Here she points convincingly to how this terminology depicts Moses attracting the attention of the divinity. Yet perhaps there is an additional narratological point to be made here, which may be illustrated more clearly if we abandon momentarily the strictly priestly material to look at how sacrifices are presented before this point. In her exposition of the curious assembly narrative, Feldman emphasizes the unusual use of the hiphil of עלה for Moses’ offerings, suggesting elevating the offering to the divinity, instead of what she terms the more “commonly” used versions of קרב that suggest approach or proximity. Why now, Moses, and why these two offerings? I don’t think we can just lightly assimilate these to some idea of “sacrifice” which doesn’t seem, in P’s narrative, to exist yet, and hence say Moses performs “sacrifices.” Even if we read the Pentateuchal narrative as a final whole, there are numerous specific offerings prior to this, but there is no qorbān until the next chapter, Lev 1. In P terms then, Moses may be doing something remarkable with these offerings but is arguably not “sacrificing,” if we take the priestly terminology and narratology absolutely seriously.
I know I am not alone in having resorted to IKEA for appropriate accoutrements, and so had my own Mosaic moments, putting things together by myself as Moses does (and Feldman interprets) in Exod 40, if not with common sense then guided by authoritative textual instruction.įeldman draws our attention to the remarkable nature of these solo construction performances, which seem not only to have Moses going to IKEA and ignoring the implied infographic that would surely indicate the need for helpers but also apparently skipping a page (and you know how disastrous that can be in these processes), given that he starts using the tent and its equipment before its consecration, in particular making a burnt offering and a grain offering (40:29). Like many of you, I have had to rearrange working space during the pandemic, and for the first time in seven years actually organized a home office in a space where I had previously just dumped things. With the subheading “some assembly required,” Feldman set my mind on a particular and fairly recent experiential path. In focusing on a quite specific part of the text, Feldman sheds much light on the big question of sacrifice my remarks from here amount to an appreciative conversation, where Feldman’s work is prompting me to ask new questions. In these remarks I want to concentrate on the second chapter of The Story of Sacrifice, and what she calls Moses’ “private audience” at the end of Exodus and the beginning of Leviticus. She combines tools that many scholars seem to choose between as mutually exclusive, working with source analysis as well as with narratological and literary acuity.
She also joins other scholars in warning against reading them directly as evidence for ritual practice, and in so doing adds some intriguing suggestions about which I will say more in a little while.
With a deft touch and significant methodological sophistication, Feldman brings these texts back, treating them above all as part of the priestly narrative, on something closer to its own terms. The work contributes to one of the most persistent hermeneutical problems of dealing with the Pentateuch's ritual texts, wherein interpreters are tempted to excise, marginalize, or downplay - in different ways admittedly but similar at least in their reductionism. Liane Feldman has provided us with a very important study that achieves a number of goals.
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