Bojowald, Stefan, Vögel als Entsorger negativer Kräfte in biblischen, ägyptischen und altorientalischen Texten, in: Biblica 101, 2020, 272–276.  Show MoreAbstract from OTA: This short paper compares Hebrew and Egyptian texts on the role of birds as removers of negative forces. In the Hebrew Bible, Lev 14:49-53 describes the cleansing of a house from “leprosy” by letting a bird fly away. In an Egyptian example, P. Ramesseum 3 B33, a swallow symbolically removes a childhood sickness. Comparable motifs also occur in Hittite and Babylonian texts. (Adapted from published abstract)—C.T.B.

Krauss, Rolf, Kritische Bemerkungen zur Erklärung von ṣāraʿat als schuppende Hautkrankheit, insbesondere als Psoriasis: Biblische Notizen 177, 2018, 3-24.   AssessmentDer Artikel setzt sich sehr kritisch mit dem Essay von E.V. Hulse, The Nature of Biblical Leprosy: PEQ 107, 1975, 87-105, auseinander. Dem Autor wird vorgeworfen, dermatologisch nicht ausreichend informiert zu sein sowie Wortspielereien und Unterstellungen vorzunehmen. Allerdings helfen die Ausführungen von Krauss nicht wirklich weiter. Krauss’ Artikel ist voll mit medizinischem Jargon, so dass er für Bibelwissenschaftler/innen, die sich nicht mit der Thematik intensiv auseinandergesetzt haben, kaum verständlich ist. Während die Argumente von Hulse mit medizinischen Behauptungen demontiert werden, vermisst man jedoch einen eigenen Lösungsvorschlag für die in Lev 13 beschriebenen Phänomene. Da ich mich in meinem Kommentar ausführlich mit dermatologischen Fragestellungen beschäftigt habe und dazu auch einen Dermatologen konsultiert habe, möchte ich mich nicht als „uninformiert“ bezeichnen. Der dermatologische Kollege hat meine Ausführungen zu Lev 13 im HThKAT gegengelesen und als medizinisch vertretbar angesehen.

Olanisebe, Samson O., Laws of Tzara’at in Leviticus 13–14 and Medical Leprosy Compared: Jewish Bible Quarterly 42, 2014, 121–127. Online

Schmitt, Rüdiger, Leviticus 14.33-57 as Intellectual Ritual, in: Landy, Francis; Trevaskis, Leigh M.; Bibb, Bryan D. (Hg.), Text, Time, and Temple. Literary, Historical and Ritual Studies in Leviticus (Hebrew Bible Monographs 64), Sheffield 2015, 196–203.  Show MoreAbstract from OTA: S. employs ritual studies categories to analyze Lev 14:33-57 as a textual phenomenon, an „intellectual ritual“ rather than a record of actual ritual practice. He begins with the notion of „ritual refiexivity,“ the process by which rituals are themselves ritualized, protected from critical analysis and transformed into rhetorical communication. S. argues that the elimination ritual for the diseased house in the above text has turned into didactic literature that teaches about the clean/unclean and about the nature of ritual authority. Examining the structure and content of the text, he concludes that the absence of performative detail makes the text unsuitable as a manual for priestly practice. Since the text cannot be performed „as is,“ we should accordingly read it as a rhetorical claim, an assertion that impurity is a concrete-materialistic force rather than a miasmatic or dynamistic spiritual force. Thus, the priests who diagnose the problem and repair its breach of purity are indispensable specialists whose authority in such matters is absolute; they are purveyors of a ritualistic monopoly with its concomitant spiritual and social control. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.]

Skidmore, Simon, The Evolution of the ṢāraꜤat Ritual in Leviticus 13:1-46, in: The Heythrop Journal 61, 2020, 893–902.  Show MoreAbstract from OTA: The problematic assumption that biblical purity thematically represents life and death is commonly held in modern biblical studies. Building upon this assumption, many scholars have attempted to explain the treatment of the ṣāraꜤat patient in Lev 13:1-46 as a symbolic banishment of death. My paper, for its part, seeks to move beyond this reading toward a method of reconstructing the evolution of biblical rituals and practices. Drawing on René Girard’s typology of four scapegoat stereotypes, I identify the scapegoat mechanism operative in the Leviticus text and propose a reconstruction of the evolution of this ritual. In particular, I suggest that the ritual now found in Leviticus 13 may have evolved from an earlier tradition in which ṣāraꜤat patients were executed to halt a mimetic crisis. [Adapted from published abstract–C.T.B.]