Knohl-the rise of the Holiness School

More on Israel Knohl’s The Divine Symphony:

The Jerusalem priests during the first temple period made a separation between morality and the observances and rituals required by God.  By the late eighth century this separation seemed out of whack because a Jerusalem establishment of officials, priests, and crooked merchants were oppressing the people, while Assyria threatened to bring the system down.  From within the priestly world-view Isaiah juxtaposed the corruption and the Assyrian threat and called it God’s judgment.

According to Knohl–and his whole reading of the Bible hinges on this–it was at this point that the Holiness School arose.  The classical documentary hypotheses recognized the Holiness Code at the end of Leviticus.  The priestly document was supposed to have been built around it.  Knohl’s thesis is that the Priestly Torah came first and the Holiness Code was an addendum tacked on at about the time of Hezekiah’s reign.  He considers it possible that the Holiness School already existed and influenced Isaiah.  But the tendency of his argument goes the other way.

Isaiah attacks sacrifice and other priestly procedures as  offensive to God’s holiness.  The Holiness Code takes a more both-and approach.  Holiness does mean keeping meticulous ritual procedures.  But it also means loving your fellow Israelites and treating them right.  And the Holiness Code called upon the whole people to be holy.

“While the Priestly Code reached new heights of abstraction and sublimity in thinking about God, its message about God was aimed at a select few.  Only a handful of people could reach the religious summits of the Priestly Torah.  The Holiness School, however, bursts the walls of the sanctuary and turns to the people as a whole.  It relinquishes religious sublimity and embraces popular customs”  (p. 67).

Knohl’s is a provocative way of thinking about the history of Israel.  I am still pondering his thesis.  In many ways it makes sense.  But I am also aware of many alternative ways to understand the development of the Hebrew Bible.   He has an appendix that  explains the way he dates the various strands–the Priestly Torah, the Yahwist, Isaiah, and the Holiness Code.  I question his dates in some cases, but so far I see nothing that would be fatal to his main thesis:  the Holiness School arose as a synthesis of priestly and prophetic/levitical concerns in the eighth century.

The theological result is to see the Bible in an evolutionary light.  The various voices in it arose as a response to historical developments.  But they are a symphony, not a cacophony, because of the Holiness School’s role in pulling it all together.  If you are used to the standard idea that the Bible was verbally inspired, and that you have to have faith that any disharmony is only apparent, you will have trouble with this.  Is it possible to understand divine revelation in a more spirited and vibrant way?