Terminology Tuesday
Holiness Code, also ‘Law of Holiness’. The collection of legal material in Lev. 17–26, so named by A. Klostermann in 1877, and designated ‘H’. The subjects dealt with are animal sacrifice and the prohibition of eating blood (17), laws of marriage and chastity (18), miscellaneous religious and ethical precepts (19), penalties for violation of the ritual laws (20), the priesthood (21 f.), the sacred calendar, incl. *Sabbath, *Passover, *Weeks, and the Day of *Atonement (23), the sacred lamp and the *Shewbread (24:1–9), punishment for blasphemy and the Lex Talionis (24:10–25), the *Sabbatical Year and *Jubilee (25), with a final exhortation (26). The recurrence of certain phrases (in particular, ‘for I, the Lord, am holy’, e.g. 19:2), Supports the view that the section is a unity. There are internal indications that it is a product of the Exile in *Babylon (cf. 26:34–45); moreover, it has a number of parallels with the exilic Book of Ezekiel. Scholars who follow the ‘documentary hypothesis’ of the origins of the *Pentateuch generally suppose the Holiness Code to have been incorporated into *P, after circulating independently for a period.
A. Klostermann, ‘Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Pentateuchs’, Zeitschrift für die gesammte lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 38 (1877), pp. 401–45; id., Der Pentateuch (1893), pp. 386–418. B. Baentsch, Das Heiligkeits-Gesetz (1893). H. G. Reventlow, Das Heiligkeitsgestz formgeschichtlich untersucht (Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament, 6; 1961); R. Kilian, Literarkritische und formgeschichtliche Untersuchung des Heiligkeitsgesetzes (Bonner Biblischer Beiträge, 19; 1963). L. E. Elliott-Binns, ‘Some Problems of the Holiness Code’, ZATW 67 (1955; pub. 1956), pp. 26–40 [favours an earlier dating]. W. Thiel, ‘Erwägungen zum Alter des Heiligkeitsgesetzes’, ibid. 81 (1969), pp. 40–73; V. Wagner, ‘Zur Existenz des sogenannten “Heiligkeitsgesetzes” ‘, ibid. 86 (1974), pp. 307–16 [questions the existence of ‘H’ as an independent collection]. Eissfeldt, pp. 233–9, with further refs. H. T. C. Sun in Anchor Bible Dictionary, 3 (1992), pp. 254–7, s.v. See also works cited under PENTATEUCH and comm. to LEVITICUS, cited s.v.
Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (Eds.). (2005). In The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed. rev., p. 783). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
