Article contents
Tithe as Gift: The Biblical Institution in Light of Mauss's Prestation Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
Extract
This study presents a new interpretation of tithe references in Scripture. It departs from the conventional view that the tithe is merely a tax levied on the people. Rather it sees the tithe as a partnership or compact with God in which tangible goods are exchanged for intangible ones. Taking the Pentateuch in its entirety as our contextreveals the tithe to bepart of a pattern of reciprocities in which goods are exchanged for divine acceptance, protection, and blessing.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1993
References
1. Biblical ordinances dealing with the tithe include Priestly (Lev. 27:30–33, Num. 18:21–32) and Deuteronomic sources (Deut. 12:6–7, 11–12, 17–18; 14:22–29; 26:12–15).
2. For a more complete discusssion of the various scholarly views on the tithe, see the author's doctoral dissertation, Tithe as Gift: The Institution in the Pentateuch and in Light of Mauss's Prestation Theory (San Francisco: Mellon Research University Press, 1991), pp. 7–37.Google Scholar
3. Weiss, Meir, The Bible from Within: The Method of Total Interpretation (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), p. 44.Google Scholar
4. Ibid, p. 67.
5. Ibid, p. 70.
6. Ibid, pp. 70–71.
7. Ibid, p. 27.
8. Childs, Brevard S., Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar
9. Barton, John, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), p. 99.Google Scholar
10. Beginning with the period of the Restoration, emphasis was placed upon living a life consonant with the mitzvot, i.e., the ritual and ethical precepts of the Torah as defined by Judaism. The observance of the tithe became a singular expression of Jewish piety throughout the period of the Second Temple. See Herr, M. D., “Yerushalayim, ha–Mikdash ve-ha-Avodah ba-Meziyut u-be-Toda'ah bi-Yemei Bayit Sheni: Perakim be-Toldot Yerushalayim be-Yemei Bayit Sheni,” in Abraham Schalit Memorial Volume, ed. A, Oppenheimer, U., Rappaport, and , Stern (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Ministry of Defense, 1980), pp. 168–173Google Scholar; Wintermute, O. S., “Jubilees. A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charlesworth, James H. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 2:38, 40, 48. Other Jewish writings from the second century B.C.E. maintained that tithing was to be taken as an indication of personal piety. See Solomon Zeitlin's introduction to The Book of Judith, trans., commentary, and critical notes by Morton S. Enslin (Leiden: E. J. Brill, for Dropsie University, 1972), pp. 33–34. Urbach cites R. Joshua, who refers to tithing activity in the period precedingthe restoration of the Temple (m. 'Ed.8:6). See E. E. Urbach, Ḥazal: Pirkei Emunot ve-De'ot(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1971), p. 600, n. 57. Talmudic sources make plain the fact that tithing was long regarded as the mark of Jewish pietyGoogle Scholar. See Min-Hahar, S., Ha-Areẓ u-Miẓvotehah (Brooklyn: Haskel Publications, 1969), p. 30. Finally, the tithe laws of the Mishnah “probably reflect the practices observed for the most part in the Persian and Greek periods.”Google ScholarMarcus, Ralph, Law in the Apocrypha (New York: AMS Press, 1966), p. 107.Google Scholar
11. Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison, with an introduction by Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (New York: Norton, 1967), p. 5.Google Scholar
12. Culley, Robert C., “Exploring New Directions,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. Knight, Douglas A. and Tucker, Gene M. (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 184.Google Scholar
13. Wilson, Robert R., Sociological Approaches to the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 83.Google Scholar
14. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Douglas, , Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 307–309.Google Scholar
15. McLeod, Katrina C. D., “The Political Culture of Warring States China,” in Essays in the Sociology of Perception, ed. Douglas, Mary (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 157.Google Scholar
16. Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, Baron, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (New York: Norton, 1982), pp. 87–88Google Scholar, 89. See also Rogerson, J. W., Anthropology and the Old Testament (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979), p. 107.Google Scholar
17. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences(1968 ed.), s.v. “Mauss, Marcel,” by Lukes, Steven (hereafter cited as Lukes, “Mauss”).Google Scholar
18. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., introduction to Mauss, The Gift,p. v.Google Scholar
19. Lukes, “Mauss.”
20. Ibid.
21. Evans-Pritchard, in Mauss, Gift,pp. vii–viii.
22. Ibid, p. ix.
23. Lukes, “Mauss.”
24. Mauss, Gift,pp. 1, 3.
25. Ibid, pp. 37–40.
26. Ibid, p. 22.
27. Ibid, p. 37.
28. Ibid, pp. 3910.
29. Ibid, p. 9.
30. Ibid, pp. 12, 15–16.
31. Ibid, p. 58.
32. Ibid
33. Ibid, p. 22.
34. Ibid, p. 45.
35. Ibid, p. 81.
36. Ibid, p. 80.
37. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, rev. and trans, by Bell, James Harle and Richard von Sturmer, John, ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 62, 68.Google Scholar
38. Powell, H. A., “Territory, Hierarchy and Kinship in Kirwina,” Man, n.s. 4 (December 1969): 591–592.Google Scholar
39. Pospisil, Leopold, Kapauku Papuan Economy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 344.Google Scholar
40. Weiner, Annette B., Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives on Trobriand Exchange (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), pp. 220–221.Google Scholar
41. Ibid, p. 223.
42. Ibid, pp. 219–220.
43. Mauss, Gift, p. 72.
44. Firth, Raymond, “Themes in Economic Anthropology: A General Comment,” in Themes in Economic Anthropology, ed. Raymond, Firth (London: Tavistock, 1967), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
45. Ibid, pp. 12, 14–15.
46. Ibid, pp. 15–17.
47. Sahlins, Marshall, Stone Age Economics (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine, 1974), p. 154.Google Scholar
48. Bohannan, Paul and Dalton, George, eds., Markets in Africa: Eight Subsistence Economies in Transition (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 7–9.Google Scholar
49. Weiner, Woman of Value,p. 213.
50. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, pp. 169–170.
51. McConville, J. G., Law and Theology in Deuteronomy (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), pp. 13, 159.Google Scholar
52. Hallo, William W., “Biblical History in Its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextaul Approach,–; in Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method, ed. Evans, Carl D., Hallo, William W., and White, John B. (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1980), p. 6.Google Scholar
53. Milgrom, Jacob, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), p. 63, n. 220.Google Scholar
54. Douglas, Implicit Meanings, p. 278.
55. Polak, F. H., “Lᾱqah' ve-Nᾱtan: He'arot Nosafot 'al ha-Nusalj ve-Gilulehah ba- Mikra,” in Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, vols. 7–8 (Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: Israel Bible Society, 1983–1984), p. xiiGoogle Scholar. See also Milgrom, Jacob, Studies in Levitical Terminology, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 25, n. 246.Google Scholar
56. McConville, Law and Theology,pp. 3–4. According to Weinfeld, Num. 18 describes the tithe as a levitical wage in a manner akin to the ancient Near Eastern covenant of grant. Weinfeld, Moshe, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 90 (1970): 201–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the association of nᾱtanwith covenant formulas, see Weinfeld, Moshe, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 72, n. 2.Google Scholar
57. McConville, , Law and Theology,p. 159.Google Scholar
58. Ibid, p. 83.
59. Ibid, p. 54.
60. Levi-Strauss, , Elementary Structures,pp. 56–58.Google Scholar
61. Finley, M.I., The Ancient Economy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), p. 33.Google Scholar
62. Lukes, “Mauss.”
63. Mauss, Gift,pp. 14–15.
64. Ibid, p. 76.
65. Ibid.
66. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics,pp. 169–170.
67. Ibid, pp. 192–193.
68. Weiner, Women of Value,p. 213.
69. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics,pp. 192–193.
70. Oliver, Douglas L., A Solomon Island Society: Kinship and Leadership Among the Siuai of Bougainville (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 365, 372, 386–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
71. Lévi-Strauss, Elementary Structures,p. 67.
72. Ibid, pp. 59–60.
73. Powell, “Territory, Hierarchy, and Kinship,” p. 592.
- 2
- Cited by