The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here: tackling Leviticus. The episode is now available.
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 63 – Introducing Leviticus
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The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here: tackling Leviticus. The episode is now available.
I haven’t listened yet, so maybe you’ve already addressed this concept broadly. First a thought and then a question. I’m hoping to hear how the instructions in Leviticus set Israel apart from the neighboring nations, particularly within the divine council/Deut 32 worldview.
Recently, I was studying Lev 17-20, especially how it may contrast to the morality and worship practiced by the neighboring followers of Molech, who of course Stephen references in his LXX quote of Amos’ warning regarding the Hebrews’ worship of Molech, as poor Jephthah ended up doing. Child sacrifice is directly linked to Molech worship. Are the surrounding passages also linked to it?
The surrounding passages include references to consulting mediums, illicit (sacred?) sex, and body (cultic?) mutilation all the way to simply being rude (as in tripping a blind person). I wonder if such practices were typical in the worship and lifestyle of Molech followers, as Yahweh makes frequent references to keeping his Name and space pure.
We’ll hit most/all of these in due time.
(I clicked enter too soon)… I recognize you won’t get there for several episodes. When you do, I look forward to this being discussed. Thanks!
Whoops! Looks like my first comment didn’t even post. It went something like this:
I’m looking forward to looking at the codes in Leviticus designed to set Israel apart from neighboring nations given to the other gods, and I hope you address it. Recently, I was studying Lev 17-20, specifically the passages with the admonition to not sacrifice children as the followers of Molech do. Poor Japheth did so, a possible harbinger of later practices, as Stephen used Amos to linkthe Hebrew worship of Moloch to the cause of the exile.
I wondered if the surrounding passages also were reactionary to the practices of Molech followers, such as deviant (cultic?) sexual practices, certain kinds of tattoos and hair cuts, and even being rude to people (tripping blind people). By linking the banning of these practices to the holiness of Yahweh’s Name and presence, I’m curious if Yahweh was calling attention to how Israel would be set apart from the other nations. I hope you discuss it when the time comes.
we’ll get to this sort of thing eventually.
Brilliant! Again, any chance of this being produced in PDF as for Acts, please?? The Acts PDFs have proved a great boon over and over again, enabling one to chase through and find information quickly and easily. I hope it is possible.
yes; as long as Mr. Tudor wants to keep transcribing, we’ll keep doing it. Others like them as well.
Thankful for your work. Question. In the podcast, I walked away hearing you say that certain moral impurity would not impact sacred space. Was I hearing that correctly?
Yes. For instance, moral impurities (e.g., adultery) were not contagious. You wouldn’t become ritually impure if you came into contact with an adulterer. A thief (another moral impurity) could come onto sacred space to make the proper sacrifices of restoration, so the moral impurity did not render the person ritually unable to tread on sacred space (required to present an offering).
There were of course moral defilements that could also defile sacred space. The point is that one doesn’t always equal the other.
thank you for answering. confused a bit 🙂 i’m having trouble parsing your use of the terms “ritual impurities” vs “moral impurities” in light of the lemma tet-mem-alef (i’ll call it “tma”).
leviticus 12-15 deals with body related defilement. the section has a synopsizing verse in 15.31 that helpfully illustrates the concept of ritual impurity you discussed in your podcast. The israelite’s uncleanness rendered the tabernacle unclean/defiled (tma) ; so far so good.
Now onto adultery. It shows up in leviticus 18.20 in a litany of sexual sins. The adulturer defiles (tma) himself; but the section closes in vs. 27 with the injunction not to follow the “detestable” (toAYvot) things of the nations that came before. Those guys defiled themselves, and then the land itself became defiled. You addressed all of this clearly in your podcast, but my confusion (personal problem) comes from the idea that the land could be defiled without the tabernacle becoming defiled… I know that idolatry was detestable, and that it defiled sacred space (ez.5.11). But for some reason the idea that adultery doesn’t seems a stretch.
i think some of my confusion comes from that fact that while Yahweh lived in their midst in restricted sacred space, he also came out and about among them (during battle, in the valley of bochim’, etc.). Again, you appear more right because even in the military encampments, the only injunction concerning Yahweh’s presence is dung, not moral sins… just trying to process this. thank you brother.
The sexual sins (several of them) are interesting in that they do pollute the land, requiring (essentially) a “reset” – it hints at the need for the sort of “scouring” Peter envisioned in the eschaton – the land/world has to be made new.
Finally started listening to this… Separately, I’ve been studying temple cosmology as it applies to Gen 1 and elsewhere with respect to the restoration of humanity and the nations, and when you said something about the blood being applied to the tabernacle to make it ritually clean as sacred space, all kinds of bells went off regarding what believers have been remade into thanks to the Cross and faith, etc. So looking forward to this.
Yep; certainly connections there.
Got my brother to listen to the podcast over Christmas! We are starting at Leviticus together so I’ll be re-listening to Leviticus so I can help walk him through it. Something caught my ear the second time around that I just missed the first time over. In this episode Milgrom makes the comment that the demons housed in temples are replaced by humans in the Levitical system. Do you think that is because of David Burnett’s fairly airtight argument that we displace them? The rebellious sons of God have been replaced with Levite priests which post Pentecost is spread to all believers, whom upon resurrection displace the rebellious sons of God??? Thoughts?
Milgrom is arguing from the typical critical-scholarly notion that Israelites denied the reality of the shedim. That’s part of the evolutionary approach to Israelite religion, where Israelites evolved out of such “polytheism” to monotheism and rejected the reality of other entities. I disagree (and I think the Bible does, too). You need to realize where Milgrom is coming from to parse what he says. He think Leviticus is quite late in terms of authorship — well past the “monotheistic breakthrough” he presumes.