Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (review)

Abstract

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 269-271 Saul M. Olyan. Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 190. Even before beginning this book, I had three reasons to be suspicious of it: its alliterative title suggested to me that the author might be trying to be over-clever; most works that take an anthropological approach to biblical texts tend to be trendy, and really dress old observations in new, difficult to understand clothes; and I wondered if there was anything interesting or new to say about hierarchy in cult. The first few pages, however, allayed my concerns. This is a significant book that uses anthropological approaches in a clear, non-flashy way to advance our understanding of biblical cult, and especially our conceptions of holiness. Olyan expresses his objectives at the very beginning: "My primary goal in this study is to investigate the manner in which hierarchical social relations are realized in biblical cultic and quasi-cultic contexts" (p. 3). He defends his emphasis on the importance of binary oppositions not through a defense of structuralism, but by noting the prominence of binary thinking in a significant number of biblical texts themselves. This study depends more on biblical texts and ancient Israelite culture than on outside methods (pp. 3-4). The study of ritual is crucial to this endeavor. Without being overly polemical against a variety of scholars and theologians who have exiled ritual to the periphery of biblical religion, Olyan articulately defends its centrality, claiming that "rites shape reality for participants" (p. 4). The book is organized into four chapters of unequal length, each of which examines a particular dyad: "Foundational Discourse: The Opposition Holy/ Common" (Ch. 1); "Admission or Exclusion: The Binary Pairing Unclean/ Clean" (Ch. 2); "Generating 'Self and 'Other': The Polarity Israelite/Alien" (Ch. 3); and "The Qualified Body: The Dyad Whole/Blemished" (Ch. 4). These are followed by a brief conclusion and a very brief but important appendix that explores the possible tension in H between Israel's status as imminently holy, versus the command that it should be holy. Rather than treating the crucial dyad male/female as a separate chapter, Olyan has integrated this pair into the various chapters. This represents a significant advance in the mainstreaming of feminist approaches to texts, which in some exceptional cases like this book is no longer seen as a separate area of inquiry. The main contribution of this book is its clarity. Olyan examines a wide variety of texts from a variety of periods and authors and explains them in an intelligible fashion that highlights both features shared by most or all biblical texts and unique ideas seen in particular corpora or passages. Olyan's fundamental arguments of the study, such as his claims that "the opposition 270THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW of holy to common divides the divine and associated place . . . from what is not divine or not associated with the divine through sanctification" (p. 17); or that "God's quintessential characteristic is holiness" (p. 17); or that various temple structures must be seen through their gradated holiness (pp. 19-25) are not new. But they are often explained more clearly and compellingly than in the sources that Olyan cites and builds upon. Some parts of the book are original and quite convincing. Before reading Olyan's discussion of the personal, economic and cultic implications of being unclean (p. 55), I had thought of ritual impurity as simply a ritual matter. Olyan's trenchant point that a main concern of P's nazirite legislation is that a nazirite, as an Israelite (rather than priest) cannot become a life-long nazirite, in contrast with a priest, who holds his priestly prerogatives for life, is convincing. His use of the term "alien incorporation" (e.g., p. 87) nicely finesses the problem of how to discuss "conversion" within biblical Israel. He uses well-chosen contemporary analogies to explain different conceptions of what might make one belong to the nation in ancient Israel (pp. 99-100). When he uses cultural anthropology and trendy conceptions such as the idea that much of religion (and life) is...