Bible Review

Babylonian Talmud, Betsah/Yom Tov 20a: Tradition, codified in the Mishnah, acknowledges that someone’s offering cannot be made “while he is not standing by its side” (Mishnah, Ta’anit 4:2).

See Philo, On the Decalogue 30/159: “The whole people sacrifice, every member of them, without waiting for their priests, because the law has granted to the whole nation for one special day in every year the right of priesthood and of performing the sacrifices themselves.”

Joachim Jeremias, Die Abendmahlsworte Jesu, 4th ed: (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), p. 214; English translation: Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. by Norman Perrin (London: SCM Press, 1964; reprinted 1990). The first German edition was published in 1935.

For a more extended analysis of the eucharistic texts, see Bruce Chilton, A Feast of Meanings: Eucharistic Theologies from Jesus through Johannine Circles, Supplements to Novum Testamentum (Leiden: Brill, 1994). In regard to Jesus’ view of sacrifice, see Chilton, The Temple, of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (University Park: Penn, State Press, 1992).

See Josephus, The Antiquities 15.417.

Solomon Goldman, The Ten Commandments (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 30.

This is the case for example in Mekhilta de Rabbi Simon ben Yochai. See Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, p. 251. See also Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch Translated and Explained, vol. II, Exodus [English translation by Isaac Levy] (London: Hachinuch, 1956), p. 258.

My use of “tend(s) to” in describing the practice of all three religious communions is deliberate. In each case, deviations from the expected norm are not hard to find.

“The specified location of the documents as given in Hittite treaties can be rendered ‘under (the feet of)’ the god, which would then correspond strikingly to the arrangements in the Israelite holy of holies” (Kline, Treaty of the Great King, pp. 19–20). See also Victor Hurowitz, “Inside Solomon’s Temple,” BR 10:02, p. 37.

A. Leo Oppenheim, et al., eds., The Assyrian Dictionary (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1964), vol. 1, A, part I, p. 133.