/lit/ - Literature

>>13805011
Moreover, in a curious way the very oneness, the singularity, of this god emphasizes the separation from nature, for though he created the earth and claims all of it as his, yet he is not to be found everywhere in it: not in the primal chaos at its edges, nor in the cities of the idolators, nor in the deserts given over to demons. Light, truth, and holiness are to be enjoyed only where the god dwells, and he chooses to tabernacle exclusively in the camp of his people, thereby establishing a center of civilization beyond the boundaries of which lie darkness and death, a wilderness peopled with beasts, bestial pagans, and their theriomorphic deities. If the city in the ancient Near East is an oasis, the camp of these semi-nomads serves the same function and defines in the charged terms of religion the chasm between what lies within and what beyond. Thus in Leviticus 16:7-10, 20-22 are found the ritual prescriptions for sending the scapegoat bearing the tribal sins out of the god's camp into the wilderness, the territory of his adversary, Azazel. Thus too the charred corpses of the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, who unlawfully offered a fire of incense to the god and perished for it; they must be dumped outside the boundaries of the camp where all ritually polluted things are to be thrown (Leviticus 10:1,2,4,5; Numbers 5:1-4; Deuteronomy 23:10-14). And so, though the tribes are now traveling through the heart of the wilderness, they are not really in it but are instead insulated by the god against it. Under no circumstances are they to surrender to it or to its temptations. This, of course, is what they continually threaten to do, for the wilderness tempts to disobedience, to riot and rebellion with its hardships, its disorderliness, its radical naturalness.