3. The Mountain of 's Vision as Mount Sinai and as Mount Abarim

The scholars of the Rabbinic period held that the contained six-hundred thirteen commandments, which constituted the definitive, normative revelation. Literature from the per­ iod after 's death could not change this revelation, though it could advocate and summarize it in many diverse ways. The were inclined to see such advocacy and summary even in passages in which the plain sense does not indicate any special concern with the Pentateuch and its norms. Thus, they suggested (Mak. 24a) that had reduced the six-hundred thirteen to eleven precepts in Ps. 15. then compressed them into six (Is. 33:15-16), and into three (Mi. 6:8). Isaiah did better on his second try, summarizing the whole Torah in the two imperatives of Is. 56:1. managed to top even this by giving only one command, "Seek me, and live!" (Am. 5:4), a feat matched by Habakkuk's "The righteous man will live by his faithfulness" (Hab. 2:4). This practice of summarizing the commandments by stating an underlying principle continued into the Rabbinic period itself, for example, in Akiva's (d. 135) dictum that the commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself (Lv. 19:18) is the "great rule" (k 8 z;z g~d8Z) of the Torah1 (Sifra 19:18). These statements should not be inter­ preted as abrogating the full range of commandments, in whose formulation Rabbi Akiva himself was central. Rather, they sum­ marize a great many laws, but the laws still take precedence in a practical sense over their summary. Here Rabbinic theol­ ogy is different from that of the Christian apostle Paul, who believed that love fulfills all commandments (Ro. 13:8-10). The issue was complicated in situations in which a post­ Mosaic inspired writer delivers a norm which contradicts some­ thing in the Torah. Ezek. 40-48 presents several such situa­ tions. For example, Ezek. 46:6-7 specifies that the new moon offering is to be one bull, six sheep, and one ram, whereas the Toraitic ordinance specifies two bulls, one ram, and seven yearling sheep (Nu. 28:11) for the same ceremony. The other contradictions which the rabbis discussed are Ezek. 44:31 and

37 38

Ex. 22:30; Dt. 14:21; Ezek. 45:18 and, again, Nu. 28:11; and Ezek. 45:20 and Lv. 7:25 (Men. 45a). The contradictions were so striking that the status of Ezekiel as a sacred book was sus­ tained only by an exegetical virtuoso performance of herculeian magnitude:

Rabbi Judah quoted the statement of Rab: A certain man has been remembered for a blessing, and Hananiah ben Hezekiah is his name. For were it not for him, the Book of Ezekiel would have been suppressed, since its words contradict those of the Torah. What did he do? He brought up three hundred barrels of oil and stayed in the upper room until he had explained away every­ thing. (Men. 45a; Shab. 13b)

The recognition that Ezek. 40-48 stands in a peculiar rivalry to the Mosaic documents has not been lost on modern historians, either. Otto Procksch observed that in Ezek. 43:18-27, Ezekiel gives the priests practical instructions, as does his fellow prophet of priestly descent, Moses, in passages like Lv. 8:lff. and 9:lff. 2 In fact, Ezekiel functions with regard to the con­ secration of the altar of the new Temple as Moses does with re­ gard to the consecration of the ancient altar whose norms were held to have been given on Sinai. As Zimmerli notes in the context of the same passage:

Der Prophet selber wird als der van Gott angeredete Charismatiker zum neuen Mose, der den neuen Opfer­ dienst eroffnen darf.3

This idea of a "new Moses," already apparent in Deuteronomic thinking (Dt. 18:15), is not alien to Ezekiel's theology, where the concept of a "new Exodus" is explicit:

•.. ''As I live, says the Lord, 4 I will reign over you with a strong hand, with an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. 34 I will bring you out from among the peoples and gather you from the lands to which you have been scattered with a strong hand, with an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. 35 I will bring you to the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you, face to face. 36Just as I entered into judg­ ment with your ancestors in the wilderness of Egypt, so will I enter into judgment with you -­ oracle of the Lords ••. 40 But on my holy mountain, the mountain of the heights of -- oracle of the Lord6 -- there the whole House of Israel will serve me in the Land, there I will receive them in