A Comparison of Philo's Special Laws I with the Epistle to the Hebrews

I recently finished Philo's Special Laws I for my daily quiet time.  Yesterday, I moved on to Special Laws II.  Philo was a first century C.E. Jewish thinker in Alexandria, Egypt.  He interpreted the Torah in light of Greek philosophy.

Special Laws I largely focuses on the sacrifices within the Torah.  In going through Special Laws I, I thought about the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews.  In this post, I would like to draw some informal comparisons between the two.

A.  For Philo, the animal sacrifices are largely symbolic of the way that people should be, spiritually-speaking.  The sacrifice is a symbol for the person offering it.  The sacrifice is to be perfect, and that symbolizes how the person offering it is to be perfect: free from the slavery of human passions and appetites and clearly and rationally seeing God in God's beauty.  The offering of the sacrifice represents the worshiper offering himself to God.  Philo even calls a person's righteousness a mediator between that person and God.  Philo also says more than once that people need to approach God in a state of virtue, free from sinful attitudes (i.e., covetousness). 
 
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, by contrast, the focus is more on how the sacrifices prefigure Christ's cleansing of people.  Christ is the fulfillment of Old Testament sacrifices.  Christ also intercedes for believers as a high priest, one who knows their weaknesses because he himself was a human and was tempted as they are.

At the same time, one cannot take this observation in the direction of saying that Philo supports people saving themselves by their good works, whereas Hebrews is about God in Christ saving people by grace.  Philo acknowledges that God transforms people, which is an act of divine grace.  Philo realizes that even perfect people are not sinless, for nobody is perfect.  Philo states that there are sacrifices that bring about forgiveness of sin.  Philo knows that the high priest is an intercessor for worshipers, and he believes that the high priest is an intercessor, in part, on account of his virtuous life.

Themes like divine grace and forgiveness are not absent from Special Laws I.  It's just that Philo's focus is on how the sacrifices symbolize how human beings should be, spiritually-speaking.  Hebrews, by contrast, like much of Christianity, tends to focus on how humans are sinful and need a perfect sacrifice to bring them acceptance from God.  The sacrifice is not the human being, so much, as it is something perfect that brings salvation to the sinful human being.

And yet, the Epistle to the Hebrews does not limit its understanding of sacrifices to atonement.  Hebrews 13:16 states that doing good and sharing with others are sacrifices to God.  (I should also note that Romans 12:1 exhorts believers to offer themselves as a living sacrifice.  This can remind one of Philo's belief that many of the sacrifices represent people offering themselves to God.)  Hebrews also has ethical exhortations about doing good and avoiding evil, so Hebrews does believe in trying to be virtuous, as Philo does.

B.  The Epistle to the Hebrews has scary passages about apostasy.  According to Hebrews, one can get to the point where one cannot sincerely repent, even if one wants to do so.  One can sin willfully, which is different from sinning out of weakness.  In Hebrews, willful sin after a person has learned the truth results in there being no more sacrifice for sin for that person.

In Special Laws I, I did not see anything about apostasy.  Philo does talk about God's grace transforming people, and that stood out to me after I read John Piper's comments on Hebrews 12:14-17.  Hebrews 12:14-17 states:

14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
(KJV)

John Piper states regarding this passage in his article, "Has My Sexual Sin Made Me Unsavable?":

There came a point where God withdrew from Esau. This meant that Esau was so hardened in his heart that even his weeping in search of repentance was phony at the root. He sought repentance with tears and they were fake. They weren’t penitent tears. He couldn’t cry real tears of repentance anymore. His tears were not true. He wanted the blessing. He wanted the safety. He wanted the gifts. He wanted the inheritance. He wanted heaven. But he did not want God. He loved this world. He traded something infinitely valuable for a single meal.

When I read Piper's comments here, I wondered why God could not transform Esau in Esau's state of spiritual helplessness.  That is why Philo's statement about God transforming people stood out to me.

At the same time, near the end of Special Laws I, Philo takes a rather exclusivist stance.  Philo states that certain people should not approach the virtuous God.  Deuteronomy 23 excludes certain people from entering the congregation of the LORD: people with crushed testicles, or those born from fornication.  Philo in Special Laws I interprets this spiritually: God excludes people who are so enamored with their senses and their faculties that they forget God.  That attitude somewhat overlaps with what John Piper says Hebrews is saying about Esau.  The question would still be, however, if Philo believes that there is hope for such people, or if he thinks that one can arrive at a state of spiritual hopelessness.

C.  The Epistle to the Hebrews interacts with the concept of intentional and unintentional sin in the Torah.  In the Torah, there is atonement for sins committed unintentionally, but death for sins committed presumptuously (Leviticus 5; Numbers 15:27-31).  The Epistle to the Hebrews seems to draw from this concept: for the author of Hebrews, there are sins committed from weakness or out of ignorance, and these can be atoned for.  But sins committed willfully, and after a person has learned the truth and been enlightened, may not be atoned for.  See here for a post that I wrote on this topic.

Philo, too, interacts with the concept of intentional and unintentional sins.  Like rabbinic Judaism (Babylonian Talmud Yoma 86b; see here for other references), Philo in Special Laws I holds that repentance can convert an intentional sin into an unintentional sin, making the sin forgivable. 
 
D.  One can conclude that the Epistle to the Hebrews believes that the physical Temple is null and void after the coming of Christ.  After all, why offer sacrifices at the physical Temple, when its sacrifices could not really take away people's sins in the first place, and the fulfillment of those sacrifices, Christ, has come?  Why go to the Temple when Christ's sacrifice brings about forgiveness of sins?

One may wonder, though, if Philo, too, believes that the physical Temple is superfluous.  Philo, after all, thinks that the Temple rituals symbolize the spiritual life: becoming virtuous and seeing God.  If a person can do these things apart from the physical Temple, is the physical Temple actually needed?

Philo in Special Laws I still seems to believe that the physical Temple plays an important role.  He thinks that the virtuous priests intercede for the people.  He also believes that the Israelites offering sacrifices and giving offerings brings physical and material blessing to the Jewish people: they preserve them and help things to go well in their lives.  For Philo in Special Laws I, the physical rituals are important, even if they symbolize something deeper. 

Book Write-Up: Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus

James W. Watts.  Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus: From Sacrifice to Scripture.  Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Watts argues in this book that Leviticus 1-16 employs rhetoric to uphold the authority of the Aaronide priests.  Watts notes examples in the Hebrew Bible of texts being read aloud to the people, and he believes that the use of the second person in Leviticus is one indication that this text is intended to be read aloud to persuade the people using rhetoric.

The message and intent of Leviticus 1-16 is largely political, according to Watts.  Sin offerings were invented so that more offerings would come to the Aaronide priests, in a time when they lacked a royal sponsor and were suffering a dearth of priestly revenues.  The story of the deaths of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, highlights the serious (even dangerous) work that the Aaronide priests are doing.  Burnt offerings are often mentioned before other offerings because that would highlight to the people the importance of offering to God.  And the Aaronide priests are depicted in Leviticus 1-16 as the only people who brought atonement, or purification.

From a religious perspective, one that looks to the Bible for spiritual edification or enlightenment, this book is quite baffling.  I may be post-evangelical in many respects, but I still want to be edified when I read the biblical text.  At the very least, I would like to understand what the details of the Bible have to do with religious conceptions of God.  But Watts challenges this tendency within me and many others in a variety of ways.  Not only does he contend that aspects of Leviticus 1-16 had a political motive, but he argues that rituals often precede the interpretation that is attached to them, and that many writings of the Hebrew Bible attained authoritative status on account of the rituals within them, meaning that the stories and theological ideas came along for the ride and were actually secondary.  Watts also dismisses one scholar’s theological idea that the Book of Leviticus was about the healing of the world.

Is there a way to be theologically edified, while embracing Watts’ ideas in this book?  Well, maybe one can learn the lesson of supporting one’s leaders and appreciating the difficult work that they are doing.  From a Christian standpoint, perhaps one can apply what Leviticus 1-16 says about the Aaronide priests to Jesus Christ.  Watts in this book points out that, while many Christians have presented Jesus as the sacrificial offering itself, the Book of Hebrews is actually closer to the spirit of Leviticus 1-16 in that Hebrews emphasizes Jesus’ status as high priest.  Overall, however, Watts appears to believe that the goal of deriving spiritual or theological meaning from Leviticus 1-16 has baffled many.  Watts notes interpreters, such as Philo, who seek to interpret the sacrifices in Leviticus from a spiritual standpoint.

Watts’ book is interesting on a variety of fronts.  He discusses a variety of scholarly ideas about the Book of Leviticus, such as the view that Leviticus 11 has an environmental purpose for forbidding the Israelites to eat unclean meat (an idea that Watts rejects).  Watts also compares and contrasts Leviticus 1-16 with other ancient Near Eastern books of ritual.  While Watts notes some overlap, he also sees differences: the way that Leviticus 1-16 puts the commands for rituals in the mouth of the deity (which occurs occasionally and briefly in ancient Near Eastern stories, but not on the level that we see in Leviticus), and the status of the Torah, not only as a book of rituals, but as a religious book that is to shape the lives of the Israelites.  Watts also makes an interesting observation about how the Samaritan priests held that they were Aaronides, and Watts contends that this was pertinent to the attempts by Judean priests to form connections with the Samaritans.

I found the book to be a difficult read, not because the prose and the vocabulary were hard for me, but rather because Watts was throwing at me one pearl after another, and it wasn’t always easy for me to stay caught up.  There were also times when I was unsure of where Watts was going with his points.  He did well to summarize his main arguments in the course of his book, but that tempted me to want to go back and see how the trees related to the forest.

Phinehas and Corpse Contamination

Phinehas was a son of Aaron, the High Priest.  In Numbers 25:7-8, Phinehas kills with a javelin an Israelite man who brazenly brought a Midianite woman into the presence of Moses and the congregation of Israel, along with the Midianite woman.  This was when God was particularly upset with Israel because Israelite men were getting together with Moabite women and were worshiping Moabite gods.  Later, in Numbers 31, Israel is battling against Midian under God's command to punish Midian because the Midianites tempted the Israelites to betray the LORD.  And who went out with Israel into battle?  According to Numbers 31:6, Phinehas did.

But I have a question.  In Leviticus 21, there are strict rules against the sons of Aaron defiling themselves with a corpse.  Leviticus 21:1-4 state (in the King James Version): "And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people:  But for his kin, that is near unto him, [that is], for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother, And for his sister a virgin, that is nigh unto him, which hath had no husband; for her may he be defiled.  [But] he shall not defile himself, [being] a chief man among his people, to profane himself."  Did Phinehas defile himself with corpses by killing the Israelite man and the Midianite woman, and by going out to battle against Midian?  Would that have gone against the rules in Leviticus 21 against the sons of Aaron defiling themselves with a corpse (with a few exceptions)?

Perhaps one could argue that Phinehas killed the Israelite man and the Midianite woman but did not touch any corpses, and thus he escaped corpse contamination that way.  But, in Numbers 31:19, both the Israelites who killed Midianites in battle as well as the Israelites who touched a corpse had to purify themselves on the third and seventh days, which, incidentally, are the same days that people purify themselves of corpse contamination (Numbers 19:12, 19).  That tells me that one becomes contaminated by a corpse by killing someone.  

I have not yet found any Jewish explanations of this dilemma.  What I have read in rabbinic literature is that Phinehas in Numbers 31 was continuing the fight against Midian that he began in Numbers 25.  But I wouldn't be surprised if a Jewish source somewhere addressed it.  A while back, I wrote a post in which I asked how Samson, a Nazirite, could kill Philistines in battle, when Numbers 6:6 prohibits Nazarites from going near a corpse.  A commenter responded that, according to a Jewish tradition, Samson was a special type of Nazarite for whom that rule did not apply, and I later read that same point elsewhere.  Was there was a halakic way to justify what Phinehas did, within rabbinic (or later Jewish) literature?

Animal Sacrifice and Substitutionary Atonement

I read the chapter entitled "African Religions" in Ari Goldman's The Search for God at Harvard.  I'd like to quote what Goldman says on page 223 about how reading and learning about the Nuer tribe (which is located in the Sudan) helped him to "better...understand [animal] sacrifice in the Jewish tradition" (page 223):

"The Nuer helped me understand.  By learning about their sacrificial rites, I was better able to understand sacrifice in the Jewish tradition.  For the Nuer, sacrifice is a way of substituting one life for another----the life of the animal for the life of a man who is in danger of death because of either illness or mortal sin.  In the ritual, the animal is killed, the blood is poured and some prime portions of meat are given to the priest.  Then the family that brought the offering sits down for a festive meal...In ancient Israel and among the Nuer, they kill for forgiveness----and then they eat."

According to Goldman, the Nuer regard animal sacrifices to be substitutionary, in that the animal dies in place of the person bringing the offering.  As a result, the person is forgiven.  That's essentially the concept of sacrifice with which I was raised: that the animal died in place of the sinner.  I one time heard preacher Ron Dart say in a sermon that animal sacrifices graphically got their point across, for, when a person saw the neck of the animal get sliced, he realized that he should have been the one who died, not the animal.

But there are other ideas that I have heard about animal sacrifices: that animal sacrifices were not substitutionary, but rather the life that was in the blood (Leviticus 17:11) put life into the cosmos (resulting in fertility), or that blood was a decontaminant that cleansed the defiled altar with life.  On a similar note, the belief that Jesus atoned for our sins in a substitutionary manner is only one Christian view on the atonement, for there is also the model that believers die with Jesus and rise again as righteous people, and other models, such as Christus Victor.

Who is right?  I don't know.  Could the Nuer have been influenced in their conception of sacrifice by a substitutionary Christian model of the atonement?  On page 220, Goldman talks about how African religion has been influenced by Christian missionaries.  In Malawi, people adored an ancestor named Mbona.  When European Christian missionaries came there in the 1800's, Goldman narrates, people in Malawi altered their conception of Mbona, saying that he was born of a virgin, and portraying him as a man on a cross rather than as a warrior.  Goldman's professor, Lamin Sanneh, said that "Missionaries did not disrupt [African religions, but t]hey added another layer" (Sanneh's words, except for what I add in the brackets).

But, according to Goldman, the Nuer were different, for they were "an isolated tribe of the southern Sudan" and did not come under Christianity's influence, "Despite the broad swath that Christianity cut across Africa" (page 222).  And yet, while I am far from being an expert on African religions, I'm uncomfortable with saying that Christianity could have had no influence at all on the Nuer.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the Nuer arrived at the conception that animal sacrifice was substitutionary on their own.  It's not that much of a stretch to arrive at that conception of animal sacrifice: the Nuer (like others) could have believed that sin resulted in death, and that the way for them to be forgiven was through an animal dying in their place.

Jesus and Elisha Disregard the Firstfruits Law? Esther Violates the Passover?

In my latest reading of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon makes an interesting point about the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and the fishes in John 6.  According to Lee, Jesus and the people were eating loaves that were illegal for them to eat!

On what basis does Lee argue this?  In Leviticus 23:10-22, we see the law of the firstfruits.  On the day after some Sabbath that was soon after the Passover (Second Temple Jews debated which Sabbath it was), Israelites were to bring a sheaf of their harvest-firstfruits to the central sanctuary, and the priest would then wave that sheaf before the LORD.  Leviticus 23:14 states (in the King James Version): "And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings."  The wavesheaf ritual was associated with the barley harvest.  Before the wavesheaf ritual that took place soon after the Passover, the Israelites could eat neither corn nor bread from the barley that they had just harvested.

In John 6, there is the Johannine story of Jesus multiplying the loaves.  There are two things in John 6 that are noteworthy, in light of the law in Leviticus 23:10-22.  First, John 6:13 says that the loaves were barley loaves.  And second, John 6:4 says that the Passover was near, which means that John 6 is set soon before the Passover, not soon after it.  Jesus and the Jews in John 6 are arguably eating bread that's made of barley from the recent harvest, before the possessor of that barley has presented the firstfruits to God.  That, according to Leviticus 23:14, is a no-no.

According to Lee, how could Jesus justify doing something that was against the Torah?  Lee offers two answers, as far as I can see.  First, on page 117, Lee says that Jesus was teaching about a new age.  The idea here is probably that the old law does not entirely apply now that Jesus has come and inaugurated something new.

Second, on page 118, Lee presents Jesus appealing to the story in II Kings 4:42-44, in which the prophet Elisha multiplies loaves for a hundred people.  II Kings 4:42 states (again, in the KJV): "And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof."  Lee's idea appears to be this: Rather than taking the firstfruits to God, as he was supposed to do, the man was using them as food for himself, Elisha, and a multitude.  And Elisha did not condemn the man for failing to present his firstfruits before God, but rather he proceeded to multiply the food.

I heard a similar idea in an adult ed class that I took on the Book of Esther.  In Esther 3:12, we read that the King of Persia's scribes on the thirteenth day of the first month (which is identified as Nisan in v 7) write the decree about the extermination of the Jews.  In Esther 4, Esther proclaims a fast for three days for the Jews in Shushan.  Remember that the Passover is on the fourteenth day of the first month, Nisan (Exodus 12).  On the Passover, the Israelites are to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  Was Esther telling Jews to fast on a day on which the Torah commanded them to eat?  Was she disregarding the Torah?

I suppose that one can ask a lot of questions about these scenarios.  How do we know that the barley loaves in John 6 were from freshly harvested barley, rather than from barley from the previous year?  Was the man in I Kings 4:42-44 required to offer all of his firstfruits to God, when Exodus 23:19 commands the Israelites to bring the first of their firstfruits?  Can we really say for sure that the Jews in Shoshan fasted during the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, since perhaps it took quite some time for the decree to be promulgated after it was written down on the thirteenth of Nisan?  But, come to think of it, Esther would probably hear about the decree pretty fast, since, as queen, she lived in the capitol city.

Was Jesus consciously disobeying the Torah when he multiplied the barley loaves?  I vaguely recall reading in John Meier's The Marginal Jew that Jesus was not violating laws out of a conscious need to proclaim their nullification, but rather certain laws did not enter into his mind.  (I'm open to correction on this, as it has been a while since I read Meier.)  At the same time, there were occasions when Jesus put well being above ritual, even in John's Gospel.  Could that be going on in John 6?  After all, perhaps there is some reason that John 6 specifies that the Passover was near, which means that the firstfruits had not been offered yet.

Numbers 5:1-4: Different Law, Intolerant God?

In Numbers 5:1-4, God tells Moses to put out of the camp those who have a skin disease, those who had a discharge, and those who have become impure due to contact with a corpse, so that they would not defile the camp, where God dwells.  (I draw here from the language of the New Revised Standard Version.)  I have two questions about this.

1.  Does this contradict other laws in the Torah?  Granted, a person with a skin disease was to go outside of the camp, according to Leviticus 13.  But my impression from Leviticus 15 is that those with discharges did not have to leave the camp, but they simply washed themselves and were unclean for a period of time.  Regarding contact with a corpse, the law concerning that comes later, in Numbers 19.  There, I don't see anything about the unclean person having to go outside of the camp, but he is washed and performs rituals at the sanctuary.  I can understand why someone with a skin disease would have to go outside of the camp: No one knows when he or she will heal, and so, until that person is healed, he or she is ritually contaminating.  But someone who had a discharge or who touched a dead body doesn't necessarily have this problem, for he or she simply has to wash and will become clean after a certain period of time.

2.  The idea behind this law is to separate impurity from God.  Many Christians have appealed to laws like this to argue that heaven or the new heavens and the new earth will have to be a place without sin, for God is perfect.  Or many Christians contend that we need to be clean before God via atonement in order to stand before God in a relationship, and this law is part of that stream of thought.  Even some Christian universalists would say that people will need to be purified and forgiven before they can enter God's presence in the eschaton.  But, if God is so pure that he is not able to be around sin, then how did Jesus hang around with tax-collectors and sinners?  St. Augustine said that a righteous man is especially perturbed by the sins of others.  But was Jesus continually offended when he was hanging around tax-collectors and sinners?  How could Jesus even socialize with them effectively, if they continually offended him?  I don't know what went on in the mind of Jesus, but I think that he probably recognized that they were on an unfulfilling path and desired for them to live a better kind of life.  But I doubt that he was disgusted with them every time that they manifested their human nature.

Musings on Jeremiah 33:14-16 and Prophecy

At church this morning, the pastor preached about Jeremiah 33:14-16, which states (in the King James Version):

"(14) Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. (15) In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land.  (16) In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness."

The pastor was applying this to Jesus, but was it Jesus at his first coming, or Jesus at his second coming?  I don't entirely remember.  On the one hand, the pastor suggested that Israel's return from exile occurred in 1948, with the re-establishment of Israel as a nation, and I think that would coincide with applying Jeremiah 33:14-16 to Jesus' second coming----the exiles return to Israel in 1948, and several years later Christ comes back and rules Israel in righteousness while enabling Judah to dwell in safety.  On the other hand, the pastor also seemed to think that v 15's reference to the Davidid as a branch was predicting that Jesus would be a humble Messiah, not the conquering king that many Jews in the first century were expecting.  That appears to hold that Jeremiah 33:14-16 concerns Jesus' first coming. 

Perhaps one could combine the two views:  God caused the Davidic branch to sprout during Jesus' first coming, in the person of Jesus, and years later Jesus would come back and rule Israel in righteousness, save Judah, and enable Jerusalem to dwell in safety.  Speaking for myself, I'm skeptical about applying Jeremiah 33 to Jesus, for I think that what Jeremiah was saying was that the Jews would return from exile in seventy years, and then God would restore the Davidic dynasty and the Levitical priesthood (see vv 18-22, and Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10).  Even if you go the route of saying that the prophecy is consistent with saying that the Jews would return from exile under Cyrus, and years later God would re-establish the Davidic dynasty through Jesus, who would rule years after that, there's still the problem of what to do with the prophesied restoration of the Levites.  Don't many Christians believe that Christ nullified the Levitical priesthood?  Is that inconsistent with Jeremiah 33:18-22's prediction that God would not only restore the Levites, but that they would be before him perpetually?

Christians can probably go a variety of routes here.  First, they can say that God did restore the Levites, in Israel's historical post-exilic period.  But Jeremiah 33:18-22 appears to describe the Levitical priesthood as perpetual, whereas the historical service of the Levites in the Temple came to an end, as did the Temple.  Second, Christians can say that Jesus as high priest fulfills the function of the Levitical priesthood, and that Jeremiah 33:18-22 is symbolic of this.  I can't really refute that, but I do think that interpreting prophecies symbolically is quite arbitrary and allows people to read back into the prophecies their desired conclusions rather than allowing the prophecies to speak for themselves.  Third, Christians can say that Levites will offer sacrifices before God during the millennial reign of Christ.  Perhaps that would work.  When I read Jeremiah's prophecies about restoration, though, it seems to concern what Jeremiah expected to happen in seventy years, not something that would be partially fulfilled in seventy years, while other parts would be fulfilled later in the future.  But many Jews and Christians believe that the prophecies could be partially fulfilled in the past while also having a later fulfillment, and the reason has been that they want for the prophecies to have continued relevance rather than being an expectation on the part of Jeremiah that did not fully pan out.

I should note something else: Jeremiah 33:18 states that "Neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually."  So the Levites are offering sacrifices?  That appears to be inconsistent with Leviticus-Numbers, in which the Aaronic priests perform the sacrifices, while the Levites are responsible for transporting and guarding the sanctuary, and possibly other services.  Deuteronomy, however, does not present the Aaronides as a higher class of priests than the other Levites, and it just says that the Levites minister before God (Deuteronomy 18:7).  Jeremiah appears to agree with Deuteronomy, whereas Ezekiel depicts the Zadokites as the priests who will offer sacrifices (Ezekiel 43:19; 44:15).  Of course, I suppose that you could say that the Aaronides and the Zadokites were Levites (Ezekiel 40:46), which is true.  Still, it's interesting that Jeremiah does not explicitly distinguish the sons of Aaron from the other Levites, but rather says that the Levites will offer sacrifices to God.

I was intrigued by what my pastor was saying about the branch, for that made me wonder why the Davidid in Jeremiah 33 was called the branch.  Does it have to do with lowliness and humility, as my pastor was suggesting?  I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, for there was an expectation that the coming king of Israel would be humble----Zechariah 9:9 presents him peacefully entering Jerusalem on a donkey, for example.  But I think the passage probably means that there will come a king who will have Davidic ancestry, which means that God will restore David's dynasty.  In short, a branch will come from the Davidic tree.

Why Did the Person Who Recovered from Skin Disease Offer Atoning Sacrifices?

I've been reading Leviticus 13-14 for my weekly quiet time, and these are chapters on skin disease.  One question that comes up in my reading of scholarly discussions of these chapters concerns why the person who was being purified after having the skin disease had to offer a guilt offering and a sin offering.  Did he do something wrong?  In this post, I'll refer to two interactions with this issue that I came across.

1.  The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament----which is written by John Walton (of The Lost World of Genesis 1 fame), Victor Matthews, and Mark Chavalas----says the following about Leviticus 14:12:

"guilt offering.  This offering, better translated 'reparation offering,' is described in chapter 5.  It is generally offered when the sanctuary has somehow suffered loss.  It may be part of this ritual to make amends for any offerings that had to be omitted by the individual during his quarantine.  Another suggestion is that since skin affliction could at times be a punishment from God for an act of sacrilege, the reparation offering is made just in case there was some such offense that the victim was unaware of."

This comment mentions two suggestions.  The first suggestion is that the person who has recovered from skin disease is offering a guilt offering to atone for the offerings that he did not give to the sanctuary when he was recovering outside of the camp of Israel.  This did not make much sense to me at first, for my impression was that the average Israelite was not required to sacrifice a burnt offering-----the priests had to do so daily, but the average Israelite did so when he wanted.  But, on second thought, I recalled that there were things that the average Israelites were required to give to the sanctuary or to God: the firstborn of their animals, the firstfruits of their crops, tithes, sin offerings when they sinned unintentionally, and guilt offerings when they transgressed in certain areas.  Consequently, it makes sense to me that an Israelite who recovered from skin disease would have to make up for what he could not give to the sanctuary when he was indisposed.

The second suggestion is that the Israelite could have been struck with a skin disease on account of some sin that he committed, and so the guilt offering is designed to atone for that just in case that's true.  This is a rabbinic position----only my impression is that ancient rabbis went further and held that the skin disease definitely was God's punishment for sin, rather than just saying that it could have been a punishment.  Miriam was an example of one who spoke evil against Moses and was punished with a skin disease (Numbers 12).

2.  Jacob Milgrom in The HarperCollins Study Bible states the following about Leviticus 14:10-20:
"The final stage of his purification takes place the following day when he brings a reparation offering for having possibly desecrated a sacred object or space (see 5.17-19)...; a purification offering (not properly sin offering) for having contaminated the sanctuary by his impurity...and a burnt offering and a grain offering to expiate for neglected performative commandments or sinful thoughts..."

Milgrom is saying that the recovered person offers the guilt offering to atone for having desecrated a sacred object or space, and the reason is that Leviticus 5:17-19 commands the guilt offering to be offered for that sort of thing.  On a similar note, Baruch Schwartz in the Jewish Study Bible refers to II Chronicles 26:16-19, in which King Uzziah is stricken with a skin disease because he had entered the sanctuary to burn incense, something that only priests were permitted to do.  Milgrom is probably arguing that the person was believed to have been afflicted with skin disease as punishment for having committed an act of sacrilege.

I'd probably need to do a deeper study of the sin offering to understand Milgrom's point on that.  Milgrom says that the recovered person offers the purification offering (or sin offering) to atone for polluting the sanctuary with his skin disease----for a presumption behind the purity system is that ritual impurity travels from the Israelite to the sanctuary and contaminates it (see Numbers 19:13, 20).  Because the sin offering is commanded for unintentional sins, however----for unwittingly transgressing God's law----I wonder if and how that relates to ritual impurity, which pertains to things that appear to be involuntary (i.e., skin disease----unless you see that as punishment for sin, having an involuntary discharge, etc.).  I suppose it could in the sense that touching the holy while in a state of impurity is disobeying God's law.  Moreover, is the sanctuary defiled until the person with the skin disease gets better and offers his sin offering?  Is the sick person essentially holding the sanctuary hostage?  I don't think so.  The sanctuary is thoroughly cleaned of impurity once a year, on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), which tells me that it can still be used even when it has some defilement (though, of course, the defilement can't get too out of control, for then God would leave, and thus there is the Day of Atonement and little cleansings that occur throughout the year).

Regarding Milgrom's comments on the burnt offering and the grain offering, it would be nice to see more evidence that these offerings atoned for neglecting positive commandments or sinful thoughts.

Jubilees, Genesis 1-2, and Leviticus 12

In Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees, Lutz Doering has an essay on "Purity and Impurity in the Book of Jubilees".

Genesis 1 appears to present the first woman as being created at the same time as the first man, whereas the creation account in Genesis 2 says that the woman was created after the man and was brought to him.  According to Doering, Jubilees 3:8 attempts to harmonize this by saying that Adam and Eve were both created in the first week, but Eve was shown to Adam in the second week.  Why?

Doering maintains that Jubilees' use of Leviticus 12 is relevant to this question.  According to Leviticus 12, a woman who gives birth to a boy is unclean for seven days and is in a process of purification for thirty-three days, during which time she cannot touch a holy thing.  If she gives birth to a female, then her time of impurity is fourteen days, and her process of purification lasts for sixty-six days.  After her purification, the woman brings to the Tabernacle a burnt offering and a sin offering.  Jubilees 3:10-11 mentions this law about the purification of the woman, but Jubilees 3 holds that Eve was impure for seven days after her creation and then was brought to her husband, and that Adam and Eve were created outside of the Garden, as Adam was brought in after a purification time of forty days, and Eve after a purification time of eighty days (see Jubilees 3).  The Garden was a holy place, and so Adam and Eve needed to be pure before entering it.

But Eve was not a mother at the time, so how could Leviticus 12 apply to her?  Doering plays with the idea that there was an ancient Jewish view that Leviticus 12 applied to the child, not just the mother, which may be implying that Adam and Eve were technically children in the sense that God brought them into being.  But Doering finds that argument to be inconclusive.  Doering concludes that "Adam and his wife represent human beings (construed as Israelites) confronted with the sanctuary and become part of the life cycle entailing defilement" (page 263).  Moreover, Doering states that Adam and Eve in Jubilees become pure simply by waiting, for they don't bring sacrifices as part of their purification, as there was not yet a priesthood.  It's interesting what laws Jubilees thinks were applicable prior to Sinai, and which laws were not.  Because Cain, Abel, and Noah offered sacrifices, I do not think that the absence of the priesthood accounts for why Adam and Eve did not bring sacrifices as part of their purification.  Perhaps Adam and Eve didn't do so in Jubilees because animals were not killed before the sin of Adam and Eve.

Doering also talks about how Jubilees aims to keep sex out of the Garden of Eden, the reason being that sex was ritually defiling (Leviticus 15:18).  Consequently, in Jubilees, Adam and Eve have sex before and after their time in the Garden, but not during.  Doering mentions Qumran's prohibition on sex in the Temple city, and the ban in CD 11:4-5 and Jubilees 50:8 on having sex on the Sabbath, a holy day.  (Jubilees even mandates the death penalty for that.)  There is an attempt to protect the holy from the ritually defiling.  This stood out to me because I have heard that Judaism considers it a mitzvah to have sex on the Sabbath (see here).

Illumination of Scripture?

I've heard more than one Christian say that, in order to understand the Bible, we need to ask the author of the book----God----what he meant.  I find that sort of attitude to be arrogant, to tell you the truth, and I really don't give a rip if Christians are cloaking it in humility.  As far as I'm concerned, it's false humility.

Here scholars are, struggling with what the text means----they wrestle, they debate, and they cope with ambiguity, sometimes coming up with answers, and often concluding that we don't know 100 per cent what the text means.  And some Christians come along and dogmatically proclaim that some subjective impression that they have about what the text means is authoritative because it is from God.  What so many religionists fail to recognize is that they themselves are filtering the text through their own subjective lens----that they are prioritizing some things in the text over other things, and that they are reading the Bible in light of a larger theology, as they subordinate to that larger theology (often awkwardly) the texts that don't quite fit it.

So do I dismiss the notion that the Holy Spirit can guide people as they read the Bible?  I have a hard time doing that, notwithstanding the things that I said above.  There have been times when I have seen Christians force the Bible into their own theology and call that God's illumination of the Scriptures.  But there have been other times when Christians have found something profound and applicable in the Bible, and their insight appears to be faithful (or at least consistent with) what the text appears to be saying.

Moreover, can God use an interpretation of the Scripture that is technically not correct?  As I've gone through Leviticus for my daily quiet time, I have come across different homiletical applications of the rituals in that book.  I don't know if these applications are faithful to the Book of Leviticus itself----the Book doesn't even tell us a lot of the time what a ritual in question means.  Some may even question whether we should be looking for deep meaning in the rituals, since perhaps there are times when a priestly school simply copied rituals from other ancient Near Eastern nations, or maybe the rituals were just there and became part of custom and people later sought significance in them.  But, in my opinion, if a homiletical interpretation can encourage a person to love God and neighbor----to admire God's righteousness, love, and mercy, and to show kindness to others----then the interpretation is good, whether it's faithful to the text or not.

At the same time, I think it's also important to be honest about the times that the text appears to violate our moral and religious sensibilities----when the text does not appear to present God as particularly righteous, loving, and merciful, and when it seems to endorse behavior that is not especially kind.  Where to go from there, however, I am not entirely sure.  And, to be honest, I doubt that those who think that they're sure have answers that are adequate.

Small in Number, the Temple Tax and Offense, a Good Way

There were three issues that stood out to me in last night's Bible study at church:

1.  The pastor and his wife were talking about a religious retreat that they attended last week.  They met other pastors , and they said that most of those pastors led churches that were small, like ours.  And yet, the churches were quite active in their local community.  I thought that was cool.  In some of the religious groups that I attended in the past, there was a belief that a church should have a lot of people attending it, or it was a failure, and so the groups were ashamed that they had few members, as if they were displeasing God.  I don't think that it's wrong for a church to want to grow in its number of attendees, but I also believe that a small church can love and serve God, and make a difference in the community.

2.  We were really struggling with the story in Matthew 17:24-27, in which Jesus told Peter to take a few coins from the mouth of a fish to pay the temple tax.  And yet, Jesus did not feel that he had to pay it, for he was the son of the king (God), and sons of kings didn't have to pay taxes.  But Jesus didn't want to offend people, and so he arranged for the temple tax to be paid.  What's strange, though, as Michael Card (the author of our study) said in the video that we watched, is that Jesus had no problem offending people at other points, as when Jesus in John 6 told the Jews that people needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood, which sounded outrageous to people whose Torah prohibited them from eating blood (Leviticus 17:11-12)!

One person in the group never heard of the story in Matthew 17:24-27 before, even though she has attended church all of her life, has taught Sunday school, and knew much of the Bible.  She just never heard the story (and, come to think of it, I wonder when I first heard it----I'm thinking it was when I read Ellen White's Desire of Ages).  And this passage puzzled her.  She said that she paid taxes because she was required to do so by law, and there would be serious penalties if she did not----it had nothing to do with not offending people.  We talked about various possibilities----perhaps Jesus didn't want people to think that he considered himself better than others because that would turn them off, or Jesus abode by earthly rules because he wasn't trying to establish an earthly kingdom at that time.  We checked a commentary, and it said that Jesus did not want to encourage people who thought that they had to pay the Temple tax to violate their consciences, plus Jesus realized that many Jews at that time were not ready to hear the truth that he was superior to the Temple. 

These solutions made sense to me, on some level: perhaps Jesus paid the Temple tax for a practical reason----he didn't want to get into trouble before his time (i.e., his arrest and crucifixion).  But the lady in the group was not satisfied with the solutions that she was hearing and even proposing.  And that happens sometimes.  We can wrestle with the biblical text and not feel at peace with the interpretations that we read or hear.  This lady actually reminds me of myself when I do my personal Bible study: I ask questions, I seek answers, and I find strengths and weaknesses in the answers that I find.  Some answers set with me better than others.

3.  In John 6, many of Jesus' disciples leave him, and Jesus asks the twelve if they will leave him, too.  One of the questions in our workbook concerned whether or not we have ever felt tempted to stop following Jesus.  A lady in the group told us why she has faith.  She said that things don't always turn out as she likes, since God may want for her to do some things herself.  But she stays faithful because she feels that her religion gives her direction.  This made me think about my daily quiet time recently in the Book of Numbers.  I learned that, even though there was no chance whatsoever that the generation of the Israelites in Numbers would enter the Promised Land, on account of their lack of faith and rebellion against God and Moses in Numbers 14, they were still expected to keep God's law in the wilderness.  In Numbers 15, for example, a sabbath-breaker was stoned.

Is that a bummer----that this Israelite generation had to keep the Torah, even though it had no future or hope of reward?  I suppose that one could say that they should have kept the Torah to teach their children, who actually would enter the Promised Land, so that the children would be good priests of God before the nations.  And yet, I thought something else: many of the laws of the Torah are good laws, even if a person has no future or would not receive a reward for keeping them.  Don't murder and don't steal are good laws.  So is resting on the Sabbath.  Even if God does not give us everything that we want, perhaps we can still benefit from God's direction, for God's path has a number of decent points.  It can bring social order and make people happy.   

Hermeneutical Questions After Last Night's Bible Study

My church started its Fall Bible study yesterday.  We're going through A Fragile Stone, Peter: Jesus' Friend. 

I'm having a hard time writing today.  Maybe it's because I'm tired after seeing Barack Obama do so poorly in last night's debate.  I myself feel rather listless right now.  And, when that is the case, trying to say everything exactly right becomes a challenge.  So I'll grant myself some leeway in this post and just write what comes to my mind, whether or not it makes sense or is completely fair and accurate.  It will probably be like Painter Smurf splashing paint on his canvas and calling that art!

I've been having positive thoughts about Jesus lately.  One reason is that I listened to that Mark Driscoll sermon on Esther a few days ago----in which Driscoll presents Jesus as a benevolent king----and I was drawn to that picture of Jesus.  Then, last night at Bible study, I was thumbing through our course book, and there was a part of it in which Michael Card (who is the author, sort of) is said to have stated on the DVD that he feels more drawn to worship Jesus when he reads that Jesus served his disciples breakfast, than he'd feel if Jesus were surrounded by a host of angels.  That's pretty powerful, isn't it?  Jesus the servant.  It's an elementary concept, but one that I'm happy to be reminded of as I go through this Bible study.

It's tempting to embrace some form of emotional evangelicalism----one that accepts without ambiguity that Jesus was the Messiah and that the Hebrew Bible points to him, one that views the Bible as without error, one that seeks to harmonize biblical contradictions, etc.  As I was thinking about this last night, my mind wandered to how evangelical preachers I heard tried to explain the difference between a guilt offering and a sin offering in the Book of Leviticus.  I don't remember exactly what they said, but I remembered that, when I first heard their explanation, it sounded to me like a stretch----that it wasn't based on anything explicit in the text itself.  I wondered if embracing an emotional evangelicalism would essentially require me to check my brain at the door----to disregard that the writings of the Hebrew Bible are diverse and reflect their historical contexts, in many cases overlapping with ancient Near Eastern culture.  But then I thought about the importance of sticking with the text.  I don't have to try to reconcile the text with some faith conviction about it.  I should just let the text be the text.  But that is emotionally drier than inhabiting the world of emotional evangelicalism.

But then here's where things get tricky.  The text often is not explicit.  We were sensitized to that last night at Bible study.  The curriculum was asking us how we thought Peter felt when such-and-such happened.  The fact is, however, that we're not told how Peter felt.  I'd say it's fun to speculate, but one lady in the group seemed to think that it was idle to speculate about what we're not told explicitly.

But, in many cases, we almost have to speculate to get anywhere with the text, or to do anything with it.  For example, after Jesus in Luke 5 performed a miracle in which Peter caught a whole bunch of fish, Peter asked Jesus to depart from him, for Peter was a sinful man.  Why?  We're not told explicitly.  And so we went through different possibilities.  Michael Card's explanation was rather elliptical: he said that Peter was afraid of unlimited success, and so Jesus responded to that concern by telling Peter that Peter would be a fisher of men.  Say what?  Was Card suggesting that Peter feared that success would corrupt him----perhaps make him proud----and so Jesus was proposing service as a solution to that?  I'm not sure.  Someone in the group made the suggestion that Peter was afraid of having access to that much power, for Peter feared that he would misuse it.  And the curriculum also suggested that Peter felt grossly inadequate in the face of the divine----and I'd say that this does not necessarily mean that Peter at that moment regarded Jesus as God, but Peter could have recognized that Jesus was part of the work of God, and Peter was in the presence of that when Jesus did the miracle.  I thought that the group's speculation over this question was rather fruitful.  It's good to have ambiguity, because that makes discussions possible.   But it was speculation.  And yet, I'd say that there are some speculations that are better than others.  For example, saying that Peter felt inadequate in the face of the divine makes sense, for there are plenty of times in the Hebrew Bible in which people feel inadequate before the divine.  Luke could be drawing from that motif.

Here's an area in which my warm feelings about Jesus conflicted with my scholarly reading of the text: We were asked in the curriculum if we were willing to die to self and take up our cross and follow Jesus.  I checked that passage, and it was talking about martyrdom, then there followed the passage in which Jesus told his disciples that some standing there wouldn't taste death until they saw the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.  First of all, I wondered how that text could even be applicable to us, since we're not in danger of martyrdom----at least not where we are sitting (and I'm talking about those of us in that group, and probably most Christians in the United States).  But I did not ask that question out loud.  Second, I was reminded of the whole problem of imminent eschatology----Jesus appears to predict that the end was near, but the problem with that is that it's two thousand years later, and world paradise still has not come.  And third, I was reminded that, yes, there is the nice, warm Jesus in the Gospels, and yet there's also the fierce apocalyptic Jesus, who somewhat scares me.  Can I get over my aversions to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels?
In any case, this will probably be a thought-provoking study.  We'll see how it turns out!

Convicting or Encouraging?

For my post on preaching today, my topic will be the question of whether a message should be convicting or encouraging, or if it can be both.  A sermon that I heard a while back comes to my mind.

I heard this sermon over a decade ago, when I was visiting a Christian college.  The college was holding a conference whose theme was Romans 1:16, in which Paul emphatically declares that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  As I looked at the brochure, the conference appealed to me (for whatever reason), and so I took a couple of college days from high school so I could attend it, while also learning about the college, of course (and I did, since I got to talk with some of the students there, plus I took a tour).

At the conference, I was on a spiritual and a religious high, as I heard inspiring messages, saw a drama about the life of Jesus, attended interesting seminars, and (most importantly) sang beautiful, sentimental praise songs.  But there was one message that sort of ruined my spiritual high.  Actually, I think it was the main message of the event, since the brochure advertised the guy who gave it as the speaker.  This speaker was essentially telling us that the true test of whether we are ashamed of the Gospel or not will come after we have left the conference.  At the conference, he said, of course we're not ashamed of the Gospel, for everyone around us is unashamed!  But will we stand for Jesus Christ when we go back to our regular lives, when there are pressures not to stand for Jesus Christ?

I didn't care for the message, to tell you the truth.  One reason was probably that I didn't like my religious high being questioned----as if I felt the way I did simply because people around me felt as I did.  I mean, shouldn't I be commended for being in an attitude of worship, rather than being asked if that attitude was sincere and would last after I've left the conference?  Second, after a period of sentimentality and "God loves you" messages, the speaker's no-nonsense, confrontational (albeit not pounding-the-pulpit) style somewhat took me aback.  I didn't find this speaker's message particularly inspiring!

But, to my surprise, when I was eating breakfast at the cafeteria the next morning, what I was hearing was that other young people at the conference actually liked the speaker's message.  A lady was coming around to each table, asking us what we liked about the conference.  Someone replied that she liked the message from that one speaker, and the lady responded that she heard others say that they liked that speaker's message.  The speaker must have left an impression, for he spoke at the conference the following year, and (if I'm not mistaken) the speaker became a part of the campus' faculty.

What did people like about this speaker's message?  I didn't hear specific reasons that they liked it, but I'll hazard some guesses.  I think one reason was that he spoke with authority, and I've discussed the issue of speaking with authority over the last few days.  But another reason was probably that he was challenging people to live out their faith.  There are many people who want a faith that is real, and they like being challenged to go out there and to show their devotion to Jesus Christ.  It's like being in the marines----there are people who want to commit to something (or someone) greater than themselves.

I tend to be turned off by those sorts of messages, however.  One problem is that, when I'm told to do something for God, I fear that I'll do it wrong.  Another problem is that I can be rather timid, and so the prospect of going out into the real world and being unashamed of Jesus Christ frightened me, a bit.  I much preferred messages that soothed my soul----messages about Christ's love for me.  In my opinion, the way for me to become unashamed of Jesus Christ is for me to be reminded why I love Jesus Christ----because he is good and loves me.  Having a no-nonsense, confrontational message thrown in my face doesn't really do the job.  I wished that I saw more tenderness in the speaker's message.

There was one thing that I really liked about the message, though.  I remembered this last night while I was doing my daily quiet time in Leviticus.  I was reading Leviticus 19, and v 19 says that you shall not put a stumbling-block in front of the blind.  The speaker was telling us a story about students at a high school who were putting a stumbling-block (desks and chairs, I think) in the path of a blind person, and he was stumbling around.  The speaker was asking us what we would do in that situation: Would we speak out or try to do something to stop it, or would we be silent?  I appreciated his point because, in this case, one did not have to proclaim a bunch of dogmas to be unashamed of Jesus Christ; rather, one could show one's commitment to Jesus by standing up for what is right----and by empathizing with someone in a position of vulnerability.  I'm not into telling people that they'll go to hell unless they sign onto a creed.  But I do hope that I will stand up for the right way to treat people.

In my sermon this coming Sunday, will I be confrontational and convicting, or will I be encouraging and inspiring?  God's love will be a significant aspect of my sermon, and so there will be a sense in which it will be encouraging (or at least that is my hope).  But I will also share some insights and thoughts that are hopefully practical---spiritual challenges, if you will.  But I won't be in-your-face, for behind even the challenges should be the conviction that God is love.

Halakah from God? Eating Ordinary Food in Purity?

In my latest reading of E.P. Sanders' Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, Sanders did two things.

1. Sanders asks a question on page 104: "Did anyone think that halakah was divine and as binding as the biblical law?"  He answers in the negative, and he focuses on the Mishnah and the Tosefta to argue that the treatment of the Torah was stricter than the treatment of the halakah and the words of the scribes.  According to Sanders, while it was believed that some traditions went back to Moses, there did not appear to be a belief that the entire oral Torah went back to Moses, at least not from the time of Jesus to the Mishnah.  My impression is that such a notion came later, as even the discussions in academies were eventually considered to have been revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Although Sanders argues against Jacob Neusner, I think that there are elements of Neusner's work that overlap with Sanders on this issue.  Neusner argues that there was a time when the authority of the Mishnah was not self-evident to everyone, and so the Sifra sought to tie the commands and rulings of the Mishnah to the Torah, which was accepted as authoritative.  But that was one approach, according to Neusner.  Another approach was what is in Avoth: to say that the oral Torah was revealed on Mount Sinai.  (UPDATE: Actually, Avoth just mentions Torah, but many take that to mean the oral Torah.  Regarding Neusner's view on Torah in Avoth, I'm writing based on my vague recollection.)  Sanders and Neusner appear to agree that, in the Tannaitic period, it was not always believed that the halakah was revealed by God to Moses.

(UPDATE: Sanders and Neusner actually disagree on Avoth.  Neusner dates it to the mid-third century, whereas Sanders believes that it contains earlier material.  Sanders also appears to believe that it's ambiguous in Avoth what the Torah was that was revealed on Sinai and passed down----whether it's legends, teaching in its broad sense, Pharisaic traditions, or Pharisaic interpretations of the written Torah.  Sanders does not think that we should conclude from Avoth that the Pharisees put their traditions on par with the written Torah.)

2.  Sanders does not agree with Jacob Neusner that the Pharisees believed that they had to eat food in a state of ritual purity, necessitating that they wash their hands before every meal.  I talked some about this debate in my post here.  In my latest reading, Sanders focuses on the Pentateuch in addressing the question of whether ordinary Israelites were required to eat ordinary food in a state of ritual purity.  His conclusion is that the priests were required to do so, but ordinary Israelites were not.  But Sanders states that, if "wet food...fell on the carcass of a swarming thing", Israelites could not eat that food (page 148).  For Sanders, that's the only case in the written Torah in which a law of ritual purity is applied to ordinary, non-consecrated food that was eaten by ordinary (non-priestly and non-Levitical) Israelites.

Sanders makes an interesting point on page 148, though.  He notes that, according to Leviticus 17:3-5, Israelites only ate consecrated meat, since all meat had to be slaughtered at the sanctuary, presented as a peace offering, and thus "eaten in purity (Lev. 7.19-21)."  But Deuteronomy says the opposite, Sanders states: Because Israel's land was expanded, Israelites no longer had to have their meat slaughtered at the sanctuary, and people could slaughter meat in their own locations and even eat it in a state of ritual impurity.  Sanders also says that, in the first century, Leviticus 17:3-5 was "a dead letter" and was "dismissed in the Mishnah (Zebahim 14.1-2)."

Levine on Leviticus 11

In this post, I'll quote Baruch Levine's discussion of the rationale behind Leviticus 11's food laws. It's on pages 247-248 of his Jewish Publication Society commentary on Leviticus.

"The dietary laws of the Torah institutionalize the basic distinction between pure and impure living creatures. A practical system of food selection emerges, in which several factors interact. (1) There is a clear preference for domesticated land animals and birds, and the perception may carry over to fish. (2) Within this larger framework, concern is shown for the diet and digestive processes of living creatures, as if to ensure that nothing forbidden to the Israelites as food had been eaten by the living creatures themselves. If there was, there was concern that such food had been digested as thoroughly as possible or, at the very least, could be separated from the creature after slaughter. The permitted animals are herbivorous ruminants, whereas virtually all forbidden birds are carnivorous creatures of prey. The torn flesh of a land animal (terefah), the evidence of violent preying, is strictly forbidden, just as humans may not eat flesh that they have torn from a living creature. (3) Empirical evidence shows a correlation between methods of locomotion and patterns of feeding and digestion: In most cases, herbivorous ruminants have a cleft hoof. On this basis, creatures with truly cleft hoofs, two 'toes,' were considered domesticated, thus permitted; living creatures with paws were undoubtedly regarded as bestial and, hence, forbidden. (4) As regards fish, the biblical inventory is extremely limited. Preference for undulatory locomotion with fins probably correlated with observable feeding behavior. Crustaceans, for example, were perceived as scavengers."

So here are the criteria, and I draw some of this from Levine's actual comments on the text of Leviticus 11 (specifically page 66):

1. God doesn't want the Israelites to eat predators or scavengers. One reason is that eating predators could result in the Israelites consuming an animal who has eating something that is prohibited to the Israelites---such as an animal that was torn.

2. God also doesn't want the Israelites to eat anything with paws---which is bestial. That's why the command is that they eat creatures with cloven hooves---any other type of foot constitutes a paw. God's preference is for fully domesticated land-animals. But I'm unclear on this point, because Deuteronomy 12:15, 22 and 14:5 let Israelites eat the gazelle and the deer, which are in the wild.

3. God wants the Israelites to eat animals that chew the cud, meaning they thoroughly grind and digest their food. That way, if the animal does eat something that's forbidden to the Israelites, his bodily processes would dispose of it (I guess).

Problems and Hope Before the Exile; Water

1. In my reading today of Randall Heskett’s Messianism Within the Scriptural Scrolls of Isaiah, the following passage on page 47 stood out to me:

[Jacques] Vermeylen suggests that Isaiah 11:1-5, which depends upon the preceding oracles, comes from the second half of the seventh century and gives them a new interpretation…Isaiah 11:2-5 offers an antithetical response to the abuses imposed by the leaders of Judah (5:19-23) and Assyria (10:5, 13). The new king who receives his wisdom from God is contrasted with the Assyrian’s false claim of wisdom (10:13). The Assyrian oversteps his role as the rod of the Lord (10:5) but the figure in 11:1-5 will “strike the earth with the rod of his mouth: (10:4).

Could some form of Messianism have existed in Israel’s pre-exilic period? Randall’s conception of Messianism answers in the negative, for he believes (if I’m understanding him correctly) that Messianism would speak to Israel when she lacked a Davidic monarchy, for Jewish Messianism was largely about the reconstitution of that very monarchy.

Fair enough. But Israel had problems even before her exile. Judah had bad Davidic kings, oppressive rulers, and threatening foreign powers. In the midst of this, could she have hoped for a Davidic king who would be righteous, who would uphold the rights of the poor rather than oppress them, and who would preside over an era of international peace?

2. In Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner states (on page 106) that, according to rabbinic exegetes of Leviticus 11:34, 37-38, dry food “is not susceptible to uncleanness.” It must be wet to be susceptible to uncleanness.

I learned that a while back in my weekly quiet time on Leviticus, but it’s good to be reminded. But I’m not sure why water is an impurity carrier.

The Bright Spot and Skin Color

Jacob Neusner, Invitation to Midrash: The Workings of Rabbinic Bible Interpretation (Atlanta: Scholars, 1998) 73.

Neusner discusses a passage from the Sifra (third century C.E.), specifically Negaim 1:4. The topic is the laws in Leviticus about the leper, or whatever the disease in question was (Leviticus 13-14).

We therefore find that the specification of colors of plagues are meant to produce a lenient ruling, but not to produce a strict ruling. One therefore examines the German in accord with his skin tone to produce a lenient ruling...And the Ethiopian is adjudged in accord with the intermediate pigment to produce a lenient ruling.

Neusner puts this in bold-face to indicate that the passage also occurs in the Mishnah and the Tosefta.

I can't find the passage in the Tosefta, but the Mishnah passage is Negaim 2:1. Here's Danby's translation of parts of it:

In a German the Bright Spot appears as dull white, and in an Ethiopian what is dull white appears as bright white. R. Ishmael says: The Children of Israel...are like boxwood, neither black nor white, but of the intermediate shade...R. Judah says[:] let a German be judged leniently by [the standard of the colour of] his own skin, and let an Ethiopian be judged leniently by [the standard of colour of] the intermediate shade. But the Sages say: Let both be judged by [the standard of colour of] the intermediate shade.

I can get pieces of what's going on here. The issue is the bright spot that indicates leprosy, which the priest looks at to determine if the leprosy is present, receding, or absent. If the leper is clean, then he can rejoin the Israelite community. On a white German, the Bright Spot appears as a dull white, whereas on an Ethiopian it is bright white. The Israelites, however, are of an intermediate shade between white and black, so the Bright Spot appears in a certain way on them.

The priests make their verdict on the condition of the leper based on the color of the Bright Spot. Leviticus 13:39 states, for example, that if the bright spot is dark white, then the leper is clean. But what is "dark white"? On a German, the Bright Spot is dull anyway! And on an African it will always be lighter than his own skin. So the debate seems to be this: Should the priest judge the German and African based on their own skin color, or on that of most Israelites?

That's my impression, and I may be wrong. Maybe the view that the priest should judge the African based on Israelite skin-color is saying that the Bright Spot stands out on black skin, so the priest can easily monitor if it becomes lighter or darker. With a German, however, that poses more of a problem, since the Bright Spot always appears darker, with the German being so white. Consequently, Rabbi Judah says the German should be judged according to the standard of German skin-color. The Sages, however, maintain that the priest should judge the German too according to Israelite skin-color. I don't understand this position.

Who are these Germans and Ethiopians? Are they resident aliens in Israel, gerim? Or are they people coming to Jerusalem for a festival, like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8? I opt for the former because Leviticus 13-14 is about purity in the land of Israel: the residents of Israel need to be purified so that God will continue to dwell in their midst.

The Rich Getting Their Hands Dirty

Jacob Neusner, The Midrash: An Introduction (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1990) 59.

Neusner quotes Sifra Leviticus, Parashah 7:14:1 (fourth century C.E., according to the Encyclopedia Judaica), which interacts with Leviticus 1:14-17:

"The priest shall bring it to the altar, pinch off its head": Why does Scripture say, "The priest...pinch off...?" This teaches that the act of pinching off the head should be done only be a priest.

This stood out to me because Leviticus 1:2-6 requires the worshiper to slaughter and flay the male from the herd before it's offered as a burnt offering. I'll use the King James Version here because it's more literal than what I usually use, the NRSV:

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD: and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces.

When a man offers a male from the herd as a burnt offering, he himself must slaughter and flay it. When a man brings a bird, however, the priest is the one who pinches off its head and tears it open.

Why the difference? I can't find the answer in my commentaries here, but I'll speculate (and perhaps wax homiletical in the process).

In Leviticus 5:7, we read that a person who can't bring a lamb for a trespass offering must bring two birds. So the richer Israelites offer animals from the herd, whereas the poorer ones offer birds or grain (if they're especially poor).

Maybe God wanted the richer Israelites to play a more active role in their sacrifice to teach them to place God above their riches. If they simply came and gave the animal to the priests so they could kill it, they wouldn't feel the sacrifice as deeply. They'd just come, give their animal, leave, and pat themselves on the back for appeasing God. But God wanted them to play a more active role in the worship, to get their hands dirty, for he realized that the rich are in danger of forgetting God (Deuteronomy 8:11ff.).

I wonder how biblical scholars or ancient Jewish interpreters address this issue.

Leviticus for Toddlers?

H.L. Strack and Gunter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash: Second Edition, trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 260.

Sifra, Aramaic 'book', designates the book of Leviticus, because in the old Jewish school system this was the first book, with which instruction began: R. Issi justifies this in LevR 7.3 (M.156) by saying that children and sacrifices are pure, and the pure should occupy themselves with pure things.

I looked up the passage in my Judaic Classics Library and could not find it, for whatever reason. Why start Jewish kids out with Leviticus? Wouldn't it be more entertaining for them to hear stories, like the ones in Genesis, or Judges, or I-II Samuel? That's how my dad and mom taught me the Bible. We listened to tapes that dramatized Bible stories. I still remember Jacob crying out, "Joseph has been eaten by a wild animals!" Or Shadrach telling Nebuchadnezzar that his golden image was "just a hunk of ugly junk outside the city wall."

But, on a certain level, Leviticus does make sense to me as the first biblical book that children learn. Why? One reason is that I learned through ritual. As Armstrongites, we kept the biblical Sabbaths and feast days (or so we assumed), and that internalized certain concepts within us (though, of course, many kids raised in the Armstrongite movement depart from it when they become older). So I'm not surprised that Jewish kids read about the rituals that they and their family performed. They approached Leviticus with some knowledge of what the book was about.
Second, the book is pretty simple. Unless one probes it deeply, it won't appear all that exciting, but it's simple enough for a beginning Hebrew student to read. It has numbers and animals, like Sesame Street, or those books that teach kids how to count.

I'm not sure what their teachers did when they got to Leviticus 18 and 20, however, the chapters about perverse sex! Rabbi Issi wants the pure Jewish kids to occupy themselves with pure things, like the sacrifices. In a sense, I can see his point, since Leviticus is all about God's order in terms of his sanctuary and worship. An innocent child not yet exposed to the horrible things in life can perhaps handle that. But there are also chapters in Leviticus that talk about the darker aspects of life. Not only are Leviticus 18 and 20 about perverted sex, but Nadab and Abihu get killed, and the curses of Leviticus 26 can give adults nightmares, let alone children!

Beyond Patriarchy

I said in Female Offerings that I might wrestle today with the theological ramifications of gendered sacrifices, particularly the issue of why the more important sacrifices had to be male.

Was the Old Testament mindset patriarchal? Yes, but the Hebrew Bible says a lot of positive things about women. Were women better off in Israel under the Torah than they were in other ancient Near Eastern societies? Not necessarily, for other countries in the ancient Near East were more egalitarian on inheritance and divorce. Plus, the Israelite religion we encounter in the Bible does not have strong female deities as do other ancient Near Eastern nations, even though there are strong women in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Deborah, the Proverbs 31 woman, etc.). And, while Jewish and Christian apologists argue that women were treated as sex objects in ancient Near Eastern fertility cults, there is debate about the existence of cultic prostitution in that region.

So I'm not sure where God is in all of this. Although Israel was more patriarchal than other ancient Near Eastern nations, maybe God was moving her in the direction of egalitarianism. The custom in Israel was for only men to inherit property, but God said that Zelophahad's daughters could inherit, since Zelophahad didn't have any sons (Numbers 27). That wasn't as liberal as other ancient Near Eastern countries, some of which allowed daughters to inherit even when the father had sons. But it was more liberal than where Israel was before.

In Exodus 21, only male Hebrew slaves are released in the seventh year. In Deuteronomy 15:12, however, both men and women Hebrew slaves are released after six years of service. Exodus 23:17 states, "Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD" (NRSV). We see the same expression in Deuteronomy 16:16, but the chapter also mentions daughters and female slaves appearing before the LORD during his festivals. Was God, through Deuteronomy, moving Israel in an egalitarian direction?

Regarding sacrifices, God may have worked with Israel according to her patriarchal presuppositions. Perhaps he was also moving Israel beyond that mindset through other laws. I don't know.

Could there be a practical reason that the male animals were considered more valuable? Were male animals the only ones used for agriculture, for example, since they were stronger? If so, then maybe that's why the males were used for the more important sacrifices.