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ISRAEL KNOHL, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). Pp. x + 246. $28.
Scholarly paradigms suggested by Israel Knohl are used by Jacob Milgrom in his magisterial commentary on Leviticus. Now, at last, in this revised and expanded translation of a monograph published in Hebrew in 1992, the English-speaking world has access to K.'s ideas. His thesis, simply stated, is that the Priestly tradition, which he calls PT (Priestly Torah), was actually earlier than the Holiness Code and related literature, which he calls HS (Holiness School). He maintains that when scholars assimilate the Holiness Code to the supposedly later P material, as they do so often, they fail to see that much of P really belongs to a greater Holiness tradition.
Knohl begins by carefully analyzing the composition of Leviticus 23 to demonstrate the priority of PT and the way HS adds the final editorial comments. He then assigns material to PT and HS in texts of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, attributing much to HS, including much that is often viewed as JE. In separate chapters he evaluates the theology of PT and HS. PT uses the ancient cultus language in a very abstract and sophisticated manner. In PT anthropomorphic imagery...