Notes From the Chapter Bibliography - 6. The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets
From The Observatory
Notes From the Chapter Bibliography
This query includes Bibliography-related notes from the author. The following paragraphs of notes from the author for Chapter 6 include quotations from William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), pp. xxiii–xxxi, 742. They were incomplete, so we omitted them from Chapter 6. Can you help us work them into the body of Chapter 6?
Suggest an edit or addition for this query. Join the research!
Author’s Bibliographic Notes on William W. Hallo
p. xxv: Discussing the laws of purity in Leviticus, William Hallo[1] remarked that a major dimension of the Near Eastern and Egyptian cults involved what A. Leo Oppenheim[2] called “the care and feeding of the gods.” Real victuals were provided to the cult statue twice each day, with additional amounts on special ceremonial occasions—meat, fowl and fish, cereals, oils, and vegetables. “Each kind of food demanded its own ceremonial, such as sprinkling for cereals and libation for oils. It was most elaborate for meats. The living animal was slaughtered and its inedible portions carefully set aside for such uses as leather-making (from the skin). The entrails, which were not considered fit for consumption, were minutely inspected for their ominous significance, and a whole ‘science’ of divination (extispicy) developed around the interpretation of the precise configuration of lungs, intestines, and especially the liver (hepatoscopy).”[3]
Hallo added that “The edible portions were then offered to the divine statue at a table set behind drawn curtains.”[4] After a short while, whatever the statue refrained from eating was given to the king. “The balance of the enormous daily deliveries to the temples was then distributed to the clergy for their consumption,”[5] as they were to the lay population on special ceremonial days, highlighted by the New Year.
The Israelite laws of Leviticus were quite different. Hallo continued, “There is no statue or other physical image of the deity and no need to ‘feed’ it. Equally important, ‘there is no augury in Jacob, no divining in Israel’ (Num. 23:23; cf. Lev. 19:26), hence no need to inspect the entails of the slaughtered animal.”[6]
Hallo wrote that the priesthood for its part derived its livelihood from “tithes and other means and received a share of the regular offerings.”[7] (For an example of abuse, see I. Sam. 2:13–16.) And by this time, “the king was neither the principal ministrant nor the designated beneficiary of the cult.”[8]
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. xxv.
- ↑ A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: 1977 [1964]), pp. 183–198.
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. 742.
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. 742.
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. 742.
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. 742.
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. 742.
- ↑ William W. Hallo, “Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in Bernard Jacob Bamberger (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Vol. III: Leviticus (New York: 1979), p. 742.
