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Joel Baden

25 Sep, 10 tweets, 2 min read

#Leviticus 19:3-8

Holiness laws, part 1

This collection starts with what looks like a nod to the Decalogue: honoring parents, sabbath, no idols. And it’s not impossible that that’s what this is, since one of the differences between H and P is that H knows and reacts to D.

But it isn’t the same. The part about parents is different: not honor, כבד, which I argued earlier was about caring for ancestral graves, but respect, ירא. This chapter comes between the sex laws, which seems relevant. Also in H we get the law against insulting parents, Lev 20:9.

H, in other words, seems to mean here what everyone usually thinks the Decalogue means: respect your parents, during their lifetimes. H cares about this from various angles. And maybe(?) it signals a temporal shift coinciding with the fading of the ancestral cult. Maybe.

Next is the sabbath law. Observe it! That is all. Again, definitely in the Decalogue, but definitely also in P, and elsewhere in H, using this specific language - including later in this same chapter. H really likes the sabbath.

How are respecting parents and the sabbath related? Uh…not obviously, except that they’re next to each other (albeit in the reverse order) in the Decalogue. Hence the suspicion of influence. Influence or not, the way they’re put here is very much H, not D.

The anti-idolatry law is the same. Exists in the Decalogue (though not adjacent to the parent or sabbath laws), but is expressed here in H’s way, using H terms. Do we need the Decalogue to explain it? Probably not.

Actually all three of these laws are reflected elsewhere in H, often in similar terms and language. So, do we need this to be a weird little mini-Decalogue (a…trilogue?)? It’s close. It’s also not super important: I know H knows D already.

But right when we think to ourselves okay, fine, H is just running through the Decalogue in a weird order, suddenly we get a long law about…not leaving the meat from your well-being offering over until the third day. Which is (checks notes) definitely not in the Decalogue.

It is, rather, just a restatement of Lev 7:16-18. Why is this here - like, in the chapter at all, or at this point in the chapter? I don’t know. I find most attempts to find a logical pattern here to be unconvincing.

What’s nice about this, at least, is it reminds us that H, despite taking a more expansive view of things than P, is still squarely of the P school: this law, which is purely ritual and has no greater moral scope, is of as much (or more) concern to H as laws from the Decalogue.

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More from @JoelBaden

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

27 Sep

#Leviticus 19:9-18

Holiness laws, part 2

Here's a pretty terrific collection of ethical laws, in no obvious order, and many of them borrowed from other texts. It's like a greatest hits of ethical legal statements. And, oh yeah, it culminates with the golden rule.

It's probably worth saying that the golden rule is known as such only because of Jesus (or, for my Jews, Hillel). There's nothing in H, or anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, to denote it as any more special or important than any other law.

Is it more special? It's certainly broader, and in that sense more useful. But it doesn't override any others - or if it does, that's an interpretive choice, not one dictated by the Bible itself. In an alternate universe, another law could have become "the golden rule."

Read 10 tweets

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

23 Sep

#Leviticus 18:24-30

Defiling the land

Some sins defile the sanctuary - the kinds of ritual sins we met in Lev 1-15, along with impurities - but some sins, like those in this chapter, defile the land itself. And while you can purify the sanctuary…not so much the land.

There’s only one way for the land to be cleansed: the removal of the people whose behavior has defiled it. (And, crucially, defiled the people themselves, too - unlike what we saw in Lev 1-15.) That’s the land “spewing out” its inhabitants.

That’s what H says happened to the previous inhabitants, the Canaanites, who acted in all these abhorrent ways. (But we know that they actually didn’t, right? It’s just a nasty polemic.)

Read 7 tweets

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

20 Sep

#Leviticus 18:22

Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman. It is an abomination.

How should we understand this verse? What does it mean that the Bible seems to prohibit male homosexual intercourse?

Let me start simply: it says what it says. It does prohibit it.

Do I like it? Of course not. But I don’t like plenty of what’s in the Bible. And neither do you - I don’t care what religion or tradition you claim. So we can begin there. Everyone picks and chooses, and everyone has always picked and chosen. Even in the Bible itself.

So holding this verse up and saying homosexuality is wrong is silly, unless you’re also in favor of slavery, or stoning disobedient children, or, I don’t know, keeping kosher. Especially, obviously, if you declare all the laws to have been voided by the coming of Jesus.

Read 15 tweets

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

30 Aug

#Leviticus 16:20-22

The goat for Azazel

Did the biblical authors believe in the following: divine beings aside from YHWH? various demons and other supernatural beings? spaces not controlled by YHWH? dumping grounds for sins where they wouldn’t bother anyone?

Yes to all.

When we get hung up on the identity of Azazel, we miss the point (in this case, what’s actually happening in the ritual). Was Azazel a goat demon? Maybe! Probably, even. Is the identity of Azazel important here? Not so much, actually.

The question should be: if Aaron has just purified the sanctuary with the purification offerings, even brought inside the inner sanctum, all the way to YHWH’s seat, then what sins are left for hm to be placing on this goat?

Read 11 tweets

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

27 Aug

#Leviticus 16:18-19

Purifying the outer altar

Same blood from the same animals, the purification sacrifices. Just moving from the inner sanctum to the outer altar, because we all know you have to start sweeping from the inside and work your way out.

Here again we get really clear useful language about what this sacrifice does, here and everywhere: it cleans and purifies the altar, and the sanctuary, from the impurities of Israel. In none of this is any person being purified, or cleaned, or even forgiven. It’s the sanctuary.

To this point, a good deal of this ritual is relatively familiar: that is, it’s closest in form to the sacrificial procedure we saw back in Leviticus 9, where the Tabernacle was inaugurated. This isn’t surprising: what’s happening here is what I’ve called a ritual reset.

Read 4 tweets

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

29 Jul

#Leviticus 11:29-38

Impurity from mice (basically)

So there you are, about to make dinner, and you pull out your nice clay cooking pot, and horror! There’s a dead mouse inside! Truly, even today I’d have trouble ever using that pot again. Just chuck it and get a new one.

This section is about the impurity caused by dead mice (and equivalent small animals). This isn’t about anything you’d eat - but nor is it really about some inherent ickiness to these animals (icky though you may find them).

These get a special section because they appear in a different area of life. No one has ever found a dead camel in their soup bowl. You don’t run across the horse that just happened to crawl into your oven and die there. Dead mice and lizards, though? All the damn time. Still!

Read 8 tweets

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