Levites and Priests in Biblical Tradition and History.

• Author: Samuel, Harald
• Position: Book review

Levites and Priests in Biblical Tradition and History. Edited by MARK LEUCHTER and JEREMY M. Hutton. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, vol. 9. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2011. Pp. x + 257. $31.95 (paper).

The history of cultic personnel in Israel and Judah played a decisive role in the reconstruction of the Hebrew Bible's literary formation already in the early days of historical-critical research, since Julius Wellhausen at the latest. Yet many (even basic) questions about priests and Levites still remain unanswered. Fortunately, interest in the topic has increased in recent years, the establishment of a session at the annual SBL meetings being only its most visible expression. The volume under review collects papers from 2009 and 2010, introduced by the editors' concise description of the state of the field.

Ada Taggar-Cohen ("Covenant Priesthood: Cross-Cultural Legal and Religious Aspects of Biblical and Hittite Priesthood"), who wrote her dissertation on Hittite priesthood (Heidelberg 2006), gives a succinct introduction to the latter topic and then re-examines the content relationship between the Hittite "Instructions for Temple Personnel" (CTH 264) and the priestly writing's differentiation between priests and Levites according to gradations of holiness. The comparison was first brought into discussion by Jacob Milgrom in 1970, who was interested in showing the antiquity of source P. Taggar-Cohen expresses her cautiousness and rightly stresses the differences between the two concepts.

In "Who Is Sacrificing at Shilohh The Priesthoods of Ancient Israel's Regional Sanctuaries," Susan Ackerman understands Shiloh as a regional or provincial sanctuary, where professional priests--in contrast to "large, state-sponsored temples"--only occasionally officiated and "were significantly divorced from the execution of these sanctuaries' sacrificial rituals" (p. 29), this situation giving rise to opportunities "for Israel's non-elites, including Israel's women, to be more centrally involved" (p. 43). Though such a scenario may not be unlikely from the viewpoint of the history of religion, it does not accord with 1 Samuel's depiction of Shiloh as a place where a whole family of priests permanently resides, while no other "large, state-sponsored temples" exist contemporaneously. Since Ackerman consistently blends historical and literary levels in her argumentation, the reader gets lost in time and space.

Jeremy M. Hutton ("The...