Priestly Narratives: A Review Panel & Book Launch for Liane Feldman's Story of Sacrifice

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About the Event

Join us for a virtual book panel on April 16 at 12:00 PM EDT on the newly published The Story of Sacrifice: Ritual and Narrative in the Priestly Source by Liane M. Feldman, Assistant Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies.

Joining Prof. Feldman for the book panel are scholars Mira Balberg (UC San Diego), Martha Himmelfarb (Princeton), Andrew McGowan (Yale), and Hindy Najman (Oxford).

This is event is free and open to all, but registration is required. Please follow the link below to register, at which time you will receive an automatic email with the link to join the event via Zoom. 

If you have any questions about the film or the event, please email us at gsas.hebrewjudaic@nyu.edu.

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About the Book

The sacrificial instructions and purity laws in Leviticus have often been seen as later or secondary additions to an originally sparse Priestly narrative. In this volume, Liane M. Feldman argues that the ritual and narrative elements of the Pentateuchal Priestly source are mutually dependent, and that the internal logic and structure of the Priestly narrative makes sense only when they are read together. Bringing together insights from the fields of ritual theory and narratology, the author argues that the ritual materials in Leviticus should be understood and analyzed as literature. At the core of her study is the assertion that these sacrificial instructions and purity laws form the backbone of the Priestly story world, and that when these materials are read within their broader narrative context, the Priestly narrative is first and foremost a story about the origins and purpose of sacrifice.

 

About THE AUTHOR

Liane M. Feldman is an Assistant Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.  Her work focuses primarily on priestly literature, with an emphasis on the literary representation of sacrifice and sacred space in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature. She pays particular attention to the interplay between ritual and narrative, compositional history, and the relationship between texts and historical religious practice. Prof. Feldman received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from The University of Chicago, M.A.s from Yale University and Boston College, and a B.A. in English literature from Northeastern University.