Carr on Calaway: Thoughts on the Sabbath / Sanctuary Relationship in H

I have known for a while now that David M. Carr's 2011 book, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible, included most likely the very first citation of anything I wrote - in this case, my dissertation.  Luckily, this past year, someone bought me a copy of the book (it is a bit pricy), and I have been slowly working through it.  I finally got the part where he discusses the implications of my work on the relationship between the Sabbath and the Sanctuary (in the Hebrew Bible, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, and the Epistle to the Hebrews) specifically for how I characterize the Holiness materials.  He writes:

Consider, for example, the strong focus in H materials (as in Ezekiel) on Sabbath that has been outlined with particular clarity in a recent dissertation by Jared Calaway.  Resonating with similar Sabbath foci in Ezekiel, Exod 31:12-17 makes the Sabbath "covenant" a central focus of the P Sinai episode, applying to it concepts of profanation previously reserved for the sanctuary. The H cultic calendar opens with an introductory mention of Sabbath (Lev 23:3), and concludes with a focus on the festivals of the seventh month (the festival of trumpets [Rosh Hashanah], Yom Kippur, and Sukkoth; Lev 23:23-43).  Finally, the Jubilee legislation in Leviticus 24 extends the Sabbath concept to the land as well, reconfiguring earlier regulations about leaving land fallow (Exod 23:10-11) and slave and debt release (Exod 21:2-6; Deut 15:1-18) so that the new law enjoins leaving the land fallow every seven years (Lev 25:3-7) and forgiving debts and freeing Hebrew slaves every forty-nine (another sort of Sabbath of Sabbaths; Lev 25:8-55). H concludes with an independent emphasis on the observance of these Sabbaths alongside reverence for the sanctuary (Lev 26:2; note also 19:30), actions that lead to secure life in the land. The exile is understood as a Sabbath for the land (Lev 26:34-35). 

As Calaway argues, this complex of texts reconfigures concepts of holiness that were particularly attached to the sanctuary so that they are linked in new ways with time.  The weekly Sabbath restores the individual and allows access to the sanctuary, the Yom Kippur "Sabbath of Sabbaths" purifies and thus restores the sanctuary, and the 49th Jubilee year (and exile land Sabbath) restores the land. Thus, a practice (Sabbath) that appears to have become particularly prominent during exile (see, e.g., Ezekiel) becomes a prism for a new understanding of concepts of holiness once attached to the (now destroyed) temple in Jerusalem. Much as Gen 12:1-3 and Second Isaiah represent different reconceptualizations of concepts once attached to the Davidic monarchy, H represents a seemingly exilic, Sabbath-focused reconceptualization of concepts of holiness once more exclusively attached to the Jerusalem sanctuary and its priesthood. (p. 302)

He goes one to discuss how this particular profile has convinced him that this "H" reconceptualization likely originated in exile (rather than post-exile).  For all of this, he relies upon my dissertation; nonetheless, all of my discussion of the holiness legislation and expansions appear in my book (though, due to some revising, not all in the same place - thus, the land materials appear when I discuss the promised land/Sabbath-rest passage in Hebrews 3-4, instead of being a part of my general Hebrew Bible discussion as in the dissertation).  Anyway, I want to thank David Carr publicly for the very positive shout-out in his immense book.