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  • From: "Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: sacrifice as God-food (Liz)
  • Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 10:45:21 -0400


> From: Jonathan Ryder [mailto:jpr1001 AT cam.ac.uk]
> Sent: Friday, June 04, 1999 5:03 AM

>
> Dear All,
>
> I don't want to stray too far off-topic, so I note here the connection
> with the following qn that has arisen out of reading recent list
> discussion and Paul: 1st, he was a 1st Century Jew; 2nd, he
> (re)interprets various aspects of cultus etc at various pts even in the
> 'authentic' letters. Herewith my question:
>
> Liz, can you clarify that you are suggesting that a 1st century Jew
> regarded temple sacrifice as feeding God? Could you give references to
> primary lit to support this? Is this notion in HB?

I don't know of any + first century discussions of cult, everything I know
is much earlier. I can cite verses from the HB. I'm not familiar enough
with Talmudic literature to cite verses, but I can quote Sanders who relies
on the Mishnah. Then I can offer some verses from the bible. In Sanders'
book _Judaism:Practice and Belief 63bce -66ce on p.104, on the second page
of his chapter on sacrifices, he says: "Sacrifices were conceived as meals,
or better, banquets. The ful and ideal sacrifical offering consisted of
meat, cereal, oil and wine." I don't think Sanders explains this fully.
These were not meals which the community shared with the god. The twice
daily sacrifices were wholly consumed by God. They were conceived of as
God's food. Other offerings are shared with the priests, but not these. The
twice daily offerings are described in Num. 28:1-8. The main verse is 28:2
, translated literally it reads: "Command the Israelites and say to them,
'my victim, my food, my pleasing odor by fire you will make sure to bring me
at its appointed time." God obtains his food inhaling it, the food must be
wholly burnt. The pleasing odor to YHWH is God's food. The whole burnt
offering is called the 'olah, in Hebrew, because it "goes up."

Most people date this passage to the Persian period. (Some few do date it to
the Hellenistic period tho.) Malachi, also writing in the Persian period,
refers to YHWH's table and YHWH's food in 1:7-8,12. Malachi compares the
gifts brought to the table of YHWH to those brought to the table of the
Persian governor. THis is a good comparison, this is in fact the parallel.
The gifts of animals brought to YHWH are in every way similar to the gifts
of animals brought to the Goovernor, they serve to placate the recipient,
and they wind up being eaten, if not by the recipient himself, than by his
entorurage, those that eat at his table (Neh.5:17-18), in the case of YHWH
these are the priests.

Sanders states that neither Josephus nor Philo believed that the sacrifice
was food for the god. He cites in Philo the Special Laws I.
In reading these I see that Philo has a completely Platonic or perhaps
Aristotelian notion of God. God is incorporeal and apprehended only by the
Intellect. Philo says "the image of God is the Word, by which all the world
was made." It is the immortal soul which is fashioned in the form of the
living God, not the body (Spec. Laws. I 81-82). (I'm sorry, I'm reading
Yonge's translation, I don't have the Greek with me.) In #150 Philo says
"appetite is a profane, impure, and unholy thing." Thus, he would not agree
with the picture of a god having appetites, who desried a "pleasing odor."

So I would suggest we have a difference here between Hellenic and Hebraic
thought, even among Jews. Boyarin discusses this in his book _Carnal
Israel_
Boyarin begins his book with a quote from Augustine's Tractatus Adversus
Judaeos: "Behold Israel according to the flesh (1 Cor. 10:18). This we know
to be the carnal Israel; but the Jews do not grasp this meaning and as a
result they prove themselves indisputably carnal."

Quoting Boyarin again, p. 1 "Augustine here argues with fine paradoxx that
Israel according to the flesh -- i.e., the Jews -- by its very insistence
that it is the true Israel demonstrates that it does not understand that
there is both a carnal and a spirititual sense to scripture...."

Boyarin, unless I missed it, does not discuss the Rabbinic conception of God
in his book, whether God was viewed as corporeal or not by the rabbis. I
don't know the Rabbinic literature well enough myself to know. I suspect
that Maimonides would not have had to spend so much time arguing against the
concept of a corporeal god if the talmud also did.

Now the question is whether Philo, or a rather a student of Philo, could
have written Hebrews. Philo gives the allegorical meaning behind the
sacrifices in Spec. Laws I:200-210. I myself do not see the relationship of
this to Hebrews. Perhaps others do and will explain it. One difference is
that Philo speaks here of the daily sacrifices, the evening and morning
sacrifices. The author of Hebrews speaks of the atoning sacrifice. Now to
Philo, it would seem, that even if the final atonement had been made, and
there were no longer a need for any further sin offerings or guilt
offerings, this would not do away with the need of the daily, morning and
evening sacrifices. For Philo, and for the authors of the priestly texts,
Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, the twice-daily sacrifices are paramount,
not the tangential sin and guilt offerings. If this is correct, it would
seem then that the author of Hebrews is not a Philonic type of Jew either.

All best,

Liz


>
> Thanks
>
> Jonathan Ryder
>
> Cambridge
> UK
>
Lisbeth S. Fried
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
51 Washington Sq. S.
New York, NY 10012
lqf9256 AT is3.nyu.edu
lizfried AT umich.edu





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