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Leviticus, a Commentary. - book reviews

Cross Currents, Fall, 1998 by Frank H. Gorman, Jr.

Erhard S. Gerstenberger, The Old Testament Library. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. xiv+450pp. $42.00 (cloth).

Recent commentaries on Leviticus (Levine [1989], Milgrom [1991], Hartley [1992], Budd [1996], Gorman [1997]) have used literary, anthropological, and comparative methods to better understand the dynamics of priestly rituals. Gerstenberger's work, originally published in German in 1993, has a very different goal. He seeks to understand Leviticus in the liturgical context of the postexilic Jewish community that existed in diaspora. The interpretive process that eventually produced Leviticus grew out of and addressed the fifth-century Jewish community of faith (2-6). The primary liturgical elements of this community were prayer, Scripture reading, proclamation, and blessings (Gerstenberger draws on Ezra and Nehemiah for his reconstruction, 6-10). Torah functions as the spiritual center of the confessional community. Moses is understood as the founder of the Torah office, and local congregational leaders functioned as teachers and interpreters of Torah (112-14, 122-27, 183-85).

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Rather than understanding Leviticus as an instruction manual for the priests, Gerstenberger believes the book is addressed to the whole Jewish community. In the reading of Torah, the community was directly confronted by the word of God. Gerstenberger finds clues to this direct address in Yahweh's verbal commandments to the people, in the recurring phrase, "this is the law," in the admonitory character of the divine words, and in the call for the sanctification of the people (4). The Jewish community of the fifth-century sought to orient its whole life in relation to the word of Yahweh.

Central to Gerstenberger's larger argument is the view that Scripture reading became a substitute for sacrificial rites in congregations distant from Jerusalem (10-14). Ritual texts possessed "edificatory symbolic value for Yahweh believers" and their reading provided occasions for meditation and interpretation (183). For example, the primary goal of Yom Kippur as observed in the early Jewish community was the expiation of the congregation through rites of penance (222-26). Gerstenberger does not discuss in detail the precise dynamics of the ritual acts in the text as they might have been enacted and experienced in and by the Israelite community.

Gerstenberger's primary concern is to discuss how these texts might have been read, heard, understood, and interpreted in a diaspora context in which temple worship was not a day-to-day reality or possibility. Although his work does not go far in advancing our understanding of Israelite sacrificial activity in its ancient near eastern context, it does raise the important question of how sacrificial texts might function within a faith community that is no longer able to undertake concrete sacrificial activity. As Gerstenberger makes clear, this question has to do not only with the reinterpretation of already completed texts, but with the interpretive appropriation and creation of texts by the worshiping community. Unfortunately, he does not explore how a community actually goes about substituting the reading of texts for the practice of sacrifice. How does "word" replace "act" or, to put it a bit differently, how does "word become act"? This would seem to be a particularly pointed matter in light of recent efforts "to deconstruct the word." How does symbolic reflection and meditation replace animal sacrifice?

A Protestant bias that remains impatient with priests, ritual, and temples runs throughout the commentary. Gerstenberger repeatedly points to ways in which the temple priests are subordinated to the teaching of Torah by congregational leaders (e.g., 72-78, 125). Sacred space is a concern of the Jerusalem priests who have little real influence on the postexilic community of faith. The temple, he states, has become a house of prayer and is "no longer a slaughterhouse" (10). The distinction between "inadvertent" and "intentional" sins discussed in Lev. 4-5 is viewed by Gerstenberger as a priestly construct that "is both artificial and dogmatically abstract" and of little value for the actual practice of atonement (understood as"reestablishing disrupted life circumstances," 62-65). Prayer has taken the place of the atonement rituals (78).

Although I find Gerstenberger's fifth-century reading of Leviticus both interesting and compelling, it needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. Further, he argues that the book developed internally around thematic centers and does not seek to interpret it within its larger Pentateuchal context. While such thematic centers are plausible, it is not clear they developed apart from the larger narrative. Finally, Gerstenberger does not systematically engage recent Jewish scholarship on Leviticus and Israelite ritual (e.g., Milgrom, Levine).

Despite these criticisms, I highly recommend this work. Addressing a crucial moment in the development and formation of Judaism and the biblical text, it seeks to provide a picture of fifth-century Judaism as it creatively, religiously, and theologically confronted the reality of the diaspora. Gerstenberger seeks to show the emergence of a confessional community concretely represented in local congregations that gathered to hear the reading and interpretation of Torah. More than a series of comments on texts, his book is a study in the development and nature of the practice of religion.

Leviticus, a Commentary. - book reviews

Cross Currents, Fall, 1998 by Frank H. Gorman, Jr.

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