Monday, January 31, 2011

Leviticus 1-3 How Much Repetition Can You Take?

Leviticus 1-3

At least the chapters are short!

We learn (over and over and over) how to kill, carve and cook various animals.
Make bread with flour and oil, but no yeast.
I believe the word MEAT is used to mean FOOD in some places.
Aaron and his son's like to have their food salted before it's cooked but they don't like honey.

I'm having a hard time imagining that these chapters aren't created by man.  Not only does it serve as way for the priests to get themselves fed, it could also be used as a guide to provide food that is safe to eat.
"But he shall wash the inwards and the legs with water"

22 comments:

  1. One of the reasons I'm enjoying reading this with all the rest of you more than I ever did trying to get through it on my own, I think, is that I always tended to try and heave through far too much in one go. Three chapters here is plenty, thanks...

    Does anybody have a rational explanation for the objections to yeast and honey? I've had a go at searching for 'why unleavened bread?' and I have to say the explanations I'm finding are wildly inconsistent and in some cases plain weird.

    I get the point about airborne yeast not being well understood; I understand about unleavened bread being what you get when you're basically moving around a lot and you perhaps aren't able to hold back a piece of yesterday's bread (in which the yeast did take) as a 'starter'. I can see that if you add honey to the dough you probably increase the chance of the yeast working.

    But given that they plainly do understand the difference between unleavened and leavened bread, even if perhaps not the precise mechanism by which it comes about, why this fixation with only one being acceptable as an offering? I could almost understand it better if yeast bread were to be wholly forbidden, because it would appear to have had something really un-natural happen to make it go all big and puffy. But I'm not getting that they aren't to eat it - just that God won't.

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  2. I have also wondered about the objection to yeast. In the second chapter here, I noticed that leavened bread and honey are ok to offer, but not for a burnt offering. I wonder if burning leavened bread or honey gives off a different smell than burning unleavened bread, or maybe it gives off more smoke or something else that is unpleasant.

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  3. I'm just amazed by all the sacrificing! I mean, it feels like the sum total of Israelite religious ritual was gathering in the tabernacle, bringing in a bunch of animals, killing them, throwing their blood all over the place, and then burning them on the altar. Did they do anything else? How did the complexity of Orthodox Jewish ritual evolved out of that?

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  4. About leaven (yeast): it is symbolic of sin and/or corruption. Okay for a meal, but not for a holy offering.

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  5. @Euslyss - but WHY is it a symbol of sin and/or corruption? Was that already a given or has it become symbolic of that way because of the prohibitions in Exodus and Leviticus?

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  6. @Susan
    It is really not explained in Leviticus. It does not say why there, but later allusions make it pretty clear. For example, Jesus tells his disciples to beware to the leaven of the Pharisees. They relate that to bread, and Jesus has to explain to them he is not speaking about bread but of the way the Pharisees teach the Mosaic law and their hypocrisy.

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  7. Many of the ceremonial restrictions of Judaism (then and now) have long been understood (including rabbinical tradition apart from Christianity) to be indicatives of God setting his people apart from their neighbors, who did not observe the same rules.

    It strikes me as interesting that the attempt to explain this naturalistically runs into a lot of "why" questions that, frankly, don't seem to have an answer, whereas the text itself supplies an answer: this is God's way of indicating that his people are set apart and different. The yeast is left out as a reminder of the uniqueness of the offering—it's not so much the yeast that's the issue; rather, it's that in taking the time to make unleavened bread, you're (1) paying attention to what you're doing, not just going, "Oh, yeah, and grab that loaf there that I made last week; that'll do for the offering," and (2) that God is not just another man; what you offer Him is different, as He is different.

    Looking for naturalistic explanations may be a dead end—many religious rituals cannot be reduced to simple responses to natural phenomena in any religion; attempting to do so simply betrays a bias against how religious belief actually works. Even if this did develop without divine intervention (which I of course do not believe), religious beliefs form in interesting, unpredictable ways; trying to reinterpret everything as being some particular outworking of culture and circumstance ignores human creativity and imagination as thoroughly as it does the possibility of divine intervention.

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  8. Leviticus could be called The Proper Care and Feeding of Your Deity.

    How did the complexity of Orthodox Jewish ritual evolved out of that?

    I found this interesting as well. The modern Jewish and Christian conception of God has indeed evolved quite a bit from the very physical conception we see in Leviticus. However, the sacrificial protocol we get in these three chapters is only the beginning, and we'll get more ritual complexity in the priestly content that follows.

    The deity of Leviticus enjoys pleasing smells. We get many mentions of "a sweet savor unto the LORD." This is often understood, along with many of the holiness rituals of the Israelites and other ancient near-Eastern cultures, as serving to attract and maintain the divine presence so as to continue to receive the deity's protection and blessing. It reminds me of the line from the Epic of Gilgamesh where Utnapishtim says "The gods smelled the savor,
    the gods smelled the sweet savor,
    and collected like flies over a sacrifice."
    (Tablet 11, lines 160-162)

    I highly recommend Christine Hayes's lecture on Leviticus to aid in understanding the purposes of many of the requirements in Leviticus. She points out that the concepts of holy vs. profane is completely separate from pure vs. impure. Something that is holy is made separate and set aside for God, while something profane just means common, ordinary, not set aside for a particular holy purpose.

    With purity, there is a further distinction between ritual purity and moral purity. Ritual impurity just means you are forbidden from contacting anything holy or participating in holiness rituals. You become impure through contact with certain things, it is contagious, and there are various ways of becoming ritually pure again. This does not imply any particular sin, that's the domain of moral purity/impurity. This distinction is often ignored by people who just want to mock religion for the ridiculous prohibitions in the OT.

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  9. @Bruce and anyone else in Chicago: is this the 11th plague, plague of snow and wind?

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  10. " it's not so much the yeast that's the issue; rather, it's that in taking the time to make unleavened bread, you're (1) paying attention to what you're doing, not just going, "Oh, yeah, and grab that loaf there that I made last week; that'll do for the offering,"

    Now I could buy that except that it strikes me as being the wrong way round. You don't take time to make unleavened bread - it's about as simple as a cooked foodstuff can be. You mix flour and water, possibly adding oil and milk, slap it on a hot surface and that's it. Bread. Takes about ten minutes. Leavened bread requires time, and care - attracting airborne yeast in the first place or saving a piece of yesterday's dough, getting the temperature right for it to ripen the dough, leaving it long enough to prove but not so long that it over-rises and falls down again, and then cooking it. I would have expected the offering to be the one that requires me to make a bit of an effort - same as the requirement that the livestock should be the unblemished one, not the scouring calf or the weak lamb.

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  11. So, Brian, what you're saying is that at this time the main job of the priests was to keep the altars burning with offerings so that God would smell the scent and stay present with the congregation? Interesting. I haven't gotten to Professor Hayes' Leviticus lecture yet - I'm still on the Exodus. That bronchitis really set me back! :)

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  12. @Brian - I'm in Indianapolis where we are getting a "potentially catastrophic" ice storm (NWS quote) - I'll take your 11th plague over this end of days scenario! :-)

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  13. @Brian
    I'm working in San Diego this week.
    No plagues for me!

    Is the tortilla from my fish taco unleavened bread?

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  14. Hey, Bruce--you are just south of me (I am in San Bernardino)
    I think that Leviticus shines as an instruction manual. I find it very tiresome to flip back and forth in A book that says "Turn to chapter three for step two and come back to chapter four" With Lviticus, you just open the scroll to the right section and read instructions from A to B. This is especially impressive when you consider how difficult it was to produce a scroll ithe first place.

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  15. @showinginterest

    I'm not 100% sure about the unleavened bread and whether or not the yeast would make it a better offering. The offering is really a heart issue, not a "how awesome is my offering" issue. Remember Cain and Able? I think it's clear that Cain was rejected b/c he had a heart issue, not b/c God likes meat more than vegetables.

    As for the sacrifices being unblimished...the purpose for the sacrifices were a symbol of something having to pay the penalty for another's sin. This substitution has to be (b/c that's the way God says so) blameless. This is all leading up to Jesus, we'll get there eventually.

    Just my thoughts on this, but I believe an offering is to remind one's dependence on God for sustenance and every day life. A sacrifice is to show that a person is repenting of their sin and understanding that they need God to cleanse them of this sin so that they might be with Him.

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  16. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  17. This does not imply any particular sin, that's the domain of moral purity/impurity. This distinction is often ignored by people who just want to mock religion for the ridiculous prohibitions in the OT.

    It's also ignored by modern Christians, who can apply any verse from any part of the bible, regardless of context, to any situation they wish.

    I've found atheists tend to read the Bible the same way Christians do, but in a reactionary manner. They still cherry-pick and ignore context. It's kind of inevitable- it's not like there is some popular secular hermeneutics.

    I finally noticed the difference between a "whole-offering" and a "shared-offering". Whole = the whole thing is burnt. Shared = part is burnt, part the priests get to snack on.

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  18. Reading the Book of Leviticus is reading the Legislation given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai.

    With that said...Legislation is written very technical. If you have difficulty reading our own laws here in the states front to back then those same reading difficulties could happen here in the 3rd Book.

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  19. @Matt33
    "As for the sacrifices being unblimished...the purpose for the sacrifices were a symbol of something having to pay the penalty for anothers sin"

    You are correct and i would like to also add that it's to be "unblemished" to keep the people from giving the weak and worthless of their flock. God wants the best and not the worthless. And also to set the standard that is required for the Messiah. Also notice they should do it with a willing heart. (Exodus 25:2; 35:5; 35:21,22;29;Leviticus 1:3;7:16;Ezekiel 46:12; etc.). This was not something that was forced on them. If you did not want to give then keep it for yourself. Also i think this was known as a freewill offering.

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  20. @Tom,

    That's a terrific point that I never thought of. I imagine any modern book of law would be much denser, more incomprehensible, and more repetitious than anything in the Bible!

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  21. @bruce,

    grammatically in the hebrew, leviticus begins with a conjunction as to directly follow exodus. thematically, it flows too––the instructions for the building and then the actual building of the temple come at the end of exodus, followed by the instructions for the israelites' worship practices, which deals with relating issues of ritual purity and moral purity; and distinctions between unclean, clean, holy.

    this people delivered out of egypt, constituted together at mt. sinai via the covenant. leviticus is the outworking of how a people in a covenant with YHWH should worship him and live holy (set apart) lives in the midst of the nations (missional intent from gen. 12:1-3).

    also take into consideration that the first 7 chapters of leviticus serve as a collective chunk and introductory section for the rest of the book.

    as you know from my email i don't wish to spam your blog, but i would recommend that you and all the readers get a good bible background/outline type book to read along. it would help give outlines of the books, themes, prominent literary devices, etc.

    i could recommend a few for those interested (don't want to spam the blog).

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  22. "I'm having a hard time imagining that these chapters aren't created by man."

    They are written by man, of course, so this is a good point to talk about the doctrine of inspiration. In Islam it is believed that Allah dictated the Qur'an word-for-word but the Westminster Confession (1.2.6) sums it up this way regarding Christians: "all the books of the Old and New Testament are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life" and that "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word of our hearts." The scriptural proofs of the authority and infallibility of Scriptures are the following: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:!6); "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son (Heb. 1:1-2); "which things we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches (1 Cor. 2:13); "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21); "look to the law and to the testimony" (Isa. 8:20).

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