Rabbits and Rock Badgers! What on Earth Was Leviticus for?

A.J. Culp New College University of New South Wales ajculp.12@gmail.com Rabbits and Rock Badgers! What on Earth Was Leviticus For? Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge 21 March 2024 In A Preface to Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis begins by saying something that, in most realms of life, is profoundly obvious: The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is—what it was intended to do and how it was meant to be used… The first thing is to understand the object before you: as long as you think the corkscrew was meant for opening tins or the cathedral for entertaining tourists you can say nothing to the purpose about them (emphasis original). C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), 1. The reason Lewis begins with it here, however, is because in the realm of literature this is not always obvious. In fact, when it comes to texts, this principle seems to be the first thing that gets set aside. Lewis goes on to say, “The first thing the reader needs to know about Paradise Lost is what Milton meant it to be.” The need to identify this is “specially urgent,” he says, because “the kind of poem Milton meant to write is unfamiliar to many readers.” This creates two kinds of situations. The first occurs among general readers. When the text does not deliver on expectations, which in this case means it does not endlessly delight, readers simply quit. Lewis, Paradise Lost, 1–2. They give up. Lewis calls such people “the unfortunate reader.” The second situation happens among specialists. When the text does not behave as they think it should, they find fault. They accuse the text of not doing what it should be doing, and the author of doing a poor job. The cumulative effect is gross neglect and mass misunderstanding. While Lewis is speaking of Paradise Lost, he might as well be describing Leviticus. It, too, is a book that has suffered gross neglect and mass misunderstanding. The situation was captured well already in the 3rd century by the Church Father Origen: If you read people passages from the divine books that are good and clear, they will hear them with great joy…But provide someone a reading from Leviticus, and at once the listener will gag and push it away as if it were some bizarre food. He came, after all, to learn how to honor God, to take in the teachings that concern justice and piety. But instead he is now hearing about the ritual of burnt sacrifices! Origen, quoted in Ephraim Radner, Leviticus (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2008), 17. Most of us know exactly what Origen means, for Leviticus holds a macabre honour among readers. It is, on the one hand, the place where most cover-to-cover reading plans run aground. These travellers trudge their way through the tabernacle account, only to come out the other side and realise they’re in Leviticus, which proves too much for their weary souls. And it is, on the other hand, the “dirty secret” book among biblical and theological scholars. Over the years, I’ve had a variety of scholars confide in private that they have no idea what to do with Leviticus. Yet as much as we might like to, we cannot ignore Leviticus, for it is a book of fundamental importance. It is, for starters, the literary “backbone” of the Pentateuch. Joel Lohr, “The Book of Leviticus,” pp. 83–111, A Theological Introduction to the Pentateuch: Interpreting the Torah as Christian Scripture, eds. Richard Briggs and Joel Lohr (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 110. For a helpful discussion on Leviticus’ place in the Pentateuch, see Rolf Rendtorff, “Is It Possible to Read Leviticus as a Separate Book?” pp. 22–35, in Reading Leviticus: A Conversation with Marry Douglas, ed. John F.A. Sawyer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). It is also the Old Testament book that makes the most claims of divine origin. John Currid, “Book of Leviticus,” 461–466, in Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, eds. G. K. Beale, D. A. Carson, Benjamin L. Gladd, and Andrew David Naselli (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2023), 462. Furthermore, Leviticus “gives some of the clearest insights into biblical religion and theology” and provides the foundation for “the New Testament’s understanding of the atonement.” Wenham, Guide to the Pentateuch, 82. And, as recent work has begun to show, Leviticus also provides the key to understanding the Gospels portraits of Jesus. Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels' Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020). In light of all this, it seems to me that we need to return to the basic questions laid out by Lewis: What is Leviticus and how was it meant to be used? Leviticus: Genus and Species? In Lewis’ case, the matter was rather straightforward. He observed that readers had largely misunderstood the “genus” and “species” of Paradise Lost: i.e., narrative poetry (genus) and epic poetry (species). His Preface, then, is largely a return to centre. It reminds readers of the conventions of these forms of poetry, showing “what” Paradise Lost is and “how it was meant to be used.” When it comes to Leviticus, however, the matter is not so simple. We do not have the luxury of such clear categories. In fact, precisely the opposite is true: Leviticus contains a variety of genres, many of which are difficult on their own, but which, when combined, form an especially puzzling book. Unlike the other books in the Pentateuch, Leviticus contains very little narrative: only chapters 8–10 and 24:10–24. These sections recount the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests, the death of two of those sons (Nadab and Abihu) for the use of strange fire, and the stoning of a blasphemer. The rest of the book is comprised of instruction for rituals, festivals, and holy living, and it concludes with the consequences of obedience and disobedience. Leviticus as Manual For this reason, many have taken Leviticus to be a kind of manual. In Judaism, from the time of the Mishnah onwards (c. 200 AD), “the rabbis referred to Leviticus as the Priest’s Manual, Torat Kohanim, because it is devoted to the proper application of religious practices, the rituals of ancient Israelite society.” David Zucker, The Torah: an introduction for Christians and Jews (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 115. Similarly, see Sorel Goldberg Loeb and Barbara Binder Kadden, Teaching Torah: A Treasury of Insights and Activities (Denver: A.R.E. Publishing, 1997), 163. While the rabbis recognised that Leviticus spoke to the broader community as well, they saw the priesthood as the primary audience. As suggested in the title Torat Kohanim, ‘Instruction for Priests,’ Leviticus was seen to instruct priests in worship so that they might carry out their primary responsibility: “to teach the people what is and what is not acceptable practice.” Others also see Leviticus as a manual, albeit one aimed at a different audience. As Gordon Wenham says, “It would be wrong, however, to describe Leviticus simply as a manual for priests. It is equally, if not more, concerned with the part the laity should play in worship.” Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 3. Also, see Wenham, Guide to the Pentateuch, 81. This is especially visible, Wenham says, in that “most of the laws apply to all Israel: only a few sections specifically concern the priests alone, e.g., chs. 21–22.” Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, 3. A case in point is Leviticus’ most sustained portion on ritual, chs. 1–7. While this section occurs from the two different perspectives the priest and the worshipper, it is dominated by the latter, which consumes more than six of the seven chapters (1:1–6:7). This was first noted in Martin Noth, Leviticus, trans. J.E. Anderson (London: SCM, 1965), 10–11. If Leviticus were a manual for priests, this would hardly make sense. Yet note Watts’ caution not to choose one audience over the other and his ANE examples with dual emphasis on priest and worshiper, esp. David Baker’s work on Punic monument inscriptions. See Watt, “Rhetoric of Ritual,” 95, 97–98. Some have therefore drawn a modern parallel here, saying Leviticus is “similar to a modern book of church order: it contains a series of manuals or directories that specify how the OT church is to operate and worship.” Currid, “Book of Leviticus,” 462. In this view, Leviticus contains a series of smaller manuals on things such as sacrifice, cleanliness, atonement, and holiness, which have been crafted into a larger document that now governs worship. Leviticus: More than a Manual While I think it is true that Leviticus is aimed at the whole of Israel and has worship as its theme, I’m not sure the metaphors of a manual or book of church order are sufficient. Similarly, Lester Grabbe says the function is not so much as a manual as a theological worldview, though he does not specify what this worldview is. See L. L. Grabbe, “The Priests in Leviticus - Is the Medium the Message?” pp. 207–224, in The Book of Leviticus: Composition and Reception, eds. R. Rendorff and R. A. Kugler (Leiden, Brill, 2003), 219. As James Watts has said, these tend to reflect “an attempt to find the original purpose for this material, that is, before it was excerpted into Leviticus and the Pentateuch and therefore before it was refashioned to fit this context.” “The Rhetoric of Ritual in Leviticus,” pp. 79–102, in The Book of Leviticus: Composition and Reception, eds. Rolf Rendtorff, Robert A. Kugler, Sarah Smith Bartlet (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 95. Elsewhere, Watts discusses the genres within Leviticus in comparison to the ANE. See James Watts, “Ritual Rhetoric in the Pentateuch: The Case of Leviticus 1–16,” pp. 305–319, in The Books of Leviticus and Numbers, ed. Thomas Römer (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 306–315. I would further clarify by saying this: these approaches see Leviticus doing its work through enacting practices, by prescribing practices that in turn form the worshipper. But this is only one of Leviticus’s twin functions. The other function it seems is to shape people through the observation of practices. After all, Leviticus as we now find it is a book within a larger narrative, a narrative meant to be read aloud in public. As such, the primary way in which Leviticus’s rites and practices do their work is through public reading, which enters a person’s body through imagination, not embodied practices. I turn now to briefly sketch how this worked. In the first place, it is helpful to understand the Pentateuch as ancient literature. To my mind, David Carr provides the best window into its genre as an ancient Near East genre. He argues that texts such as the Pentateuch may be broadly understood within the ANE category of “education-enculturation” texts. David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 12. As suggested by the name, these texts served dual purposes. They served, in the first place, as educational material for scribes. The scribes would learn to read, write, and recite cultural traditions through these texts. Secondly, and more importantly, these texts served as conduits of cultural transmission. A key function of the scribal class was to translate these writings into oral culture, which transmitted the community’s most treasured traditions from generation to generation. This, in turn, created cultural memory and identity. As suggested in the title of his book, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart, Carr sees the ultimate goal of such literature as human formation: The fundamental idea…was not how such texts were inscribed on clay, parchment, or papyri. Rather, what was truly crucial was how those written media were part of a cultural project of incising key cultural-religious traditions—word for word—on people’s minds. Carr, Writing, 8. This means that “the primary place of ‘storage’ of such texts” was not in libraries but “in the minds and hearts of those who mastered them.” Carr, Writing, 80. And it means, further, that the goal of such texts was to create a certain kind of person, an ideal person. “Thus the project of…education was not just the formation of a particular scribal class. Rather it was focused on the perpetuation of humanity in general, humanity as defined by [a particular] culture.” Carr, Writing, 31. In Israel, it appears the Pentateuch was especially central in this project. As James Watts has shown, References to reading are remarkably sparse in the Hebrew Bible. Though the variety of styles and genres in the biblical books attests to an ancient literary culture in Israel, there is little explicit mention of reading prophecy and virtually no references to reading hymns or history. Most references to reading portray the reading of law. The Hebrew Bible provides more information on the reading of law than on reading any other genre of its literature.” James W. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 15. When Watts says ‘law’ he means the Pentateuch, which to him indicates something foundational for our current discussion: the purpose of the Pentateuch was chiefly educational, not legal. Watts, Reading Law, 20–21. Its primary context of use was public reading rather than judicial courts. What, then, was the purpose of Leviticus in this? If we imagine the whole Pentateuch being read aloud in public, then Geoff Harper’s thesis is especially illuminating. G. Geoffrey Harper, “I Will Walk Among You”: The Rhetorical Function of Allusion to Genesis 1–3 in the Book of Leviticus (University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2018). Harper argues that Leviticus, representing the structural and theological centre of the Pentateuch, Harper quotes Jacob Milgrom multiple times: “structure is theology.” E.g., Harper, “I Will Walk,” 79. takes up and develops the plot tension initiated at the beginning of the Pentateuch, in Genesis 1–3. It seeks to answer, in other words, “How can humanity, excluded from the presence of YHWH since the Garden of Eden, renter his presence?” Harper, “I Will Walk Among You,” 79. Or how, in the words of the text itself, can the Lord fulfil his promise that “I will walk among you” (Gen 3:8; Lev 26:12)? Leviticus addresses this, Harper says, by evoking key images from Genesis 1–3. Focusing on Leviticus 11, 16, and 26, Harper shows how the text portrays the tabernacle as a second Eden and Israel as a second Adam. “The cult, therefore, functions as a gateway to life as it was meant to be,” Harper, “I Will Walk Among You,” 168. which is to say, life lived “before God” and increasingly conformed to his image. For Harper, then, the primary purpose (“primary illocution”) of Leviticus is the transformation of the cosmos into sacred space and Israel into a holy people in order to restore the divine-human coexistence. The purpose of Leviticus in its Pentateuchal context, therefore, is to facilitate the inauguration of paradise regained. Harper, “I Will Walk Among You,” 104. As Harper so helpfully develops, the point here is not merely to restore what was lost, but to reverse it. By portraying the rites and dietary laws in this way, Leviticus portrays Israel as “standing at a crossroads,” with one path leading “toward the restoration of what was lost—paradise regained as it were (partially at least)” and one path leading back down the path of Adam and therefore “the suffering of similar removal from the divine presence.” In language reminiscent of Carr, Harper says Israel is here portrayed as “a new humanity.” Harper, “I Will Walk Among You,” 104. Personally, I find Harper’s work especially illuminating, and I think it provides a key link between Genesis 1–3, Leviticus, and the New Testament’s depiction of Christ as the final atoning sacrifice, high priest, and Word tabernacling among us (John 1:14). Yet I would like to raise a question surrounding the issues of genre and purpose. From personal conversations with Geoff, I believe he would agree that Leviticus is not merely ritual within narrative but “narrative ritual” Bryan Bibb, Ritual Words and Narrative Worlds in the Book of Leviticus (London: T & T Clark, 2009), 33. Bibb describes the process as a two-side coin—as “ritualized narrative” and “narrativized ritual” (p. 35): “The dynamic interaction…in which the ritual prescriptions are narrativized and the story-telling itself is ritualized” (p. 33).—ritual that now carries out its work first through narrative. And, from his monograph, it seems he follows Watts in seeing one of Leviticus’s key functions, in turn, as serving as “persuasive” literature—literature aiming to shape people’s opinions and perspectives. Leviticus as Verbal Tabernacle Yet I wonder whether we might say more here. In particular, I wonder if it would be helpful to revive Mary Douglas’s view of Leviticus as a verbal tabernacle or literary sanctuary. Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). We do not need to accept the particulars of her view, which have caused many to dismiss her entire perspective (Douglas famously argued that the literary structure of Leviticus mirrors the physical structure of the tabernacle, meaning that when one reads Leviticus one experiences a virtual tour of the tabernacle). But if we accept her general view on the genre of Leviticus as a verbal tabernacle, then it opens the door to her idea of its function: as a virtual experience. In saying that Leviticus is a “virtual space” that exists in “virtual time,” Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, 18–19, 96. Here Douglas leverages the work of Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study int he Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art (Harvard University Press, 1942) and Feeling and Form (Charles Scribner and Sons, 1953). Interestingly, Langer also distinguishes between the virtual the practical, which may well prove fruitful in explore the dual purposes of Leviticus. See Samuel Bufford, “Susanne Langer's Two Philosophies of Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 31.1 (1972): 9-20, 11. Douglas means is that Leviticus, as narrative, does not merely instruct or inform, but creates a virtual world into which the audience is transported. To me, this provides a better notion than “persuasion” in understanding Leviticus’s formative power. What it means is that people are transported into an enduring moment in time: the tabernacle at Mt Sinai, where they encounter God and hear his voice. To be sure, his voice instructs the audience in the ways of rituals and holiness, which, in turn, is meant to shape their habits and practices. But it also works more wholistically, shaping their very imagination, affections, and identity as God’s people by drawing them into the larger story. This particular moment of Leviticus creates a holiness consciousness, but, within the larger story, this consciousness is tied to primeval promises and vocation of God’s people. In this way, Leviticus shapes the people into “a kingdom of priests and holy nation” (Exod 19:6). To my mind, such an understanding of Leviticus makes sense of its enduring imprint upon God’s people, especially in those times when they either did not have or no longer needed the sanctuary: i.e., the exile, post-temple Judaism, and the early Church. In post-temple Judaism, for instance, Hanna Liss marvels at the power of the virtual world created by Leviticus, where the imaginary “sanctuary [continually] intrudes upon man’s actual life.” Hanna Liss, “Ritual Purity and the Construction of Identity: The Literary Function of the Laws of Purity in the Book of Leviticus,” pp. 329–354, in The Books of Leviticus and Numbers, ed. Thomas Römer (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), 353. Italics are from the original. Liss has two other essays that flesh out her ideas further: “Of Mice and Men and Blood: The Laws of Ritual Purity in the Hebrew Bible,” 199–214, in Literary Construction of Identity in the Ancient World: Proceedings of the Conference Literary Fiction and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Literatures: Options and Limits of Modern Literary Approaches in the Exegesis of Ancient Texts, Heidelberg, July 10–13, 2006, eds. Hanna Liss and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), and “The Imaginary Sanctuary: The Priestly Code as an Example of Fictional Literature in the Hebrew Bible,” pp. 663–689, in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, eds. Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006). Every (educated) Jew today is well aware of the fact that (s)he stays in the state of impurity permanently…Since there is no sanctuary today, the only thing that remains is the awareness of a Jewish person's impure condition (which doesn't matter at all). Liss, “Ritual Purity and the Construction of Identity,” 354. For Liss, then, the ongoing legacy of Leviticus is that it prepares people for “life facing the Holy.” Liss, “Ritual Purity and the Construction of Identity,” 352. And such a perspective, of course, dovetails well with the New Testament claims about Christ. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John, Christ is the true tabernacle and ongoing place in which we encounter God’s Word. In him we find the fulfilment of God’s promise that “I will walk among you” (Gen 3:8; Lev 26:12). It is somewhat serendipitous, then, that both Scripture and this essay began with Paradise Lost and end with paradise regained. 26