1 Peggy, Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993) 147.Google Scholar

2 Marguerite, Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974) 126.Google Scholar

3 Thus in this reading the prophetic description of the temple is not simply an opportunity for nostalgia over a quickly disappearing past—a rhetorical tour de force that commemorates the former glories of the Jerusalem temple. Nor is it only an abstract vision for a distant future, a valorization of a temple that is wholly theoretical as the community resigns itself to an exile of undefined length. It can certainly be understood as both. Chapters 40–48 commemorate the loss of the temple and offer a vision for the future. But neither proposal captures, or accounts for, the compelling nature of the prophet's vision with its striking sense of immediacy. There have been numerous attempts to categorize the temple vision. Among them see Jon, LevensonTheology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40–48 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1976)Google Scholar, who strikes a balance between the mythic and the practical in his reading of the vision (161). Levenson argues that the end of the prophecy should be understood “in the light of mythic concepts of a cosmic mountain” and he highlights the common fund of ideas and images connected not only to Eden but also to Zion that contextualize and give meaning to Ezekiel's temple (17). That said, he goes on to strike a balance between the more theoretical or mythic readings of the temple vision and a more practical program. Levenson writes: “Still we must register a protest. The highly specific nature of the description of the temple, its liturgy and community bespeaks a practical program, not a vision of pure grace…. The fact that God has already constructed the temple does not mean that man has no role in its construction…. The heavenly archetype and its human execution are not at odds in the mind of the prophet … the order defined by the vision is still a goal to be effected through human striving and was understood as such by the tradition” (45–46). Jonathan Z. Smith begins his sustained analysis of Ezekiel's temple by identifying hierarchies of power and of status that are reinforced in the details of the vision in his work in To Take Place (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). He goes on to argue that the temple is a “social map rather than artifacts of mortar and stone” (48) and that the “established structures of relationships that were capable of being both replicated and rectified within the temple complex could also be replicated without. Even lacking a king or temple, or (as later) even without the realistic hope of a restored kingship or temple, the system of status could be transferred” (73). In this essay, in contrast to Smith but in agreement with Levenson's more balanced approach, I am not interested in the temple exclusively as an abstraction, which of course became its later fate, but in the tangible, concrete promise its restoration held out to an exilic community in the aftermath of its first destruction. Ezekiel's prophecy is part of a priestly project whose repeated and urgent aim throughout the priestly texts is to restore a living community to the promised land.

4 This is true whether or not the prophet wrote the vision or if it was attached to an earlier collection of Ezekiel's prophesies by a later hand. The content of the vision responded to and was influenced by the experience in Babylon in the ways I discuss in this essay.

5 The many references of the prophet to the divine body is beyond the scope of this article, though it is interesting that both the human and the divine bodies are so richly relied upon to depict and resolve the challenges and dislocations of exile. For a discussion of God's corporeality in Ezekiel see Rimmon, KasherAnthropomorphism, Holiness and Cult: A New Look at Ezekiel 40–48 ZAW 110 (1998) 192–208Google Scholar, at 192.

6 On the influence of the exilic setting on Ezekiel's language, see Stephen, Garfinkel “Of Thistles and Thorns: A New Approach to Ezekiel II 6,” VT 37 (1987) 421–37Google Scholar, at 437. Garfinkle has shown how certain combinations of words used in Ezekiel's prophecy are best understood when looked at in light of Akkadian incantation material. One such example can be found in Ezek 2:6: “… because thistles and thorns are with you, and you sit among ‘scorpions’” (as translated by Garfinkle, following the MT). Garfinkle argues that certain acts performed by Ezekiel, such as a self-imposed period of muteness and being bound by cords, can also be traced to Akkadian incantation texts or perhaps to a popular poem, the Ludlul, whose topics include paralysis, binding of various body parts and inability to speak.” Stephen Garfinkel, “Another Model for Ezekiel's Abnormalities, JNES, 19 (1989) 39–50, at 48. See also Daniel Bodi, who identifies the Erra tablets as another work that Ezekiel could have plausibly encountered. The “Erra tablets [would be] displayed on house walls and doors as amulets against plague and disaster” (158). Bodi points out that the term , unique to Ezekiel's vision in ch. 1, is etymologically related to Akkadian elmesu. Other features identified by Bodi that are found in Erra and also appear in the later biblical prophecy include motifs such as the Song of the Sword, the seven executioners, the importance of the figure of the watchman, and in particular, the preoccupation with the departure and absence of the divinity from the divine shrine. Thus, the Babylonian setting and its incantation texts and tablets could have quite plausibly influenced both Ezekiel's language and his physical acts. None of this speaks to the actual lives of the exiles, a topic on which the prophet remains silent. Daniel, Bodi, The Book of Ezekiel and the Poem of Erra (Freiburg: University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

7 Jean, Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia (trans. Teresa Fagan; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) 117.Google Scholar

8 Ibid.

9 Gerdien, Jonker, The Topography of Remembrance (Leiden: Brill, 1995) 36–37 [italics added].Google Scholar

10 Diane, Sharon, “A Biblical Parallel to a Sumerian Temple Hymn? Ezekiel 40–48 and Gudea” JANES 24 1996 99–109Google Scholar, at 99.

11 , Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, 118–19Google Scholar. For the dating of the poem, see Jean, BottéroMesopotamia (trans. Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) 297.Google Scholar

12 , Jonker, The Topography of Remembrance, 35, 46.Google Scholar

13 Joseph, Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Louisville, Ky.: John Knox, 1990) 12Google Scholar. Note, too, Walther Zimmerli's attribution to Ezekiel of a priestly background: “His interest in the temple, his knowledge of sacral ordinances, as well as the closeness of his language to that of the Code of Holiness and the Priestly Document … provide sufficient external support for this” (Walther, Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 1–24 [trans. Ronald E. Clements; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979] 16).Google Scholar

14 Odell, Margaret S., “You Are What You Eat: Ezekiel and the Scroll” JBL 117 1998 229–48, at 237.Google Scholar

15 Ellen Davis points out that such a description of prophetic activity is based on the work of Georg Fohrer and cites the relevant references at the end of her book. E, llen, Swallowing the Scroll (Sheffield, U.K.: Almond Press, 1989) 67–68, 169.Google Scholar

16 Zimmerli observes that such acts “appear very much more strongly in Ezekiel than in the other great writing prophets.” Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, 17.Google Scholar

17 For a discussion of the numbers and a review of the proposals that attempt to explain their significance, see Moshe, GreenbergEzekiel 1–20 (New York: Doubleday, 1983) 103–4Google Scholar. Whether or not Ezekiel actually performed the acts attributed to him, we do, in fact, have a modern example of a performance of long duration by the artist Tehching Hsieh who spent a year lying on a cot in self-imposed isolation within a cage that he built in his New York apartment. For details of this performance and others of extended duration, see Adrian, Heathfield and Tehching, Hsieh, Out of Now, The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009)Google Scholar. I would like to thank my student Adam Scheldt for alerting me to an exhibit of the artist's cage and photographs of his performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

18 Odell, Margaret S., “You Are What You Eat,” 248. For an extended discussion of Ezekiel as a street performer, see the work of Bernhard Lang, “Street Theater, Raising the Dead, and the Zoroastrian Connection in Ezekiel's Prophecy,” in Ezekiel and His Book (ed. Lust, Johan; Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1986) 298Google Scholar. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, notes the prophet's striking “physical participation” in his prophecy, 19.

19 Interest in performance art has recently resurfaced as indicated by the extraordinary crowds at the retrospective of the work of Marina Abramovic at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the spring of 2010.Google Scholar

20 The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (ed. Preminger, Alex and Brogan, T. V. F.; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993) 1366Google Scholar [italics added].

21 Goldberg, Rose Lee, Performance Art (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001) 153.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 7.

23 Ibid., 7–8.

24 Levenson, Jon D., Program of Restoration, 7.Google Scholar

25 Collins, John J., Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2004) 373.Google Scholar

26 , Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 27.Google Scholar

27 On this point, Kasher points out that the phrase opens each of the book's three visions. He lists 1:3, 3:22; 8:1 and 40:1. Kasher, “Anthropomorphism, Holiness and Cult,” 203. The phrase also appears in 33:22, the moment when Ezekiel is informed that Jerusalem has fallen, and in 37:1.Google Scholar

28 A form of the root appears in vv. 1, 2, 3, 4. A form of the root appears in v. 2 as “visions” of God. In v. 3 a man “appears” in front of the prophet with an “appearance” like copper. In v. 4 that man orders the prophet to “see” with his eyes all that the man will “show” him since he was brought there to “see” and then to report on that “seeing!” Thus appears four times in v. 4 alone.Google Scholar

29 As put to me by Ed Greenstein in a personal communication.Google Scholar

30 A strong case has been made that God acts out of self-interest rather than for the sake of the house of Israel who are beyond repentance. See Schwartz, Baruch J., “Ezekiel's Dim View of Israel's Restoration,” in The Book of Ezekiel (ed. Odell, Margaret S. and Strong, John T.; Atlanta: SBL, 2000) 43–67Google Scholar, at 65; and Moshe, Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37 (New York: Doubleday, 1997) 738.Google Scholar

31 Ezekiel's dimensions for the new temple could not in reality be implemented. Yet his vision could still act upon his audience. As argued by Sarah Luria in a description of the architecture of Washington, D.C., “The spaces constructed by the texts are as fantastic as they are real, as rhetorical as they are concrete—vanguard environments that seek to change the political world.” Capital Speculations (Durham, N.H.: University of New Hampshire Press, 2006) xxv.Google Scholar

32 Thanks to Sarah Luria for this creative insight. Of course, I would not propose an exact date on which the prophecy would have been written and edited into its final version. Nor do I know who preserved it, and most importantly, who had access to that text. What does seem clear to me, however, is that the prophet intended his vision to be known to the entire “house of Israel” and not merely to its elite.Google Scholar

33 On the use of the temple to make dramatic changes in spatial organization that would have political implications, see Stevenson, Kalinda Rose, Vision of Transformation (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).Google Scholar

34 For a discussion of the priestly politics involved, see For a discussion of the priestly politics involved, “Innerbiblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44 and The History of Israel's Priesthood” JBL 114 1995 193–208.Google Scholar

35 The parallels between the endings of Ezekiel and Numbers are quite striking, providing evidence of some type of interaction. For details on the way in which Numbers develops these themes, see my Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

36 Thanks to Ben Sommer for that suggestive phrase in a personal communication.Google Scholar