Thursday, February 10, 2022

John S. Bergsma on the influence of Zion tradition in Ezekiel 40-48 and the Eschatological Temple

  

·       Ezekiel 40-43: the vision of the dimensions of the temple, is analogous to the instructions for the tabernacle in Exod 25-27, but also bears important similarities to the description of the Solomonic temple (1 Kgs 6-7), the sanctuary nonpareil of Zion theology.

·       Ezekiel 44-46, which largely concern regulations for temple personnel, draws strongly from various passages of P and H; but Ezekiel incorporates into this P/H legislation new regulations for the liturgical functions of the nāšî’, the Davidic monarch associated with Zion (cf. 37:24-26). The concept of the monarch as cultic functionary is foreign to all Pentateuchal legislation, but characteristic of Zion theology.

·       Ezekiel 47-48 have obvious parallels to accounts of land division in the Hexateuch (Num 34-35; Josh 13-19), but also reveal the influence of Zion traditions. The river of life flowing from the temple (47:1-12) is not a Sinaitic or Mosaic motif at all. Instead, it develops the ancient Near Eastern concept of the divine river flowing from the primordial mountain of God, which Israelite tradition assimilated to Zion/Jerusalem and the Gihon spring (Gen 2:13; Ps 46:4; 1 Kgs 1:33, 38, 45). Likewise, Ezekiel’s division of the land in 47:13-48:35ects the significance Jerusalem gained during the Davidic monarchy. As Judah and Benjamin surrounded Jerusalem on each side, so Ezekiel sandwiches his temple city and environs between the territories of these two tribes (Ezek 48:22). By contrast, there is no hint in the tribal land divisions in the Hexateuch of the significance Jerusalem would gain later in the biblical narrative, or that the national capital would lie between Judah and Benjamin. In sum, Ezekiel’s placement of the capital precinct between Judah and Benjamin (48:21-22) is the influence of the Zion tradition. By contrast, the Hexateuch’s de facto capital of Israel is Shechem (Deut 11:29; 27:4, 13; Josh 24:1, 25, 32).

 

Thus, every major division of Ezekiel’s temple vision—the sanctuary (40-43), the personnel (44-45), and the land (47-48)—shows the same pattern of conflation of Pentateuch motifs and instructions with material drawn from or inspired by the Zion traditions.

 

The contrast between Ezekiel and the Pentateuch highlights the absence of any specific concern for Zion, Jerusalem, or the temple in the Pentateuch. This is true no matter the position one takes on the direction of dependence. If Ezekiel is using the Pentateuchal strata, then he is inserting into them Zion material that they lacked. But if one or more of the Pentateuchal strata are drawing on Ezekiel—the Holiness Code, for example—then the Holiness redactors must have intentionally edited out references to Zion/Jerusalem in their Ezekielan source, such as “my hill” (Lev 26:3::Ezek 34:26) or “the mountain of my holiness” (Deut 12:5-6::Ezek 20:40). Such a procedure cannot be reconciled with the view that the final redaction of the Pentateuch was executed by Jerusalem priests in the Persian period as part of an effort to legitimize the Jerusalem temple cult, as posited by several current models of Pentateuchal composition. (John S. Bergsma, “The Relevance of Ezekiel and the Samaritans for Pentateuchal Composition: Converging Lines of Evidence,” in Exploring the Composition of the Pentateuch, ed. L. S. Baker Jr., Kenneth Bergland, Felipe A. Masotti, and A. Rahel Wells [Bulletin for Biblical Research Supplement 27; University Park, Pa.: Eisenbrauns, 2020], 237-38)