I Will Walk Among You The Rhetorical Function of Allusion to Genesis 1-3 in the Book of Leviticus

The face of Pentateuch scholarship has shifted dramatically in the last forty years, resulting in the questioning of many received truths and the employment of a host of new, renewed, and often competing methodologies by biblical scholars. This study sits at the intersection of these recent interpretive trends. G. Geoffrey Harper uses insights from the fields of intertextuality, rhetorical criticism, and speech act theory to create a methodological framework, which he applies to three Leviticus pericopes. Chapters 11, 16, and 26 are examined in turn, and for each the assessment of potential parallels at lexical, syntactical, and conceptual levels reveals a complex web of interconnected allusion to the creation and Eden narratives of Genesis 1 and 2-3. Moreover, Harper probes the theological and rhetorical import of these intertextual connections and explores how Leviticus ought to be understood in its Pentateuchal context.
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