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
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