Chapters 8-10: Priesthood, Part 2

Okay, so let's review: we know that the priesthood is responsible for officiating in the Tabernacle - overseeing and enacting the sacrificial rituals, maintaining the utensils and furniture involved in these rituals, keeping the fire under the altar burning.  We know the Tabernacle is supposed to mirror the divine order of Creation, representing and hosting the kavod Adonai among the Israelites.  In a word, the priests' job is order: doing the right thing at the right time with the right stuff.  And we know that through this, the priests themselves are a part of demonstrating YHWH's holiness before the people.  Let's pick up some of these pieces and look at them more closely.

III.  The Function of the Priesthood
      Who exactly are the priests?  In the ancient world, priests existed as a class or profession whose job it was to serve God by mediating between the divine and human realms.  Israelite priests were defined even more specifically: the sons of Aaron and tribe of Levi, in varying roles, were to be set apart for this special vocation as YHWH had commanded them.  You don't just get to decide to be a priest.  And you don't get to decide not to be one.  You either are, or you aren't.
      And if you are, you are a part of a specifically defined hierarchy (reinforcing the Levitical theme of separation, don't misunderstand "hierarchy" to mean privilege or superiority - in Leviticus, hierarchy means divisions of people and things into specific classes or responsibilities.  "Higher" is not equal to more desirable, nor is "lower" inferior) - there are strict rules on who you can and cannot marry, what you are to wear, how you care for and mourn your dead.  And in a conscious parallel with other "set apart" things - the Tabernacle, the altar, sacred animals, etc. - only the priests and the Tabernacle are anointed with the "oil of anointing."  The priest is essentially the human counterpart of the Tabernacle.  In addition to their role of officiating in the sacrificial ritual, priests also acted as prophets/advisors from time to time, and taught the people regarding ritual matters.
      All of these tasks are essentially concerned with delineating the realm of the holy, distinguishing between the hol (the common, everyday) and the kodesh (what is holy, or sacred).  The job of the priests was to maintain God's holiness by maintaining the order of the sacred culture - just as God ordered Creation, the priests were supposed to keep the order of the Tabernacle (the microcosm of the world as it was supposed to be, remember?)

IV.  Chapter 10 - "Outside Fire" and The Bible's Views of Leadership
      So here we are.  What to do with chapter 10.  Let's start by looking more carefully at some of those linguistic cues I mentioned last time:

• v1, "outside fire" - in Exodus 30.9 we read, "You are not to offer-up upon it (the altar) any outsider's smoking-incense, either as offering-up or as grain gift."  Commentators have ideas about why this "outside fire" might have been offensive (for example, maybe it refers to incense borrowed from pagan sacrificial rights), but we're not really sure what it means.  What is clear, and what we can assume Nadav and Avihu knew, is that incorrect or unauthorized incense was prohibited. 
• v1, "such as he had not commanded them" - no fewer than twelve times do we hear the refrain "as YHWH had commanded him" or a variation of it in chapters 8 and 9.  This affirmation leaves no doubt in the minds of the listeners that all of the things that were done regarding the consecration of the priests and their officiation were according to divine command and not the custom or convention of humans.  For the newly-installed priests to immediately enact an offering that was not according to divine command was essentially to unravel this notion and suggest that the priests did not act on behalf of YHWH but in the place of YHWH. 
• v1, "brought near" - too near?  Perhaps they took their outside-fire too far into the inner sanctum (cf. 16.1-2), and were unprepared for an encounter with the electric presence of YHWH.  Remember that fence around the power plant?  Can we imagine that maybe their resulting deaths were less an instance of punishment by divine wrath than the natural consequence of disrespecting danger - like sticking your finger in an outlet? Or could it be a statement about the consequences of disorder?  Maybe order vs. disorder is the equivalent of live vs. death.   Maybe it really is that important. 
• v2, "and fire went out from the presence of YHWH" - just two verses earlier this exact phrase tells of a positive instance of divine fire that came out and completed the sanctifying of the sanctuary/priesthood (9.24).  The presence of YHWH can be either a blessing or a curse - what will it be?  Whatever else it is, YHWH's presence is not safe.
• v3, "through those permitted-near to me, I will be-proven-holy, before all the people I will be-accorded honor!" - finally, this is the closest we get to an explanation: God's holiness was to be established through correct performance of his commands by those called upon to perform them. Another one of those phrases we heard over and over again is that the priest "brings near" the offerings "before the presence of YHWH" to be seen by YHWH.  The result is that "YHWH will make-himself-seen by you" (9.4, 6) "before the entire people" (9.23; 10.3).  Mediation.  The priests either mediate YHWH's presence to the people the way that they are supposed to, or they're out of a job.

So the bottom line seems to be that God's holiness is at stake in the leadership of God's people.  The biblical account does not tell us exactly why Nadav and Avihu's actions were offensive; we are only told that what is prescribed is legitimate, and what is not is sacrilege.  Priests who adhere to the regulations of their office and protect the purity of the sanctuary sanctify God; in turn, the sanctuary is favored by God's presence.  When they flout God's will, it is a matter of life and death - sacrilege evokes a spontaneous, electric response. 

      This is consistent with a stringent view of leadership in other parts of the Bible - in Lev 22 Moshe is reminded that failing to properly conduct the sacrificial ritual is to profane his holy name; "You are to keep my commandments, and observe them ... that I may be hallowed amid the children of Israel" (31-33).  And in Numbers 20, Moshe and Aharon's failure to "have-trust in me, to treat-me-as-holy before the eyes of the Children of Israel" means that they will not be able to enter the promised land.  If that doesn't seem fair, it should serve to remind us that when God's holiness is at stake, the stakes don't get any higher.  We might also ask ourselves, "What if the consequences weren't this severe?"  What would that say about God's holiness and what is required for sinful humans to host his electric presence? 

Finally, we're supposed to pay attention to beginnings and endings, so how might the scene at the end of the chapter (vv16-20) inform the scene at the beginning of the chapter?  Moshe becomes angry with Elazar and Itamar (again, two of Aharon's sons in case you missed the parallel) because he believes they have taken another misstep - except this time they're still alive.  What's different?   

      In the first place, there seem to be two legitimate ways this sacrifice could have been done (cf. 6.17-23 vs. 9.15).  Maybe there was confusion about which one was supposed to have been observed at the time, and either way was acceptable.  Secondly, maybe our cue once again lies in "brought-near ... before the presence of YHWH."  Aharon recalls the last time someone tried to "bring-near ... before the presence of YHWH" and says, "Really?  After what just happened, you expect us to choose the riskier option when this other one seems perfectly acceptable?  I don't think so.  How am I supposed to know if it would have been good in the eyes of YHWH??" (my paraphrase).  And Moshe relents.

      Whether Aharon's other sons are supposed to serve as our model of priestly piety or they were just lucky enough to have learned their lesson the first time, they choose to err on the side of caution.  They are overly cautious about approaching the holy place, in contrast to the extreme in-caution of Nadav and Avihu.  And this level of respect demonstrates a desire to sanctify YHWH's name rather than be sanctified themselves.  And so they lived. 

For next time, read chapters 11-15: Purity and Pollution, Part 1

*If you are able to obtain it, Joseph Klawans' essay, "Concepts of Purity in the Bible," published as an appendix in the Jewish Study Bible, will be very helpful for this topic.  

      

  

Chapters 8-10: Priesthood, Part 1

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre, 

Observe degree, priority and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office and custom, in all line of order.

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark, what discord follows!

Troilus and Cressida, Act I, scene 3

...And YHWH spoke to Moshe, saying:
Take Aharon and his sons with him,
the garments and the oil for anointing, 
the bull for the hattat-offering, the two rams and the basket of matzot;
and the entire community, assemble at the entrance to the Tent of Appointment.
Moshe did as YHWH had commanded him...


...Now Aharon's sons, Nadav and Avihu, took each-man his pan,
and, placing fire in them, put smoking-incense on it, 
and brought-near, before the presence of YHWH, outside fire,


such as he had not commanded them.


And fire went out from the presence of YHWH
and consumed them, so that they died,
before the presence of YHWH.

.............................................................................................................................

"Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows..."  Our text for today has some hard words.  This has been the most difficult lesson for me to prepare so far, and I can't quite put my finger on why - it's not for lack of subject matter, or time, or interest, but every time I thought about sitting down to work on it I had this feeling like I was facing a wall I was supposed to figure out how to scale, or catching fireflies and trying to make them into a Lite Brite. So naturally, I put it off all week until it was the night before our study and couldn't possibly be avoided any longer.

I think maybe the reason for my procrastination is the great looming WHY?? of chapter 10 - why do these guys get annihilated and we only get three verses to read about it?  I felt like I had to come up with an answer, but the deeper I dug the more I realized that no one who has asked this question has really found an answer.  What's more, it's not particularly bothersome to me that they get killed - full disclosure about my basic lack of pity here.  They must have deserved it, right?!  It's good enough for me that God knows what they did, and there must have been a reason for their deaths.  Unfortunately, I knew that wasn't going to be considered a satisfactory answer in a room full of people with more refined moral sensitivity and compassion than I have.  I knew the kinds of questions that would be coming my way - "So is God not all-forgiving?  What did they do that was so bad?  God sure must be full of himself.  Some kind of career incentive that is!"

So here is what I argued (if there's anything we've learned at Duke, it's that everything is an argument - ahem - "thesis"): chapter 10 comes in a block of material that belongs with chapters 8 and 9.  Chapters 8 and 9 have to deal with consecrating the priests and preparing them for their service before the Lord.  We might expect, then, to at least find some clues in chapters 8 and 9 that can help us make some sense out of what happens in chapter 10.  Bingo!  Those clues are what I have to offer you.  Fireflies though they may be, it's a start.

I. Guiding Observations
      a.  These chapters introduce a shift from the prescriptive legal formulations you've been reading for the past seven chapters - what to do - to descriptive narratives of certain ritual events - what was done.  On the surface, this material about the installation of priests seems as though it would fit better at the end of Exodus since the content slightly overlaps and describes the fulfillment of what was ordained in Exodus 29.1-37 (the ritual through which priests are installed).  Why do you think it is here instead - after the consecration of the Tabernacle, after the introduction of the sacrificial rituals?

      c.  Note the parallel between Moshe in ch 8 and Aharon in ch 9 - Moshe, acting on behalf of YHWH, consecrates Aharon and the priests, then the priests put their new role into action by officiating a dedicatory rite on behalf of all the people, consecrating the Tabernacle and celebrating the entry of God's presence, kavod Adonai.  There's another parallel comin'.  

      b.  With an ear to what will come in ch 10, pay attention to refrains/similarities/repetition in the wording of the text, specifically these:

• "As YHWH had commanded Moshe" (8.9, 13, 17, 21, 29; 9.10, etc.)
• "Brought near (to be seen by YHWH)" and "Before the presence of YHWH" (8.26ff), which becomes "YHWH will make himself seen by you" (9.4, 6) and "before all the people" (10.1-3)
• "And fire went out from the presence of YHWH" (9.24; 10.1)

II. The Tabernacle

      I've been itching for the right time to talk about this, and I think it's finally arrived (although I couldn't keep from hinting at it here and there...).  Although this is largely the business of Exodus and therefore not the focus of our subject matter, to rightly understand the role of the priesthood there are a few things you need to know about the Tabernacle.  Actually, one thing you really need to know: The Tabernacle is a visual/ritual representation ordering space, time, and life, as a microcosm - a mini-cosmos - of the world, echoing the divine order portrayed in the Creation story.  There are three ways this ordering takes place (Leviticus likes threes):    

• Space is ordered through the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus
• Time is ordered through the festivals and yearly structure outlined primarily in Leviticus 23
• Life is ordered through the hierarchies of priests/common folk, Israel/outsiders, dietary rules/regulations, etc.

The Tabernacle is where stuff happens.  But more than that, it's where the stuff that happens takes on meaning that is greater than the actual event itself; everything that happens in the Tabernacle means something having to do with God's vision for being present with his people.  Somehow, through this one place, we're supposed to be able to see back all the way to the Garden where YHWH was present and separated the day from the night, the water from the dry land, the greater lights from the lesser lights; to see forward all the way to the holy city which "has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light ... and nothing unclean will ever enter it."  

      So in Leviticus, the Tabernacle stands at the front and center of keeping things separate.  These separations somehow are to mirror Creation, to mirror divine order, and therefore to mirror YHWH himself "before all the people."  And guess who was in charge of keeping things in their proper order?  Yep. You've got it.

I'll leave you to think about what might be at stake if the priests choose not to maintain these divine boundaries as they go about their business.  We'll continue the conversation next time by probing a bit deeper into The Function of the Priesthood and Chapter 10: Biblical Leadership.

Chapters 1-7: Sacrificial Offerings - Their Ritual and Disposal

Sacrifice.

Is it possible for us - post-modern North Americans living in a mechanized-pasteurized-sterilized society - to wrap our minds around the sacrificial system?  What is the point of killing an animal on behalf of a human?  How can the God who creates life and forbids the murder of human beings (cf. Exodus 20.23 and 21.12) explicitly command the taking of animal life for ritual purposes?  And isn't it wasteful - what about all the meat that is burned, all the time that is spent, all the hoops that had to be jumped through?

But maybe it is precisely because of the seeming distance between our world and the world of Leviticus that we need to hear what it has to say.  When it comes to the sacrificial system, Leviticus shakes us out of any Christianized delusions we might have about sacrifice being something that is essentially voluntary, metaphorical, or spiritual.  Like it or not, sacrifice was a mandatory and tangible part of Israelite life, and whatever else it was I can assure you it was not metaphorical.  Sacrifice meant the very real taking of a life, and the direct participation of the worshipper in that act.

So setting aside our conflicted notions about whether or not we ought to be offended by this system, let's talk about The Function of the Sacrificial Cult in the Ancient World and The Purpose of Israelite Sacrifice.  We'll conclude with some observations that will give us some ways to think about appropriating the witness of the sacrificial system in our own context, which will hopefully guide us in future topics.

But first, a warning: if as you read these chapters you're tempted to find connections between Christ and the way that these systems foreshadow his work of atonement through death and resurrection, be careful to distinguish between fulfillment and annulment.  Jesus seems to have meant it when he warned, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Mt. 5.17-18).  He demonstrates as much by assuming Levitical principles in many of his parables and teachings - for example, in Mark 12.31 and Luke 10.27 (citing Leviticus 19) and Luke 4 (citing Leviticus 25).  The author of Hebrews likewise identifies Jesus' work as a reinstatement of the eternal covenant, not a glib "out with the old, in with the new!"  Finally, the eschatological vision of the completion of God's plan in Revelation 21 sounds an awful lot like Leviticus 26, with talk of God himself dwelling with his people and being the temple in the city, in which "nothing unclean will ever enter it."  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe we ought not jump too quickly to conclusions about what brought about the end of the sacrificial system and why it isn't practiced any more ... just something to think about.

I. The Function of the Sacrificial Cult in the Ancient World
      In this case, as in many, it's helpful to explore the broader cultural context in which Israel was situated.  Spotting similarities and differences between Israel and their neighbors might shed light on the meaning of a particular practice that is taken for granted in the biblical account.  In the ancient world, sacrifice had at least four main functions:

a. Restoration - a means of dealing with guilt over the taking of a life.  The switch from a gathering to a hunting society brought with it "the acute sense of having violated something essential in the cosmic order" (Fox), notwithstanding the fact that hunting was for food and not for pleasure.  The means of dealing with this guilt was to return life to the gods, giving life back for life taken, in order that life may ultimately be renewed (note this concept when we come back to the contrast of the unethical and unecological use of living resources in our "civilized" society).
      Furthermore, this giving back of life had to take place through ritual - by increasing the anxiety over taking a life (by making it a ritual process), limits are placed on both the frequency of killing and the anxiety surrounding it.  If you make a big deal out of something, chances are it will happen only when absolutely necessary.

b. Gift  - the worshiper brings something of value to the deity, setting it apart for sacred use as an act of thanksgiving.  The vividness of the Hebrew phrase olah or "offering up" to describe burnt offerings helps illustrate this concept - the smoke rises up from the altar to the heavens, where it is a "sweet savor."  The inclusion of grain or vegetable offerings as appropriate sacrifices, which obviously did not carry the same weight as animal sacrifice, probably figures prominently in this context.  Gift offerings were not altruistic, but acknowledged and invited reciprocal movement between the human and the divine - offered in response for some kind of blessing, these offerings expressed and established relationship between two parties.

c. Communion - it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to understand this one: in most times and places in history, sharing a meal has been a token of solidarity, companionship, celebration, or any number of other social functions.  By bringing food offerings to the deity, the worshipper acknowledged the cementing of relationship and mutual involvement; human and divine life were inextricably related.

d. Atonement/Expiation - communal or individual sin is purged through the act of sacrifice as a symbol of substitution for the life of the sinner.  The fact that the animals permitted in the Bible for sacrifice are pastoral and frequently used metaphorically for the Israelites themselves (cf. Isaiah 53.6, Psalm 100.3, to name a just a couple) comes to the forefront here.  Note also the illustration of this type of sacrifice at the end of the Flood story, where we read for the first time of God accepting animal life in place of human life (Gen. 8.20-22ff).  Not coincidentally, this is also the first we hear of God allowing the eating of meat, and it is directly linked to the ritual of sacrifice.

II.  The Purpose of Israelite Sacrifice
      In a nutshell, the sacrificial system functioned within Israel to maintain or repair the relationship between God and Israel through a combination of the above rationales.  We read of the olah offering, which does not deal with sin but is a sort of plea for God's acceptance and attention.  The shalom offering could be understood as a sort of combination of gift and communion, responding to and cementing relationship between the worshipper and God.  The hattat offering, the "de-sin offering," is the purification offering to decontaminate the sanctuary and individuals.  And the asham offering, or "reparation offering," deals with either the feeling or recognition of guilt, especially in cases of unintentional wrongdoing. 

About that: in the Bible, sacrifice for the sake of atonement is almost always in reference to unintentional sins, whereas deliberate wrongdoing may not be atoned for in this system.  You may have noticed the repeated phrase, "when one sins in error" (4.1, 13, 22, 27).  What do we make of this?  How is it your fault if you didn't mean to do it?  This will come under closer inspection as we explore the concepts of purity and holiness, but the Levitical concept of sin carries a very real, tangible acknowledgment of sin as something that is a liability.  Guilt does not always mean a moral trespass, but something more like a build-up of impurity that happens over time in the natural course of life.  For Leviticus, the world of life-after-Genesis-3, guilt is simply the result of being human, of being not-God.  And if we want to have any part in hosting God's presence again, it's something that simply has to be dealt with.

III. Reconciliation Through - Slaughter?!?
      There's no denying that Leviticus affects us at a visceral level.  It is one thing to talk about what happened in the ritual, and what it might have meant and why, but I have a hard time understanding how the taking of a life works to protect and restore life.  Really?  Is it not a direct contradiction?  I would venture to guess that most of us think of ritual sacrifice as morally questionable, aesthetically offensive, or both.

But consider our mechanized and mass-produced meat industry, where the killing of animals for food takes place at a remove from our consciousness and from our direct participation, in contrast to the sacrificial system in which the worshipper and priest alike are involved (cf. 1.4-5ff, "He is to lean his hand on the head of the offering-up ... he is to slay the herd-animal before the presence of Yhwh, and the sons of Aaron, the priests, are to bring-near the blood...).  The symbolic value of the act lay precisely in the direct consciousness of taking a life.  How might our own practices of slaughtering and consuming meat be altered if we were directly confronted with the reality that a life must be taken for the physical nourishment that is gained?  How might it affect the choices in our diet if there were no distinction between physical nourishment and the symbolic/ritual restoration of life?  How might it affect the land where these animals are raised, the crops that are raised to feed them, the economy that is based upon it?  How might it affect the global economy?

Anthropologists and sociologists also suggest that in societies where the practice and rationale for sacrifice has broken down (i.e., our own), there is inevitably an increase in intrahuman violence.  In contrast, the sacrificial system sets radical limits on the taking of life, recognizing the danger of being in proximity to the boundary between life and death.  In conjunction with explicitly forbidding the taking of human life (Ex. 23.13, 21.12), these limits include where one can slaughter and eat meat (17.3ff) and for how long you can eat meat (19.5-8).  We have all but erased these boundaries in our mechanized society - the only boundaries we recognize are the ones we ourselves create - we want slaughter (i.e, "processing") to be removed from our consciousness, and the timeframe in which we can consume meat to be entirely on our own terms.  "I'll have it my way," thank you very much.

I need only mention the documentary "Food, Inc." to call into question our derogation of the sacrificial system in contrast to our "civilized" society, but this is a topic to be explored in more depth later on.  For now, take good note that the sacrificial system works in tandem with the purity/food laws to order all of life as sacred space.  It is only on the basis of the sacrificial system that we can approach Section II, Ritual Pollution and Purification.  First however, we need to know who is responsible for maintaining the boundaries between the holy and the common...

For next time, read chs 8-10: Installation of Priests and Systems Failure

Charting the Course

Outlining any biblical text is essentially a superficial exercise, in that there are multiple ways of organizing the given content and no one schema ought to be considered definitive.  That said, here is a rough sketch of the content of Leviticus that I find helpful, and that will inform our journey:

I.  The Sacrificial Cult: Chs 1-10
1-7          Sacrificial Offerings: Their Ritual and Disposal
8-9          The Installation of the Priests
10            Systems Failure

II.  Ritual Pollution and Purification: Chs 11-17
11            Forbidden and Permitted Foods (Transition)
12-15       Pollution from Bodily Fluids and Skin Disease
16            Purifying the Sanctuary and the High Priest
17            On the Shedding of Animal Blood

III.  Holiness: Ch 18-27
18            Pollution from Forbidden Unions: Defining the Family (Transition)
19.3-4      Frame at Beginning
19-20       Holiness in Public/Private Behavior
21-22       Holiness in Priestly Behavior
23            Holiness in the Calendar
24            Miscellaneous
25            Regulations Concerning Land and Slaves
26.1-2      Frame at End
26.3-46    Holiness Confirmed or Denied: The Blessing and the Curse
27            Assessments for the Priests: Appendix

I cannot stress enough the importance of reading the text yourself.  Find a translation you like (I'll be reading Fox's The Five Books of Moses, which beautifully maintains the structure and phrasing of the Hebrew), and read it slowly, one section at a time.  Read with the overall picture in mind, the entire book in one sitting.  Read it more than once.

As you read,
- pay attention to beginnings and endings.  What happens in chapter 1, and chapter 27 (or 26)?  How does a particular chapter, scene, or section begin and end?
- listen to repeated phrases, like "I am the Lord your God."  When do they show up, and what contexts are they used in?  Do they always have the same effect, carry the same weight?  Imagine you are receiving these words not on the page but orally - what effect do you think it would have the first, the fifth, the twentieth time you heard that phrase?  What are the points of contact that hearing a particular phrase would recall, or the connections it would suggest?
- look for connections, not explanations; why is the text arranged in the order that it is?  Is there something about the story at the end of chapter 10 that can help us understand the story at the beginning?  Why does certain material show up in the places that it does?

I do hope you'll be reading along with us as we journey; I promise you'll have a much better trip!

For our next session, read chapters 1-7: Sacrificial Offerings - Their Ritual and Disposal

Introduction, Part 3

Context.  Genre.  Narrative.  Theology?

I don't know about you, but "theology" is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Leviticus.  Legal codes? yes.  Instructions? yes.  Odd stories? sure.  But if we want to talk about theology, surely we would be better served to turn somewhere else - right?

But what is theology, after all?  Is it not the study - the -ology, logos, the speaking of or about - the Theos - God?  Do we really mean to say that Leviticus isn't about God, isn't about how all readers, in all times and places, can understand and relate to this God?

But what if we don't understand?  What if the way that Leviticus does theology is so foreign, so other, so far-removed from our way of thinking that we can't see through the layers of language to understand what it really means? 

Then that, my friends, is when the fun begins.

I.  Theological Thinking
The theological thinking that informs Leviticus as a whole and should therefore underlie our thinking about it is a sort of symbol system, a right-brained, associative/analogical way of thinking (if you can never remember which side of the brain is which, and I never can, right-brainers are the creative artsy types.  I think).  Maybe this is why it might not seem much like theology to us, who are accustomed to sequential, linear, discursive ways of thought in all things having to do with -ology.  But is that really the only way of thinking logically?  What if it were more like a web of thought, in which the whole couldn't be understood from any single point, and the sum is greater than the parts?  What if there was something too great to be described with words, but we could instead use words to recall images that communicate at least something about the mystery?  What if it were like, as George Herbert exclaims, a constellation - "Oh that I knew how all Thy lights combine / And the configurations of their glorie! / Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine / But all the constellations of the storie."*  This is what Leviticus does.  Maybe I should have warned you to be sure and stretch instead of buckling your seat belts, because if you really want to learn the language it's going to give your brain one heck of a workout.

II. Symbol Systems
But in a sense, we already know how to think this way.  The religious life is essentially symbol-laden, one in which we rely on symbols whenever we are approaching something too big to be explained in rationalistic terms.   This is what we do when we hold up bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ.  This is what we do when we come through the waters of baptism into a new family, a new community, a new birth.  This is what we do when we look to the cross as the locus of our salvation, sing about "the blood of Jesus shed for me," and talk about the Word becoming flesh and making his dwelling - yes, tabernacling (sound familiar?) -  among us.  The language of Leviticus is precisely what we do when what we want to say cannot be said.

The particular unspeakable that Leviticus is treating is our question of how it is possible for a holy God to be present - to tabernacle - among a sinful people.  We cannot pretend that something didn't go wrong back in Genesis 3, that things are as they should be.  The God who walked in the garden is also the God whose presence at Sinai requires three days of preparation, of washing and readying, of boundary-fixing, who comes with thunder-sounds and lightning, a heavy cloud and the sound of the shofar (Ex 19ff). This is the God whose kavod Adonai fills the Dwelling so that even Moshe could not go in, who wipes out three thousand people when they make their own gods (Ex 32), whose fire goes out and consumes priests who bring the wrong kind of fire (Lev 10).  But just as we cannot go back to the Garden and those cool morning walks, neither can we escape the loneliness, the loss, the longing.  Even if this is a holiness that cannot be contained, maybe it can be - hosted?  Maybe the Tabernacle can become a Garden.

So Leviticus sets to work on this task of delineating the concrete behaviors that are required to host holiness through 2 Symbol Systems, distinct yet related: the Sacrificial Cult and Purity Regulations.  Both are aimed at acknowledging God in a very material way - honoring God through our bodies, through the crops that we grow and eat and wear and build our houses with, through the bodies of the animals that we raise, use, and eat.

Symbols, however, have a way of changing shape - or changing the shapes that they make us think of.  The cross certainly meant something different in first century BCE Rome than it meant during the crusades or in Auschwitz or at the little white Baptist church down the road.  Which brings us back to our Question: How do we understand the witness of the biblical text, and how do we appropriate that witness for ourselves?

III. Conclusion
So if Leviticus has everything to do with theology, yet insists that this theology be worked out in material, tangible ways, then we are safe to say that the essence of Israel's holiness lies precisely in that steady, material acknowledgment of God that Leviticus outlines.  Leviticus belongs at the center of Torah to remind us that there is nothing abstract about holiness - if we read 19.18 just exactly the way it is written,"you shall love your neighbor," ought rather to be, "you shall act lovingly toward your neighbor" (read more about that here).  Holiness has hands and feet, and moves about in the space and time that shapes our daily, material lives.  

The point then, is this: Leviticus is a kind of symbol system that is a language, designed to make far-reaching and carefully nuanced statements about how the people of God embody and enact holiness. We would do well to bear this in mind as we either 1) Dismiss Leviticus and the Jewish practices it prescribes as ridiculous, or 2) Engage potentially controversial Levitical issues in the church. We must ask ourselves, "Do we understand this language well enough to engage in the conversation, or are we picking out a few phrases like tourists from a phrase book?" Or as Herbert concludes,

Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,

           And comments on thee: for in ev'ry thing

          Thy words do finde me out, & parallels bring,

And in another make me understood.

          Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse:

         This book of stares lights to eternall blisse.

- George Herbert, "The Holy Scriptures II" from The Temple (1633)

Introduction, Part 2

I. Why Study Leviticus, or, What does it mean to read Leviticus as Scripture?

     So here's the lowdown: you have a direct stake in the study of Leviticus if any of the following issues have ever arisen in your faith community...

• The role of women in the church 
• Homosexual relations
• Divorce and remarriage amongst clergy
• Questions regarding ethical eating, land use, and animal care

Have you ever been a part of a conversation in which one of the parties thought they had a scriptural trump card, only to turn to one of the places where these issues are named and find that - it was given the time of day for all of one or two verses, and you couldn't figure out how we got from beard trimming to prostitution?  Why even mention it at all?

And what about all the trouble Leviticus has caused - or, rather, the trouble we've caused in our varied understandings and mis-understandings of it?  Consider, for example...

• Much of Paul's address to the early church involved controversy between Jewish Christians and other Jews over dietary regulations and purity issues
• Inasmuch as Leviticus remains a central text in Jewish communities, general Christian dismissal of Leviticus may not be unrelated to the long history of Christian theological anti-Judaism (note, I am not here referring to anti-semitism)
• The Jubilee legislation of ch 25 is arguably the most important and most overlooked civil rights passage in the Bible 

So what does it mean to read Leviticus as Scripture?  What does it mean to commit to the collection of books that we call the Bible - can we rightly privilege or neglect any of its parts?  What is the kind of theological thinking that informs Leviticus as a whole - how do we penetrate the strangeness of the language and content to see through the layers?  The question we'll keep coming back to is, perhaps, THE central question in any exercise of biblical interpretation: "How do we 1) understand the witness of the biblical text - on its own terms - and 2) how do we appropriate that witness for ourselves - are the systems that Leviticus offers us valid expressions of holiness in our life with God?

II. Getting Ourselves Situated: Context

     Let's think for just a minute about how Leviticus in situated within the canon we call Scripture: the third of the five books of Torah, which forms the core of the Hebrew Bible, apart from which the New Testament cannot be made sense out of.  You take out Leviticus, and Torah is shot through with holes.  Take out Torah, and the Hebrew Bible is unintelligible.  Take out the Hebrew Bible, and Paul's letters make no sense and Jesus was a babbling lunatic - from Genesis to the Psalms, through the prophets, Hebrews, and Revelation - at best it gets a little muddy and at worst, it's all gobbledygook.  If you're getting ideas about inter-connectedness, webs or concentric circles or pick-up-sticks or a Jenga tower, you're on the right track: and buckle your seat belts, because we are in for quite a few loop-de-loops on this ride that is Leviticus.  Shocking, I know.  We'll get to that in a moment.

III. Content and Structure

     Here it comes: the Genre Question.  Even before our questions about understanding and appropriating, the Genre Question ought to be one of the first that we ask - what kind of literature are we dealing with?  (Don't get all whacked out about hearing words like "literature" and "genre" and "text" when we talk about Scripture - all it means is that we're recognizing that we cannot read the Psalms the same way we read Revelation, or the Gospels the same way we read Colossians.)  If you happen to crack open a commentary or something similar, you'll probably come across what the author refers to as "P" - the Priestly source.  And who is P?  No one knows.  Possibly Israelite priests from antiquity.  But we do know what P is - a compilation, probably of various materials and sources, in which the vocabulary and interests are priestly, dealing specifically with details of ritual practices or narratives of sacred events.  As best we can tell, this compilation came together sometime around the 6th century BCE, when the Israelites had been packed off to Babylon and desperately needed a way to solidify what it was to exist as the people of YHWH in a land of exile.  In other words, P is concerned with theology and worship.

     Leviticus, as you know, follows Exodus: the Israelites have been delivered from Egypt, have received Torah at Sinai, the Tabernacle is completed and the cloud took-up-dwelling on it, and the Glory of YHWH, the kavod Adonai, filled the Dwelling.  Now what?  Well, now we learn what to do with the presence of God in our midst.  Now we learn how to stay alive while at the same time hosting the electric, dangerous kavod Adonai.  Now we begin to remember what it's like when YHWH is near to us.  Our book is situated within a long narrative extending from Exodus 25 through Numbers 10, "When the Tabernacle Stood at Sinai."  Do you remember what happened at Sinai?  God spoke to Moses, to the children of Israel.  By the way, the title "Leviticus"?  We English-speakers inherited that from a Latinized version of the Septuagint's Greek title for the book, which means "Book of the Levites."  True enough, but it's not just for the Levites, which the Hebrew title helps us keep straight: Vayikra means "And he called..."  God called, to Moshe, to the children of Israel.  This is God's address to God's people.  We ought - all of us - to listen carefully.

     Within Leviticus itself, we have two kinds of writing: short narrative blocks interspersed throughout long sections of law, or legal codes.  In this format, the purpose of the snippets of narrative is to provide the literary framework for the embedded laws and commandments - that is, a historical rationale and theological explanation.  Listen carefully to these narratives, pay attention to what comes before them and what follows, because their placement and context is about as much explanation as you're going to get - as Ellen Davis says, Leviticus' idea of an explanation is "I am the Lord your God. Any questions?"

     So if P is concerned with theology and worship, why does it include long sections of laws and regulations?  For us - assuming you happen to be a post-modern, Christian, Protestant reader - this is perhaps the most difficult hurdle to surmount.  Remembering that Leviticus addresses the question of how a holy God can be present with a sinful people by recalling the divisions and separations of creation, we find that the law is a way of delineating the realm of the holy.  In the theological thinking of Leviticus, these are not structures that impose constraint, limiting and stifling what would otherwise be blissful freedom - these are, instead, boundaries that protect life.  These are the fences around the power plant, the warning signs that say "Danger! Radiation Area."  And the three rails of this fence that delineates the realm of the holy are, 1) the Sacrificial Cult, 2) the Purity Regulations, and 3) the relationship between holiness and the ways that we use the created order - the land, the animals, the bodies, that sustain life.

Photo from David Hendin's blog, Sepphoris 2011

But why is this benevolent Creator-God so dangerous?  And why is the language of Leviticus so hard to understand?  These are questions for another day.

Introduction, Part 1

"It was a dark and stormy night..."; "Once upon a time, in a far away place..."; "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive were proud to say that they were completely normal, thank you very much."  Hmm.  That's not quite right. "Once there were four children, whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy"; "In the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth..." - yes!  That's the one.  We'll start there.

In the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters - 

God said: Let there be light! And there was light. 

God saw the light: that it was good. 

God separated the light: Day! and the darkness he called: Night!

There was setting, there was dawning: one day.

And God separated the waters above from the waters below...

And the waters from the dry land...

And the day from night, light from light...

And God created all living things after their kind: the swarms of the waters, the fowl above the earth, herd-animals, crawling things, and the wildlife of the earth - after their kind.

And God created humankind in his image (after his kind?), in the image of God did he create it, male and female he created them, and they were to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, animals, all the earth, and all crawling things that crawl about on the earth!

And all of these orderings, these separatings - these are the begettings of the heavens and the earth: their being created. And God saw that it was good, and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his work that he had made.  And God gave the seventh day his blessing, and he hallowed - made holy, separate-for-God - it.

Our story begins with distinctions and orderings.  It begins with separating, with setting boundaries and assigning places "after their kind."  And it begins with hallowing, that great setting-apart, separate-for-God-ing.  The beginning of our story is a vision of the cosmos in which space, time, and life-forms are ordered under the active care of a powerful but benevolent God, a God who would walk about in this garden he had made with those he had placed in it.

But then something went terribly wrong.  Something having to do with disorder and death and confusion, with loss of vision and ruptured relationships and - absence.  Gone is the garden, and gone is the God who walked in it.

Fast forward a book or two: the two have become many, the garden has become a desert, but the dis-ordered cosmos has begun again to take on a shadowy kind of order - maybe something like the mirages radiating off the heat of the desert sand - in the Tabernacle, the visible, ritual representation of the ordering of space, in the Festivals that order time, and in the priestly hierarchies, dietary rules, and sacrificial regulations that order life - that once again order Creation itself.  Do you know where we are yet?  "It is a world in which everything and everyone are to take their place under the perfect worship of a perfect God, banishing or avoiding death, defect, and disorder.  In the priestly view, the world is to be an echo of the divine order that is portrayed in the Creation story."

The Book of Separations.  The story of Concentric Circles, of Order vs. Disorder, of Life vs. Death.  The Book of Hallowing, of Making Holy, of Separating-for-God.  This is how the Israelites will know how to "choose life" (Dt 30.19) that will be "wisdom-for-you and understanding-for-you," so that they might be a great nation whose God is near to it, as YHWH our God (Dt 4.6-7) - as near as a morning walk in a garden.

This is the how-to on holiness and hospitality.  This is the vision of life in heaven-on-earth.  This is the answer to the absence.

But there's still just one small problem: it's in another language.

First things First: A Bibliography

The work represented here can hardly be claimed as my own, but is instead a condensing and re-presentation of a number of sources for which I claim absolutely no credit.  Rather than littering each post with what will likely become redundant footnotes, I list my sources comprehensively here as both a reference and a resource for you, dear reader.  Listed below is the entire spectrum of works from those I've used extensively to those I know to be useful but have barely skimmed the surface of.  It would be wildly exciting if you were to be so inspired as to purchase and read them for yourself - but whether or not you do, I welcome any questions you may have about particular references over the course of our study.

      First and foremost, the single greatest influence reflected here is the work of Dr. Ellen F. Davis, Amos Reagan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School.  Her lectures, delivered during the course of Introduction to Old Testament Interpretation at Duke Divinity School during the Fall of 2011, have provided the interpretive framework within which I've approached further study.  Any interest or insight I have regarding this difficult text is indebted to her.

• Berlin, Adele and Marc Zvi Brettler.  The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Berry, Wendell.  The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2002)
• Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
• Douglas, Mary. Leviticus as Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
• ______. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 2002) 
• Elliger, K. and W. Rudolph, eds. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983)
• Fox, Everett.  The Five Books of Moses: A New Translation With Introduction, Commentary, and Notes.  The Schocken Bible, Vol. I (New York: Schocken Books, 1995)
• Kaminsky, Joel S. and Joel N. Lohr. The Torah: A Beginner's Guide (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2011)
• Levine, Baruch A.  The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989)
• Matthews, Victor H. A Brief History of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002)

An Invitation

How would you like to get in on a little bit of this Leviticus-studying action? As you know, I have the opportunity to study Leviticus this summer (by means of leading a Bible study) as part of my field-ed requirements, and let me tell you, it is hard work.  Most of the time I feel like I'm flopping around in the water when I ought to be charting the course.  So I thought that as I work and re-work this material in an effort to make it at least partly palatable, you might be interested in taking the journey with me.

See, here's the thing: I know Leviticus is generally not a popular book for Bible studies or sermons or coffee conversation or, well, reading.  There are hardly any interesting narratives in it to at least keep the story moving along or give us something to "mine" a tidbit of moralism from.  And there is an awful lot of  blood and sacrifice and measuring and counting and do's and don'ts - "you put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in, and you shake it all about..."

But is it really just an ancient version of the Hokey Pokey - or hocus pocus?  I don't think so.  I wonder, though, if we were really honest about what we think about Leviticus - honest about how we don't really expect it to inform our reading of Scripture or strengthen our life with God, and the confusion we encounter in those rare moments when we do try to give it a charitable reading and find that we don't understand how it can possibly be "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" - I wonder if we might find that we've edged it out to those same margins right along with the hokey and the hocus.

But Leviticus remains, after all, Scripture - "the Word of God, for the people of God."  And Scripture is never interested in hanging out at the margins, weakly offering a dim glimpse into an archaic past that we've grown out of so we can look back and say, "praise Jesus!  Now we know what not to do!"  Jesus didn't think so.  Paul didn't think so.  And for what it's worth, I don't think so.

So as the central book in the Torah, which is central to the Hebrew Bible, apart from which we cannot understand Jesus or the New Testament or Paul's letters to many of the first Christ-followers who were so influential in shaping the life of the church, I'm here to make a case for Leviticus.  That may be overstating it a bit: I'm here to hold up the light, to clear away some of the dust and cobwebs, to "pass onto you what I've received" from people who have helped me see that even if I still can't fully understand what's going on here, maybe it's worth stopping long enough to stare long and hard at.  And maybe what we see will leave an impression on our hearts and imaginations so that we'll talk about it when we "walk upon the way, when we sit in our houses, when we lie down and when we get up," and in so doing we'll gradually begin to understand that it's less about our life with God than God's life with us.  Because that is what Leviticus has to say - how can sinful Israel - the sinful people of God - host the electric presence of a holy God?  

I hope you'll join me.