Levine on Leviticus 11

In this post, I’ll quote Baruch Levine’s discussion of the rationale behind Leviticus 11′s food laws.  It’s on pages 247-248 of his Jewish Publication Society commentary on Leviticus.

“The dietary laws of the Torah institutionalize the basic distinction between pure and impure living creatures.  A practical system of food selection emerges, in which several factors interact.  (1) There is a clear preference for domesticated land animals and birds, and the perception may carry over to fish.  (2) Within this larger framework, concern is shown for the diet and digestive processes of living creatures, as if to ensure that nothing forbidden to the Israelites as food had been eaten by the living creatures themselves.  If there was, there was concern that such food had been digested as thoroughly as possible or, at the very least, could be separated from the creature after slaughter.  The permitted animals are herbivorous ruminants, whereas virtually all forbidden birds are carnivorous creatures of prey.  The torn flesh of a land animal (terefah), the evidence of violent preying, is strictly forbidden, just as humans may not eat flesh that they have torn from a living creature.  (3) Empirical evidence shows a correlation between methods of locomotion and patterns of feeding and digestion: In most cases, herbivorous ruminants have a cleft hoof.  On this basis, creatures with truly cleft hoofs, two ‘toes,’ were considered domesticated, thus permitted; living creatures with paws were undoubtedly regarded as bestial and, hence, forbidden.  (4) As regards fish, the biblical inventory is extremely limited.  Preference for undulatory locomotion with fins probably correlated with observable feeding behavior.  Crustaceans, for example, were perceived as scavengers.”

So here are the criteria, and I draw some of this from Levine’s actual comments on the text of Leviticus 11 (specifically page 66):

1.  God doesn’t want the Israelites to eat predators or scavengers.  One reason is that eating predators could result in the Israelites consuming an animal who has eating something that is prohibited to the Israelites—such as an animal that was torn.

2.  God also doesn’t want the Israelites to eat anything with paws—which is bestial.  That’s why the command is that they eat creatures with cloven hooves—any other type of foot constitutes a paw.  God’s preference is for fully domesticated land-animals.  But I’m unclear on this point, because Deuteronomy 12:15, 22 and 14:5 let Israelites eat the gazelle and the deer, which are in the wild.

3.  God wants the Israelites to eat animals that chew the cud, meaning they thoroughly grind and digest their food.  That way, if the animal does eat something that’s forbidden to the Israelites, his bodily processes would dispose of it (I guess).

Problems and Hope Before the Exile; Water

1.  In my reading today of Randall Heskett’s Messianism Within the Scriptural Scrolls of Isaiah, the following passage on page 47 stood out to me:

[Jacques] Vermeylen suggests that Isaiah 11:1-5, which depends upon the preceding oracles, comes from the second half of the seventh century and gives them a new interpretation…Isaiah 11:2-5 offers an antithetical response to the abuses imposed by the leaders of Judah (5:19-23) and Assyria (10:5, 13).  The new king who receives his wisdom from God is contrasted with the Assyrian’s false claim of wisdom (10:13).  The Assyrian oversteps his role as the rod of the Lord (10:5) but the figure in 11:1-5 will “strike the earth with the rod of his mouth: (10:4).

Could some form of Messianism have existed in Israel’s pre-exilic period?  Randall’s conception of Messianism answers in the negative, for he believes (if I’m understanding him correctly) that Messianism would speak to Israel when she lacked a Davidic monarchy, for Jewish Messianism was largely about the reconstitution of that very monarchy.

Fair enough.  But Israel had problems even before her exile.  Judah had bad Davidic kings, oppressive rulers, and threatening foreign powers.  In the midst of this, could she have hoped for a Davidic king who would be righteous, who would uphold the rights of the poor rather than oppress them, and who would preside over an era of international peace?

2.  In Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner states (on page 106) that, according to rabbinic exegetes of Leviticus 11:34, 37-38, dry food “is not susceptible to uncleanness.”  It must be wet to be susceptible to uncleanness. 

I learned that a while back in my weekly quiet time on Leviticus, but it’s good to be reminded.  But I’m not sure why water is an impurity carrier. 

The Bright Spot and Skin Color

Jacob Neusner, Invitation to Midrash: The Workings of Rabbinic Bible Interpretation (Atlanta: Scholars, 1998) 73.

Neusner discusses a passage from the Sifra (third century C.E.), specifically Negaim 1:4. The topic is the laws in Leviticus about the leper, or whatever the disease in question was (Leviticus 13-14).

We therefore find that the specification of colors of plagues are meant to produce a lenient ruling, but not to produce a strict ruling. One therefore examines the German in accord with his skin tone to produce a lenient ruling…And the Ethiopian is adjudged in accord with the intermediate pigment to produce a lenient ruling.

Neusner puts this in bold-face to indicate that the passage also occurs in the Mishnah and the Tosefta.

I can’t find the passage in the Tosefta, but the Mishnah passage is Negaim 2:1. Here’s Danby’s translation of parts of it:

In a German the Bright Spot appears as dull white, and in an Ethiopian what is dull white appears as bright white. R. Ishmael says: The Children of Israel…are like boxwood, neither black nor white, but of the intermediate shade…R. Judah says[:] let a German be judged leniently by [the standard of the colour of] his own skin, and let an Ethiopian be judged leniently by [the standard of colour of] the intermediate shade. But the Sages say: Let both be judged by [the standard of colour of] the intermediate shade.

I can get pieces of what’s going on here. The issue is the bright spot that indicates leprosy, which the priest looks at to determine if the leprosy is present, receding, or absent. If the leper is clean, then he can rejoin the Israelite community. On a white German, the Bright Spot appears as a dull white, whereas on an Ethiopian it is bright white. The Israelites, however, are of an intermediate shade between white and black, so the Bright Spot appears in a certain way on them.

The priests make their verdict on the condition of the leper based on the color of the Bright Spot. Leviticus 13:39 states, for example, that if the bright spot is dark white, then the leper is clean. But what is “dark white”? On a German, the Bright Spot is dull anyway! And on an African it will always be lighter than his own skin. So the debate seems to be this: Should the priest judge the German and African based on their own skin color, or on that of most Israelites?

That’s my impression, and I may be wrong. Maybe the view that the priest should judge the African based on Israelite skin-color is saying that the Bright Spot stands out on black skin, so the priest can easily monitor if it becomes lighter or darker. With a German, however, that poses more of a problem, since the Bright Spot always appears darker, with the German being so white. Consequently, Rabbi Judah says the German should be judged according to the standard of German skin-color. The Sages, however, maintain that the priest should judge the German too according to Israelite skin-color. I don’t understand this position.

Who are these Germans and Ethiopians? Are they resident aliens in Israel, gerim? Or are they people coming to Jerusalem for a festival, like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8? I opt for the former because Leviticus 13-14 is about purity in the land of Israel: the residents of Israel need to be purified so that God will continue to dwell in their midst.
 

The Rich Getting Their Hands Dirty

Jacob Neusner, The Midrash: An Introduction (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1990) 59.

Neusner quotes Sifra Leviticus, Parashah 7:14:1 (fourth century C.E., according to the Encyclopedia Judaica), which interacts with Leviticus 1:14-17:

“The priest shall bring it to the altar, pinch off its head”: Why does Scripture say, “The priest…pinch off…?” This teaches that the act of pinching off the head should be done only be a priest.

This stood out to me because Leviticus 1:2-6 requires the worshiper to slaughter and flay the male from the herd before it’s offered as a burnt offering. I’ll use the King James Version here because it’s more literal than what I usually use, the NRSV:

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD: and the priests, Aaron’s sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces.

When a man offers a male from the herd as a burnt offering, he himself must slaughter and flay it. When a man brings a bird, however, the priest is the one who pinches off its head and tears it open.

Why the difference? I can’t find the answer in my commentaries here, but I’ll speculate (and perhaps wax homiletical in the process).

In Leviticus 5:7, we read that a person who can’t bring a lamb for a trespass offering must bring two birds. So the richer Israelites offer animals from the herd, whereas the poorer ones offer birds or grain (if they’re especially poor).

Maybe God wanted the richer Israelites to play a more active role in their sacrifice to teach them to place God above their riches. If they simply came and gave the animal to the priests so they could kill it, they wouldn’t feel the sacrifice as deeply. They’d just come, give their animal, leave, and pat themselves on the back for appeasing God. But God wanted them to play a more active role in the worship, to get their hands dirty, for he realized that the rich are in danger of forgetting God (Deuteronomy 8:11ff.).

I wonder how biblical scholars or ancient Jewish interpreters address this issue.

Leviticus for Toddlers?

H.L. Strack and Gunter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash: Second Edition, trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 260.

Sifra, Aramaic ‘book’, designates the book of Leviticus, because in the old Jewish school system this was the first book, with which instruction began: R. Issi justifies this in LevR 7.3 (M.156) by saying that children and sacrifices are pure, and the pure should occupy themselves with pure things.

I looked up the passage in my Judaic Classics Library and could not find it, for whatever reason. Why start Jewish kids out with Leviticus? Wouldn’t it be more entertaining for them to hear stories, like the ones in Genesis, or Judges, or I-II Samuel? That’s how my dad and mom taught me the Bible. We listened to tapes that dramatized Bible stories. I still remember Jacob crying out, “Joseph has been eaten by a wild animals!” Or Shadrach telling Nebuchadnezzar that his golden image was “just a hunk of ugly junk outside the city wall.”

But, on a certain level, Leviticus does make sense to me as the first biblical book that children learn. Why? One reason is that I learned through ritual. As Armstrongites, we kept the biblical Sabbaths and feast days (or so we assumed), and that internalized certain concepts within us (though, of course, many kids raised in the Armstrongite movement depart from it when they become older). So I’m not surprised that Jewish kids read about the rituals that they and their family performed. They approached Leviticus with some knowledge of what the book was about.

Second, the book is pretty simple. Unless one probes it deeply, it won’t appear all that exciting, but it’s simple enough for a beginning Hebrew student to read. It has numbers and animals, like Sesame Street, or those books that teach kids how to count.

I’m not sure what their teachers did when they got to Leviticus 18 and 20, however, the chapters about perverse sex! Rabbi Issi wants the pure Jewish kids to occupy themselves with pure things, like the sacrifices. In a sense, I can see his point, since Leviticus is all about God’s order in terms of his sanctuary and worship. An innocent child not yet exposed to the horrible things in life can perhaps handle that. But there are also chapters in Leviticus that talk about the darker aspects of life. Not only are Leviticus 18 and 20 about perverted sex, but Nadab and Abihu get killed, and the curses of Leviticus 26 can give adults nightmares, let alone children!

Beyond Patriarchy

I said in Female Offerings that I might wrestle today with the theological ramifications of gendered sacrifices, particularly the issue of why the more important sacrifices had to be male.

Was the Old Testament mindset patriarchal? Yes, but the Hebrew Bible says a lot of positive things about women. Were women better off in Israel under the Torah than they were in other ancient Near Eastern societies? Not necessarily, for other countries in the ancient Near East were more egalitarian on inheritance and divorce. Plus, the Israelite religion we encounter in the Bible does not have strong female deities as do other ancient Near Eastern nations, even though there are strong women in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Deborah, the Proverbs 31 woman, etc.). And, while Jewish and Christian apologists argue that women were treated as sex objects in ancient Near Eastern fertility cults, there is debate about the existence of cultic prostitution in that region.

So I’m not sure where God is in all of this. Although Israel was more patriarchal than other ancient Near Eastern nations, maybe God was moving her in the direction of egalitarianism. The custom in Israel was for only men to inherit property, but God said that Zelophahad’s daughters could inherit, since Zelophahad didn’t have any sons (Numbers 27). That wasn’t as liberal as other ancient Near Eastern countries, some of which allowed daughters to inherit even when the father had sons. But it was more liberal than where Israel was before.

In Exodus 21, only male Hebrew slaves are released in the seventh year. In Deuteronomy 15:12, however, both men and women Hebrew slaves are released after six years of service. Exodus 23:17 states, “Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD” (NRSV). We see the same expression in Deuteronomy 16:16, but the chapter also mentions daughters and female slaves appearing before the LORD during his festivals. Was God, through Deuteronomy, moving Israel in an egalitarian direction?

Regarding sacrifices, God may have worked with Israel according to her patriarchal presuppositions. Perhaps he was also moving Israel beyond that mindset through other laws. I don’t know.

Could there be a practical reason that the male animals were considered more valuable? Were male animals the only ones used for agriculture, for example, since they were stronger? If so, then maybe that’s why the males were used for the more important sacrifices.

Female Offerings

BryanL asked on his blog, “The Art of Procrastination,” Did the Savior Have to be a Man? And T.C. Robinson argues on New Leaven that the Passover lamb had to be a male, since the Passover lamb was a type of Christ, who was a man (see “The Passover Lamb had to be Male…”).

I asked T.C. how he accounts for the female sin offerings in the Hebrew Bible (Leviticus 4:28, 32; 5:6). There were also peace offerings, which could be either male or female (Leviticus 3:1, 6). And Sue points out under T.C.’s post that the red heifer of Numbers 19 was a female. Were they a type of Christ? If so, then gender obviously doesn’t matter, does it?

I have the same problem with typology that Richard expresses under T.C.’s post: “The problem that I have with most ‘typology’ is the severe lack of [hermeneutical] control, i.e. there are as many ‘types’ as people with imagination! Oftentimes it just degenerates into our reading what we want into the biblical text rather than letting it speak for itself.”

For my weekly quiet times, I’ve heard a lot of Christian sermons–from Jon Courson, Chuck Missler, Bob Smith, and the list goes on. They like to use typology, as they seek to tie things in the Old Testament to Jesus Christ. The problem is that the “type” and the “antetype” are not always perfect fits. When this happens, the preacher usually says that the type is intentionally imperfect, since God wants us to focus not so much on the type, but rather on the antetype, the perfect Jesus Christ. But what makes them think that it’s a type of Christ at all, when the two don’t completely match?

As a Christian, I’m not totally against typology, since it’s a way that I derive meaning from the Hebrew Bible. I personally don’t slay giants or sacrifice animals, so I have to do something to make those concepts meaningful to my own spiritual life. But I don’t expect typology to convince someone with non-Christian presuppositions, such as Jews, or historical critics who don’t seek to force the Hebrew Bible into a Christian mold.

I try to understand the writings of the Hebrew Bible on their own terms, before I apply them to Jesus Christ. When the text says that the offering had to be “unblemished,” for example, I don’t limit my thoughts to “Oh my, this must be a type of the sinless Son of God.” Rather, I ask why the offering had to be unblemished within the Hebrew mindset. My impression is that a lot of it had to do with the majesty of God (see Malachi 1), which required that God receive the best.

Then why did God have different gender requirements for his sacrifices? Unlike Sue (perhaps), I think that gender actually does matter in terms of this issue, for there were some sacrifices that absolutely had to be male (e.g., the burnt offering of Leviticus 1:3, 10). Some could be male or female (the peace offerings of Leviticus 3:1, 6). And some had to be female (some of the sin offerings of Leviticus 4-5).

I think a possible answer is that the gender requirements placed a hierarchy of importance on the sacrifices. Leviticus 4, the chapter on sin offerings, prescribes a bullock for the sins of the priest and entire community, a male goat for the sins of a prince, and a she-goat or female lamb for the sins of the individual. Priests, princes, and the entire community are more important than single individuals, so their sin offerings had to be from the gender that was higher on the hierarchy within the Hebrew mindset, the male. For evidence of such a hierarchy, see Leviticus 27, which places a higher redemption price on male human beings than females.

Similar rules appear in Numbers 15:22-28, though, here, the sacrifice for the entire community is one young bull for a burnt offering and one he-goat for a sin-offering. This differs from the command in Leviticus 4 that a young bull be the sin offering for the entire community, so I guess there’s diversity within the Bible. (Who would have guessed?) But, still, Numbers 15 conveys the message that the more important offerings had to be male. Likewise, in Leviticus 16:5, 7, two male goats are used in the Day of Atonement ceremony, which is for the entire community.

Why is the burnt offering to be a male, whereas a peace offering can go either way? I think the answer may be that the burnt offering is the most sacred sacrifice. God gets all of the burnt offering, whereas the peace offering is shared between God and the worshipper (Leviticus 1, 7). The burnt offering may have been the sacrifice that invited God’s presence at the outset, which would explain why it appears in so many rituals (Leviticus 16:3–Day of Atonement; Leviticus 23–the festivals in general; Leviticus 15–purification; etc.).

I’m not sure if this principle (that the more important sacrifices had to be male) makes sense of everything in the sacrificial system. The Passover sacrifice was for individuals, yet it had to be male. The red heifer helped cleanse the entire community, yet it was female. Maybe the Passover lamb was in a higher class because it was for a festival, so a male was required. As far as the red heifer goes, I’m not sure how to explain her. I think that the principle holds true in a lot of instances, but there are a few exceptions. So I guess I’m doing the same thing as the Christian typologists I criticized: seeing a pattern, while not knowing what to do with an exception.

I’m tired of writing now, and I kind of shot my day with this post! I may wrestle with the theological ramifications of this issue tomorrow. See you then!

Vaal, Part II

For background, see Vaal, Part I.

As I think about the Star Trek episode about Vaal, most of what goes through my mind are religious polarities. Unlike Paul Tillich, however, I have a hard time synthesizing them or finding a middle ground.

In the episode, the people of Gamma Trianguli VI feed their god Vaal and get balance, peace, prosperity, and long life in return. Captain Kirk feels that this whole set-up is hindering their growth and development, so he destroys Vaal.

In the Bible, I see two views. One states that the worship of God makes things click for people. The second says that we need pain and adversity in order to grow.

The first one is in the Torah. Leviticus 26 goes into all of the blessings that come from obeying God’s commandments, as well as the curses that occur on account of disobedience. If Israel obeys, she will get food and peace and prosperity and life, much like the inhabitants of Gamma Trianguli VI experienced (only the Israelites have lots of children). And you remember how the people of Gamma Trianguli VI had to feed Vaal in order to receive paradise? The Torah treats certain sacrifices as food for God (Leviticus 3:11, 16).

On the other hand, there is also a view in the Bible that adversity makes us better and stronger people. As Romans 5:3-5 states: “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (NRSV).

So you see one view in the Bible that looks similar to the Vaalite position: we need to worship God because that’s what guarantees our peace and sustenance. But you also see the Kirkian view: we need adversity because that’s how we grow.

Jesus the Literate, Slavery, Had Adam and Eve Done It Right

1. M. Bar-Ilan, “Writing in Ancient Israel. Part Two: Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth and Rabbinic Period,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 33-34.

“A high percentage of the population did not know how to read and it seems evident that in rural areas and in small towns only one man could read from the Tora. We might conclude that in such settlements there were more than 90% illiteracy (T. Megilla 3:12).”

Bar-Ilan is talking about the rabbinic period, but I’ve heard the same thing about New Testament times in Palestine. Bar-Ilan gives a quotation from an ancient source, the Tosefta, so let’s see what it has to say:

“A synagogue which has only one person who can read–he stands and reads [in the Torah] and sits down…even seven times” (Jacob Neusner’s translation).

Okay, I guess literacy wasn’t widespread in Palestine back then, if there were towns in which only one person could read. When rabbinic literature talks about kids learning the Bible and the Mishnah, therefore, it may either be setting forth its ideal of Palestinian life, or discussing an elite.

We read in Luke 4:16-19 that Jesus could read. There, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in a Nazareth synagogue. How could Jesus read, if most people back then were illiterate?

This is where some believe that Luke is wrong, historically-speaking. At DePauw, I knew an atheist who made that very point. “How is Jesus reading? Most people couldn’t read back then?,” he asked. I also vaguely recall that John Dominic Crossan regards Jesus as an illiterate peasant.

But maybe Jesus somewhere learned how to read. I once had a conversation with a colleague at Harvard Divinity School. He wasn’t aiming to go into academia, but rather into a Korean Christian ministry. But he took a New Testament class, in which he had to read John Dominic Crossan’s book on Jesus the peasant. His class got into a debate about whether or not Jesus could read. My friend remarked that Martin Luther King in his context probably shouldn’t have been literate either! For him, great men are great precisely because they are able to rise above the limitations of their context.

I’m not sure how right my friend was about Martin Luther King. Schools were segregated in King’s day, but at least African-Americans had schools to go to, and I’m sure they taught reading. At the same time, the South tried to trip African-Americans up with literacy tests. So maybe there were lots of people in the South who could read, and lots who could not, and this probably applied to both races: black and white.

But, if even illiterate towns had at least one literate person in the synagogue, then why couldn’t Jesus have been one of those literate people? Perhaps God set things up so that Jesus would learn how to read.

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 349.

“In the period before us, however, the abolition of slavery, save in isolated cases of manumission, was utterly out of question, considering only the enormous number of the slaves. The world was far from ripe for such a step. The church, in her persecuted condition, had as yet no influence at all over the machinery of the state and the civil legislation. And she was at that time so absorbed in the transcendent importance of the higher world and in her longing for the speedy return of the Lord, that she cared little for earthly freedom or temporal happiness. Hence Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, counsels servants to serve only the more zealously for the glory of the Lord, that they may receive from God the higher freedom; and not to attempt to be redeemed at the expense of their Christian brethren, lest they be found slaves of their own caprice. From this we see that slaves, in whom faith awoke the sense of manly dignity and the desire of freedom, were accustomed to demand their redemption at the expense of the church, as a right, and were thus liable to value the earthly freedom more than the spiritual.”

Schaff includes a similar quote from Tertullian, and he also refers to a fourth century statement by Chrysostom that slaves should be gradually emancipated. In pages 350-352, Schaff cites some interesting facts: that Christian tradition “makes Onesimus, the slave of Philemon, a bishop[;]” that the slave Callistus “rose to the chair of St. Peter in Rome” in the third century C.E.; that Clement calls slaves “men like ourselves;” and that Lactantius (third-fourth century C.E.) proclaims slaves and masters to be equal.

I picked this quote to write about because Ignatius’ statement about slavery stuck out to me, but I never got around to discussing it on my blog. Ignatius essentially says that slaves shouldn’t try to become free. What was Paul’s position? That depends on how one translates I Corinthians 7:21. The NRSV has the following:

“Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever.”

This seems to imply that the Christian slave should make us of his state of slavery rather than seeking to become free. As Titus 2:9-10 says, “Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.” By being good slaves, Christian servants could lead their masters to Christ.

The NIV, however, has something different:

“Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you– although if you can gain your freedom, do so.”

For the NIV, a Christian slave should become free if he is able to do so.

The Greek looks rather ambiguous: it says something like “but if you are able to be free, rather use.” The debate concerns what the word translated “use” means.

But the New Testament is not always anti-slavery. I Timothy 6:2 instructs Christian slaves to submit to their Christian masters, so apparently the church didn’t require masters to free their slaves once they joined up.

At the same time, the New Testament requires masters to treat their slaves with kindness (Ephesians 6:9). Paul even tells Philemon to regard his servant not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ (Philemon 1:16).

The New Testament and early Christian record on slavery is rather checkered. There isn’t really a wholesale condemnation of the institution, yet masters and slaves were treated as equals. Does the latter part absolve Christianity of being pro-slavery? Some will say “yes,” and some will say “no.” I had a professor at DePauw who said that Southern slave-owners in pre-Civil War days acknowledged that their slaves were spiritual equals, yet, in their eyes, spiritual equality did not mean social equality. At the same time, shouldn’t spiritual equality lead to social equality? John Wesley certainly thought so, for he believed that a master wouldn’t beat a slave whom he saw as a brother in Christ. And Ephesians 6:9 is clear that masters shouldn’t mistreat their slaves.

One more point: God can use a person even in slavery. Many of us are seeking to change our circumstances, but should that be our sole focus? Maybe God can use us in an unpleasant situation. That’s not to say that slaves shouldn’t have sought their freedom, since freedom is a good thing, and slavery could be really horrible. But it’s one more thing to think about as we consider the issue of the Bible and slavery.

3. Jacob Neusner, Judaism’s Story of Creation: Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah (Boston: Brill, 2000) 117.

“Adam picked and ate. But here too there is a detail that cannot be missed. Even after three years, Israel may not eat the fruit wherever it chooses. Rather, in the fourth year from planting, Israel will still show restraint, bringing the fruit only ‘for jubilation before the Lord’ in Jerusalem. That signals that the once forbidden fruit is now eaten in public, not in secret, before the Lord, as a moment of celebration. That detail too recalls the Fall and makes its comment upon the horror of the fall. That is, when Adam ate the fruit, he shamefully hid from God for having eaten the fruit. But when Israel eats the fruit, it does so proudly, joyfully, before the Lord. The contrast is not to be missed, so too the message. Faithful Israel refrains when it is supposed to, and so it has every reason to refrain and to eat ‘before the Lord.’ It has nothing to hide, and everything to show.”

Neusner is discussing Leviticus 19:23-25: “When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the LORD. But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the LORD your God” (NRSV).

Suppose that Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the forbidden fruit? Would they have stayed in their state of ignorance and simplicity? Or would God have allowed them to eat it once they became more mature? After all, the knowledge of good and evil is not necessarily a bad thing in Scripture. The Book of Proverbs is largely about distinguishing good from evil! Maybe Adam and Eve weren’t quite ready to do that yet. Or God wanted them to learn to obey him first, before they got into the realm of complex decision-making. Madeleine L’Engle once wrote that Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve was like offering a martini to a child!

C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra is about what would have happened had Adam and Eve obeyed God. It’s not Adam and Eve staying naked and simple for the rest of their natural lives! Adam and Eve actually receive glory in Lewis’ scenario.

I like the way that Neusner presents the issue: the Israelites learn to obey God when they refrain from eating the fruit for three years. Eventually, they eat as they rejoice before the Lord. Maybe that could have happened for Adam and Eve, and God wasn’t trying to withhold anything good from them.

Samuel the Non-Aaronite

Source: Jacob Lauterbach’s introduction in Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933) xiii.

“Tradition reports such an activity of studying and interpreting the Torah and of diligently searching out its full meaning and all its implications, even in pre-exilic times. Thus, the prophet Samuel is supposed to have interpreted the passage in Lev. 1.3 as implying that the slaughter of the sacrificial animals may be performed by a layman, i.e., a non-priest.”

I remember reading Leviticus 1:3-5 for my daily quiet time, and I noticed it said that the worshipper is the one who slaughters the animal. I read a while back that this is one view in the Torah, since there are passages in which the priest kills it. But I don’t remember where I read that.

I wonder if the rabbi was trying to explain how a non-priest like Samuel could be offering sacrifices. I Chronicles 6 says that Samuel was descended from Kohath, which means he was a priest. But, as far as I know, the Kohathites were not the ones who actually sacrificed the animals, since Leviticus 1 presents the sons of Aaron doing that. Aaron was a descendant of Kohath, but Samuel was not from the line of Aaron. The Kohathites not from the line of Aaron were responsible for covering certain holy objects while moving them (Numbers 4). I’ve read commentators who contend that the Chronicler tried to tie Samuel to a priestly line to explain how he could be offering sacrifices. If that were its goal, why didn’t it tie Samuel to Aaron?

Also, while I’ve not read the rabbis’ argument, I find it somewhat weak. Sure, the worshipper killed the animal, but the Aaronite priests were the ones who offered it. The problem of Samuel the non-Aaronite priest doing so remains just that–a problem.