RT Article
T1 "You Shall Be Holy": A Speech Act Theoretic Theological Interpretation
JF Journal of theological interpretation
VO 12
IS 2
SP 183
OP 199
A1 Arcadi, James M. 1981-
LA English
PB The Pennsylvania State University Press
YR 2018
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1679438425
AB In Lev 19:2, God says, "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." Using speech act theory and an account of holiness recently proffered by Alan Mittleman, I argue that one's antecedent commitments to a particular conception of holiness have dramatic implications for one's categorization of the kind of speech act one takes God to perform with this utterance. If, on the one hand, one takes holiness to refer to an ethical category, then one will see the utterance in question as a command—God enjoining the people toward some ethical end. On the other hand, if one takes a metaphysical understanding of holiness, one will read the utterance as the exact opposite of a command. Instead of placing obligations on the people, in this utterance God places obligations on Godself. I conclude by following Mittleman's synthesis of the ethical and metaphysical conceptions of holiness that thereby undergirds a synthesis of the twin speech acts performed by God in this utterance.
K1 Ceremonial objects
K1 Ethical Behavior
K1 Holiness
K1 Illocutionary acts
K1 Jewish ethics
K1 Metaphysics
K1 Philosophical object
K1 Speech Act Theory
K1 Torah
DO 10.5325/jtheointe.12.2.0183