Reviewed by: Centralizing the Cult: The Holiness Legislation in Leviticus 17–26 by Julia Rhyder Liane Feldman Julia Rhyder. Centralizing the Cult: The Holiness Legislation in Leviticus 17–26. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 134. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. xxi + 484 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000148 Julia Rhyder's recent volume, Centralizing the Cult: The Holiness Legislation in Leviticus 17–26, is a critically important addition to the study of pentateuchal priestly literature. Clearly written and richly detailed, this book revisits one of the most well-trod paths in studies of the Pentateuch's cultic materials and offers a fresh and theoretically sophisticated approach to the question of cultic centralization, and to the study of the literary history of Leviticus 17–26 more broadly. The first three chapters (111 pages) of this book are concerned primarily with a review of scholarship on the concept of centralization (chapter 1), the Holiness Legislation (chapter 2), and the phenomenon of centralization in the Persian period (chapter 3). Textual analysis begins to take center stage in chapters 4 through 7. Chapter 4 argues that Leviticus 1–16 participates in the project of centralization in three ways: by advocating the standardization of ritual practice, by constructing an authoritative priesthood, and by uniting the Israelites in service of the sanctuary and its cult. Rhyder insightfully argues in this chapter that the detailed ritual instructions are best understood as "a form of communal knowledge rather than the prerogative of the priests alone" (139, emphasis original). Chapter 5 takes up the issue of the laws about slaughter and disposal of blood in Leviticus 17. Rhyder makes at least two important and related contributions in this chapter, the first of which is to argue that it is "inappropriate to suggest that H derives its centralizing logic from the claims made in Deut 12" (238). Instead, Rhyder methodically and meticulously demonstrates that the laws in Leviticus 17 primarily draw on concepts that can be found in other P texts, thus negating the need to look to Deuteronomic influence. This chapter also makes one of the strongest cases I have seen for the close literary relationship between Leviticus 16 and 17. Chapter 6 engages the question of calendars and centralized time, blending arguments about ritual standardization from chapter 4 with broader questions about the effects of pilgrimage and festival observance on a centralization project. While primarily focused on Leviticus 23, Rhyder also draws attention to the often-overlooked passage in Leviticus 24:1–9, which she describes as an appendix to P's festival calendar (304). At several points in the book, Rhyder points to texts that are closely linked with P both thematically and linguistically and argues that these links to P "should be read not so much as indicating that these verses are secondary intrusion to H but as a discursive strategy on H's part" (307). I wonder, however, if a simpler explanation for these "P-like" texts in the midst of H might be that they are P. While such an argument could be disputed, the possibility is never addressed. This points to one weakness of the book [End Page 414] as a whole: for all of her insightful and detailed readings, Rhyder at times uncritically accepts that Leviticus 17–26 is a distinct and coherent literary unit even when her readings of individual texts pave the way for a different conclusion. Chapter 7 analyzes the remainder of the Holiness Code and argues that the focus on the holiness of the Israelite community is best understood as advancing a form of "conventionalism" as described by social theorists such as Theodor Adorno. Rhyder argues that the discourse of holiness in H suggests that it is not only concerned with the participation of the Israelites in the cult, but "also with how they should interpret their own experience in light of its centrality" (345, emphasis original). This chapter recasts the concept of communal holiness as part of a larger project concerned above all with loyalty to the deity and his shrine in all facets of one's life. A broader aim of this book is to situate not only the Holiness Code, but it seems all of P, in...