The Place and the Stone: Reassessing the Priestly Writing’s relationship to Bethel
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The Priestly story of Jacob at Bethel in Gen. 35.9–15 is commonly interpreted as a Priestly delegitimization of the pre-Priestly Jacob/Bethel story in Gen. 28.10–22*. This interpretation has arisen largely from the different ways in which the texts conceptualize the maqôm and maṣṣēbôt, with the Priestly text supposedly desacralizing the standing stone and turning the ‘place’ into merely a location of remembrance, not the dwelling of the deity. This article challenges this assumption, especially addressing the similarities between the Priestly conceptions of Bethel and the redactional ‘vow narrative’ in Gen. 28.20–22*. It then relates the redaction-critical findings with the historical situation at sixth-century Bethel, which seems to have been the main cultic site in Yehud during the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods. On the basis of this analysis, the article concludes with the suggestion that Bethel be taken more seriously as a possible compositional context of P.
Author: John Will Rice
Institutions: Tel Aviv University, Heidelberg University
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,450
OpenAlex ID: W4402068852