A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile and the Torah

Abstract

A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, Exile and Torah, by Risa Levitt Kohn. JSOTSup 358. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 148. $85.00 (cloth). ISBN 0826460577. Risa Levitt Kohn's interest in Ezekiel's message to exiles, during one of most traumatic periods in Israelite history (p. 1), brought her to study systematically lexical and thematic similarities between Ezekiel and P, and Ezekiel and D/Dtr. She poses questions regarding nature of relationship between Ezekiel and abovementioned sources. By considering implications of these literary connections on evolution of Torah, Levitt Kohn is able to place Ezekiel within context of Israelite history, theology, and literature. Levitt Kohn joins a gigantic controversy in biblical scholarship, with J. Wellhausen and Y. Kaufmann as major speakers. In a thorough introduction (ch. 2), she examines Wellhausen's thesis as well as counterthesis regarding evolution of Pentateuch and Ezekiel's contribution to this process. Studying idiomatic similarities between language of Ezekiel and P, on one hand, and D/Dtr phrases, on other, Levitt Kohn establishes (once again) improbability of assumption that Ezekiel preceded both and D/Dtr sources. She thus joins Kaufmann's school in this debate. In her study, Levitt Kohn strives to release Ezekiel from burden laid on him by Wellhausen, who considered prophet to be no less than the original spiritual of Judaism (thus Levitt Kohn [p. 110]). Levitt Kohn presents four major arguments regarding relationship between Ezekiel and Torah (ch. 6). First, though she argues that Ezekiel does not know entire Torah (p. 117), prophet is certainly aware of both and D/Dtr sources in their written form. Yet Ezekiel is not working furiously to preserve these traditions for posterity . . . Ezekiel is not safeguarding Israelite tradition from extinction (p. 111). Rather, uses both traditions, separately and in combination, as sources for his own pronouncements; he questions these traditions, comments upon them, and, ultimately, reformulates them (p. 111). Second, Levitt Kohn refutes moderate path that explains connections between Ezekiel and as resulting from common priestly concerns, ideology, vocabulary, or heritage in general. She rather emphasizes direct literary allusions to P in Ezekiel (p. 112, emphasis original). Third, Levitt Kohn illuminates Ezekiel's independence with respect to his sources and explains his position in accordance with his main motives in using them. The legal standards of both and D serve Ezekiel, on one hand, as theological arguments to explain 587 B.C.E. disaster and, on other, as potential standards for his contemporaries' improvement or as means to a future redemption. Yet, when neither nor D serves his purpose, Ezekiel paves his own new way, which oftentimes integrates both schools' ideologies (pp. 113-14). Finally, through a comparison with exilic and postexilic literary compositions, Levitt Kohn places Ezekiel at roots of a process of synthesizing pentateuchal literary sources, exemplified years later in redactor's work on Torah, in Ezra-Nehemiah, and in Chronicles. By articulating Ezekiel's combination of contradictory theologies of and D, then, Levitt Kohn gives prophet primacy as precursor of Torah redactor(s). Thus, she argues that Ezekiel anticipated restoration authors and redactors in constructing an inclusive ideology that intentionally combined rival streams of thought known to us as and D. Hence, while denying Wellhausen's appointment of Ezekiel as architect of Judaism, Levitt Kohn nevertheless awards prophet another major role: Ezekiel established an integrated ideology that went beyond preexilic separate Priestly and Deuteronomistic schools of thought. …