GT-seminar: Beginnings of Priesthood

GT-seminar: Beginnings of Priesthood: When and Why did Levi Tradition Began to Attract the Attention of Ancient Jewish Scribes?

Seminar med Jessi Orpana (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Copenhagen)

Levi gets little attention in the Hebrew Bible. Even though Levites are central to the cult, Levi the patriarch is not explicitly presented as a priest or in other cultic duties. This, however, changes in later stages of the developing patriarchal traditions.
In the Aramaic Levi Document Levi becomes the first priest, but his agency is not limited to priesthood and cultic activities. By reinterpreting the previous traditions and by making implicit references explicit, Levi’s agency is broadened to vision revelations and wisdom teaching, aspects not prominent in earlier priestly traditions, but highly relevant in wisdom discourse.
In this paper I will offer a comparative close reading of the depictions of Levi in Genesis and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Aramaic Levi Document. Besides investigating the literary level, I will assess of potential reasons why the tradition concerning Levi began to expand when it did thus bringing the socio-historical contexts into a dialogue with the preserved literary sources.

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