{"id":104,"date":"2011-07-30T21:48:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T01:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=104"},"modified":"2011-08-06T09:52:32","modified_gmt":"2011-08-06T13:52:32","slug":"loathing-longing-and-leviticus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Loathing, Longing, and Leviticus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One must be at least a little meshugah<\/a> to study history.<\/p>\n

Historians suppose themselves to be in search of data, evidence they can use to (re)create something of the past.\u00a0 Instead, they find themselves mere interpreters, functioning with limited vocabulary and with incomplete understanding.<\/p>\n

If a historian doesn\u2019t sense why his or her work is inadequate, never fear.\u00a0 A rival historian will be sure to explain.\u00a0 Pointing out others\u2019 failings is called scholarship.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be scholarly just now, even though my summer reading (call it \u201cClassic Volumes in Biblical Research\u201d) is pushing such triggers big time.\u00a0 The stack of books currently on my kitchen table feature gold lettering and many thick pages.\u00a0 Such books have authority, magisterial language, and stains on their book covers.\u00a0 I used to balance books such as these on my head when I studied ballet.\u00a0 They were excellent tools for demonstrating poor posture.<\/p>\n

I spent a part of July reading one of the great books of biblical studies, Julius Wellhausen\u2019s Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel<\/em>, published in 1878.\u00a0 Wellhausen is mostly known as the father of the Documentary Hypothesis, which quite correctly posits that Moses did not author the whole Megillah, that a number of hands and agendas can be discerned in the Torah, and that these various authors can be ascribed identities as southern or northern or priestly or pre-or post exilic.\u00a0 (The exile referred to here is the one that followed the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, not one of the other multitudinous exiles in Jewish history.)<\/p>\n

Here is what Wellhausen is not<\/em> so remembered for: The actual thesis of his master work.<\/p>\n

Wellhausen argues that ancient Israelites reveled in a personal relationship with God.\u00a0 Along came the big bad priests of the post-exilic period and replaced spontaneity and individualism with fanatical devotion to law and the practice of the same, sucking the very life out of that old time religion.\u00a0 Ezra, Nehemiah, and their ilk were followed by the equally small-minded and legalistic Sadducees, Pharisees, and rabbis of later eras.\u00a0 The priests were, according to Wellhausen, unimaginative, dogmatic, opinionated, mechanical, cancerous, and parasitic.\u00a0 Read Leviticus.<\/p>\n

Wellhausen\u2019s tome makes for exhausting reading, and not just because there are hundreds of pages of contempt for the priests and the Priestly Code.\u00a0 It is exhausting because it smells of the nasty polemics of centuries.\u00a0 Judaism was and is a dying religion of a narrow-minded, legalistically inclined people who are preoccupied with form, not feeling, with trivial details of ritual rather than grand connection with the divine.<\/p>\n

Well.\u00a0 Slander and clich\u00e9 are hardly unknown in academic circles.<\/p>\n

I must also admit it: Julius Wellhausen\u2019s work is brilliant, imposing, overarching. \u00a0There is plenty to be learned from it, even now.<\/p>\n

I know, too, that he was born into a culture that most often dismissed Judaism and Jews as petty, grasping, small-minded, and parasitical.\u00a0 Teaching contempt of Jews is a typical practice in Europe from early church fathers on.<\/p>\n

To what extent can I blame men and women who were the products of centuries of intolerance toward my people?\u00a0 I too am a product, and I carry assumptions and prejudices of my own time. \u00a0Where does my right to judge, to evaluate, begin and end?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this, too: In significant regard, historians are actually explaining themselves.\u00a0 Wellhausen hated all ecclesiastic authority and praised any hint of spontaneous and individual religious expression he could find in Hebrew Bible.\u00a0 He valued myths and tales that revealed a deity who talked and walked with humanity.<\/p>\n

In this regard, what Wellhausen loved, I also love.\u00a0 What he sought, I seek.<\/p>\n

I like to revel in texts that express the all-so human longing for what is sweet and loving, transcendent and ineffable.\u00a0 If you look in Torah, you can see the reflection of that longing slipping through the verses, framed even by the words of slaves.\u00a0 \u201cHave I not gone on seeing after God saw me?\u201d Hagar asks, wonderingly (Gen: 16:13).<\/p>\n

The Torah\u2019s authors marveled at existence.\u00a0 Each of their authors attempted to make sense of a mysterious and magical world that deserved reverence and awe.<\/p>\n

Even the priestly writers.\u00a0 Even in Leviticus.<\/p>\n

I wish I could convince Wellhausen of that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wellhausen argues that ancient Israelites reveled in a personal relationship with God. [He] hated all ecclesiastic authority and praised any hint of spontaneous and individual religious expression he could find in Hebrew Bible. He valued myths and tales that revealed a deity who talked and walked with humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,34,36,35],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jews","tag-leviticus","tag-meshuga","tag-wellhausen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}