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Does a lack of coherence always render a text "unreadable" or "unintelligible"? In this essay, I explore the relationships between three of De Beaugrande and Dressler's standards of textuality: cohesion, coherence, and intertextuality (considered more narrowly here in the form of allusion). I consider examples of textual allusion that readers have considered surprising, incongruous, or incoherent. I conclude that in some cases, there is reason to believe ancient Israelite writers employed allusion in such a way as to create incongruity and incoherence at local text-segment levels while creating a coherent argument at larger text-segment levels. In these cases, at least, the text is still "readable."

In this essay, I examine how the book of Ezekiel has been employed or criticized as a resource for environmental ethics, and I explore the hermeneutical strategies behind these efforts. To do this, I make use of David Horrell’s critique and taxonomy of how the Bible has been used to inform attitudes about the environment. I conclude by arguing that while the book of Ezekiel is not as ecologically dangerous as some readers have claimed, neither can it function on its own as a useful tool for constructing an environmental ethic. However, reading Ezekiel as part of a metanarrative generated by a larger scriptural corpus may render its imagery useful as a resource.

This chapter discusses the similarities and differences in form, content, and vocabulary between the book of Ezekiel and the commands, motivations, and sanctions in the Pentateuch. It considers how legal traditions in the broad sense—that is, not just “laws,” but also statements about obligation, benefits, and punishments—are used in the book of Ezekiel. The logic of the book is deeply indebted to priestly ideology and its notions of purity and holiness. This chapter also examines the possibility, nature, and direction of dependence, both conceptual and literary, between the book of Ezekiel and Israel’s legal traditions (Deuteronomic, Priestly, and Holiness) that were textualized and incorporated into what became the Pentateuch.