Why Did They Put Leviticus In The Bible?

[Julie Marie]

This is not sarcastic nor intended to poke fun at the Bible.  I'm very serious about this question.

I am reading a novel.  In it there is a sadistic murderer.  He uses quotes from Leviticus to plan the grisly way in which he kills women.  This isn't the first instance of someone using quotes from Leviticus to justify harming another human being.  They seem to be endless.

So after a while I begin asking myself how this guy managed to get his writings included in the Bible.  Some of what he wrote would bring mental health professionals to diagnose him a sociopath.  Why did the council allow this to be part of the Bible?  I don't see the logic.

I realize back then misogyny was the order of the day and including anything written by a woman was verboten, no matter how positive a message it may convey.  But I'm sure there were other writers from Old Testament times that could have been included that were far less dark than Leviticus.  An awful lot of what I've read makes me believe he should have worked for Hitler.

Any answers?  I'm beside myself on this one.

[tekla]

Really, for the observant Jew (and remember this was written by Jews, for Jews, Xian's just ripped it off) Leviticus IS the entire whole of the bible, because it's the law.

I think it makes more sense, taken as a whole, and using historical context.  Remove those things, let people pick and choose what they like and dislike, and make it immediate rather than historical and it becomes a weapon.

[Arch]

To differentiate between "us" and "them"?

I have heard that certain translations take liberties (sometimes liberties of historical context) and that Leviticus doesn't always say what we think it says.

[tekla]

You had to hear that?  You've never picked up different versions and checked it out?  Anyway.  It's much easier to lose and confuse meaning translating across time (in this case many millennia) than between languages.  We can make allowances in some ways for language differences when translating.  We can not go back and have any understanding what people 5,000 years ago mean by choosing one word, or the way they intended for it to be applied.  In some respect you have people in one of the most modern, scientific and rational cultures ever reading what amounts to speculations on the part of some rather literate, but still itinerant and highly superstitious sheepherders.

[JessicaH]

There are alot of things through the book that I find terribly offensive and perverse. Infanticide, genocide, rape, slavery and other things are given a "thumbs up" quite a few times through the book. It's a shame that more people haven't read the whole thing to know what's really in it.

[tekla]

There are alot of things through the book that I find terribly offensive and perverse.

Leviticus, or the entire Bible?  That whole crucifixion deal is pretty bad too.

[Julie Marie]

Leviticus IS the entire whole of the bible, because it's the law.

Okay, that makes sense, at least it may have a few thousand years ago.  But was that the case, say, in 380AD?  And since laws usually change with social views, why hasn't anyone thought that maybe editing a book, that so many live their life by, to keep up with the times is the prudent thing to do?  Leviticus seems to attract all the nuts.  Maybe that should be telling the powers-that-be Leviticus has lost it's positive social value and it's time to retire it.

[Pica Pica]

Leviticus mean - 'about/for/for the attention of the Levites'.

The Levites were a tribe is Israel who were not given any land, they took tithes from the other land owners in return for priestly and political duties - so it is the book outlining their duties and the laws of their society that they were to uphold.

[tekla]

no fair, Pica's dad is a pro. 

So Pica, is that then the understanding that those laws only apply to the priest class/caste, or do they apply to the whole of Israel?

[Pica Pica]

They apply to the nation, but in particular to the priestly caste.

It's important to note (and this next paragraph is going to be gabbled recollection) that the Pentateuch (the first five books) were not written to moderately late in Biblical history and were written after the nation had settled and split into two kingdoms. North and South. It is thought that the these books were written after the larger Northern kingdom (Israel) had been conquered by the Assyrians and written by the Southern and previously less powerful kingdom (Judah). So there is a vested political interest in this book by Judean scribes to claim and codify the laws of God that the larger kingdom had flouted. This is one of the reasons why the tradition of law is so strong in Judaism - because a strong king was one who practiced the law. (Judah was itself conquered later, which caused a lot of soul searching and moody prophets.)

However, if we follow a Christian understanding, Christ said 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' Mat 5:17.

The idea being that Christ's life and death have obsoleted the technicalities of the law for the greater law of 'do unto others'. That God's law was not 'The Way' to God anymore because 'The Way' was through the example and sacrifice of Jesus. 'I am the way, the truth and the light' etc..
The next thousand or so years of Christianity seeming (to me) to be about working out what that entails.

[tekla]

Yeah, the Israelites don't even have a flood story until they come back from Babylon (hummm, and it sounds suspiciously like the flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh, though with distinct Hebrew lessons).  However, I always told my students that if your going to steal, steal from the best, & that being said and done I just wanted to say that the Pentateuch pretty much rocks.  The writers of Genesis and Exodus in particular are about as good at writing as anyone has ever been.  It really sucks you in, right from the start, the guy starts with the beginning of everything and gets it out of the way in a couple of quick, and just about the most poetic you can find, paragraphs

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And the evening and the morning were the first day.

You can't touch that.

And really, all of you can rail about what the law (circa here what, a couple millennia before the Common Era?) says, and how goofy parts of it are/were (whatever) but in doing that you fail to see how radical and how great a leap forward any written law was for that time and place.  Indeed, the notion of a written law that applies to everything is one of the very foundation blocks of Western Society and Culture (but we don't teach that anymore do we?).  The twisting, bending, shifting, the incredible picking and choosing over the Jewish Law as codified in Leviticus (instead of worshiping it for what it is, the beginning of civil society in the West) comes from trying to apply something that was done by and for some rather literate, but still itinerant and highly superstitious Bronze Age sheepherders wandering around in a desert to people in one of the most modern, scientific and rational urban-based cultures ever.  The problems are obvious.  They are also legion.   

[Pica Pica]

The problems are obvious.  They are also legion.   

They are many?

I love Gilgamesh, or at least what I read through OUP version - they make no bones that it is an incomplete text, give you the story with the missing bits pointed out an appendices with later/similar texts that are usually used to patch the holes up. I love the later part of the story more - that after realising the fact of death because the death of his soul-buddy Enkidu, he seeks out eternal life - and completely cocks it up.

Realising that he has blown his chance of becoming immortal, he returns home to be a good king to his people. A message I like a lot.

[Annah]

Hopefully I can answer this questions as I am a Divinity Student!

The Book of Leviticus, contrary to popular belief, was not written by Moses but under the reign of Josiah who was a King a few generations past Solomon. During this time, Judah was in a political, cultural, and sovereign crises from the Assyrian Empire. Israel had already been decimated.

Josiah was known as a king who tried to bring Judah back to "it's roots" as their culture was being immersed with other cultural identities and religion.

Josiah felt it was proper to write some laws of instruction (Leviticus and Deuteronomy) as a method and "handbook" that the Jewish nation needs to keep it's uniqueness or fear that their culture would merge into other nations (Goi in Hebrew). Israel had already been assimilated and 10 of 12 total original tribes of Israel was gone forever as they merge with Persian nations and incorporated their lifestyle in the other nations.

Leviticus was a written instruction to the priests and those who follow the law was important to them during this time.

Is Leviticus and Deuteronomy mysogenic? Absolutely. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the culture of Israel/Judah back in their times. Other countries were more progressive (women Pharoahs and other women of high society) but the Jews felt that keeping women in this regard was holding onto their "roots."

Most of the law in these two books were designed and written to specifically set them apart from other nations.

Concerning the flood, I would not say anyone stole the story as it did not come from one original source. Rather, it is a shared mythos as it is related to that region where Persia, Canaan, Judaism, Northern Egypt flourished. It's natural that the stories be shared across cultures.

[Pica Pica]

Nice. That's sort of what I was trying to say, but clearer.

[Annah]

Okay, that makes sense, at least it may have a few thousand years ago.  But was that the case, say, in 380AD?  And since laws usually change with social views, why hasn't anyone thought that maybe editing a book, that so many live their life by, to keep up with the times is the prudent thing to do?  Leviticus seems to attract all the nuts.  Maybe that should be telling the powers-that-be Leviticus has lost it's positive social value and it's time to retire it.

It wont ever be retired because it's considered a holy book like other ancient texts. The problem is people try to take the book and make it applicable to today's society of laws (which should not be done in any book).

Also, Jews still use Leviticus quite diligently in their readings.

But depending on one's religion, Leviticus would be a staple in one's faith or completely useless.

[tekla]

Flooding on the Nile was different from The Flood, and from what records we have it seems the Babylon write the first real 'epic - in this sense meaning "bad for humans"' flood story, and that makes sense, all you need is the right timing on dual 100 year floods on the Tigris-Euphrates systems and it could get a little wet there by the rivers of Babylon.

[Annah]

most of the flood narratives came from an epic flood and not the flood of the Nile so I agree. The flooding of the Nile was praised upon as a good thing that gives life constantly in a parched land.

The stories of the flood always centered around Gods or God who felt that humankind was to be eliminated entirely due to the misdeeds of humans. There is always a "hero" of the story that convinces their God(s) to alter the course of total annihilation by allowing some survivors with a promise that a flood that destroys humanity will never occur again.  The shared stories of the same mythos convey a sense of something much bigger than a flooding of a river. Most scholars and theologians conjectures that the flood was a real event that possibly the waters from the Atlantic broke through what is today called the Suez canal and flooding the valley of what is known as the Mediterranean sea.

The Nile flood is repeated each year with joyous anticipation and is a sign from the Gods that humanity had done well (Osiris granted humanity the gift as a continuing sense of favor that his teachings of civilized upbringing earlier continues), while the lack of a flooding in the Nile was usually a sign of disobedience of humanity to the Gods or a time of trials and testing.

[Julie Marie]

It wont ever be retired because it's considered a holy book like other ancient texts.

So the bottom line is, in religious circles once something is deemed holy, that's it, there's no touching it?

If Leviticus is law, and if people follow this law, and the laws written in Leviticus, if followed to the letter, could get you in trouble with modern law, none of that matters to those who deem this sacred?  That seems a bit extreme to me.

You'd think at least someone could write a modern translation that a quorum of religious "upper management" could agree on.  Then it could be published in such a way as to discourage the nut cases from citing verses to justify their prejudice or insanity.  I'm not saying this would stop the nuts, but maybe some of their less nutty followers wouldn't follow anymore, citing the new and widely accepted translation, and that would diminish the power the nut cases have. 

Imagine for a minute that all the verses in all the holy books were understood from the perspective of doing no harm to others by everyone who deems these books holy and sacred.  What would this world be like? 

[Annah]

So the bottom line is, in religious circles once something is deemed holy, that's it, there's no touching it?

Correct. Holy books in any religion does not change. It may be translated into different forms of language but the source will never be edited or deleted. It's like that with religions from Buddhism to Islam to Christianity and everything in between.

They wont be deleted because they are still considered holy texts and even if we disagree with them or find them rally compromising, they still were a voice of a culture and the beginnings of a spiritual movement.

If Leviticus is law, and if people follow this law, and the laws written in Leviticus, if followed to the letter, could get you in trouble with modern law, none of that matters to those who deem this sacred?  That seems a bit extreme to me.

Absolutely. That's why I say no one should follow these laws to the letter in today's society. These were rules built from society in a culture that centered around the Torah. To follow these ancient rules today would be like wanting to use a chariot to go to work. It worked back then but not too good today

You'd think at least someone could write a modern translation that a quorum of religious "upper management" could agree on.  Then it could be published in such a way as to discourage the nut cases from citing verses to justify their prejudice or insanity.  I'm not saying this would stop the nuts, but maybe some of their less nutty followers wouldn't follow anymore, citing the new and widely accepted translation, and that would diminish the power the nut cases have.

You can revise the translation to make it more accurate to the original text but for a holy book you cannot altar, edit, or change something because we do not like it. To pay devil's advocate, a fundamentalist would have a hay day if we could do that.

The best alternative is reading commentaries that discusses the scriptures to better get an understanding of what they mean. And there are some versus where we will never emotional relate to because it was a culture we never experienced nor ever will.

Imagine for a minute that all the verses in all the holy books were understood from the perspective of doing no harm to others by everyone who deems these books holy and sacred.  What would this world be like?

It would be nice!

[Lisbeth]

Okay, that makes sense, at least it may have a few thousand years ago.  But was that the case, say, in 380AD?  And since laws usually change with social views, why hasn't anyone thought that maybe editing a book, that so many live their life by, to keep up with the times is the prudent thing to do?  Leviticus seems to attract all the nuts.  Maybe that should be telling the powers-that-be Leviticus has lost it's positive social value and it's time to retire it.

Oh they have edited it in a sense, though christians haven't kept up with the program. The Law or Torah is the five books of Moses, especially Leviticus. When the Torah stopped making sense, they slowly created the Talmud, which reexplains the Torah. The Talmud consists of two main parts, the Mishnah or oral law, and the Gemara which are basically study notes. You can't really get the Torah without studying the Talmud.

Also, Jews still use Leviticus quite diligently in their readings.

Do you mean Hasidic or Conservative or Reformed Jews?