3.1 – The Torah of Sacrifice in its Contexts
Marking off Leviticus 1:1–7:38 as a domain for exploration opens up another set of questions about context. These chapters are, for different readers, another instance of the elite, priestly ideology inscribed in P; the opening of the book called Wayyiqrāʾ, or Leviticus; or a legal interpolation between the two narrative accounts of Yahweh’s inauguration of tabernacle worship in Exod. 40:34 and Lev. 9:23–24. What the text means is determined by the boundaries set by its readers.
3.1.1 – Textual Contexts
Like any unit of text, this text is set within a number of legitimate textual contexts. The work of a reader is not to attend to the material of one context over and against any other, but to ensure she knows, at any given moment in the interpretive process, the precise ‘whole’ into which she situates this part. Before embarking on a direct study of the Torah of Sacrifice, I will evaluate the usefulness of five conventional contexts.
3.1.1.1 – Leviticus as a discrete book
A number of scholarly interpreters have found success interpreting the Torah of Sacrifice on the assumption that it is the opening movement in the discrete book of Leviticus as a book. Ellen F. Davis, in one place, charges readers to “do justice to texts.” One of her own commitments, in her ‘art’ of ‘just’ theological exegesis is to read “each biblical book as a literary whole, a unified theological statement.” The development in North American biblical scholarship popularly attributed to Brevard Childs and referred to as ‘canonical criticism,’ she says, acknowledged that the ‘books’ of the Bible were composed and shaped by several authors and so, historically or psychologically speaking, cannot be said to express a single ‘point of view.’ These books do, however, “[evince] a high degree of polyphonic coherence.” Reading texts in the context of the books in which they’ve been finally fixed protects against two forms of unjust reading: proof-texting, which subjects isolated texts to the powerful voices which have removed them from their contexts; and metanarration, which sweeps through the Bible, reducing all the diverse traditions arranged within the canon into a homogenizing ‘story.’
Reading this way, Davis recognizes Leviticus as “the book that stands literally at the center of Torah and thus at the heart of Jewish thought and religious practice.” The book is not a juxtaposition between (what have been called) ceremonial and moral laws, but a sustained, symbol-laden, action-oriented expression of the art of embodying holiness. Its harsher tones only serve to underscore the narrator’s deep awareness of the incompatibility between God and ourselves. Into this existential context, Leviticus 1–7 takes, as the book’s starting point, “the ordinary and seemingly simple practice of eating as a point of entry for thinking about the complexity of human existence, within the created order and in relation to God.” Thus, Davis finds a natural relationship between the subject matter of animals for eating (Lev. 1–7) and the discussion of cleanliness that begins with food at Lev. 11. She also avoids reducing the content of these chapters to what has been called the ‘elite ideology’ of P and the rhetorical focus on post-exilic ‘priestly control.’
Lester L. Grabbe also approaches Leviticus as a discrete book. According to Grabbe, the consensus critical scholars once shared about the relationship between P (Lev. 1–16) and the Holiness Code (hereafter ‘H’; Lev. 17–26) has weakened. It has become more difficult to determine, with sufficient confidence, whether H depends on P or even exists as a separate source at all. He finds, then, it is not only warranted but also judicious to “investigate the subject [of priesthood] in the book of Leviticus alone,” combing the contents of the book for the light they shed on his questions about the priesthood. As he considers the first seven chapters of the book, he observes that the instruction both addresses the laity (Lev. 1–5) and discusses the priestly issues that would have been most relevant and interesting to the laity (Lev. 6–7). Therefore, he cannot understand this book as a ‘priestly manual,’ and he hypothesizes a lay audience.
On the other hand, Grabbe finds himself disappointed with the book. When he expands his study of priesthood to other Scriptural texts, he discovers “the picture [of priesthood] in Leviticus does not always agree with that elsewhere.” He notes, in particular, that Deuteronomy focuses on the teaching role of priests, and that Leviticus fails to clearly answer the important question, ‘Are Levites priests?’ Furthermore, he does not believe the schematized picture of priesthood represents the priesthood in (historical) practice. Thus, he finds the book offers its readers “neither a self-contained nor an independent account of the priesthood.” Rather than criticize Grabbe for measuring the book against a standard foreign to the book itself, readers should read his essay as a cautionary reminder that, while books invite explorations of their themes, they never promise to answer the questions we bring to them from outside.
3.1.1.2 – The Torah of Sacrifice within Priesterschrift
Not all scholars agree that Leviticus is, as Davis has described it, ‘a unified theological statement.’ Claiming to represent “nearly all biblical scholars,” Feldman asserts, “The Five Books of Moses are not five books.” Rather, the relatively late division of the Pentateuch into five books can be explained materially, in terms of resource scarcity: It “is the result of Persian and Hellenistic-era Jewish scribes … reaching the limits of what a scroll could contain.” Eschewing book distinctions in the search for meaning, these scholars have situated texts like the Torah of Sacrifice in their hypothesized reconstructions of what Davis has called ‘diverse traditions.’ Some of these readers, like Frank Gorman, investigate P for theological meaning. Meanwhile, others consider P to be a piece of theological propaganda rationalizing Zadokite supremacy in the Persian era.
Like Davis, Gorman is wary of the general bias in Old Testament scholarship against priestly ideology, and against priestly ritual in particular. Until the last few decades of the twentieth century, this bias prevented critical scholars from the synchronic and sympathetic reading of P that would clarify what he calls ‘the ideology of ritual.’ Simply put, P is concerned with order, and it describes the work of God and the work of the priesthood as the creation and maintenance of an orderly cosmos, society, and cult. God orders His cosmos by speaking (wayyōʾmer, Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24) and dividing (wayyabdēl, from badal; 1:4, 6, 7, 15, 18); and, in His only direct speech to Aaron, He instructs His priests to divide (ūlahabdîl, also from badal; Lev. 10:10) between the holy/profane and the un/clean. Thus, the heart of priestly work is a careful dividing (badal) and ordering, and a maintenance of sacred boundaries, that maintains and perpetuates God’s ordering cosmos, cult, and society.
When a reader engages the P material on the creation of the tabernacle and cult (Exod 24:15–31:18; 35–40; Lev. 1–16) alongside P’s creation account, she cannot help but perceive the structural and thematic features of the texts that bear this out. In writing Exodus 25–31, the priestly author uses the phrase ‘and Yahweh said to Moses’ seven times (25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12), thus dividing the instructions into seven speeches that correspond to the seven speeches of creation in Gen. 1:1–2:4a. Just as he concludes with the creation of the sabbath (Gen. 2:1–3), he concludes this section with a seventh speech that institutes the Sabbath as a covenant sign (Exod. 31:12–17). In Exodus 35–40, the chapters that narrate the construction and arrangement of the tabernacle and its furnishings, the priestly author employs the refrain, ‘as Yahweh had commanded Moses’ twenty-one times, concentrating them in the final two chapters (36:1; 38:22; 39:1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 29, 31, 32, 42, 43; 40:16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32, 33). Moreover, he closes Moses’s seven acts of assembling and setting up these constructed materials close with seven instances of the refrain, ‘as the Lord commanded him’ (40:19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32).
As he had with these two narratives of the creation of the cosmos (Gen. 1:1–2:4a) and the creation of the tabernacle (Exod 25–31; 35–40), the priestly author continues his priestly creation narrative with the creation of the cult (Lev. 1–7). Excluding the introductory (Lev. 1:1–2) and concluding statements (7:37–38), these chapters are likewise structured by seven uses of the introductory phrase, ‘and Yahweh said to Moses.’ Also like Exod. 25–31 and 35–40, the seven uses of the structuring formula are especially concentrated in the final two chapters (Lev. 5:14, 20 [=6:1 ET]; 6:1 [=6:8 ET], 12 [=6:19 ET], 17 [=6:24 ET]; 7:22, 28).
Like these previous priestly passages, the sevenfold use of an introductory formula emphasizes the interrelated and orderly nature of God’s creation. But unlike these passages, this introductory formula does not, itself, structure the contents of the various teachings. As I have demonstrated above, the most obvious structure of the Torah of Sacrifice is its back-to-back sequences of instructions for the five fundamental sacrifices. Furthermore, the five sacrifices described in the Torah for Priests (Lev. 6–7 [=6:8–7:36 ET]) are introduced with the more consistent introductory formula, ‘zōʾt tōrat …’, or ‘This is the instruction of X offering’ (6:2 [= 6:9 ET], 7 [= 6:14 ET], 18 [= 6:25 ET]; 7:1, 11).
Despite its limits, Gorman’s reading of the Torah of Sacrifice within the context of P is far more helpful than the readings produced by other critical scholars. Many of these critical scholars have been influenced by a theory that the composition—or at least the final redaction—of Torah took place during the Persian Period. For these readers, who have been inclined to read P as an expression of competition for institutional and ideological supremacy, Leviticus represents the Zadokite priests’ identification with the Aaronides dynasty and their preeminence over the Levites. P is thus explained in terms of its ‘esoteric’ interests and political program which is, in essence, the centralization of worship around the altar of the Second Temple. These readers are chiefly interested in the relationship between the hypothesized, early HS (Lev. 17–26) and the later Lev. 1–16, which is thought to revise some of the material from the HS and contradict some of the material from the Deuteronomist (D).
For example, Baruch A. Levine interprets the mention of the ʿōlâ and the minḥâ in the festal instructions of Lev. 23:12–13 and 18–20 as late interpolations from a priestly writer. According to Levine, this writer’s purpose was to delegitimize the tĕnûfâh (‘raised/waved offering’) that was common in Ancient Near Eastern cultures and throughout D. The Holiness School having allegedly permitted the tĕnûfâh, the priestly redactor allegedly asserted the requirement of the ʿōlâ and the minḥâ in order to bolster its argument for the supremacy of the altar sacrifices. On this reading, the Torah of Sacrifice is a polemic argument against Deuteronomistic ideology.