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College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University

School of Theology and Seminary Faculty Publications

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2020

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Ezekiel's Priestly Imaginary: A Symbolic Or Idolatrous Reality?, Dale Launderville Osb Jan 2020

Ezekiel's Priestly Imaginary: A Symbolic Or Idolatrous Reality?, Dale Launderville Osb

School of Theology and Seminary Faculty Publications

The images and genres as well as the structure of the Book of Ezekiel aim to promote symbolic thinking in which the reader receives the word of Yhwh as an engagement with the divine Other. Such engagement fosters a priestly imaginary in which the Judean exiles are called to look beyond appearances as they wrestle with the contradictions generated by the exile and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. The readers, like Ezekiel and the exiles, can become living symbols of Yhwh. Such symbolic thinking will be illustrated through a focus on chaps. 17-20 in which the tensions between individual …