דרכי הסננון הכוהני בתורה: דנמים שימוי לשון, מכנים. מאת מאיר פארן [Forms of the Priestly Style in the Pentateuch: Patterns, Linguistic Usages, Syntactic Structures] (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 156 Reviews Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael," utilizes Mekhilta According to Rabbi Ishmael: An Introduction to Judaism's First Scriptural Encyclopaedia (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 23, xvi, 105-109, 141, 142, and 24-25. Again in chap. 8, "Is Judaism a 'Biblical Religion,'" in summing up his views he returns to exploit Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabba, pp. xi, xv-xvi, 5, 73-76, 80-84, 90-91, 104-105, and 120125 . Each chapter contains an appropriate introduction and transitions to smooth the flow of the argument or to recontextualize a passage to suit the theme of the present work. Because the author has contributed significantly to the modem discussion of rabbinic literature, and especially to the topic of the present book, it would have been helpful if he had included in the preface references to his previous writings which are reprinted here as he has done in some of his other more recent works. For the reader who does not have access to the volumes just mentioned, or who has not taken the time to work through them, or who needs a summary and another presentation of the author's views on the theme "Writing with Scripture," this book offers a representative sample of his thinking on this subject. Lewis M. Barth Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute ofReligion Los Angeles, CA 90007 .p~ ,'ttD nMlJ .c'DC ,11W, 'W'1O'W ,0'0)' :mm 'Jm~n rWon ,~" [FORMS OF THE PRIESTLY STYLE IN THE PENTATEUCH: PATTERNS, LINGUISTIC USAGES, SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES ]. By Meir Paran. Pp. 400 + XVI. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989. Cloth, $24.00. In recent years "literary study" has shifted from the goal of reconstructing the development of the text to focus more and more on the received form of the text, emphasizing such things as close reading and interpretation of the canonical text as well as appreciation of formal literary devices including various types of repetition, variation, and structure. The history of the text-much less the reality reflected therein-is less often stressed in an attempt to let the text speak for itself to an audience who is not bound by the chronological or cultural setting of the unknown author. Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 157 Reviews Both literary trends are alive and well at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, although the boundaries between them are not always that apparent. This is as it should be, for the approaches are by no means as irreconcilable as more polemical scholars in either camp would have us think. The work reviewed here is by the iate Meir Paran, a disciple of Professor Menahem Haran. This fine piece of scholarship, in fact, combines the two aforementioned trends, placing the careful analysis of poetics and literary devices at the service and within the framework of source criticism. Paran's contribution addresses two issues and may be said to follow two agenda. The issue dictating the structure of the work is the style of P. Under this rubric the author includes characteristic sentence structures, literary formations of larger units, as well as individual words and expressions. Paran discusses first the existence of a Priestly style. To establish this, he compares select passages from P, or, rather P and H, with parallel passages in D and the Book of the Covenant. Juxtaposing materials of similar content reveals that P's style is more verbose and tends toward balanced structures looking something like poetry. The main sentence pattern typifying the Priestly passages is the "Short Circuit Inclusio," better tenned "Circular Inclusio" (Paran coins the Hebrew term n'lJ)c [maC 'g61et]). The Priestly Circular Inclusio is a sentence in which a word (usually a verb) at the head of the sentence is repeated pleonastically one or more times in the sentence, bringing the reader full circle back to the beginning of the sentence . So, for example, the instruction for making the incense altar reads m~ illDl>n C'~ '~l> m~ .,~c n:Jrc n'lDln (Exod 30:1) in which the word n'IDl>' is repeated by illDl>n. In this case the second clause is an adverbial clause complementing the predicate and creating a qatal-yiqt61 pattern...