Noted Jewish Scholar Dies: Impact on Studies of New Testament
Posted on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 @ 12:30 PM
Jacob Milgrom, a noted Jewish academic and Biblical commentator, died last weekend in Jerusalem at the age of 87. Professor Milgrom will be long remembered for his work on the priesthood in ancient Israel and especially the aspects of ritual purity that were required of the priests and the community. His commentaries on both Leviticus--published as part of the Anchor Yale Bible Commentary Series (3 volumes) as well as the Augsburg Fortress Continental Commentary Series--and the Book of Numbers, published in the JPS Torah series--will form the basis of study in this area for considerable time.
The impact of purity is often overlooked in terms of the New Testament. Christian scholarship, in a desire to create distance from Jewish antecedents, often overlook the importance of this within the early church. Most of the healing miracles that are detailed in the Gospels were undertaken by Jesus Christ to enable the sufferer to become "clean" and hence avoid the stigmatism of being impure. The great debate in the early Church was the application of the purity laws to gentiles who wished to be followers of the way.
Milgrom has thus made a sizeable contribution to further studies in this field.
As a prolific scholar, Milgrom had just finished a section of a new commentary on the Prophet Ezekiel for the Anchor Yale series.