Holy Brothers: Geography, Kinship, and Priesthood in Ancient Israel

by Matthew R. Rasure

Overview

The history of the Israelite priesthood in the early first millennium BCE is shrouded in mystery. While images of priests, prayer, and sacrifice play a significant role in all biblical periods, reconstructing the practices and organization of the early priesthood is beset by a host of historical, chronological, and methodological problems. In 1973, Frank Moore Cross published a landmark proposal tying the history of the priesthood to the character of Moses and the establishment of the United Monarchy—the so-called “Mushite Hypothesis”—providing a historical foothold for the study of each. Building on the work of Cross, Matthew R. Rasure investigates traces of the early priesthood through narrative analysis of geography, kinship, and the memory of the characters of Moses and Aaron. Rasure posits the existence of two spectra on which different biblical voices may be positioned: a polarity between geographical center and periphery, and a polarity concerning understandings of Aaron and Moses. What emerges from these oppositions is a picture of two priestly identities active in distinct regions. The interactions between these priesthoods shape the history, politics, and cult of the United Monarchy, the Divided Monarchy, and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978711297
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	172
File size:	406 KB

About the Author

Matthew R. Rasure (Ph.D. Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University) is a scholar, non-profit leader, and clergy person.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Chasing the Priesthood in the Early First Millennium
Chapter 2: The History of the Mushite Hypothesis
Chapter 3: Holy Lands-Geography and the Israelite Priesthood
Chapter 4: Holy Families-Genealogy of the Levites, Moses, and Aaron
Chapter 5: Holy Priests-Moses, Aaron, and Priestly Authority in the Pentateuch
Chapter 6: Geography, Kinship, and Priesthood-A Synthesis
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Holy Brothers refurbishes an often-overlooked theory on the origins of the Israelite priesthood for a new era of scholarship. Matthew R. Rasure skillfully presents textual, geographical, and comparative evidence in this lucid and learned monograph. Students and scholars alike who are interested in the relationship between early Israelite history and the Hebrew Bible will benefit from Rasure’s careful research and insightful conclusions.” —Reed Carlson, United Lutheran Seminary

“Matthew Rasure’s book takes up the thesis, best known from the scholar Frank Moore Cross, that the priesthood in ancient Israel was divided into two groups, often at odds with each other: one descended from Moses (Mushite) and the other from Aaron (Aaronide). This thesis has had a wide and controversial reception in modern scholarship, and Rasure provides a comprehensive examination of both thesis and reception in great and searching detail. He argues persuasively that the thesis needs to be explored in three dimensions, as manifest in the Hebrew Bible along with non-biblical sources and modern anthropological analogies: the priesthood in terms of its varied geographical location in ancient Israel; in terms of the genealogical traditions attached to it; and in terms of the biblical narratives about priests, particularly in the Pentateuch, the latter based on Rasure’s nuanced use of the Documentary Hypothesis. The result is a book that offers an extended and probing evaluation of Cross’s priestly duality, affirming its core vision, but with important revisions that bear more broadly on the nature of priestly conception and practice in Israel, on the structure of ancient Israelite society, and on the shape of biblical literature.” —Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, emeritus, Harvard University

From the Publisher

Holy Brothers refurbishes an often-overlooked theory on the origins of the Israelite priesthood for a new era of scholarship. Matthew R. Rasure skillfully presents textual, geographical, and comparative evidence in this lucid and learned monograph. Students and scholars alike who are interested in the relationship between early Israelite history and the Hebrew Bible will benefit from Rasure’s careful research and insightful conclusions.

Reed Carlson

Matthew Rasure’s book takes up the thesis, best known from the scholar Frank Moore Cross, that the priesthood in ancient Israel was divided into two groups, often at odds with each other: one descended from Moses (Mushite) and the other from Aaron (Aaronide). This thesis has had a wide and controversial reception in modern scholarship, and Rasure provides a comprehensive examination of both thesis and reception in great and searching detail. He argues persuasively that the thesis needs to be explored in three dimensions, as manifest in the Hebrew Bible along with non-biblical sources and modern anthropological analogies: the priesthood in terms of its varied geographical location in ancient Israel; in terms of the genealogical traditions attached to it; and in terms of the biblical narratives about priests, particularly in the Pentateuch, the latter based on Rasure’s nuanced use of the Documentary Hypothesis. The result is a book that offers an extended and probing evaluation of Cross’s priestly duality, affirming its core vision, but with important revisions that bear more broadly on the nature of priestly conception and practice in Israel, on the structure of ancient Israelite society, and on the shape of biblical literature.

Peter Machinist