Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 70:1 (NA 2019)
Article: The Persuasive Intent Of The Book Of Leviticus
Author: Katherine M. Smith

TynBull 70:1 (2019) p. 145

The Persuasive Intent Of The Book Of Leviticus1

Katherine M. Smith

([email protected])

Although Pentateuchal scholarship has tended to approach Leviticus as two corpora in order to explore the historical situation behind each source, recent studies have explored the literary artistry and rhetoric of Leviticus. However, very little argument has been articulated about how Leviticus is rhetoric. To address this lacuna, this thesis demonstrates how a rhetorical strategy shapes Leviticus’s arrangement to achieve a particular effect. To this end, this study adopts a four-step rhetorical-critical framework for the overarching argument.

The first step is to identify the nature of the exigency within the Pentateuch’s literary setting that motivated Yhwh to communicate with Moses from the tent of meeting in Leviticus 1:1–2, which this study terms the ‘persuasive situation’. A heightened tension can be observed in Exodus 40 as Yhwh’s glory fills the tabernacle; how will Yhwh live in the midst of his covenant people who have displayed a propensity to break faith with him and for Yhwh not to consume them? The separation between Moses and Yhwh, as Moses is left standing outside of the tabernacle, unable to enter, escalates this tension. As Yhwh calls to Moses from the tent of meeting at the beginning of the book of Leviticus, the following communication events address the problem of this exigency. Thus the book of Leviticus functions between Exodus and Numbers to enable Yhwh to

TynBull 70:1 (2019) p. 146

dwell among his covenant people whilst not abhorring them (Lev. 26:11–12).

To demonstrate how Leviticus addresses this exigency within its persuasive situation, the third step of the rhetoricalcritical framework analyses how Leviticus as the sum of P and H is arranged to achieve a particular effect that modifies the exigency. Before this can occur, though, a second step is necessary to delimit Leviticus as a rhetorical unit. Using insights from information structures and cognitive linguistics, I argue that it is feasible to approach Leviticus as a coherent and discrete unit within the context of the Pentateuch and, furthermore, that the global scheme of Leviticus’s macrostructure has fifteen episodes (Lev. 1–7; 8�...