Alter on Douglas

Robert Alter reviews Mary Douglas’s latest book, Jacob’s Tears: The Priestly Work of Reconciliation , in the March 3 issue of the London Review of Books . Douglas’s book deals with two main areas, the first historical and the second anthropological.

Alter finds the first section unpersuasive; from his description, it sounds unfortunate as well. Douglas attempts to show how the Pentateuch fits into the post-exilic history of Israel, specifically how it arose from a conflict between the “separatists” like Ezra and Nehemiah and the “unifiers,” enlightened priestly intellectuals who wanted the returnees to embrace the people of the land. She sees everything in the Pentateuch “as a direct and pointedly political reflection of the division among the Judeans she has posited.” For example: “Jacob’s deathbed curse of Simeon and Levi for massacring the male population of Shechem ‘was inserted into Genesis to represent the editor’s case against the government of Judah’s foreign policy.’ Balaam’s practice in his poetic oracles in Numbers of setting the names of Jacob and Israel in apposition is said to be an affirmation that Israel is an integral part of the nation . . . Balaam himself is described here as ‘a brilliant pastiche of a colonial governor.’” Oh my. Douglas’s contributions to biblical studies have largely come from her ability to see the texts without the distorting screen of critical scholarship, but alas she has become a critical scholar. Alter notes that “Douglas plays the ingenious but arbitrary game of more conventional biblical scholars, which is to date any given text, or at least its purportedly determinative redaction, to the period that interests you, and then to read all its details as a reflex of a particular ideological trent in that period.”

Fortunately, the book also includes some of Douglas’s trademark anthropologically-inspired discussions of the Pentateuch. For Douglas, Leviticus in particular is not centrally about regulations for sacrifice, laws of uncleanness, or rules for sanctuary maintenance, but “an articulation of the tripartite sacred architecture of creation.” Sinai serves as the model, and Douglas finds echoes of the triple structure of Sinai in three areas: in the structure of the tabernacle sanctuary; in the various parts of a sacrifices animal (“a pyramid shape, with the head and the meal, the parts available to be eaten by the priests and people, at the bottom; above that the midriff area with the fat covering the kidneys, which is to be burnt entirely on the altar; and on the top, the entrails, the liver lobe and the genitals”); and in the structure of Leviticus itself (three sections separated by brief narratives in chapters 10 and 24). Addressing the question of why this tripartite structures of Leviticus has not been observed before (she calls Leviticus a “book planned as a projection of a building”), Douglas reverts to her historical argument: “beginning with the separatist party of Ezra and Nehemiah, who became the conservators of the new scriptural canon, readers of the priestly literary achievement were able to see it only from the perspective of their own preoccupation with fencing themselves off from the surrounding peoples and preserving themselves from external contamination.” Thus, “this generation would not recognise a cosmogram if it was staring straight at them.” Alter is not entirely persuaded, but he appreciates Douglas’s challenge to “ponder whether these ancient regulations bearing on the conduct of the cult and the preservation of the sanctuary’s purity might have a larger metaphysical purpose.