Peter J. Leithart

Klawans (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple) is disturbed by the gap between studies of biblical purity and studies of sacrifice. Mary Douglas proposed that Levitical purity was not primitive, but systematic, symbolic, and socially functional. Even those who are unconvinced by her proposals has . . . . Continue Reading »

Klawans helpfully reminds us of the pre-preparations for sacrifice (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple). To offer an animal, an Israelite has to have one, and it has to be unblemished. Worshipers begin by being shepherds and herdsmen, and they have to be careful ones.Careful like Yahweh: . . . . Continue Reading »

In his first book, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, Jonathan Klawans explores the complex relations of sin and impurity in biblical law and later Jewish thought. He distinguishes between “ritual defilement” that arises from unavoidable natural processes and “moral . . . . Continue Reading »

In his Taboo, Fritz Steiner observed that the discovery of Polynesian taboo customs was a “Protestant discovery” (50). Admitting that this was a historical accident, he still thought it worth remarking, and thought it contained a clue to 19th-century obsessions with taboo:“The . . . . Continue Reading »

Beard envy is rampant, Serena Solomon reports, and some men are taking action:“The thick, flowing beards adorning hipsters from Williamsburg to Park Slope are driving follicly-challenged New Yorkers to a little-known but growing field of plastic surgery - facial hair . . . . Continue Reading »

FJA Hort offered a concise summary of the argument against dating Revelation in the reign of Domitian and for a Neronian date in his 1908 study of The Apocalypse of St John I-III.First, the negative case rests on a sense of the limits of the persecution of Domitian: “The last few months . . . . Continue Reading »

“What do all these typographical high jinks signify?” asks Paul Muldoon about e. e. cummings’s poem about Buffalo Bill in a New Yorker review of Susan Cheever’s E. E. Cummings: A Life.Muldoon suggests several answers: “Perhaps the disregard for punctuation allows . . . . Continue Reading »

Marshall Poe notes in his TLS review that Catherine Merridale’s Red Fortress challenges the traditional statist interpretation of Russian history:“According to her, weak Russian leaders and their cronies concocted the statist theory - in various guises, at various times - simply to . . . . Continue Reading »

Jonathan Klawans charges (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple) that Girard’s Violence and the Sacred is “nothing short of an indictment of sacrificial rituals” (22), which Girard finds “abhorrent” (23).Klawans thinks that Girard’s theory suffers from the same . . . . Continue Reading »

When the Philistines capture the ark, they think Dagon has defeated Yahweh. Yet Yahweh is a power worth deploying as a subordinate to Dagon, so that put the ark in Dagon’s temple (1 Samuel 5).Dagon apparently knows that he’s in the presence of the High God. Every morning, He bows in . . . . Continue Reading »