Calum M. Carmichael, Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Anselm C. Hagedorn, “Taking the Pentateuch to the Twenty-First Century,”ExpTim 119 (2007): 53–58; John Barton, “Law and Narrative in the Pentateuch,” Communio Viatorum 51 (2009): 126–140; Assnat Bartor, Reading Law as Narrative: A Study in the Casuistic Laws of the Pentateuch, AIL 5 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2010). Another interesting area of research is the concept of purity and defilement. In addition to Jacob Neusner’s classic and voluminous works, see: Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution andTaboo, Routledge Classics (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1996); Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: