Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Berit Olam: Studies in Hebrew Narrative & Poetry | BO)
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Many good intentions to read the entire Bible have foundered on the rocks of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Do these books have literary qualities? How does the storyteller tell the story? In Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy Stephen Sherwood applies the tools of narrative criticism to look for the literary qualities of these three biblical books.
Sherwood identifies the narrative art of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy not only in such colorful stories as the Sabbath breaker, the threat from Sihon and Og, the deaths of Nadab and Abihu, the story of Balaam, the bronze serpent, Aaron’s rod, Miriam’s leprosy, and the water from the rock, but also through the extended discourses made by characters in the story. Sherwood studies the voices of several of these characters: the narrator, the Lord, Moses, Aaron, the Israelites, Balaam and Barak, and others, to see how each is "characterized" by their words and actions.
In Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Sherwood also shows how each of the three books has its own characteristics as part of a larger story. Leviticus deals mainly with divine speech. Numbers also contains divine speech but the voices of Moses and the narrator are more recurrent. Deuteronomy is presented in the form of a farewell speech of Moses before his death. The story is then retold from Moses’ point of view, with different emphases and even some changes.
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- Introduces the literary qualities of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
- Explores the characteristics of each of the three books
- Studies the voices of several characters
Top Highlights
“Perhaps the fundamental tension in Leviticus revolves around the question: ‘How can the all-holy Lord, who cannot tolerate the unholy, dwell in the midst of a people who are, by the very nature of things, subject to contamination by the profane’ (see 16:16)? The answer is a system of purification and atonement that will prevent the kind of explosive reaction that killed two of Aaron’s sons (Mann 1988, 114–15).” (Page 13)
“highlights the narrative character of the book as well as its continuity with what has come before.” (Page 3)
“as chiasmus, inclusio, and repetition give the text a more poetic and rhetorical character” (Page 4)
“Structurally, Leviticus is at the heart of the Pentateuch” (Page 4)
“literary work more than as a law code is its language” (Page 3)
Stephen K. Sherwood embarked on probably the most difficult assignment in the Berit Olam series: presenting Leviticus as narration. His discoveries while analyzing the text, although probably unsuccessful in the broad picture of changing entrenched ideas about Leviticus as a holiness code and priestly instruction book, nonetheless shed keen insights and needed light on its narrative elements. He argues that Leviticus cannot be anything but narrative because ‘it is part of a larger story.’ . . . Sherwood argues convincingly how important—nay, how essential—Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were to the writers of the New Testament; he cites the many times Jesus and the New Testament writers referred to Leviticus, for instance. . . . His careful, literary, word-by-word, painstaking analysis (which he acknowledges was helped by modern computer programs) contributes to an appreciation of three books largely overlooked by Christendom yet essential to both Jewish and Christian faiths.
—Robin Gallaher Branch, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, South Africa
Stephen K. Sherwood teaches at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.
