nificance of «canonical function», the essay investigates first external parallels between the two books that impact their reading especially within their sections of the OT and NT. It then looks at internal components of the books that contribute to their larger canonical role, with especial attention paid to the role of the future community as implied readership, rhetorical devices, location, and claims of final authority and sufficiency. The article concludes with a proposal regarding ways in which the two books do, indeed, function within their testamental canons in like ways.
The Baal Peor episode (Num 25,1-18), followed by the second census (Num 26), marks the break between the first compromised wilderness generation and the second. This episode is a «covenant of kinship» between Israelites and Midianites resident in Moab, sealed by marriage between high-status individuals from each of these lineages. The violent repudiation of this transaction by the Aaronid Phineas is in marked contrast to the Midianite marriage of Moses, for which an explanation is offered, and is paradigmatic of the attitude to intermarriage of the Aaronid priesthood during the mid-to-late-Achaemenid period.
Most scholars accept the two-conquest model according to which Shalmaneser V conquered Samaria in 723/722 BCE but died shortly thereafter, and that Sargon II then suppressed the ancient city again in his second regnal year (720 BCE) after resolving the internal conflict in Assyria. This paper critically examines this model, discusses some problems regarding chronological order, and proposes a new historical reconstruction in support of one conquest. The probability of there having been propagandistic considerations motivating Sargon II’s scribes is also discussed.
Hos 13,12 and Job 14,17 describe sins as tied in a bundle. Since other verses imply that sins serve as God’s own evidence against sinners, the common image in these two verses is best explained in light of evidence preservation procedures attested in Neo-Babylonian legal texts.