Perspectives on Purity and Purification in the Bible

Description

This book is a collection of essays on purificaton and atonement in the Hebrew Bible that provides new insights into the discussion of these ideas by looking at the values of sociological and anthropological approaches to the topics. The collection also examines multivalence and polyvalence in ritual and asks to what extent it is possible to speak of the function or meaning of ritual, even within the highly systematic priestly texts.

Baruch J. Schwartz is the A. M. Shlansky senior lecturer in Biblical History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research centers on Biblical religion and law, the Torah, classical prophetic literature and medieval biblical exegesis. He is the author of The Holiness Legislation (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999) and of the commentary on Leviticus in The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). He was an editor of the volume Texts, Temples and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996). Naphtali S. Meshel, M.A., teaches at the Department of Bible and at the "Amirim" Program for Outstanding Students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation titled "Ritual as Language" at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jeffrey Stackert is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.He is the author of Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). David P. Wright is associate professor of Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East at Brandeis University.

Mention -New Testament Abstracts, Vol. 53 No. 1, 2009 Mention in Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) Reviewed in Religious Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 2, June 2010 (UK)