The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity
Mark Leuchter
Abstract
The biblical record attempts to present the Levites as a clerus minor under the Aaronides, a second class priestly order occupying a mediating role between them and the larger Israelite public. But scholars have long recognized that this literary presentation obscures a much more complicated reality pertaining to the origin of the Levites and their role in the development of Israelite religion. This study provides a renewed examination of the Levites as a social entity within ancient Israel, providing a detailed picture of their origins, their ideas, their response to adversity, and the deep i ... More
The biblical record attempts to present the Levites as a clerus minor under the Aaronides, a second class priestly order occupying a mediating role between them and the larger Israelite public. But scholars have long recognized that this literary presentation obscures a much more complicated reality pertaining to the origin of the Levites and their role in the development of Israelite religion. This study provides a renewed examination of the Levites as a social entity within ancient Israel, providing a detailed picture of their origins, their ideas, their response to adversity, and the deep impact of the traditions they forged and preserved in literary form. The Levites’ own sense of social place and purpose persistently set terms for Israel’s own developing sense of identity—from the era before the rise of kingship, the formation of the northern kingdom, the emergence from Neo-Assyrian imperialism in the late seventh century BCE, the experience of exile under Babylon, and finally the complicated cultural negotiations under the Persian empire. An examination of the Levite traditions that emerged sheds new light on the role of myth in the formation of group identity boundaries both within and beyond Israelite/ancient Jewish social horizons.
Keywords:
Levites,
priests,
myth,
ancient Israel,
ancient Judaism,
prophets,
scribes,
temple,
ritual,
wisdom
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190665098 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190665098.001.0001 |
