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7 Memory and the Transformation of Priestly Terms into Lay Concepts The loss of the temple and its rituals left a chasm in the religious experience of the Israelites living in exile. That disaster could well have been understood as God’s utter rejection of God’s people and the end of the covenant with Israel. With no way to enact the relationship through the rituals of the temple or to keep God present and aware by means of those rituals, the priesthood must have imagined all to be lost forever. Yet all was not lost. The authors behind the Holiness tradition, who shared many of the concerns of the priesthood, incorporated two particular deuteronomic notions, divine transcendence and an emphasis on the community’s role in maintaining the unique relationship between God and Israel. Both concepts were well suited to exile. With those two ideas wedded to a priestly sensibility, the Holiness school translated elements of Israel’s cultic life into concepts and practices that could be performed ex ecclesia, facilitate the connection between older and new practices, and elevate the covenantal significance of two such practices in particular: circumcision and the Sabbath. It accomplished these transformations primarily through the reinterpretation of priestly memory terminology. Keeping Institutions In the main, in priestly literature, “keeping” (šmr) conveys a sense of preservation. One keeps or preserves something that is already in existence like “the Ark of Yahweh” (1 Sam. 7:1) or the institution of the priesthood (Num. 3:10; 18:7). When applied to the Israelites, keeping takes on a punctual quality, such as when the Israelites are commanded concerning specific, timebased practices, and in this sense it involves memory. For instance, in Exod. 13:10, they are enjoined to “keep this law [observance of Passover] yearly in its proper time,” and in Num. 28:2, they are to “be careful to offer [the sacrifice 147 appropriate to each festival] to me in its proper time.” In both passages, it is not only the commanded act but also the sacred time in which it is to be performed that is to be kept. Keeping is often conservative and boundary enforcing, two concepts of some import to the priesthood.1 The nuances associated with “keeping” endure in Holiness literature, particularly when the Israelites are told to keep the institutions of circumcision and the Sabbath, both of which, most scholars agree, were either exilic religious innovations or were elevated in importance in the exilic period.2 Both were subsequently taken up by postmonarchal priestly tradition and invested with exceptional significance as signs of the covenant. Because both circumcision and the Sabbath are signs, I defer a full discussion until the next chapter. A few comments, however, may be made in the present context. 1. CIRCUMCISION Even within the context of biblical narrative, circumcision does not appear to be an ongoing religious obligation. Exodus 4 indicates that Moses failed to circumcise his sons, and as observed earlier, Exodus 12 seems to imply the practice was introduced to Israel in connection with Passover.That connection appears to be confirmed in Josh. 5:2-12 when the Israelite males are circumcised immediately prior to making pesaḥoffering. It is not until 1 Samuel that circumcision is assumed for Israelite males, and even here the assumption is only implied by references to the Philistines as “uncircumcised” (1 Sam. 14:6; 17:26.) In the context of exile, circumcision as a practice for Israel to “keep” serves two functions. It provides the exiles a way to distinguish themselves from their Babylonian neighbors, a desirable objective in light of the very probable penchant for assimilation.3 As (or more) importantly, circumcision is an exclusively lay practice that requires no temple and is done without a priest. 1. On the priestly concern for boundaries and its theological and structural implications, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966) and Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, AB 3–3b (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2001), 718–36. On priestly attention to spatial boundaries, see Hanna Liss, “The Imaginary Sanctuary: The Priestly Code as an Example of Fictional Literature in the Hebrew Bible,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 663–89. Liss argues (p. 680) that the priestly tradition attempts to define a very limited spatial framework for the interaction of the divine and human realms so that “[t]he...

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