Antiquitopia

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 f...

I just saw via Brian Small that there is a new review (see here ) of my book, The Sabbath and the Sanctuary , published by Nicholas Moore of Keble College, Oxford in the Journal of Theological Studies.  I, unfortunately, am not a subscriber, so I do not know what is praised and what is criticized, but am happy to see that my book continues to attract attention.

Mike Kibbe, a student at Wheaton, has reviewed my monograph here .  I would like to thank him for giving it some attention!

My book, The Sabbath and the Sanctuary: Access to God in the Letter to the Hebrews and Its Priestly Context, is now printed, published, and available for purchase from Mohr Siebeck!  Check it out here  and order it for your libraries today!

My monograph, The Sabbath and the Sanctuary:  Access to God in the Letter to the Hebrews and Its Priestly Context , is now officially being promoted in the Mohr Siebeck catalogue .  Here is the info: Jared C. Calaway The Sabbath and the Sanctuary Access to God in the Letter to the Hebrews and its Priestly Context Who can enter the sacred and heavenly presence of God? And how? Various ancient Jewish and emergent Christian groups disputed these questions in the first century CE. Jared C. Calaway states that the Letter to the Hebrews joined this debate by engaging and countering priestly frameworks of sacred access that aligned the Sabbath with the sanctuary. From the Hebrew Bible through late Second Temple Judaism, the sanctity of the sanctuary could be experienced through the Sabbath, sacred space through sacred time. In its sweeping vistas of Sabbath rest and the heavenly homeland, the heavenly sanctuary and the coming age, and the heavenly priesthood...

My 2010 Columbia Ph.D. dissertation, "Heavenly Sabbath, Heavenly Sanctuary: The Transformation of Priestly Sacred Space and Sacred Time in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Epistle to the Hebrews," directed by Alan Segal is now available as an open access document through ProQuest. You can download a pdf here . Here is the abstract: This dissertation investigates how the Sabbath and the sanctuary interrelate in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Studies of sacred time and sacred space have generally treated them as separate yet complementary categories in the study of religion. This has been equally true of those studying the Sabbath and the sanctuary in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Considerations of their coordination have tended to be rare momentary glimpses rather than extended treatments. This study focuses on the coordination of sacred time of the Sabbath and sacred space of the sanctuary through how they come togeth...

Since I study the intersections of sacred space (Sanctuary) and sacred time (Sabbath) in ancient Jewish and Christian literature, I am often attracted to their invocations in modern literature as well. Paul Celan, for example, often talks about the Sabbath in his poetry. Here is a meditation by W.H. Auden: The Sabbath Waking on the Seventh Day of Creation, They cautiously sniffed the air: The most fastidious nostril among them admitted That fellow was no longer there. Herbivore, parasite, predator scouted, Migrants flew fast and far-- Not a trace of his presence: holes in the earth, Beaches covered with tar, Ruins and metallic rubbish in plenty Were all that was left of him Whose birth on the Sixth had made of that day An unnecessary interim. Well, that fellow had never really smelled Like a creature who would survive: No grace, address or faculty like those Born on the First Five. Back, then, at last on a natural economy, Now His Impudence was gone, Looki...

For those of you who do not know, my research right now primarily investigates the various ways ancient Jews and Christians bring together holy space and holy time, particularly the Sanctuary and the Sabbath, focusing on priestly traditions or traditions that reflect upon or respond to such traditions (particularly P, H, and Ezekiel; Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice; and Epistle to the Hebrews). Nonetheless, I was struck by the passage in Is. 56:1-8, which, although evincing some general conceptual similarities to P, H, and Ezekiel, takes a different tack in articulating how the Sabbath relates to the Sanctuary by universalizing the relationship. In the priestly framework in the Priestly source of the Pentateuch (including the Holiness Code) and Ezekiel, improper reverence of the Sanctuary and lack of observance of the Sabbath, or their profanation, leads to being cut off from the community. The inverse corollary to this is that proper observance and reverence of the Sabbath and the S...

את־שבתתי תשמרו ומקדשי תיראו אני יהוה (Lev. 19:30; 26:2) For you non-Hebrew readers, this says, "Observe my Sabbaths and venerate my Sanctuary. I am YHWH." Both quotations come from a part of the Pentateuch called the Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26). Some distinctive elements of the Holiness School (which produced the Holiness Code) is God's self assertions, as in this passage: "I am YHWH." And the first-person singular possessive: " my Sabbaths" and " my sanctuary." Moreover, HS tends to give quite an increased reverence for the Sabbath. Taking a look at this passage, as well as how the Sabbath is interwoven in the instructions to build the Tabernacle and the actual building of the Tabernacle (Exod. 31:12-17; 35:1-3; the entire instructions are Exodus 25-31; 35-40), the question arises: "What does the Sabbath have to do with the Sanctuary?" Why bring them together, and, in this case, even seem to privilege the Sabbath over th...