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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen
zum Neuen Testament
Herausgeber / Editor
Jörg Frey (Zürich)

Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors

Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford)
James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala)
Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)
Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg)

305
Purity, Holiness, and Identity
in Judaism and Christianity
Essays in Memory of Susan Haber

Edited by
Carl S. Ehrlich, Anders Runesson
and Eileen Schuller

Mohr Siebeck
Carl S. Ehrlich: born 1956; 1991 PhD, Harvard University; since 1996 Professor of Hebrew
Bible in the Department of Humanities at York University, Canada.
Anders Runesson: born 1968; 2001 PhD, 2002 Docent, Lund University; since 2003 Pro-
fessor of Early Christianity and Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies,
McMaster University, Canada.
Eileen Schuller: born 1946; 1984 PhD, Harvard University; since 1990 Professor of Early
Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University, Canada.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-152548-3

ISBN 978-3-16-152547-6
ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament)

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliogra-

phie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2013 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted
by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to
reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems.
The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen, printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen
on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier.
Printed in Germany.
 Preface

This book is the result of the joint efforts of friends of the late Susan Haber,
a brilliant scholar in the making, whose untimely death has left a void for
all who seek better to understand ancient Judaism in its many and diverse
forms, including the early Jesus movement. Both as an undergraduate stu-
dent at York University and as a graduate student at McMaster University
Susan’s research interests had a focus on purity issues, but she worked with
and published studies on a wide variety of writings, from the Hebrew Bible
to Second Temple and New Testament texts. Susan’s field of specialization
became the Dead Sea Scrolls, but her dynamic thinking, her boundless de-
sire for knowledge and her impressive learning consistently led her also to
take note of and engage the wider picture, in which various religio-cultural
aspects of ancient Judaism were allowed to interpret each other. In this way,
she was a model not only for her fellow students but also for scholars work-
ing within these fields. Most of her essays – both previously published and
unpublished – have been collected and published by the Society of Biblical
Literature under the title “They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays on Purity
in Early Judaism (2008). In the present volume we would like to honor
Susan’s memory by focusing on and continuing to work along the research
trajectories that she had outlined for herself as she planned how she could
best contribute to the study of ancient Judaism.
After a biography and appreciation of Susan Haber authored by one
of her rabbis, David Seed, the essays in this volume, following a basic
chronological outline, fall into three groups based on Susan’s interests.
In Part I, Baruch Schwartz, Eric Grossman, and Ehud Ben Zvi deal with
issues of purity and cult in the Hebrew Bible. While Schwartz considers
the list of festivals in Leviticus 23 as an expression of a uniquely priestly
worldview, Grossman turns our attention to the popular perceptions of the
cult – including the various purposes and motivations behind pilgrimages
to Jerusalem – beyond the priestly worldview and concomitant legislation.
Ehud Ben Zvi concludes Part I with an analysis of purity concerns as they
surface in the narrative world of the Book of Chronicles, an unlikely but
important candidate for the study of purity concerns in the Late Persian /
Early Hellenistic period.
Part II addresses issues of purity, holiness, and identity from the second-
century B.C.E to the third-century C. E. in places varying from Qum-
VI Preface

ran to Carthage. A range of texts and topics are covered. Cecilia Wassen’s
comparative study of purity and community in the Dead Sea Scrolls and
in Paul’s letters sheds new light on how intertwined the identities of the
early Christ-believers and other Jews were in the first century, and how the
Jerusalem Temple played a vital role as respective groups gave expression
to their (eschatological) worldviews. Stephen Westerholm explores Paul’s
thought as it relates to holiness before and after his vision of the risen Christ.
Referring to the themes of holy scripture, holy law, the holy people of God,
and the holy Spirit, Westerholm claims significant continuity and change in
Paul’s life as a Pharisee and Christ-believer.
Adele Reinhartz then addresses the issue of the historical Jesus and the
Gospels’ description of the Temple cleansing in relation to his arrest and
execution. Reinhartz critiques the common view among scholars that the
cleansing of the Temple was the direct cause behind his arrest and points
to the fact that none of the Gospel narratives links the Temple cleansing to
the priestly plot against his life. From the historical Jesus, Thomas Kazen
proceeds to the earliest preserved narrative about Jesus: the Gospel of Mark.
In dialogue with Susan’s analysis, Kazen focuses on Mark’s interpretation of
Jesus and purity, discussing specifically the pericope of the so-called hemor-
rhaging woman (Mark 5:25–34) and how it may shed light on the issue of
ritual hand washing before meals (Mark 7:1–23).
Anders Runesson’s study understands the Gospel of Matthew as a Jew-
ish text that explains Jesus’ eschatological vision of apocalyptic disaster, a
final judgment, and the coming kingdom of heaven as a consequence of the
underlying conviction that the Jerusalem Temple had been defiled by a cor-
rupt leadership. Focusing on a text contemporaneous with the Gospel of
Matthew, Steve Mason considers the theme of purity in Josephus’ Judean
War. In the course of his discussion, he deals with purity issues in relation to
the Jewish uprising of 66–70 C. E. and the destruction of the Temple. Mason
suggests that “War’s pollution/purification language provides a crucible for
testing approaches to cultural interaction in the Roman world.” While Jo-
sephus shares the discourse he communicates within with his international
peers, this former general never abandons his distinctly Judean identity.
The two final contributions of Part II move beyond Judaism. Philip
Harland’s study of the first-century autobiographical letter attributed to
Thessalos explores how the holy was perceived outside Judaism, and so adds
to our understanding of the role of purity when the divine was encountered
in Greco-Roman culture. In this way, aspects of the sacred in first-century
Jewish life and thought are placed in a larger context that may shed light on
common as well as divergent phenomena in these cultural settings. Similarly,
Lily Vuong’s essay, which concludes Part II, focuses on questions related to
identity outside Judaism, as she investigates how early non-Jewish Christian
 Preface VII

identities were formed through the influence of social and economic factors
on martyrdom. The narrative of Perpetua and Felicitas, a Christian matron
and her Christian slave, reveals that Christian as well as non-Christian
audiences would have “viewed, valued, and treated matrons and slaves un-
equally, regardless of their Christian affiliation.”
However, Susan’s interests in purity and identity issues came to an end
neither at the gates of academic institutions nor in antiquity. She was very
much engaged in questions that have contemporary relevance, not in least
Jewish–Christian interaction and dialogue. The third part of the volume,
while maintaining a focus on purity and holiness, thus brings us from the
Middle Ages up to our own time.
Beginning with texts from the Hebrew Bible and exploring their recep-
tion in rabbinic writings and mediaeval commentators, Martin Lockshin
explores the concept of holiness and whether some items considered holy
under certain circumstances may – contrary to the construction of the re-
lationship between pure and impure – transfer holiness to regular objects.
While biblical texts convey a world-view in which holiness can be conta-
gious, later halakhic Judaism rejects this view, a fact that may shed light on
the rabbinic thought-world and how it was constructed.
Yedida Eisenstat’s contribution addresses issues of sanctification and
shame against the background of priestly theology in Hayyim Nahman
Bialik’s 1903 poem In the City of Slaughter, thus highlighting a Jewish
response to the Kishinev pogrom of the same year in the Russian Empire.
Concluding the volume, Eileen Schuller takes as point of departure Susan’s
interest in contemporary Jewish–Christian encounters and dialogue and
analyzes how biblical texts about purity have been incorporated and used
in Christian lectionaries. The importance of this topic for Jewish–Chris-
tian relations, which Susan recognized, can hardly be overstated, since the
choices and combinations of texts to be read in weekly services will affect
how sermons are prepared and, thus, what church-attending Christians will
be taught about how purity and holiness are understood in Judaism.
It is our hope that this volume in honor of Susan Haber will serve as
encouragement and inspiration for scholars and students not only to con-
tinue to explore the topics dealt with here, which are critical for our under-
standing of Judaism as well as Christianity and their interrelated histories,
but also to engage the wider issues that surface as academic disciplinary
boundaries are transcended. If our joint efforts may stimulate such cross-
disciplinary study, so characteristic of Susan’s approach to academia, this
book will have fulfilled its purpose.
Finally, we would like to extend our thanks to Dr. Henning Ziebritzki at
Mohr Siebeck for his continuous support as this book came into being, and
to the editor of WUNT, Professor Dr. Jörg Frey, for accepting the volume
VIII Preface

in this series. It is also our pleasure to acknowledge the help of two people
without whom this book would not have been published. First is Dr. Jer-
emy Penner, a McMaster University alumnus whose graduate studies in the
department partly overlapped with Susan’s; Jeremy did much of the prelimi-
nary formatting of this volume. And last, but not least, is Susan’s husband,
Dr. Stephen Haber, who has supported this project from its inception and
provided us with the photograph of his late wife that introduces this collec-
tion of essays in Susan’s memory.

Hamilton and Toronto, Carl Ehrlich, Anders Runesson,

November 2012 and Eileen Schuller
 Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V

David C. Seed
A Brief Biography and Appreciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I
Ancient Israel

Baruch J. Schwartz
Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Eric Grossman
Everyman’s Judgment Cometh from the LORD:
Popular Perception of the Primary Purpose of the Cult . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Ehud Ben Zvi

Purity Matters in the Book of Chronicles: A Kind of Prolegomenon 37

Part II
Classical Antiquity

Cecilia Wassen
Do You Have to Be Pure in a Metaphorical Temple?
Sanctuary Metaphors and Construction of Sacred Space
in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Paul’s Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Stephen Westerholm
Is Nothing Sacred? Holiness in the Writings of Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Adele Reinhartz
The Temple Cleansing and the Death of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
X Table of Contents

Thomas Kazen
Jesus and the Zavah: Implications for Interpreting Mark . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Anders Runesson
Purity, Holiness, and the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew’s
Narrative World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Steve Mason
Pollution and Purification in Josephus’s Judean War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Philip A. Harland
“The days seemed like years”: Thessalos Prepares to Encounter
the God Asklepios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Lily Vuong
The Impact of Social and Economic Status on the Experience of
Martyrdom: A Case Study of Perpetua and Felicitas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Part III
The Mediaeval and Modern Periods

Martin I. Lockshin
Is Holiness Contagious? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Yedida Eisenstat
Sanctification and Shame: Bialik’s In the City of Slaughter
in Light of Leviticus and Ezekiel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Eileen Schuller
Biblical Texts about Purity in Contemporary Christian Lectionaries 283

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
1. Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
2. Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
3. Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
4. Foreign Words and Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
 Susan Haber
A Brief Biography and Appreciation

David C. Seed

My God, the soul with which You endowed me is

pure. You created it, You formed it. You breathed it
into me and You preserve it within me. A time will
come when You will reclaim it from me; but You
will return it to me in the life to come.
Introduction to the Morning Service (taken from
b. Ber. 60b)

When I think of Susan Haber, the story of Rabbi Akiva immediately comes
to mind. According to tradition, Akiva was a commoner, not from rabbinic
lineage, nor was he learned in any way. As a matter of fact, it is told that he
was opposed to the rabbis and did not look favorably upon them (b. Pesa .
49b).
Yet, he decided for some reason to place himself at their feet and study
under them beginning at the age of forty. Fortunately, he was blessed with
a wife who encouraged his studies. After a period of study lasting thirteen
years, he himself became a renowned teacher. His modest beginnings belie
the impact he had on so many within Jewish tradition, teaching us that
knowledge and learning are not the purview of a particular class, lineage or
ancestry.
This is also Susan’s story, the story of a woman born of middle-class
parents, Lou and Goldie Gula, on August 7, 1957 in Toronto. Her family
belonged to Adath Israel Congregation, where she attended its afternoon
religious school. The Gula family kept a kosher home, and Susan had a
traditional Jewish upbringing, not uncommon for members of the Jewish
community at that time.
Susan graduated from the University of Toronto with a B. Sc. in 1978.
Since her father was an optician, she followed in his footsteps and received
an ophthalmic dispensing certificate and worked with him for about five
years. It was during that time that she met her future husband, Stephen
Haber, whose family was also from Toronto. Although he was study-
2 David C. Seed

ing podiatry in San Francisco at the time, their relationship flourished in

spite of the distance. After a three-year engagement, they were married on
May 24, 1981.
While working for her father, Susan became a certified contact lens fitter,
achieving such competence that she began teaching this skill at several local
colleges. Her burgeoning expertise allowed her to work for other doctors,
and she received many compliments on both her skills and her exemplary
care for her patients. Yet, even while the vision of others was her major
professional concern, she was developing an inner perception that expressed
itself in other ways.
Susan noted that the beliefs of some Jews who professed to be ‘observant’
did not always seem to be reflected in their actions. Troubled by this incon-
gruity and being the voracious reader she was, she wanted to learn more
about Judaism, its history and origins, to delve into this and other questions:
What was the essence of Judaism? How did it begin? What expectations did
Judaism have for the individual? But, she eventually realized that without
further guidance and knowledge, she would not be able to answer these
challenging questions that piqued her interest.
Being the perfectionist that she was, there was no shortcut for Susan.
The only way to satisfy her interests was to return to school. Now that her
children (Gillian born in 1984, Joshua in 1986, and Jeremy in 1990) were
older, and with Stephen’s encouragement, she became a student once more,
this time at York University in her native Toronto, where she began slowly
to explore Judaism’s roots. She graduated summa cum laude in 2000 with
an Honour’s B. A. in Religious Studies. It was during this time that Susan’s
Jewish interests turned to scriptural studies and that she published her
first scholarly article on “God, Israel and Covenant: Unity in the Book of
Deuteronomy.”1 Her passion for Jewish scholarship only intensified over
the years, as she continued her studies at McMaster University in Hamilton,
earning her M. A. in Religious Studies in 2004. It was during this latter year
that she was awarded the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies’ prestigious
Jeremias Prize, in recognition of her essay “From Priestly Torah to Christ
Cultus: The Re-Vision of Covenant and Cult in Hebrews.”2
However, Susan was not focused exclusively on her academic studies.
She so loved Stephen and their children, and there was nothing she would
not do for any of them, teaching each of them to cook, assisting them with
school work, and helping them realize the potential she knew each of them
had. Shabbat and holidays were always a time to gather at the table she so

1
Haber, “God,” 132–41. The paper on which the article was based was originally written
for a class taught by C. S. Ehrlich.
2 Haber, “Priestly,” 143–58.
 Susan Haber 3

lovingly prepared. Six summers were spent at the family camp program
held at Camp Ramah in Canada. She also gave generously to her synagogue
community, now armed with her new knowledge. She became a member of
the Board of Governors of Adath Israel Congregation and chaired its Adult
Education Committee, while also serving as a shomeret (female attendant)
at the local mikveh (ritual bath). Susan could usually be found at synagogue
every Shabbat morning, the only woman to wear a tallit (prayer shawl) at
her Conservative synagogue, which enabled her to express her growing
commitment not only to the academic dimension of Judaism but to its
spiritual side as well. Given the religiously conservative nature of Canadian
Jewry at the time, her actions exemplified her willingness to demonstrate
publicly her renewed Jewish identity.3 She also had the opportunity to travel
to Israel on four separate occasions over the years. Her ability to integrate
her newfound vision for herself with her roles as mother, wife, and friend
was a testament not only to her flexibility but also to her resolve in integrat-
ing these important values into the life she had created for herself.
After completing her Master’s degree, Susan began work on her Ph.D.,
pursuing the area of interest she had begun to carve out for herself: purity
in the Second Temple period, with concentrations on Early Christianity
and on the relationship of women to purity. The wide-ranging nature of the
topics to which she dedicated herself during that time is impressive, given
the place from which she had begun her studies just a few years earlier; for
example, “Going Up to Jerusalem: Purity, Pilgrimage and the Historical
Jesus,” “Living and Dying for the Law: The Mother-Martyrs of 2 Mac-
cabees,” and “A Woman’s Touch: Feminist Encounters with the Hemor-
rhaging Woman in Mark 5.24–34,” to name but a few.4 Her doctoral studies
were supported by a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, one of the most prestigious accolades available
to Canadian graduate students, and by the Harry Lyman Hooker Senior
Fellowship, McMaster University’s highest award for incoming doctoral
students in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
To gain a more complete impression of Susan’s academic accomplish-
ments, one must look through her posthumous volume “They Shall Purify
Themselves”: Essays on Purity in Early Judaism, which was edited with
care and dedication by Adele Reinhartz, one of the faculty members with
whom she worked most closely over the years at McMaster. Others who
were instrumental in nurturing Susan’s studies at McMaster included Ei-
leen Schuller, who supervised her master’s and doctoral work, and Anders
3See Robinson, “Canadian;” Waller, “Community.”
4
All three articles are published in “Purify.” The first is also published in Harland, Travel;
the second was first published in the online journal Women in Judaism; and the third in the
Journal for the Study of the New Testament.
4 David C. Seed

Runesson. However, without her professors at York University, who en-

couraged and guided her initial interest in Jewish and specifically textual
studies, these accomplishments would never have taken place. Susan made
a deep and lasting impression on them all as well as on her fellow students,
to whom she gave freely of her time.
Here was another Rabbi Akiva in their midst, a woman who started to
study Jewish texts at approximately the same age as did he, one who showed
an insatiable desire to learn and to absorb from her teachers and her fellow
students. However, in distinction to Rabbi Akiva, she did so as a woman,
following a path that had been carved out by others before her but which
she now made her own not only for herself, but for the other women who
would follow her example afterward. It is fascinating to note how her
gender became such an integral part of her being and grew more important
over the years. One may see it in the subject matter of many of her writings
and in her participation as the student representative to the Committee on
the Status of Women of the Society for Biblical Literature. These various
activities, in addition to those outside of the academic sphere, showed how
she could express her Judaism in new and exciting ways.
Susan felt energized and reinvigorated through her studies, as one could
sense clearly whenever one spoke with her. One could hear the enthusiasm
in her voice whenever she discussed her courses and studies; it was if she
had been reborn in her new scholarly existence. It was challenging at times
because of the many responsibilities she had to her family; yet, she lived
her life with a sense of dedication and devotion to both her family and
her studies. She was fortunate to have had a supportive family and many
friends, teachers, and fellow students, who gave her the encouragement to
pursue her academic career, in which she was making great strides on both
a professional and personal level. To look at and to read the body of work
that Susan produced over a period of but a few years makes her untimely
passing all the more tragic. While she had not yet begun formal work on her
dissertation, one can discern in her collected works the depth of scholarship
that she had already attained.
In early 2006 Susan underwent various medical tests to determine the
source of the physical problems she had been experiencing. Shortly after
Passover of that year, the results came back that she had pancreatic cancer.
There were many visits to doctors, trying to see if there might be some
course of treatment that could be of help. Both Susan and Stephen were
determined to fight this by whatever means possible. They researched what
treatments were available and spoke with many experts about possible op-
tions. Nonetheless, hospital stays became more frequent over the coming
weeks; unfortunately, a lung infection prevented her from ever starting
a proposed course of chemotherapy. But, there was one thing that never
 Susan Haber 5

changed during this time: her ability to face the future with her charac-
teristic love of life. She and Stephen celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding
anniversary with family and close friends at a small gathering in their home.
She made sure, through the smile on her face and the conversations she held
with everyone present, that we were there to celebrate her love for Stephen
and the joy she felt in sharing it with others. She expressed that same love for
her three children, trying to ensure that they knew that her bonds with them
would not end with her passing but would continue forever. In the back of
her mind, Susan did not want to leave her children without a mother and
to have them relive what she herself had endured with the loss of her own
mother at age fifteen. When she spoke with them, it was with this thought
in mind. As their mother, she had enough confidence in them to share those
important feelings with them.
It was difficult for her to give up the studying and learning that had ac-
companied her over those last few years, but her teachers did not let her
illness break the relationship and bonds they had built with her. Each one
was there to stand by her in full understanding of her decision to interrupt
the pursuit of her doctorate because of her health. As well, her friends never
left her side or that of her family. The love that Susan had shared with so
many during her short life was present in the many kindnesses that so many
extended to her and her family during this difficult period. She understood,
more than ever, just how blessed she was in her life, with a wonderful mar-
riage, three loving children, a wide circle of family and friends, and – of
course – the opportunity to study and enhance her life not only intellectu-
ally but spiritually as well.
Susan passed away on July 3, 2006, a few weeks shy of her forty-ninth
birthday and just seven weeks after she was first diagnosed with cancer.
What was it that led Susan to her eventual study of purity in early Juda-
ism? It began with a simple question but developed into a pursuit that gave
new meaning and purpose to her life. Why did some profess a commitment
to Judaism without a similar devotion to it in deed? In seeking the answer
this question, she understood that there was no simple solution. However,
by investigating the subject of purity in ancient Judaism, she could perhaps
begin to uncover how and why her ancestors gravitated to this ancient prac-
tice. Was it to better themselves spiritually? To attain a more elevated life in
their devotion to God? Did their dedication to the laws of purity make them
better Jews? Perhaps in learning from them, she thought that modern-day
Jews might come closer to God, bridging the divide between religious law
and personal devotion.
In her introduction to Susan’s collected works, Adele Reinhartz suggests
that “purity is one issue that brings us face to face with the chronological
and cultural distance between Judaism of antiquity and our modern sensi-
6 David C. Seed

bilities … In the ancient world, however, the concepts of purity and impu-
rity were frequently used to define the conditions that regulated access to
the divine. Throughout the ancient Near East, Egypt, Mesopotamia as well
as in classical Greece and Rome, acts that were defined as sinful and states
defined as impure were obstacles to worship.”5
Did Susan’s studies bring her closer to the answer she was seeking? Un-
fortunately, we will never know, since her life was cut short before she
would have had the opportunity to explore more fully the relationship
between the purity rites of ancient times and our own distance from the di-
vine. Nevertheless, in her brief life, purity was her constant companion, for
she brought a purity of soul and spirit that enriched not only an important
academic field but the lives of so many who were touched by her. In Song of
Songs Rabbah 7:10 we read, “Rabbi Yochanan said, ‘When a scholar passes
away, his lips continue to move in the grave.’ How do we know? As it says
in Song of Songs (7:9), ‘moving gently do the lips of those that are asleep.’”
Even in death, Susan’s words and deeds will continue to speak to many for
generations to come, and we are the better for it.

Bibliography

Haber, S. “From Priestly Torah to Christ Cultus: The Re-vision of Covenant and
Cult in Hebrews.” Pages 143–158 in “They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays on
Purity in Early Judaism. Edited by Adele Reinhartz. Early Judaism and Its Litera-
ture 24. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.
–. “God, Israel and Covenant: Unity in the Book of Deuteronomy.” European Juda-
ism 32 (1999): 132–141.
–. “Going Up to Jerusalem: Purity, Pilgrimage and the Historical Jesus.” Pages 49–67
in Travel and Religion in Antiquity. Edited by P. A. Harland. Studies in Christian-
ity and Judaism 21. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011.
–. “Living and Dying for the Law: The Mother-Martyrs of 2 Maccabees.” Women
in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 4 (2006): http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/
index.php/wjudaism/article/view/247
–. “They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays on Purity in Early Judaism. Edited by
A. Reinhartz. Early Judaism and Its Literature 24. Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2008.
–. “A Woman’s Touch: Feminist Encounters with the Hemorrhaging Woman in
Mark 5:24–34.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 (2003): 171–192.
Harland, P. A., ed. Travel and Religion in Antiquity. Studies in Christianity and Juda-
ism 21. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011.
Reinhartz, A. “Introduction.” Pages 1–6 in “They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays
on Purity in Early Judaism. Edited by A. Reinhartz. Early Judaism and Its Litera-
ture 24. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.

5 Reinhartz, “Introduction,” 1.
 Susan Haber 7

Robinson, I., “Canadian Jewry Today: Portrait of a Community in the Process of

Change,” Changing Jewish Communities (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) 12
(2006) http://www.jcpa.org/cjc/cjc-robinson-06.htm (June 10, 2012).
Waller, H. W., “A Community Transformed: The National Picture.” In From Immi-
gration to Integration: The Canadian Jewish Experience: A Millennium Edition.
Edited by R. Klein & F. Dimant. Institute for International Affairs, B’nai Brith
Canada, 2001. http://www.bnaibrith.ca/institute/millennium/millennium10.html
(June 10, 2012).
 Part I

Ancient Israel
 Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23
Baruch J. Schwartz

Susan Haber ‫לז״נ‬

Almost all studies of Leviticus 23,1 including those appearing in critical

commentaries on Leviticus, as indeed almost all studies of what have come
to be called “the festival calendars” in the Torah,2 are comparative studies
of the festivals in ancient Israel as they appear in the several Torah sources,
their commonalities, and especially the differences between them, which are
understood to be indications of the festivals’ evolutionary development.3
This is no surprise. Systematic critical study of the Pentateuchal law codes
may actually be said to have begun way back in 1835 with J. F. L. George’s
Die älteren Jüdischen Feste,4 and the centrality of this topic in the work of
Julius Wellhausen5 and of his followers, detractors, disciples, and opponents
is undeniable.6 Moreover, it would probably be no exaggeration to say that
biblical religion itself begins with the annual festivals, if by biblical reli-
gion – in the tangible, practical sense – we mean the performance of routine
worship of Yhwh perceived as a commanded, positive obligation devolving
on the people of Israel. We have only to recall that in J, the oldest of the Pen-
tateuchal documents, the three annual pilgrimage festivals constitute virtu-
ally the whole of the law (on the assumption that underlying the present
form of Exod 34:17–26 there is indeed an authentic J law-code),7 and that in
1 See recently Nihan, “Festival Calendars”; for earlier studies see the literature cited and

the references given in the notes below.

2
Exod 23:14–19; 34:18–26; Lev 23:1–44; Num 28:1–30:1; Deut 16:1–17.
3 Among the recent critical commentaries, see Noth, Leviticus, 163–76; Elliger, Leviticus,

302–24; Wenham, Leviticus, 297–307; Levine, Leviticus, 154–63, 261–68; Hartley, Leviticus,
363–94; Gerstenberger, Leviticus, 334–54; Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1947–2080.
4
George, Jüdischen Feste; on this book’s decisive influence, see Rogerson, Old Testament,
63–68; Gesundheit, Festival Legislation, 6; idem, Three Times, 1.
5
Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 83–120.
6 For Kaufmann’s now classical critique of the Wellausenian reconstruction, see Kauf-

mann, Toledot, esp. 1:119–26; see also idem, Religion, esp. 178–80. Recent works on the
festivals include Wagenaar, Origin; Weyde, Appointed Festivals; Goldstein and Cooper,
“Development;” idem, “Festivals;” idem, “Exodus;” Berlejung, “Heilige Zeiten; Gesundheit,
Three Times.”
7
Classical four-source theory views the Minor Book of the Covenant (Exod 34:11–26),
12 Baruch J. Schwartz

J’s reconstruction of the events, these – and these alone – are, therefore, the
terms of Yhwh’s covenant with Israel.
The scholarly study of the festival calendar texts is devoted primarily to
the historical study of the festivals themselves, that is, to the attempt to re-
construct their observance as an evolving historical phenomenon and social
reality. For this purpose, the texts must be studied in a manner we might call
“vertical.” Each of the festival calendars must be considered independent
of its literary context, i.e., the document in which it is found, and each bit
of textual evidence must be mined for the information it provides for the
topic under examination, compared and contrasted with every other bit of
evidence, and placed somewhere along the historical continuum.
The “horizontal” study of these texts, within their respective separate,
authentic literary contexts and as peculiar expressions of something unique
and distinctive, has been much less of a scholarly priority. The festivals in
the Priestly laws, as a topic worthy of study in its own right, have been hit
particularly hard, first because of the displeasure, or at least the sense of
alienation, that Priestly writings and Priestly ideas occasionally arouse in
students and scholars, and second, because Priestly festivals themselves are
seen as a two-stage evolution, with the exclusively cultic festivals of P only
hovering in the background, ultimately to be dispensed with and replaced
by the festivals of H, in which the Temple rituals are augmented by popular
and agricultural observances and the laity is given a share in the celebration.8
My aim in this essay is to study P first of all as literature and not as evi-
dence, and to study it in isolation, sympathetically and on its own terms. I
want to attempt to understand the text of Leviticus 23 as a literary expres-
sion of the unique Priestly conception of the so-called festivals, and to
elucidate how this conception functions as an integral part of the Priestly
worldview. For these purposes I shall ignore the non-Priestly sources en-
tirely, except if a point of contrast needs to be made.

which is situated within a readily identifiable J narrative (33:1–5, 12–23; 34:2–3, 4a1β, 5a2–27)
and, thus, presumably to be assigned to J, as the earliest of the law corpora in the Pentateuch;
see Haran, “S per ha-B rît.” Critics have debated this; for the view that this law corpora
is a later, redactional passage, see, most recently, Gesundheit, “Festival Calendars,” 14–64;
idem, “Intertextualität”; idem, Three Times, 12–43. Hoffman, accepting Gesundheit’s the-
sis regarding Exodus 34, advances the suggestion that J actually contained no law-code
at all, inculcating its distinctive normative teachings through its narratives; see Hoffman,
“Uniqueness.” It is possible, however, that the text of Exod 34:11–26 is a reworked form of
an authentic, albeit brief, J law-code, the actual provisions of which were essentially those
preserved in the rewritten version.
8 For the theoretical, theological, and textual arguments underlying this now widely ac-

cepted view of the development of the festivals in the Priestly strata, see Knohl, Sanctuary,
1–45; for the most recent critique of this approach, see Nihan, “Festival Calendars.” See
also Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, esp. 2054–56; Milgrom, however, expresses some uncertainty
about characterizing H’s festival legislation as containing popular, folk elements.
 Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23 13

In this discussion I also ignore the differences between P and H. Of

course it goes without saying that Leviticus 23 is part of H, and the theory
that an earlier pre-H version of the text can be unearthed here by carving
away everything but the skeletal outline of dates, labor prohibitions, and
the repeated command to sacrifice a communal offering on each of the oc-
casions enumerated9 is indeed enticing. Yet it remains speculative, and in
any case, as I have argued previously, I do not see the differences between P
and H as expressions of a major chasm between the two, nor do I view H as
a polemical revolution in Priestly theology or as a popular and progressive
movement in Priestly practice. Rather, I see H’s rewriting of the Priestly
Code, including its festival legislation, as the natural outgrowth and exten-
sion of what is implicit, often explicit, in early P.10 I thus prefer to speak of
Leviticus 23 as an expression of the Priestly festival legislation, and of the
image of the festivals that emerges from it as the Priestly image of these
distinguished occasions.
Since the best way to arrive at Priestly ideas is by exercising precision
with regard to Priestly terminology, I will organize the following remarks
around some of the important terms and concepts that inform the laws
found in Leviticus 23:
1. The chapter begins with the twice-repeated statement that “these” are
Yhwh’s ‫( מֹועֲדִ ים‬vss. 2 and 4); it closes by repeating this phrase twice more
(vss. 37 and 44). In none of the Torah sources but P are the festivals called
‫מֹועֲדִ ים‬, nor do the other sources employ anything equivalent or even simi-
lar to this term. Translators and exegetes agree that the word ‫ מֹועֵד‬means
“times,” or appointed, or designated, times; on contextual grounds, there
can be no taking issue with this rendering, and P’s usage of the word else-
where seems to confirm it as well. In the Priestly creation myth, Yhwh as-
signs to the sun, the moon, and the stars the function of serving as ‫ אֹותֹות‬and
‫“ – מֹועֲדִ ים‬indicators and” (or “of”)11 “fixed times, and of days and of years”
(Gen 1:14).12 Yet, the same word appears numerous times, in P as well as
in other strata of biblical literature, in the sense of “meeting” or “meeting-

9
As emerges from the analysis offered by Knohl (Sanctuary, 1–45) of each of the chap-
ter’s pericopes respectively.
10 See Schwartz, Holiness, esp. 24–33, 241–49.
11
This according to some scholars, who view the conjuctive w w in the phrase ‫לְאֹתֹת‬
‫ ּולְמֹועֲדִ ים‬in Gen 1:14 either as superfluous (thus according to the Karaite interpretation,
cited and vigorously rejected by Abraham ibn Ezra; see his Introduction to Genesis in
Torat ayyim, Genesis, I, 6), as a scribal error (thus according to many critics, beginning
with Olshausen in 1870, cited in Skinner, Genesis, 26), or simply as explicative (thus Speiser,
Genesis, 6).
12
For other instances in P, see Gen 17:21; 21:2; Num 9:2, 3, 7, 13; 10:10; 15:3; 28:2; 29:39.
Among the many occurrences of this usage of the word outside of P are, for instance,
Gen 18:14; Deut 16:6; 2 Sam 20:5; Jer 8:7; Ps 102:14.
14 Baruch J. Schwartz

place.”13 This occurs most often in the frequently recurring ‫אֹהֶל מֹועֵד‬,14 and
the explicit use of the verb ‫ נֹועַד‬in P in this context15 makes the meaning of
‫ מֹועֵד‬in this phrase unambiguous.16
The precise etymological and semantic relationship between the two
usages of ‫מֹועֵד‬, “meeting” and “time,” which even occur in one and the
same literary source, is somewhat elusive. The loose semantic connection
between the two does not provide an adequate explanation; simply to say
that, in order to have a meeting, one needs to set a time does not account for
using the same word for the meeting itself and for the meeting-time. Even
adducing the English word “date,” which moved from being a term for the
meeting-time to a colloquial term for the meeting itself, while tempting,
appears on further examination to be a case of false analogy: the semantic
development is backward, since the presumed primary meaning of ‫ מֹועֵד‬is
the meeting, not the time.
One possible solution is that the two usages are homographs: identical
words derived from two related but distinct roots. When appearing in the
sense of meeting or meeting-place, ‫ מֹועֵד‬would be derived from ‫“ ועד‬meet;”17
whereas, when appearing in the sense of “fixed time,” it would reflect
the semantically different and etymologically distinct (though related) ‫יעד‬
“designate.”18 The drawback of this solution is that it leaves us with both
usages of the identical word employed by the same Priestly writers in close
proximity to each other with nothing but context to enable the reader to
differentiate between them. However, even this is not wholly unknown in
Priestly literature.19

13 In non-Priestly texts this is infrequent; see Num 16:2; Isa 14:13; Job 30:23; Lam 2:6 and

n. 16 below; for the Priestly occurrences, see the next note.

14
There are well over a hundred occurrences in P; see Exod 27:21; 28:23; Lev 1:1; 3:2;
Num 1:1; 2:2 etc.
15 Exod 25:22; 29:42, 43; 30:6, 36; Num 10:3, 4; 17:19; for the sense “assemble, congre-

gate,” see Num 14:35; 16:11; 27:3. See below, n. 17.

16 The ‫ אֹהֶל מֹועֵד‬appears in the Torah outside of P as well, in four E passages: Exod 33:7;

Num 11:16; 12:4; Deut 31:14. On the distinctive non-Priestly conception of the ‫אֹהֶל מֹועֵד‬
reflected in these passages, see Haran, Temples, 260–75.
17 See the passages mentioned above in n. 15 and Josh 11:5; Ps 48:5; Job 2:11; Amos 3:3.
18 See Exod 21:8; Jer 47:7 (where ‫ יָעַד‬parallels ‫)צִּוָה‬, and esp. 2 Sam 20:5. For a discussion

of the problematics involved in verbs I-yod and I-w w, see Blau, Tôrat ha-Hege, 260–62.
Nominal forms analagous to ‫ מֹועֵד‬occur both with roots originally I-yod (e.g. ‫ )מֹוקֵׁש‬and
with those originally I-w w (e.g. ‫)מֹוקֵד‬. My thanks to Naphtali S. Meshel for his assistance
on this point.
19 For instance, the verb ‫ ּכִּפֶר‬in P has been shown to be both a denominative formation

from the noun ‫“ ּכֹפֶר‬payment,” meaning “serve as ransom,” and a verb cognate to Akk.
kuppuru and meaning “wipe away, purge” (usually impurity). These too are etymologically
unrelated homographs, yet both appear throughout P, with the sense to be determined in
each case from context; see Schwartz, “Prohibitions,” 52–4.
 Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23 15

Another explanation might be that instead of thinking of durations of

time, that is, observances that are a certain number of days long (one or
seven, in P’s calendar), we should be thinking of points along a time-line –
what are today called “dates.” Perhaps, these are also “meeting-points,”
encountered as one moves along the time-line – around a circle perhaps –
and re-encountered each year as the time-line or time-circle repeats itself. If
this is correct, then the ‫ מֹועֲדִ ים‬are points-in-time, moments of onset, met as
the year progresses from month to month. Perhaps then, this is the key to
this widespread use of the word, an essentially calendrical usage, in keeping
with the biblical view of time expressed here and elsewhere.
2. The distinctive feature of the festivals in this chapter (and elsewhere in
P)20 is that they are designated as ‫ ִמקְָראֵי קֹדֶ ׁש‬.21 To understand this phrase, one
must realize that in the Priestly conception the whole of reality is divided
into two categories: ‫ קֹדֶ ׁש‬and ‫חֹול‬, the holy and the common, that which
belongs to the particular realm of the deity and everything else, which is
in the realm of the everyday, the mundane. Whatever is in the category of
‫ חֹול‬is permitted for unrestricted, normal human use. The ‫ קֳדָ ׁשִים‬or sancta,
however, are Yhwh’s exclusively, and all unauthorized human contact with
or use of them is severely prohibited.22 In this conception, reality is thought
of as being composed of five dimensions: persons, objects, space, words, and
time. Desecrating the sacred, which is to be avoided at all costs, consists of
violating the restrictions imposed on what belongs to the deity by making
mundane use of it. Just as the mundane use of a sacred object desecrates it,
the mundane use of sacred time, time belonging to Yhwh, desecrates it.
Since the time when one does all of one’s productive activity is by definition
non-sacred time, a day on which all such activity ceases must be a sacred
time, time that belongs to Yhwh himself, time not to be used by humans.
Thus, each of the days designated as a ‫קֹדֶ ׁש‬, a sanctum, is a day on which
no labor is to be done. Accordingly, the term ‫ ִמקְָרא קֹדֶ ׁש‬is followed, indeed
glossed, by the words “You shall do no work” (vss. 3, 7, 8, 21, 25, 28, 35,
36).23

20
Exod 12:16; Num 28:18, 25, 26; 29:1, 7, 12.
21 To be precise, specifically singled out days among them are so designated. The pilgrim-
ages of ma ôt and sukkôt are each of seven days’ duration, but only the first and final days
of ma ôt, and only the first day and additional eighth day of sukkôt are designated as ‫ִמקְָראֵי‬
‫ ;קֹדֶ ׁש‬this distinction, too, is unique to P. D’s regulation that after having observed a one-day
pilgrimage in order to offer the pesa sacrifice and having then returned home (Deut 16:1–7),
there to eat ma ôt for the next six days, one is to refrain from labor on the seventh (v. 8), is
in some measure analogous but by no means identical, the provision being confined to this
festival alone, and the concept of the sacred being entirely absent.
22
Schwartz, Holiness, 250–58; compare Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1978–79.
23 For a discussion of this phrase and its two variations (‫תעֲשֹּו‬ ַ ‫ ּכ ָל־ ְמלָאכ ָה ֹלא‬and ‫ּכ ָל־ ְמלֶאכ ֶת‬
‫)עֲבֹדָ ה ֹלא ַתעֲשֹּו‬, see Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1977–78.
16 Baruch J. Schwartz

A fuller appreciation of the notion that the basic definition of sacred

time as time that belongs exclusively to the deity is gained by the fact that
the festivals are spoken of in this chapter (and elsewhere in P) not merely
as ‫ ;מֹועֲדִ ים‬rather, they are said to be the ‫ מֹועֲדִ ים‬of Yhwh. They are Yhwh’s
fixed times. The repeated use of the construct (vss. 2, 4, 37, 44) and the use
of the possessive ‫“ מֹועֲדָ י‬My fixed times” (v. 2) serve to confirm what is meant
by “sacred” in Priestly thought.
The cluster of terms and phrases as well as the conceptual world they
express are all entirely unique to P. Only in P are the festival days times of
cessation from work, from engaging in daily activity, for only in P are they
sacred.
Now, in P nothing can be a ‫ קֹדֶ ׁש‬simply by definition. In order to be in
the category of the ‫קֳדָ ׁשִים‬, the group of sacred entities, the person, place,
or thing must undergo an active consecration; something must be done to
it to transform it into a ‫קֹדֶ ׁש‬, something expressed by the factitive form of
the verb, the piel ‫קִּדֵ ׁש‬. The tabernacle and the priests are transformed into
­ hwh’s own palace servants by application of the anointing oil and associ-
Y
ated acts. Offerings are transformed into Yhwh’s food by being presented
and coming in contact with the sacred space. The Israelite people as a whole
are transformed into Yhwh’s sacred people – according to H – by perform-
ing the commandments.24 Sanctity must be imparted by an act or process of
consecration for the transformation from non-sacred to sacred to take place.
How does time become sacred, become Yhwh’s own time, which humans
may not violate? The word ‫ ִמקְָרא‬in the phrase ‫ ִמקְָרא קֹדֶ ׁש‬provides the answer:
by pronouncement. This is the sense of the verb ‫ קָָרא‬that appears four times
alongside it in the chapter (vss. 2, 4, 21, 37), with ‫ ִמקְָרא‬thus construed as its
cognate accusative.25 The idea that time is consecrated by being declared
holy may readily be confirmed by P’s etiological legend about the sabbath
(Gen 2:1–3), according to which the seventh day was transformed into a ‫קֹדֶ ׁש‬
by being so designated by Yhwh at creation.26 It is confirmed by logic as
well; given that every sanctum needs somehow to be made into such, how
else could this be accomplished with time other than by declaring the time
to be Yhwh’s own minutes and hours, off-limits to humans?
On first glance one might surmise that these calendrically recurring times,
like the weekly sabbath in P’s narrative, were pronounced sacred once and
for all by Yhwh himself – the former at creation, the latter at Sinai – as
recounted in this chapter. If so, certain annual dates were simply decreed,
once upon a time, by Yhwh to Moses and this is how they became sacred

24
See Schwartz, Holiness, 260–63; idem, “Israel’s Holiness.”
25 Compare ‫( חֹדֶ ׁש וְׁשַּבָת קְֹרא ִמקְָרא‬Isa 1:13).
26 See Schwartz, “Sabbath,” 11–13.
 Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23 17

times for ever after. But the verb ‫“ ִּתקְְראּו‬You shall proclaim” in vss. 2, 4, 21
and 37 is conclusive evidence to the contrary. Evidently, some sort of annual
pronouncement of each one is mandated.
This, then, is the clue to the term ‫ ִמקְָרא קֹדֶ ׁש‬. It is not a “holy convocation,”27
which conveys the idea of assembly. No assembly is commanded and none
is thought to take place on these occasions; such a notion would seem to
be the farthest thing from the mind of the Priestly writer, and in any case
cannot be expressed in the Hebrew verb ‫קרא‬.28 Nor are ‫ ִמקְָראֵי קֹדֶ ׁש‬to be ex-
plained as “sacred proclamations,”29 since the proclamations would not be
sacred at all; it is the ‫מֹועֲדִ ים‬, the times themselves, that become sacred, and
they achieve this status as a result of being proclaimed. Rather, ‫ִמקְָרא קֹדֶ ׁש‬
must mean something that has become a sanctum by virtue of proclamation,
i.e., a thing pronounced, and thereby rendered, sacred.
According to v. 3, pronouncement is to be made for all of the sacred occa-
sions ‫“ ּבְמֹועֲדָ ם‬each in its own time,” as each of the specified dates is encoun-
tered. How is this envisaged? One thinks of the ceremonial consecration of
the New Moon instituted by the Rabbis, performed by the high court in
order to formalize, and thereby to ensure uniform recognition of, the onset
of each new month, which concluded with the verbal pronouncement sanc-
tifying the occasion,30 but this may be literalizing exegesis more typical of
legal midrash than of biblical literature.31 And while there is perhaps some
biblical evidence for such oral proclamations – one thinks of ‫קַּדְ ׁשּו־צֹום קְִראּו‬
‫“ עֲצָָרה‬Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn occasion” in Joel 1:1432 – Priestly
law displays no familiarity with any such mechanism. On the contrary, in
P the heavenly bodies were created for the purpose that Israel – eventually,
when it came into existence – would be able accurately to identify Yhwh’s
times and to mark them accordingly.33 Accordingly, our chapter concludes

27 For this widespread rendering, see Ramban on v. 2 (Torat ayyim, Leviticus, 224),
KJV, RSV et al. It has been embraced by many critical commentators; see for example El-
liger (Leviticus, 313), Hartley (Leviticus, 371 and passim) and even Levine (Leviticus, 154)
despite the fact that the NJPS translation, on which Levine’s commentary is based, rejects
this in favor of “sacred occasions.”
28
In both Priestly and non-Priestly texts, the verbal forms of the root ‫ קהל‬are used for this
purpose; see, e.g., Lev 8:3; Num 1:18; 8:9, 10:7; Deut 4:10; 31:12, 28.
29 Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1957; see also 1958–59 for further discussion of the exegetical

history of the use the phrase.

30 m. Roš Haš. 2:7.
31 See b. Roš Haš. 24a, where the Court’s proclamation itself (!‫מקֻּדָ ׁש‬ ְ ) is derived through
literalizing the interpretation of the verb ‫ ; ִּתקְְראּו‬the stipulation that all present must repeat
the proclamation is adduced from repointing the word ‫ אֹתָם‬as if it were ‫ ַאּתֶם‬, and the need
to repeat the word twice (!‫ ) ְמקֻּדָ ׁש ְמקֻּדָ ׁש‬is held to be implicit in the use of the plural ‫ ִמקְָראֵי‬in
the term ‫ ִמקְָראֵי קֹדֶ ׁש‬.
32 See Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1957.
33 See Gen 1:14–15 and n. 11 above. Of course, P admits that the heavenly bodies also
18 Baruch J. Schwartz

with the notice that Yhwh’s times were indeed announced to the Israelites
(v. 44), thus leaving the annual implementation in their hands.
What type of annual pronouncement is contemplated? It would seem that
v. 37 provides the answer:
‫) ֵאּלֶה מֹועֲדֵ י ה׳ ֲאׁשֶר־ ִּתקְְראּו אֹתָם ִמקְָראֵי קֹדֶ ׁש‬a(
:‫) לְ ַהקְִריב ִאּׁשֶה לַה׳ עֹלָה ּו ִמנְחָה זֶבַח ּונ ְ ָסכִים ּדְ בַר־יֹום ּבְיֹומֹו‬b(

To grasp the syntactical relationship between the two parts of the verse, it
needs to be realized that the infinitive construct with prefixed lamed (‫)לְ ַהקְִריב‬
in cases such as this is epexegetical.34 The word ‫ לְ ַהקְִריב‬here thus means “by
offering,”35 and the phrase as a whole states that the way in which the ‫ִמקְָראֵי‬
‫ קֹדֶ ׁש‬are to be proclaimed, as it were, is by offering the prescribed offerings
to Yhwh on each one of them at its own time.36
3. The phrase ‫ לְ ַהקְִריב ִאּׁשֶה לַה׳‬in the summary verse (v. 37) echoes the re-
peated command that occurs in each of the paragraphs of the chapter and
constitutes the only performative act prescribed for each one of the ‫ִמקְָראֵי‬
‫( קֹדֶ ׁש‬vss. 8, 18, 25, 27, 36 [2x]; see also v. 13). As is now known, the word
‫ ִאּׁשֶה‬is not derived from ‫“ אֵׁש‬fire” but from a root ‫אש״ש‬/ ‫ או״ש‬meaning “gift”
and is known from Ugaritic as well as from Hebrew proper names such
as ‫ יהואש‬and ‫יאשיהו‬. The word is not used to refer to the purification and
reparation offerings, as these are not gifts but rituals of expiation, but it is
used consistently to denote burnt offerings, cereal offerings, and sacrifices
of well-being – as illustrated in our verse: ‫ִאּׁשֶה לַה׳ עֹלָה ּו ִמנְחָה זֶבַח ּונ ְ ָסכ ִים ּדְ בַר־יֹום‬
‫ּבְיֹומֹו‬.37 The importance of the use of the term ‫ ִאּׁשֶה‬, best translated “food-
gift,” is thus that the priest, the Temple food-server, sees and experiences
the festival day approximately the same as he does every other day, as a day
on which Yhwh receives his daily tribute in the form of food-like offerings,
with one crucial difference: these are the days on which he receives more.
Days, it would seem, are identified in Priestly thought by what is offered by
Israel to Yhwh on them. On festival days, the daily food-offering is a more
sumptuous, more extravagant repast. This is stated even more bluntly in P’s

have the task of providing light, but light was created independently (Gen 1:3) and could
exist without them.
34 See GKC §114o.
35
Compare ‫( וְׁשָמְרּו בְנ ֵי־יִשְָֹראֵל אֶת־ ַהּׁשַּבָת לַעֲשֹ�ֹות אֶת־ ַהּׁשַּבָת‬Exod 31:16), which means that the
Israelites are to keep the Sabbath “by doing it,” i.e., by observing a full cessation of activity.
36 Contrast NJPS, where 37a is rendered “… the set times of Yhwh that you shall cel-

ebrate as sacred occasions” (italics added), followed by the gerund form “bringing offerings”
etc. In addition to transforming “proclaim” into “celebrate as,” for which there is no textual
warrant, this rendering gives the mistaken impression that the making of offerings is an
accompanying act, i.e., that these days are somehow to be “celebrated,” and in addition to
this, offerings are to be brought.
37 Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 161–62; see also Schwartz, Leviticus, 208.
 Miqra’ Qodesh and the Structure of Leviticus 23 19

other festival calendar, appearing in Numbers 28–29, the caption of which

reads “Command the Israelites and say to them: Be punctilious in present-
ing to me the offerings of food due to me as food-gifts of pleasing odor to
me at stated times” (Num 28:2), and which then goes on to catalogue the
specifics of each day’s required food-gifts: the more modest ones to be of-
fered daily and the more elaborate ones offered on the Sabbath, New Moon,
and each of the festival days.
4. There is one crucial term that is not used to characterize Yhwh’s
designated sacred times: the word ‫חַג‬. The word ‫ חַג‬does not mean festival,
celebration, or feast. The only meaning of the noun ‫חַג‬, and of the verbal
root ‫ חגג‬in all of its appearances, is “pilgrimage.”38 Appearing regularly in
the non-Priestly festival legislation,39 this word expresses the obligation to
pay a visit to Yhwh in his abode, that is, to appear and worship at a location
where he is believed to reside – as expressed most explicitly in the accom-
panying phrase ‫( לְִראֹות אֶת־פְנ ֵי ה׳‬in its original form): “to see Yhwh’s face.”40
This is what was referred to above as the only performative requirement
of Israel’s religion in J; it is certainly the central feature of the festivals in
E (Exod 23:14–19) as well. In D, of course, the practicalities of complying
with this obligation, when Yhwh is deemed to reside at a single location,
became the entire focus of the festival legislation (Deut 16:1–17), and this
was certainly the case in historical and sociological fact as well.
In contrast, P’s calendar of distinguished dates is most definitely not or-
ganized around the idea that Israelites must visit Yhwh a few times a year.
There are seven sacred times, but only two of them are also days on which
pilgrimages take place: the ‫ חַג‬of ma ôt (v. 6) and that of sukkôt (v. 34). The
other five are decidedly not pilgrimages; the term ‫ חַג‬does not appear and
the presence of the populace is neither required nor envisaged. In two of
these five, the pilgrimage is even conspicuously absent: the day on which
the bikk rîm-loaves are brought as part of the day’s ‫( ִאּׁשֶה‬vss. 15–21) is not a
pilgrimage day, even though it corresponds to the wheat-harvesting pilgrim-
age in all of the other sources; 41 the final sacred day in the calendar (v. 36b)
is also not a pilgrimage, even though it comes immediately at the conclusion
of a seven-day pilgrimage of which it is somewhat a part. Furthermore,
when the pilgrimage command does appear, it is mentioned somewhat more

38 Haran, Temples, 289–90.

39 Exod 23:14, 15, 16, 17; 34:18, 22, 25; Deut 16: 10, 13, 14, 15, 16; 31:10.
40
Exod 23:15, 17; 34:20, 24; Deut 16:16 (2x); 31:11. On the Masoretic vocalization ‫י ֵָראֶה‬,
‫“ לֵָראֹות‬be seen,” see the critical commentaries.
41 P elsewhere refers to this day as š bû ôt (Num 28:26), and it corresponds to the non-

Priestly pilgrimage of q îr (Exod 23:16) or š bû ôt (Exod 34:22; Deut 16:10,16). Yet, it is

most decidedly not a pilgrimage occasion in P; it is observed as ‫ ִמקְָרא קֹדֶ ׁש‬by the priests in the
Temple, and by the populace at home; the word ‫ חַג‬is entirely absent.
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