Thread by @JoelBaden

#Leviticus 4:1

At this juncture, it’s worth stepping back a second and talking about the major groups of sacrifices in Leviticus, since we’re transitioning from one to the other here.

(There’s obviously nothing worth saying about this actual verse.)

What we’re about to enter into are the sacrifices that are generally described as involuntary: they’re required in certain situations, and the text lays out what those situations are (at least in general terms and for the most part).

What we just read in Lev 1-3, then, is generally described as the voluntary offerings: ones you can bring whenever you like. And this is true! While the next ones tell us the conditions under which you must offer x, what we’ve read so far just says “if you want to offer x.”

The caveat is that the offerings in Lev 1-3, while they certainly can be brought at any time, are also sometimes required to be brought. We’ll see the scenarios soon enough, but it’s quite common for, say, a whole burnt offering to accompany a required sacrifice.

And the well-being sacrifice, while certainly the kind of thing one could offer just for funsies, is also one of the required offerings on festivals. And here’s where we get to the fun part:

Outside of Leviticus, outside of P, the only sacrifices anyone knows anything about are the ones in Lev 1-3. The involuntary sacrifices we’re about to leap into are entirely the invention of P, as far as we know. No one else mentions them (except other P-like texts. Ezekiel).

To the rest of the world, there were two basic sacrifices: the whole burnt offering, and the well-being offering. These were so common a binary that the well-being offering could just be called “sacrifice,” זבח, because the whole burnt offering was specified as such.

Outside of P, everyone knew that at all the festivals - the pilgrimage ones, the new moon, etc. - what was required was a well-being offering, a זבח. Whenever you read about someone offering a sacrifice outside of P, if it doesn’t specifically say whole burnt offering, it’s this.

The זבח, the well-being offering, is what Moses says Israel wants to go sacrifice in the wilderness. It’s what Elkanah offers every year at the beginning of Samuel. It’s what David pretends to be doing when he’s hiding from Saul in 1 Sam 20. It’s standard.

Thus: what were the only two sacrifices in existence become, in P, the two “offer whenever” sacrifices. It’s almost like a nod to the rest of the culture - sure, you want to do this, fine, here’s how - before getting to the ones that P is instituting now for the first time.

Of course, P has assimilated the whole burnt offering and the well-being offering (and the meal offering) into its general system. But they are actually largely peripheral to it, accompaniments and accoutrements rather than doing core functional work, as we’ll see.

To be super clear: this isn’t a chronological evolutionary development of Israelite religious practice. This is one text, one school perhaps, inventing some new stuff. That text made it into the Bible - but that doesn’t make it representative of any actual practice.

I’ll keep coming back to this as we go. Just to keep in mind: P is a utopian and idiosyncratic concept of the Israelite cult (and everything else). We need to stop treating it as the last word on Israelite cult and ritual. It’s just one word. And it’s a weird word, at that.