Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Lesson #1
And he said . . .
And he said . . .
Preview
Leviticus sits squarely at the center of the Torah, the
middle unit of Gods Law:
A (Genesis);
B (Exodus);
C (Leviticus);
B (Numbers);
A (Deuteronomy)
Sitting as it does between the brilliant narratives of
Genesis and Exodus and the wilderness tales of
Numbers and Deuteronomy, Leviticus seems a
moment of stasis, a pause in Scriptures forward
movement that dwells on the mechanics of sacrifice
and the minutiae of ritual law, subjects of little
interest or relevance to a modern audience.
In truth, most readers either bog down in Leviticus or
And he said . . .
2
simply skip over it.
Fair enough,
but how does
Leviticus do
that while
fitting into
the overall
narrative
shape of
Scripture?
And he said . . .
And he said . . .
And he said . . .
The Tabernacle
Pillar of Cloud & Fire
(Theophany of God)
In Exodus, we hear
God speak to his
people from the top
of Mt. Sinai in a
voice of thunder; in
Leviticus, he speaks
intimately from
within the
Tabernacle. In
Exodus, God offers
the Israelites a
unique role in the
plan of salvation; in
And he said . . .
Leviticus, they learn9
As we enter Leviticus
the Israelites have been
in the wilderness for one
year (Exodus 40: 17);
Leviticus will span one
month (Numbers 1: 1);
and Numbers through
Deuteronomy will span
another 39 years, for a
total of 40 years in the
wilderness, or one
generation.
Our narrative from
Genesis through
Deuteronomythe Torah
And he said . . .
10
is thus linear in
And he said . . .
11
And he said . . .
12
14
But in
Leviticus,
God begins
to bridge the
gap between
himself and
sinful
humanity!
And he said . . .
15
And he said . . .
16
17
Sacrifice
chapters 1-10
Sanctification
chapters 11-27
And he said . . .
18
And he said . . .
19
In the New
Testament, the
epistle to the
Hebrews offers a
detailed
commentary on
Leviticus, seeing
in the sacrifices a
foreshadowing of
the person and
work of Christ.
And he said . . .
20
21
If we read Leviticus
through the lens of
the New Testament,
we see in the five
great sacrificesand
in the Day of
Atonement (Yom
Kippur) in chapter 16
the most perfect
portrait of Christ in
all of Scripture. In
the Gospels, we see
Christ through mens
eyes;
in Leviticus, we
And he
said . . .
22
23
Leviticus is a thrilling
book of tremendous
depth and beauty.
For a Jewish reader,
Leviticus rests at the
very heart of Torah,
Gods most precious
gift to his people; for
the Christian reader,
it sets forth the inner
dynamics of salvation
and of our
relationship with
And he said . . .
24
God.
A+
A+
25
A Note on Met
hodology
And he said . . .
26
As we begin our
study of Leviticus,
we need to lay out
some guidelines on
how to proceed. In
scholarly circles, this
is called
hermeneutics,
strictly defined as
the study of the
methodological
principles of
interpretation.
And he said . . .
27
And he said . . .
28
29
This approach of
seeing the Christian
canon of Scripture
as a tightly knit
fabricthe Old
Testament prefiguring the New and
the New Testament
fulfilling the Oldis
an essential element
of Roman Catholic
exegesis, and it is
summarized in the
And he said
...
Catechism
of the 30
And he said . . .
31
In addition to the
Catechism of the
Catholic Church,
several other
documents are also
important for
establishing a solid
hermeneutic (or
method) for a
Catholic reading
Scripture. They are
available here:
CatholicAnd he saidresources.org/Churc
...
32
And he said . . .
33
Now,
back to
Leviticus!
And he said . . .
34
To properly engage
Leviticus we need to
begin with an
understanding of
biblical cosmology, of
the tripartite nature
of Gods creation as
it was viewed in the
ancient Near East, c.
1500-500 B.C., and
as it is mirrored in
Scripture.
And he said . . .
35
36
As Scripture reads:
In the beginning, when God
created the heavens and the earth
and the earth was without form or
shape, with darkness over the abyss
and a mighty wind sweeping over
the watersthen God said: Let
there be light, and there was light.
God saw that the light was good.
God then separated the light from
the darkness. God called the light
day, and the darkness he called
night. Evening came, and morning
followedthe first day.
Then God said: Let there be a
dome in the middle of the waters ,
to separate one body of water from
the other. God made the dome, and
it separated the water below the
dome from the water above the
And he said
. . .so it happened. God
dome.
And
38
And he said . . .
39
And he said . . .
40
41
42
And a holy
God must
judge sin.
And he said . . .
43
William Blake, God Judging Adam (color relief print with pen, ink and
water color), c. 1795.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
And he said . . .
44
46
Land of
Goshen
Via Maris
Rameses
Succoth
Bitter Lakes
Marah
Elim
Rephidim
Mt. Sinai
Mt. Sinai
At Mt. Sinai we
encounter no cozy,
gentle God!
When the Lord came down
upon Mount Sinai, to the top of
the mountain, the Lord
summoned Moses to the top of
the mountain, and Moses went
up. Then the Lord told Moses:
Go down and warn the people
not to break through to the Lord
in order to see him; otherwise
many of them will be struck
down. For their part the priests,
who approach the Lord must
sanctify themselves; else the
Lord will break out in anger
against them. But Moses said
to the Lord, The people cannot
go up to Mount Sinai, for you
And he said . . .
yourself warned us, saying: Set51
God in Heave
Firmament and
Sky
Man on Earth
And he said . . .
53
Moses/God
Priests
People
Mt. Sinai
In the post-lapsarian
world, God no longer
permits sinful humanity
to stand before him.
The people stay at the
foot of the mountain,
forbidden from even
touching it; the priests
(Nadab & Abihu and 70
of the elders), after
sanctifying themselves,
are permitted only to
climb the lower slopes of
the mountain; only
Moses may go to the top
And he said . . .
55
of the mountain to
56
Holy of Holies
Holy Place
High Priest/Go
Priests
People
Courtyard
People
accompanied
by
Priests
for
sacrifice
People
People
In Leviticus as Literature
(1999), the brilliant
anthropologist Mary Douglas
suggests that Leviticus
embodies a mode of thought
that she calls analogical, a
mode entirely different from
Western analytic thinking.
Douglass suggests that
Leviticus sees reality as an
elaborate system of
correspondences between
the cosmos and Mt. Sinai, on
one hand, and Mt. Sinai and
the Tabernacle on the other
hand.
With this general scheme in
view, Douglas claims that
Leviticus displays a
And he said . . .
58
purposeful literary structure,
This is a dazzling
insight, and one
that shines an
incandescent light
on our study of
Leviticus!
Although we have
discerned a clear 2-part
structure to Leviticus
Sacrifice (1-10) and
Sanctification (11-27)that
2-part structure is
imbedded deeply within
the tripartite vision of the
cosmos that is mirrored in
Gods theophany at Mt.
And he said . . .
Sinai and in the structure59
Consequently, when
we examine the rituals
of the five great
sacrifices, the detailed
functioning of the
priesthood and the
hundreds of laws
concerning food, sex
and various diseases,
we do well to see each
detail in the context of
the whole.
Leviticus is like a 3dimensional mosaic,
mirroring reality itself,
with each individual 60
And he said . . .
command a single tile
Oh, this is
going to be
fun!
And he said . . .
61
And he said . . .
62
63