Jon D. Levenson - Sinai and Zion

Begun in the summer of 1979, this study was completed in a first draft during a leave-year in Jerusalem, in 198081. Thanks are due to those who helped make that year so pleasant for my family and me, especially three eminent scholars at the Hebrew University, Moshe Weinfeld, Jonas Greenfield, and Moshe Greenberg. I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of individuals who were kind enough to read all or part of the manuscript and to offer me their expert advice: Gsta Ahlstrm, Michael Brown, Richard Clifford, Baruch Halpern, Peter Machinist, Melinda Reagor, and my indefatigable and ever supportive editor, John Collins. Although I have profited from their wisdom, the errors that remain are strictly my own responsibility. Two typists, one on each side of the Atlantic, who proved their expertise in decipherment, also deserve special mention: Hannah Groumi and Michelle Harewood.

I have tried to keep the quotations from the Bible to a minimum. Those that do appear are my own translations, which often show the influence of the New English Bible and the new translations from the Jewish Publication Society. As in the latter version, verse numbers in this study refer to the Hebrew, rather than the English, where there is a divergence.

Jewish tradition forbids the vocalization of the four-letter name of God, which is conventionally but inadequately translated as Lord. Jews pronounce it as Adonai or Ha-Shem. In this book it appears as YHWH without vowels, even in references to literature in which it was originally vocalized.

Skokie, Illinois
October 2, 1984

This paperback differs from the hardbound edition only in certain minor corrections, almost all of them typographical. I thank Professor Robert L. Cohn for giving me the list of misprints that he had noted in preparing his review of the volume for the Journal of Religion .

In the rush to get out the first edition of Sinai and Zion , I neglected to thank Randall Zachman for his last-minute contribution in helping me with the proofreading and in preparing the indices.

August 24, 1986