News flash! —- Yahweh has apparently contradicted himself once again at Sinai, claiming at one point that eating a carcass or a torn animal is strictly prohibited and not even a week later—that’s right folks one week later!—claiming that it is permissible to eat. What madness! Or, we have yet another example of different and contradictory law codes penned by different authors, to address different historical communities, and which were bothRead More
Month: August 2013
#187. Is the non-sacrificial slaughter of a sacrificial animal for the consumption of its meat strictly prohibited OR is it allowed in certain cases? (Lev 17:3-9 vs Deut 12:21-25)
In its present redacted form, the Pentateuch has Yahweh both commanding the prohibition of all non-sacrificial slaughter as an eternal decree (Lev 17:3-9) and commanding non-sacrificial slaughter for certain cases (Deut 12:21-25)—and as we shall see, these are specific cases defined by the Deuteronomist’s unique historical circumstances. As we have seen elsewhere (#137, #139-140, #141, #143, #146, #155, #175, #178, #183, #184, #185, #186), rather than seeing Yahweh commanding contradictory laws,Read More
#186. Is Yom Kipper (the Day of Atonement/Purification) an eternal law OR not? (Lev 16, 23:26-32 vs Deut 16:16; Rom 3; Gal 3; Heb 5-9)
The Priestly literature is the only corpus of texts in the Bible that prescribes as an eternal law, directly from Yahweh’s mouth, the festival of Yom Kipper—but see Ezekiel too, a text not incoincidentally also written by an Aaronid priest in exile. In fact, the priestly literature is the only corpus of texts in the Bible that commands certain sacrifices (#155), festivals (#109-110, #118), holy days (#171), covenants (#31), and otherRead More
#185. What is the punishment for a man who lies with a menstruating women: he merely becomes impure himself OR he is “cut off” from the community? (Lev 15:24 vs Lev 20:18)
Ah, the menstruating woman… what is to be done with her? As we have already previewed (#175, #178, #183, #184), in the priestly sacred world, all bodily emissions are deemed impure—whether that be saliva, puss, urine, semen, or blood—and the “infected” individual must undergo a process of regaining his/her state of purity. In Leviticus this usually involved being quarantined off from the community for 7 days, a washing of one’s clothesRead More
#184. Who can declare an individual “pure/clean”: the Aaronid priest OR Jesus? (Lev 12-15, 18-20 vs Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37; Mark 1:40-45; Matthew 8:1-4; Luke 5:12-16, etc.)
“And the priest shall identify him/her as pure.” As previously noted (#183), the whole belief system, social organization, and worldview created by the Aaronid priests who wrote the scrolls that eventually became the book of Leviticus were intricately constructed upon categories of pure and impure, and these categories were woven into, according to this priestly guild and its god, the very fabric of the cosmos itself, of its metaphysics, at itsRead More