ORCID
James W. Watts: 0000-0002-4872-4986
Document Type
Book Chapter
Date
2015
Keywords
Leviticus, sin, guilt, offering, sacrifice, Pentateuch, Torah
Language
English
Disciplines
Biblical Studies | Religion
Description/Abstract
Many interpreters have noted that the common nouns, hattat and asham, carry legal connotations in Akkadian and non-priestly parts of the Hebrew Bible. In P, they also serve as the names of the “sin” and “guilt” offerings. The fact that the offering names evoke legal documents and treaties suggests that they were introduced because priests were playing a larger role in legal matters, or at least wished to. The demise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah provide plausible reasons for why the Temple would have been looking for additional sources of revenue in the form of the sin and guilt offerings. But the interpretation of the kingdoms’ history in Deuteronomistic and other texts may have raised doubts about priestly claims to be able to offer atonement for sins through the cult. This paper analyzes how the rhetoric of Leviticus has been shaped to advance those claims in the context of hostile historical and literary circumstances.
Recommended Citation
Watts, James W. "The Historical and Literary Contexts of the Sin and Guilt Offerings." In Text, Time, and Temple: Literary, Historical and Ritual Studies in Leviticus, ed. Francis Landy, Leigh M. Trevaskis, Bryan Bibb, Sheffield: Phoenix, 2015, 85-93. Reprinted from Watts, Leviticus 1-10 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 309-316.
Source
local input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Additional Information
From Text, Time, and Temple: Literary, Historical and Ritual Studies in Leviticus, ed. Francis Landy, Leigh M. Trevaskis, Bryan Bibb, Sheffield: Phoenix, 2015, 85-93. Reprinted from Watts, Leviticus 1-10 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 309-316.