In and Out

In and Out December 19, 2014

Roy Gane’s detailed, technical Cult and Character is a sustained response to Jacob Milgrom’s claim that the purification offers of the Torah did not cleanse the worshiper who offered them but the sanctuary. Gane’s overall argument is convincing, and he makes a lot of intriguing exegetical points along the way.

For instance, he compares the sprinkling of blood for purification offerings for the high priest with the sprinkling of blood in the Most Hols Place on the day of atonement.

He finds this: “In [Leviticus] 4:6-7 and 17-18 the blood manipulations in the outer-sanctum offerings are as follows: 

*Sevenfold sprinkling ‘in front of the veil’ (i.e., in front [east] of the incense altar).

*Daubing once on the horns of the incense altar.

Then, the high priest moves westward, toward the ark of the covenant, where YHWH’s Presence is located” (281).

This 7 + 1 pattern is echoed on the day of atonement, but in reverse. He takes Leviticus 16:16 to indicate this sequence:

“*Daubing once on the horns of the incense altar.

*Sevenfold sprinkling in fron (east) of the incense altar.”

This means that the movement is “away from the ark of the covenant” (282).

A tiny textual and ritual detail, but few things are tiny in rituals. In this reversal (from 7 + 1 to 1 + 7, from a east-to-west movement to a west-to-east movement), Gane finds support for a claim he has made on other grounds as well: “throughout the year evils were transferred from offerers into the sanctuary, toward the ark, but on the Day of Atonement the same evils were purged out” (282).

This is a large point against Milgrom and Co, since it indicates that the mechanism of the daily and weekly purifications was different from the mechanism of the rites of the day of atonement. Milgrom thinks that both daily purifications and the Atonement were purgings; daily purifications purged the lesser pollutions that penetrated into the courtyard and holy place, while atonement purged the more serious defilements that penetrated all the way to the inner sanctuary. 

Gane sees instead an in-and-out movement. Daily purifications removed sin and impurity from the worshiper so that it could be borne by the sanctuary and the priest, and ultimately by Yahweh Himself, Israels supreme Sin-Bearer (cf. Exodus 34:7). On the day of atonement, the sins, guilt and rebellion that Yahweh had borne during the year were removed by the blood rites and the expulsion of the scapegoat.

It reminds one of Romans 9: “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?”


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