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JACOB MILGROM, Leviticus 17-22: A new translation with introduction and commentary (AB 3A; New York/London/Toronto: Doubleday, 2000). Pp. xviii + 1265-1892. $50; and Leviticus 23-27: A new translation with introduction and commentary (AB 3B; New York/London/Toronto: Doubleday, 2001). Pp. xxi + 1893-2714. $50.
Anyone who has followed Milgrom's work over the past four decades has waited in great anticipation for the completion of his work on Leviticus. Such anticipation has not gone unrewarded. This commentary is certainly the most in-depth and systematic examination of the book in the modern era. M.'s detailed discussion of every verse and summary discussions of a myriad of larger thematic issues that are important to the Priestly writer will have to be the starting point for future readers. Not only does the work show a thorough digestion of the whole of Leviticus, but it also draws meaningfully on the larger Priestly corpus as it is witnessed in Exodus and Numbers. In addition to this, the second volume has a lengthy essay on the theology of the Holiness Code, and the third volume ends with a massive bibliography and an extremely detailed and well-constructed set of indexes.
For many readers, the size of the work (2714 pages over three volumes) will provide its own challenge. Though to some degree this could not be avoided-M.'s work is so groundbreaking in its originality that every point requires thorough documentation-at many points a more judicious editorial hand would have been useful. (Sometimes, for example, the citation of postbiblical materials seems merely encyclopedic and does not contribute to an understanding of the simple sense. And do we really need a detailed response to several of M.'s critics at the close of the final volume?)
There have been new winds blowing in the study of the Priestly source, and this commentary is fully abreast of these shifts. The changes have come in two directions. First, Israel Knohl's work has revived and extended a long moribund idea that H is later than P and presumes a knowledge of P. As a consequence of this, judgment, Knohl and others...