REVIEWS 569

Commandments does not mean that Savin’s argument for the

integration of feminist biblical scholarship with so-called
‘mainstream’ scholarship is not a valid one which could indeed
lead to fresh insights.

doi:10.1093/jts/fll118 ANTHONY PHILLIPS

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/58/2/569/1671564 by guest on 19 November 2021

Advance Access publication 29 September 2006 Flushing, Falmouth
anthony.phillips@tiscali.co.uk

Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power.

By WILLIAM K. GILDERS. Pp. xii þ 260. Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. ISBN
0 8018 7993 0. N.p.
THIS book deals with all the passages, in all parts of the Hebrew
Bible, in which blood is assigned a ritual function, but its
main focus is on ritual texts in the priestly strata of the
Pentateuch. It is one of the most important works on its subject
in recent years, because the author has reflected on the relevant
methodological issues and applies methods that are relatively
new in this field in a careful and consistent way.
On the question of method in the study of ritual, Gilders notes
that most interpreters have sought to interpret ritual according
to its instrumental eVects—what it is thought to achieve—or to
its symbolism, the meaning it is supposed to communicate. But
Gilders follows the lead of the texts themselves in downplaying
these issues, and especially the latter, in favour of a focus on
ritual practice, on what is actually done. He adopts the ideas
of anthropologists who have argued that ritual can be seen to
create an ordered space in the midst of the disorder of the
everyday simply by being done and even if there is no reflection
on its eVects or meaning. Most important for his study is the
perception of Nancy Jay that a sign may function not only
as a symbol but also as an index, ‘a sign that is connected with
its referent as a matter of fact’, like a pointing finger, and in
ritual may thus mark out the status and relationships of the
participants. Gilders shows clearly how blood manipulations
achieve this, for example by being restricted to the priests.
He could have observed that blood is well suited to function
flexibly as an index throughout the sacred area simply because
it is a liquid, unlike the flesh of the victim.
ß The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
570 REVIEWS
But Gilders is equally well aware that we do not have actual
rituals to interpret, but texts about rituals, which have meaning
only as they are read. He repeatedly emphasizes that if readers
are even to envisage how the ritual is to be carried out, let
alone speak about its meaning, they must fill in the gaps which
the text leaves. Since readers fill the gaps in diVerent ways—as

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/58/2/569/1671564 by guest on 19 November 2021

he again and again illustrates from the literature—and since his
main object is a historical interpretation, he finds himself
having repeatedly to warn that such and such an interpretation
may be plausible, but is based on such gap-filling rather than
on the text itself.
Gilders deals separately with the P and non-P texts. Most
significantly, he follows Knohl and Milgrom (rightly in my view)
in regarding H as a redactional layer within P. Hence he must
disqualify Lev. 17:11 as a key to the interpretation of (earlier)
P texts. This is important, because it is the only text to give
a symbolic significance to blood manipulation at the altar. Yet
the entire book is dominated in a strange way by this text.
Gilders both begins and concludes his study with it, and when
it is not being discussed it obtrudes its ghostly presence (like
the Law in the preface to Wellhausen’s Prolegomena) as a false
key to the interpretation of the texts under discussion. Gilders
argues that in P rpk has a broad semantic range covering
such ideas as ‘purify, consecrate, expiate’. He uses the general
rendering ‘to eVect removal’. But in H (Lev. 17:11, Exod.
30:11–16, and Num. 31:48–54, the only texts to use the phrase
r,pKI vpn-lu) it means simply ‘to ransom’, ‘to give r,pK o ’, and
Lev. 17:11 says that YHWH has assigned the blood, that is the
life, of an animal, as a ransom for human lives. But this is not
to be assumed as the meaning of the altar blood rites in the
understanding of the P tradents. I find this argument convincing.
Although Gilders argues that no symbolic filling of this gap
can be certain, he does discuss various ideas from the literature.
One idea he seems to endorse is dubious: that impurity absorbed
by the blood of the ja~j is transferred back to the carcass of
the slain animal (p. 130). The fact that the carcass of an animal
whose blood has been brought into the holy place must be
disposed of in a clean place (Lev. 4:12) argues against this.
The book is important, however, rather for its analysis of the
‘latent functions’ of blood manipulations: how blood functions
as an index. It marks out the status of those participating: lay
people cannot deal with blood; only priests can apply it to the
 REVIEWS 571
altar, and only the ‘anointed priest’, ‘Aaron’, can bring blood
inside the shrine. Exodus 12 is an exception which proves the
rule, for in P’s understanding there were no priests at the time.
The argument applies equally to non-P texts, where Moses
(Exodus 24) or the king (2 Kgs. 16:15) is privileged in the same
way. It maps order onto space when it is used to consecrate

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/58/2/569/1671564 by guest on 19 November 2021

or reconsecrate (Leviticus 8, 16) the shrine and the altar. It links
the worshippers to the altar, and hence to YHWH, but only
through the mediation of the priest.
Gilders has marked out a new line of interpretation of ritual
texts in the Hebrew Bible. His book should be required reading
for anyone working in this field. Much remains to be done,
but scholarship already owes a considerable debt to him.
He generally writes clearly and felicitously (the odd neologism
apart), and the book is beautifully produced. There is one slight
error in the (transliterated) Hebrew (p. 172: zikaron for
zikkaron).

doi:10.1093/jts/fll132 WALTER J. HOUSTON

Advance Access publication 5 January 2007 Mansfield College, Oxford
walter.houston@mansfield.ox.ac.uk

Numbers. (The Forms of the Old Testament Literature,

Vol. 4 (fotl).) By ROL P. KNIERIM and G. W. COATS.
Pp. xii þ 367. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK:
Eerdmans, 2005.
MIT R. P. Knierim und G. W. Coats haben zwei Experten
zu erzählenden und kultisch-regelnden Texten des Pentateuch
ihre jahrelange Beschäftigung einem Ziel zugeführt (s. Coats zu
Ex 1–18 in fotl IIa, Knierim in fotl IIb zu Ex 19–40,
beide 1992). Geplant war, daß R. P. Knierim 1,1–10,10 und
G. W. Coats 10,11–36,13 kommentieren sollten. Wegen des
fortschreitend sich verschlechternden Zustands von Coats hat
nun Knierim den ganzen Band bearbeitet, indem er seinen
eigenen Part und zusätzlich die Kommentierung von 10,11–36
versah, zu 11,1–36,13 das Manuskript von Coats zugrundelegte
und zu 10,11–36,13 eine Einführung verfasste, für die er sich auf
das Manuskript der Dissertation seines Schülers Won W. Lee,
Punishment and Forgiveness in Israel’s Migratory Campaign,
stützte (publiziert: Grand Rapids, 2003). Wegen inzwischen

ß The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org