Well, this one has taken awhile but at least I’m doing two books at once. I was trying to schedule a podcast to come out concurrently, but I keep having to reschedule the guest. The content king’s is a sorry and thankless life, but we do it for the kids.
The Book of Leviticus is where the Old Testament starts to get challenging. We put a pause on the well-known stories and start getting into some granular regulations about how the Hebrews are supposed to live. There are some distinct focus areas for these regulations, mainly concerning how to prepare offerings and what to offer, what is ok to eat, how to identify and treat different illnesses, and how one atones for sins.
From the perspective of contemporary Christians, particularly interesting are the sin and guilt offerings. I can’t speak for Protestant denominations, but I know my priest has mentioned that people often ask how humans who lived before the time of Christ can gain forgiveness or find their way into Heaven. The answer is that Yahweh had elaborate instructions for how to absolve sin through ritual which he delivered to the Hebrews, mostly in the Book of Leviticus. Ultimately, such offerings were superseded by Christ’s sacrifice for all of mankind, and now a relationship with Christ and asking Him for forgiveness has taken the place of these earlier rituals.
“And the priest shall put of the blood upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense before Jehovah, which is in the tent of meeting; and all the blood of the bullock shall he pour out at the base of the altar of burnt-offering, which is at the door of the tent of meeting. And all the fat of the bullock of the sin-offering he shall take off from it; the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, which is by the loins, and the caul upon the liver, with the kidneys, shall he take away, as it is taken off from the ox of the sacrifice of peace-offerings: and the priest shall burn them upon the altar of burnt-offering.”
Even if we want to take a secular view of the Book of Leviticus, we can see that a lot of practical information is being transmitted. Perhaps this is a sort of folk wisdom about which foods are safe, which illnesses can be treated or are dangerously contagious etc. As I am prone to note, until the very recent past, ritual, superstition, and science were all one category of human knowledge and so the presence of real biological information alongside metaphysical claims and “baseless” admonitions is fairly standard. To compare this kind of content, here are two different passages from Leviticus.
“Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all fours, or whatsoever hath many feet, even all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination.”
“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman conceive seed, and bear a man-child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of the impurity of her sickness shall she be unclean.”
From the perspective of secular modernity, the first passage may contain some practical information. For instance, maybe humans had discovered that animals that “goeth upon the belly” are more likely to be poisonous and therefore should be avoided. On the other hand, the second passage dealing with “cleanliness” after giving birth appears like pure superstition. It’s interesting to consider why these two, seemingly different types of information, would be considered similar in antiquity. Perhaps if the only form of conveying information was a sort of informal oral tradition, the basis of nearly all claims was lost, and so they might appear equally unpredictable to the ancient Hebrew while a modern reader can imagine a rational basis for one and not the other.
There are also fascinating theories online about the precise nature of Yahweh, particularly based on this portion of the Old Testament. There are two particularly interesting heresies: the first theory is that the god of the Old Testament is actually the demiurge or in some sense Satan, and this is why he is acknowledging of other gods but forms a specific bond with the Hebrews. There is a sort of secular version of this heresy where the god of the Old Testament was an alien or simply a mighty creature, much more powerful than a human being who was able to perform minor miracles and bend the ancient Hebrews to his will. Ultimately, I don’t give any credence to either of these theories, but they are interesting ways to deal with aspects of the Old Testament God’s apparent character that are hard to explain or reconcile. If these things are interesting to you, you can read about the first here and the second here.
Many of the rules mentioned in the Book of Leviticus are challenging to modern readers, particularly because the punishment for so many things is death. In addition to things like murder or kidnapping, the death penalty was also prescribed for a number of sexual behaviors like adultery, incest, and homosexuality.
“If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
For non-Christians or non-theists, I can’t really defend these passages in terms they would find acceptable, but I will observe that modernity’s whole frame of morality can’t be reconciled with the Bible. I don’t know when this happened exactly, but a seeming premise of modern morality is that certain basic biological desires cannot be eliminated, only constrained or exercised in certain directions. I admire the practicality of this perspective, but again it’s not reconcilable with Christianity. The entire premise of a priest, someone who marries the Church, is that such a person will live their entire life without gratifying any sexual desire. I suspect that most modern people think to even attempt such a thing is doomed and dangerous, and certainly there is a lot of evidence to support this point of view. On the other hand, if even one person has ever been a true priest in the sense of sexual denial, then it is established that it is possible for a human being to never indulge that instinct. (shrug emoji)
For the record, since some may be wondering, I do have moments of regret with regards to my tattoos given the scriptural admonition against them. I don’t think I take it seriously enough to consider removal, but I certainly won’t get more. I think the prevalence of Christian tattoos is sort of weird and interesting, and I’d love to read social science about it, but I don’t think any of the modern Abrahamic faiths emphasize this particularly. In my time in the Middle East, certainly the most pious people I knew did not have tattoos, but there are many serious Muslims that have them, and some religious minorities (I’m thinking of Shi’ite groups here) seem to get religious tattoos in the same way some modern Christians do.
Now on to the Book of Numbers. As I’ve mentioned as a theme before, the Book of Numbers features a lot of doubt from the Hebrews, both about Moses and Aaron and Yahweh Himself. I am always confused and comforted by these mentions of doubt in the Old Testament. Confused because Yahweh has already performed a number of miracles for the Hebrews and led them out of Egypt, but comforted because it shows that doubt was a problem even for ancient peoples (I tend to think faith must have been easier in the past, and it’s nice to be reminded this wasn’t necessarily the case).
The Book of Numbers is important historically because it is during this book that the Hebrews actually arrive in the land of Canaan. Furthermore, the Book of Numbers also establishes the Tribe of Levi as the priestly caste within Hebrew society. I have gathered that there are still modern Jews who consider themselves Levites, interesting!
But let’s get back to the theme of doubt. Many have noted that it shouldn’t take forty years to get from Mt. Sinai to Canaan, in fact, it could be walked in a few weeks. The story of why it takes so long is the story of doubt, which arrives from many sources, but is always punished by God. There are a number of distinct complaints issued by the Hebrews during this period, each met with its own punishment from God. These are:
Complaining of hardship - fire in the camp
Complaining about food - struck with plague
Jealousy of Moses - leprosy
Hesitance to enter the Holy Land - forty years of wandering
Korah’s mutiny - sent to the underworld
Moses strikes the rock twice - Moses cannot enter the Holy Land
I think for contemporary readers, it is hard not to focus on the seeming harshness of these punishments. However, what is being established is that God always stands true to his covenant, even when his followers don’t, and after just punishment, the covenant is always re-established. This stands in stark contrast to the story of the flood, during which God gave up on man completely.
It’s important to understand that in some sense the Old Testament is establishing limits on the nature and length of punishments that may not have existed previously. In other words, these laws and punishments establish that sin actually can be absolved and recompense can be made for a variety of crimes or misdeeds.
I am also willing to grant scripture a sort of eternal relevance as well as relevance in its own time. A book that did not prescribe harsh, retributive justice likely could not have informed any ancient worldview because ancient people would not have accepted it. I know that in Islam, there is an ongoing argument about female inheritance. It is often noted by moderns that Mohammed recommends a smaller inheritance for daughters than sons, but the missing context is that this was the first law of any kind to establish such a right for female progeny in the Arabian peninsula. In other words, we should not just look back on this law from the perspective of full female equality, but note that in its time this established entirely novel rights for women (along with an end to infanticide). Again, I think the boundaries in the Old Testament are similarly establishing borders around the concepts of punishment and vendetta, which when left only to human instinct can become eternal and swallow everything.
Next week we will look at Deuteronomy and possibly Joshua as well.