Laying down the Law
Summary of Leviticus
The third book in the Torah is named after the Israelite tribe of Levi, which is given its special status as guardians of religious purity (including the priesthood) in the book of Exodus. Much like the later part of Exodus, Leviticus is concerned with the organisation of the Israelites, explaining the nature of their civil and religious laws and describing the roles and responsibilities of the priests (descendants of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi). Aaron and his sons are formally initiated as priests, thus beginning the formal worship of God.
Leviticus then takes some of the rules outlined in Exodus, and goes into significantly more detail on things such as food laws and sacrifices. It is in Leviticus where most of the famous ‘you shall nots’ appear, describing forbidden activities that make a person ritually unclean and unworthy. Also significant are rules describing the management and use of land, when the Israelites inherit their promised country.
The book of Leviticus does not contain much in the way of narrative, aside from a few short stories that serve to illustrate the consequences of breaking the law. Often, these consequences mean the death of the offender.
What Leviticus may have meant to its original audience...
The laws of Leviticus were firmly entrenched in the idea of what it meant to be Israelite. The ceremonies, legal procedures, celebrations and mandates given there clearly established the cultural distinctiveness of the Israelite people in relation to their neighbours - both in the ancient world, and in the later period of the Exile where the spoken traditions were probably written down.
These laws defined the activities of the priests and therefore gave foundation to the activities of the Sadducees of Jesus' day - a religious party focused on maintaining the power and order of the Temple in Jerusalem. In establishing ideas of purity, they also served as the underlying resources for the work of the Pharisees and Essenes, other Jewish religious groups in the time of Jesus who maintained strict separation from Gentiles (non-Jews) wherever possible. As part of the Torah, Leviticus also shaped the ceremonies of the Samaritans, who sought to worship the One God on the hills in the north of Israel and still perform Passover sacrifices to this day.
But there was more than just religious identity at stake. The laws also described who was 'in' and who was 'out', and what was 'pure' and what was 'forbidden'. In this, Leviticus was key for Israelites in determining how life should be lived and how separately one should keep oneself from others. The key principle underlying this idea of separateness was holiness. Among other places, in Chapter 11:44 Leviticus states "be Holy, for I am Holy (NRSV)". Core to the Israelite's national identity, then, was the notion of being a distinct people who follow a distinct God, and Leviticus provides instructions about how this holy social distinctiveness would be maintained.
How Jesus might have read Leviticus...
The distinctive holiness of the Jews is something that Jesus challenges on several occasions. He frequently crosses borders that others do not touch... bleeding women, Samaritans, gentiles, lepers and the dead are all touched and changed by Jesus' interactions. He frequently transgresses the Sabbath laws, another key mark of Jewish distinctiveness. Far from remaining 'separate', Jesus instead seeks to redefine holiness, creating his own definition regarding the chosen-ness of God's people. In Luke 6:36, when sharing his vision of the new community of God (having called 12 disciples, emulating the 12 tribes of Israel, in 6:12-16), Jesus gives an important commandment of his own, replacing holiness with mercy/compassion. "Be merciful, just as your father in heaven is merciful (NRSV)". In this simple statement, Jesus radically rewrites the holiness code. Rather than being distinctive by being 'set apart', Jesus calls his followers to find their distinctiveness in the compassion or mercy that they show for others.
These religious challenges by Jesus are not a mistake or an example of his ignorance of Jewish law. He intentionally debates opponents over questions of interpretation, as he looks to demonstrate the core purpose of the law - reshaping and reforming humanity in God's true image. So he states in Matthew 5:17 as he hands down his 'new covenant' in the Sermon on the Mount “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill (NRSV)".
It is the nature of that fulfillment that Jesus seeks to challenge people's thinking on. Part of the very core of his ethic for the people of Israel and, indeed the world, is drawn from directly from Leviticus. "You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Lev 19:17-18, NRSV)", quoted as the second of the "greatest commandments" in Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31 and Luke 10:27.
Jesus demonstrates what this love looks like in Luke through the tale of the "Good Samaritan" (Lk 10:25-37). In this well-known parable, Jesus responds to the question "who is my neighbor?". While traditional Israelite understanding places the answer among "your people" as per the quote in the above paragraph, Jesus makes it clear that neighbor is not simply a matter of who is alike, but is indeed the person in need of compassionate mercy - which is in this case demonstrated by the Samaritan in 10:37. In this response, the holiness in the story which leads to eternal life (v25) is demonstrated by the Samaritan, a person normally beyond the Israelite concept of God's concern. Here, then, Jesus radically expands traditional Levitical understandings of both holiness AND love for neighbor.
What Leviticus might mean for Christian faith today...
On the one hand, Leviticus plays a role in the formation of "Judeo-Christian" ethics, joining other legal codes of the Torah in defining morality and law in the Western Christian world. On the other hand, its ethics come with thousands of years of cultural layers belonging to an ancient, sacrificial culture in which purity, cultural division and hierarchy were seen as vital to societal order.
Today, we no longer live in such a society. We are separated by time, place, technology and religion from Leviticus' world. Furthermore, Jesus himself seemed to lead his followers on a program of re-imagination, encouraging us to see our relationship to God in terms of our concern for other people. While Leviticus is used by some Christians particularly in defining sexual morality, there is no reason that its laws should hold any particular relevance for us in an age where we no longer see sacrifice as necessary for meeting with God, consider eating bacon as defiling or diagnose all skin conditions as leprosy.
We can more broadly acknowledge Leviticus as a text that seemingly gives shape, purpose and direction to the Israelites in an age of chaos and violence. We can also appreciate the way in which it shapes the world that Jesus lives in, defining what many of his contemporaries understood about the presence of God in the Temple, and the ideas of purity that Jesus was forced to reckon with. However, we should also recognize that (for Christians) the fulfillment of these laws' purpose--connecting with God--was indeed completed in Jesus.
Some important questions to ask about this book...
+ Is everyone unclean!?
From Chapter 11, Leviticus begins outlining the foods that would render a person unclean. Animals have to meet the key criteria of both (1) chewing a cud (2) having split hooves. Seafood has to be fish with fins and scales - shellfish were forbidden. Birds have specific species named as unclean, while insects also have specific species named. One didn't have to eat these animals to become unclean - simply touching their carcasses was enough. Additionally, anything that an unclean carcass touched would also be declared unclean - needing to be either washed, or destroyed.
Childbirth rendered a woman unclean (a male child would lead to a shorter period of uncleanliness than a female child). Menstruation made a woman unclean. Skin rashes and infection made people unclean. Itchy scalps made people unclean. Bodily fluids, including 'male discharge', made people and objects touched by it unclean. Corpses were unclean. Touching an unclean person made you unclean.
Uncleanliness was therefore an unavoidable aspect of Israelite life. It didn't mean the end of your life, but had clear implications for daily life. Unclean people could be excluded from approaching the ‘Tabernacle’ or Temple. For this reason, the priests held themselves especially aloof from positions that could compromise their religious purity, as they themselves were the administrators of the purification rituals (which may explain the response of the priest and the Levite in the story of the "Good Samaritan" (Lk 10:25-37).
Uncleanliness could be remedied through a combination of sacrifice, priestly declaration and temporary exclusion from society. In theory, it was easily fixed through following the correct procedure, as long as it wasn't a permanent medical condition like leprosy.
However, in practice the cleanliness laws could lead to substantial social division. Costs of sacrifice, the need to present oneself before authorities, isolation and shunning led to a number of people being pushed to the margins. Although the laws of sacrifice do make provisions for relatively cheap birds to be sacrificed by the poor in place of the more expensive sheep or cattle, it became clear that purity had a price.
That was the ancient world... what is the price of holiness today?
+ What about Leviticus' laws on sexuality?
Leviticus 18 is traditionally one of the key 'go to' passages when Christians have discussed and debated sexuality in the 21st century. Along with the Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis 19, Leviticus is frequently used to condemn and dismiss same-sex relationships. While a broader discussion around this issue can be found here, it is worth acknowledging the contextual limits of this passage regarding sexuality, as there are things that it says and doesn't say that we often overlook.
For example, while Leviticus 18:17 forbids concurrent relationships by a man with both a woman and her daughter, it doesn't explicitly forbid father-daughter relations... a disturbing omission, especially considering the role of Lot in Genesis 19. On the other hand, Leviticus 18:18 does explicitly forbid relations for a man with both a woman and her sister, which is precisely what Jacob/Israel does with Leah and Rachel in fathering the twelve tribes of Israel.
The point is that while Leviticus does make some clear statements about acceptable/unacceptable relations, it is also clear that those laws are ignored, adjusted or reinterpreted at other points in the Bible. That's not to say that any/everything is permissable, but the anomalies raise some important discussion points. If the community that Leviticus was written for had such ambiguity in their own stories, how can we possibly expect them to simply transfer across into our own time and place? (Especially, when one considers the points made by President Bartlet of the West Wing. Note: This video is not linked to be offensive, but thought provoking).