Redefining the roles of the rural Levites
by James Douglas Wilson
According to the prevailing interpretation of Israel’s cultic development, especially in the wake of cultic centralization, the Levites transitioned from their roles as local high place priests to that of the locally unemployed and impoverished. Utilizing ritual, sociological and anthropological criticism, and drawing from the portrayal of the Levites in and outside of Deuteronomy, James Douglas Wilson’s study considers an alternative perspective on roles and functions of the Levites within Israel’s gates.
The Levites in the book of Deuteronomy are portrayed in the cultic and social spheres of Israel. According to the prevailing interpretation of Israel’s cultic development, especially in the wake of cultic centralization, the Levites transitioned from their roles as local high place priests to that of the locally unemployed and impoverished. Utilizing ritual, sociological and anthropological criticism, and drawing from the portrayal of the Levites in and outside of Deuteronomy, James Douglas Wilson’s study considers an alternative perspective on roles and functions of the Levites within Israel’s gates. Its purpose is to demonstrate that these “rural” Levites did not entirely lose their local cultic roles, but that they may have been responsible for performing several social-level tasks which corresponded to their cultic roles based on their permanent duties in the sanctuary and their overall function as socio-cultic mediators and ritual specialists. Their roles are generally described in the Old Testament as “guard duty” and “manual labor,” but more specifically it is asserted here that the rural Levites performed local scribal duties associated with the triennial tithe and legal cases and performed ritual duties related to local meat consumption.
- By (author) James Douglas Wilson
Other Titles in this Series
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
Deuteronomium – Tora fur eine neue Generation
Innsbrucker Deuteronomium-Tagung 2010 im Gedenken an Volkmar Premstaller SJ
Volume 17
Kritische Schriftgelehrsamkeit in priesterlichen und prophetischen Diskursen
Festschrift fur Reinhard Achenbach zum 65. Geburtstag
Volume 27
Die Entdeckung des Politischen im Alten Testament
Festschrift fur Wolfgang Oswald zu seinem funfundsechzigsten Geburtstag
Volume 29
Nicht darfst Du diesen Wortern etwas hinzufugen
Die Rezeption des Deuteronomiums in der Tempelrolle: Sprache, Autoren, Hermeneutik
Volume 11
Reading as a Disclosure of the Thoughts of the Heart
Proto-Halakhic Reuse and Appropriation between Torah and the Prophets
Volume 23
Aux commencements – Creation et temporalite dans la Bible et dans son contexte culturel
Collected Essays on Creation and Temporality in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Texts
Volume 24
Mosetora und Jahwetora
Das Verhaltnis von Deuteronomium 12-26 zu Exodus, Levitikus und Numeri
Volume 21
Persische Reichspolitik und lokale Heiligtumer
Beitrage einer Tagung des Exzellenzclusters Religion und Politik in Vormoderne und Moderne vom 24.-26. Februar 2016 in Munster
Volume 25
Gerechtigkeit und Recht zu uben’ (Gen 18,19)
Studien zur altorientalischen und biblischen Rechtsgeschichte, zur Religionsgeschichte Israels und zur Religionssoziologie. Festschrift fur Eckart Otto zum 65. Geburtstag
Volume 13
Similar Books
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae
Old Slavonic Version and English Translation
Volume 261
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
From Joseph to Jesus
The Joseph Narrative as a Compositional Template from Old Greek Esther to the Gospel of Luke
Volume 125
Lobbying for Equality
Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Equality during the French Revolution
Paradise Lost in Transmission
The Return to Eden in the Apocalypse of Peter within Its Ethiopic and Early Christian Contexts
