Alter: on to Purity and Danger (?)

Book three here, Leviticus. A tentative schedule - nine chapters a week

Weeks Sections
Feb 27-Mar 4: Lev 1-9
Mar 5-11: Lev 10-18
Mar 12-18: - Lev 19-27

ETA : previous thread are
here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/127545
and here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/129966
and here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/131811

Nothing to post yet as I'm just starting.

To kick this thread off:

- Who's still with us?
- Anyone familiar with Mary Douglas?

Still following a few days behind the caravan... I'm just after the 10 commandments, no golden calf in view for the moment. Not sure when I'll get to Leviticus...

Here but still in Exodus

Still following! I've been back-burnering somewhat, as I'm a ways into Leviticus already. Also Rick's book is riveting. Also Alter one is too large to pop in my laptop bag, and too heavy to read in the bath, where I tend to doze and let thinks drop, and so it's become bedside reading. And I've been away. But the first half of Levit has a lot more going on in it from my perspective than the last half of Exodus.

I am following. I have not read much of Leviticus and don't want to, but I want to see you bring on the laws and tell us about them.

Robert

PS Are you keeping count? There should be 613 laws altogether in the Law.

R

I'm not keeping count.

That's okay. Some say that Rabbi Hillel got the count wrong anyway.

Robert

Two awesome slide shows by Janeajones, who has been distracted from our group read by a newborn grandchild. She uses these for a class.

http://faculty.scf.edu/jonesj/JanesPPT/Hebrews/OldTestament.ppt

http://faculty.scf.edu/jonesj/JanesPPT/HUM2210/Christianity/Christianity.ppt

Also, I've requested Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger from my library. It doesn't have Leviticus as Literature. Curious what I'll find.

Sigh. I wish I were reading along with you. Real Life has intervened, and I have very little time for reading and need books that don't require this much attention. I do hope to read this and will use all these discussions as a resource; just don't know when.

I think we're hovering around five, with four reading along. I'm guessing quicksiva and Zenomax will also drop by sometime. Maybe Urania1 too??

Rebecca - I understand, but still too bad. Good luck with the RL stuff.

FlorenceArt, Solla & MM - We are all in different places. I don't think I can speed up any, but let me know if you would like me to slow down.

Leviticus happens to a very interesting introduction by Alter. I'll put some notes together for a post here.

Some thoughts on the intro:

As we enter what is typically considered the most boring of biblical books—a list of laws that haven't been applicable since the destruction the Temple and are mainly lacking in narrative—we might stop ponder this comment by Alter in the introduction

...by the later Middle Ages, small Jewish boys were introduced to the Torah not through the great story of creation and the absorbing tales of the patriarchs in Genesis but through Leviticus—in Rashi's formulation of the pedagogic slogan, "Let the pure ones come study laws of purity."

This idea of purity and personal holiness - this is my impression of the heart of Judaism, more than anything else. (not the Golden Rule). Of course that just an impression, but I think it's significant.

Here, in this book, is the first time the Bible really addresses this idea. Up to now, all the narratives are full of humans making mistakes, and there is a sense of stain, of different types, throughout. That isn't corrected there, but the path to the purity is laid out.

Of course, these rules can't be applied. There is no sacrificial temple. According to Alter these laws were written after the destruction of the first temple, but before the second temple - which means even when they were written there was no temple. They were a idealistic reflection of the past and a hope for the future.

But, the idea of personal purity can be extrapolated away from the sacrificial cult and into whatever real life anyone has. For Jews, this meant living by the rabbinically interpreted laws—ie that by following the divine laws you live a life of purity and you and your life become holy.

The details of these laws (and their count) may not be important. But, the sense these laws give of the importance of purity and holiness, something that possibly only comes from the text in an indirect manner, might be worth some effort, maybe something to keep in mind.

Alter comments about Mary Douglas's ideas of analogical thinking and the tripartite system...

Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process.

So the split of Sinai
- mountain top for God
- perimeter for Aaron & elders
- foot of the mountain for everyone else

is analogically incorporated into the temple
- Holy of Holies
- Sanctuary for priests
- outer court

and sacrificed animal parts
- entrails-intestines-genitals - Sinai summit
- midriff with fat - for altar
- head and meat - for the people
with the suet marking a boundary of the forbidden

Leviticus 1-9

1. Sanctuary sacrifices

2. Grain offerings

3. Communion or well-being sacrifices
3A. Where Alter goes into Douglas’s tripartite structure of the sacrifice. See above (post 13)

4. Sacrifices to purify after an inadvertent offense.
4A. Key seems to be purity, not guilt or innocence

5. Sacrifices to make for various crimes, some unwitting

6. Teaching of various kinds of offering
6A. The Hebrew word Torah is translated here as “teaching”

7. More teaching of offerings

8. Moses performs an installation offering
8A. Oil for consecration
8B. Blood for cleansings (like a detergent)

9. Moses does an offense offering

Themes
I got nothing. Just various rules of sacrificial and other offerings; and then apparently some examples in which Moses shows how to correctly perform these offerings.

I am still here. Trying to learn kindle.

hi quicksiva.

More posts coming. I have notes ready in ink-on-paper form, but haven't had a chance to type them up. Spring Break kind of got in the way.

Leviticus 10-16

10. Nadab and Abihu fatal mistake
- "And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them"

11. Dietary Laws
- "For I am the LORD your God, and you shall hallow yourselves and become holy for I am holy."

12. Woman after birth

13. Skin diseases
Alter argues for "Skin blanch" over leprosy

14. Ritual cleansing after recovery from skin diseases
- a "scapebird" (?) - like form Mesopotamian purging rites

15. genital discharges of various kinds
- in pagan origins the contamination comes from demonic sources. Here the same contamination ideas are kept, even if the demons are dropped.

16. Sacrifices for the Day of Atonement (biblical Yom Kippur)
- Kippur means atonement of purgation.
- atonement has Mesopotamian origins - cleansing of accumulated transgression. Later spiritual repentance.
- the original scape goat release for "Azazel" - which was apparently some of goat demom, which bring to my mind images of Pan. Hint at some kind of mythological origin.

No grand themes, just a few random things that struck me

1. Aaron insists on mourning despite God's commands

2. Why these dietary laws?
Mary Douglas's idea is that animals of ambiguous classification are avoided
Alter's idea is that this comes from a "horror of the inchoate"

3. There is science and medicine here
- All these dietary laws require classification of every known animal. This takes observation, there is a system here
- then we find that the priests are expected to play doctor. They inspect the skin and prescribe the...well, not a remedy, but prescribe something.

4. What do we make of Azazel?

Looking more ahead than behind, a question for everyone here: What makes something holy?

I'm wondering where did this idea came from. It was already there and clearly understood when these books were written. But somewhere it must have an origin, as an idea. Is it a cultural or learned phenomena? Maybe we have some emotional spot or sorts that is specifically kept for something holy.

I keep wondering why we care. Why can't we just say fuck it, without somehow feeling unclean by saying it?

I am wondering if this is only a human thing. Was the original of holy more practical? Maybe it was simply something that provided peace and comfort.

Have you ever read the Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade. The idea is that we need to make things special in some way, for instance carrying a pole around that then becomes the center of the universe.

All in all, though I am interested in these books in a large sense, I am finding the trudging through all the laws and purifications, etc rather dreary. I hope Numbers picks up a bit, but from what I peeked ahead in the into, it sounds like it may not happen until halfway through.

Solla
- I have not come across Sacred and the Profane, and just requested it from my library. Apparently it's a bit difficult to read.
- If I remember correctly, there is a lot of killing in Numbers. When I read it some twelve years ago, I found it particularly disturbing.

I'm finding Leviticus interesting in a way that is hard to explain. I just seem to be curious about how they structured this, and what it may have meant to these (P) authors.

We're quiet here. I hope to post on the rest of Leviticus this weekend.

more on Nadab and Abihu

This seems very arbitrary. It's the first attempt at sacrifice and something goes terribly wrong. Aaron's sons introduce a "strange fire" and are put to death by fire from God. According to Kugel and medieval interpreters, the law later in this chapter prohibiting priests from using alcohol is connected, and implies that Nadab and Abihu not only made some fatal error, but also were drunk and hence careless.

From a moral point of view, this is section seems arbitrary. Punishment does not seem to fit the crime. If you take out the drunkenness, this was merely a mistake.

From a didactic point of view this has a lot of value. It underlies how serious handling the holy stuff is. It must be done right, or it's fatal. And it's nudge to the priests to fear God and don't flub this stuff and a nudge to everyone else that these priests are doing serious stuff.

From a narrative view this is again arbitrary, although it is interesting that this is the first sacrifice. The priests are entering new territory with unknown dangers, a new frontier, if you like. Or maybe more like entering a newly discovered cave - contained but mysterious and unknown. Certainly the narrative brings out the weight of this. A literary touch.

Am I the only one thinking about the Apollo 1 training fire while reading about this?

Now you're making me curious. I should probably start reading this...

Perhaps one could think of this God as impersonal like the physical forces that lead to a physical catastrophe. If you try to think of this arbitrary act as being morally driven it does not make sense. if you think of it as an illustration of what could happen if you are careless with hidden forces it is a bit different.

Solla - Kugel goes into exactly that. That the P writer, who wrote the Tabernacle stuff in Exodus and also Leviticus 1-16, saw a very impersonal, unknowable unreachable God and that P wasn't trying to understand god, but saying something like, "I'm not interested in your day-to-day issues. Let's just keep doing the ritual and it will all be OK. "

Chapters 17-26 are attributed to a different writer, (or school of writers), who is called H (because this is called the Holiness Code). The Hebrew lingo is slightly different. And the laws, while still just laws, extend beyond ritual. There is an effort to cover the day-to-day stuff as well.

Kugel argues that if these schools weren't contemporary with each other, their existence was at least somewhat close in time. In other words, the religion didn't evolve, there were multiple schools of thought that are stitched together.

Finally, Kugel says the current consensus, which is still in debate, is that H had the last word and did a lot of the stitching here.

I'm still trying to read this stuff, but RL keeps getting in the way. I'm behind where I intended to be. So, I'm still reading the section by Kugel...

Florence - like the tabernacle stuff, Leviticus takes a different kind of curiosity than Genesis & early Exodus. Narrative is lacking. If you can get past that, then it's quite interesting. It's also consistent with the Tabernacle stuff. So, for the purpose of flow, it's not a bad idea to just keep on.

Leviticus 17-27

Chapters 17-26 are the Holiness Code

17. Opening of the Holiness Code
- "And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to Aaron and to his sons and to all the Israelites...'" - opening line, noteworthy because God addresses all the Israelites, instead of just the priests.
- Subject is that all animal slaughter needs to be at the Tent of Meeting (but may mean only sacrificial slaughter.)

18. Legal stuff about sex
- "I am the LORD your God" - repeated after every law.
- "And you shall not dedicate any of your seed to pass over Molech," - some of kind reference to child sacrifice ??

19. An elaboration from the ten commandments (from Exodus 20)
- "You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy"
- "And you shall love your fellow man as yourself" - golden rule is hidden in Lev 19:18
- "I am the LORD" - I counted 15 occurrences here

20. More about sex, but here you're doomed to die

21. Who can/can't "be defiled" by dealing with the dead and what kinds of priests can/can't give sacrificial offerings
- rejects most pagan gestures of mourning.

22. Only priests in state of purity can eat sacrifices; only unblemished animals can be sacrificed.

23. Holidays/festivals
- Sabbath
- Passover - hints as two different origins of passover - Paschal lamb and flatbread (unleavened bread)
- first harvest, this is Shavuot/Pentecost
- blowing of the horn - the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah - resembles how Kings are heralded
- Day of Atonement - Sukkot

24. The stoning of the son of "Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan" for invoking God's name.
- which can be thought of as the son of compensation, daugther of the law-suit of the tribe of Judgment

25. The Jubilee year

26. promises and vivid threats
- basically do as I say or else, with a very extensive else.

27. miscellany of extra laws

Some stuff to highlight, quickly. This is all in the text or in Alter's notes. Later on I'll post from Kugel.

1. Note that these laws apply outside the sacrificial temples. The first time we've seen this since we started talking about the Tabernacle.

2. Note the rationale is very simple - You shall be holy because god is holy. Holiness is never defined, so it's assumed to known, some kind of common sense knowledge.

3. Impurity is sometimes induced by actions, but often outside the person's control - such as from deformation or from being a victim. The point seems to be the purity, not morality.

4. Julibliees -

4A. This is another reference to God as king. When a new king came to power, he would release slaves, and return people to the their lands and other nice friendly stuff. But God doesn't get replaced, so there is a Jubilee year every 50 years instead. This practice was abandoned after tribes lost their land to invaders.

4B. King James version made a nice mistake
Alter's translation, "call a release (from debts and indenture) in the land to all its inhabitants"
KJV's translation, "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof"
- the KJV version proclaiming liberty is found on the Liberty Bell

from Chapter 26

There is one list of good stuff if you follow god's laws. Basically it says you will find peace and not be hungry. Oh, and your enemies will fall down before you.

The bad stuff has five phases.
1. First there is panic, disease, military failure and slavery
2. then it gets seven times worse
"make your heavens like iron and you earth like bronze"
3. then it gets seven times worse than that (so 49 times worse)
beast are unleashed and roads desolated
4. If you still haven't learned it gets seven times worse than that (so 343 times worse than the first one)
"I will bring against you the avenging sword of the covenants vengeance"
5. seven times worse again - 2,401 times worse than the first time.

Parts of this feels like it could be a response to the Babylonian exile or other historical conquerorings.

Lev 26:31-33
"And I will turn your towns into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will not smell your fragrant odors. And I Myself will lay waste to the land, and all your enemies who settle it shall be appalled by it. And You I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheath the sword after you, and your land shall be desolation, and your towns a ruin"

Was going to post something tonight, but time was taken. Anyway, I took a break, and I'm now back at it. I've kicked off the Numbers thread here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/135184

I'm way behind as I only started Leviticus this week. Just a few chapters in, but right now what strikes me is how detailed the instructions for atonement are, and how vague the description of the offenses. There is a reference to God's commandments, so I guess that any breach of the 10 commandments, or of any of the long instructions that followed, is considered an offense. But unless I missed something, the notion of "unclean" which seems to important and triggers many sacrifices (how did they manage to keep their herds with all that killing of bulls, sheep, goats, pigeons...) has not been defined before. And probably never will be. I suppose it was so evident to the contemporary writers and readers that a definition was not needed.

Keep us updated on your progress. Holiness and purity are never defined, but constantly emphasized. Holiness includes a sense of separateness, something set apart in some way... or so some book told me, I forgot which one.

how did they manage to keep their herds with all that killing of bulls, sheep, goats, pigeons...

Good question!

Alter does mention separateness, in relation to the classification of animals between food and unclean, and to the phrase "you must make yourselves holy, for I (the LORD) am holy", or something to that effect. As the LORD made the world by separating things from the primeval chaos, so man, to get closer to the LORD, must set himself apart from the rest of creation. Or something.

Just past the ghastly execution of Aaron's sons, and deep into dermatological diseases. Yuck. Reading this feels a bit like being inside the head of someone with an obsessive compulsive disease. How could they bring up the courage to set foot outside their tent, or touch anything? I suspect that they didn't all follow these instructions to the letter, they would make life impossible.

This resonates with a documentary I saw this week-end. There was something about the fact that many Israelites kept polytheist beliefs or at least rituals for quite some time. Apparently some scholars believe that the definitive plunge into monotheism came with the Babylonian exile, and the conviction that they were being punished for their transgressions. Which is also the time when the priestly bits of the bible were written, if I got this right. And the part I am reading right now is almost exclusively from the priestly source. Right? It almost makes sense. It's still scary.

And that remind me of another documentary, on Easter Island. One explanation for the fall of the civilization that made the statues (the moai) could be an ecological disaster brought by repeated droughts. The first reaction was a frenzy of moai building to appease the gods, and when that didn't work, they rejected the gods, pulled down the moai, and started a new religion altogether. Which the Israelites didn't do apparently, just built more rituals and taboos into the existing one.

about Nadab and Abihu:

They are connected to the golden calf story.

The likely historical origin of the Golden Calf is in 920 bce, when Jeroboam became the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel. He is recorded to have created two golden calves for his people to worship. He did this to help discourage anyone from traveling to Jerusalem and worshiping at Solomon’s temple in the southern Kingdom of Judah. For whatever reason, the Exodus writers used the rebellious Jeroboam’s story to stick it to Aaron and his direct descendents

Jeroboam's sons were Nadab and Abijam (Kugel has a reason for the name change, but I forgot it). The same writers used the same historical story to make their difficult to decipher point against the priests in the Moses story.

I posted my Leviticus comments on my thread, here (message #169): http://www.librarything.com/topic/128182#3350780

I didn't expect much from reading this book, but I'm glad I didn't skip it. This is all so fascinating (insert bad Spock imitation here), so weird and alien.

Wow.

From skin diseases to diseases of garments to diseases of houses.

A woman is unclean for the 7 days of her menstruation, then 7 more days after that. Half the time basically, unless they were more often pregnant than not.

Wow. Crazy stuff. And I must be crazy too, because I'm actually starting to enjoy this. It's just so weird. But this is how people saw the world 3000 years ago, at least some people, the ones who wrote this book. And how can we expect to even begin to guess at what cavemen were thinking when they were painting their cave walls?

Sounds like you're in a groove.

#36 The whole point, as far as I can figure out, is that the time when a woman is unclean (which has always been described to me as ritually, not physically, unclean) is to ensure that by the time the woman is allowed to have sex with her husband, they are not only desperate for it, but it is her most fertile period! Hence, lots of babies.

38> Yes, the whole book is about ritual purity/impurity. And about the sex interdict, well, the man could have other wives to visit, unless they were all unclean at the same time. The woman doesn't have that option.

>39 FlorenceArt: that raises kind of an interesting question. In Judaism sex is considered a woman's right rather than a man's, yes? (Google tells me the term is onah?) I odn't know if this obligation was in force at that time (or really, to what degree it is today, or anything else about it), but for a lot of men with more than one wife I can imagine it becoming quickly political, not to mean enervating.

From http://www.jewfaq.org/sex.htm:

Sex is the woman's right, not the man's. A man has a duty to give his wife sex regularly and to ensure that sex is pleasurable for her. He is also obligated to watch for signs that his wife wants sex, and to offer it to her without her asking for it. The woman's right to sexual intercourse is referred to as onah, and it is one of a wife's three basic rights (the others are food and clothing), which a husband may not reduce. The Talmud specifies both the quantity and quality of sex that a man must give his wife. It specifies the frequency of sexual obligation based on the husband's occupation, although this obligation can be modified in the ketubah (marriage contract). A man may not take a vow to abstain from sex for an extended period of time, and may not take a journey for an extended period of time, because that would deprive his wife of sexual relations. In addition, a husband's consistent refusal to engage in sexual relations is grounds for compelling a man to divorce his wife, even if the couple has already fulfilled the halakhic obligation to procreate.

40> I didn't know about the woman's right to sex, thank you. I wonder if it's the same in Islam?

41: It is similar.

Thank you Anna, I was wondering if you would read this. :-D

In patriarchal societies even though there are lots of texts and things in support of men having to satisfy their wives sexually because of the nature of the society it is not practicable for a wife to insist on this right. It irritates me when Muslims say "look at how we have all these rights for women" and use this kind of thing as an example because in real life if a Muslim wife is not sexually satisfied she is NOT going to take it to court, people would be horrified and how is she supposed to prove it? Have a third party observe her bedroom? The entire time I lived in Muslim countries I did not hear of one woman who used this so called law to insist on a divorce or whatever. I believe it would be the same in Israel in practice even though Israel is probably much less patriarchal than surrounding countries.

I don't think they are quoting the Talmud in Israeli courts.

Please see: Death Penalty and Talmud Law, on line.

In December 1999, the United States Supreme Court set a precedent by accepting for consideration an amicus curiae brief in a death penalty case (Bryan v. Moore). Aside from mentioning the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution in passing, the brief was based wholly on Talmud law. The Jewish Journal reports:

A man who will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court next year that his planned execution in Florida's electric chair constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" can point to a 2,000-year-old Jewish law when he pleads his case.

A friend-of-the court brief filed last week in the Supreme Court by the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, which advocates the position of the Orthodox community, and the American Section of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, backs Anthony Bryan's position.

In citing only Jewish law and excluding any reference to previous Supreme Court decisions, the brief is believed to mark a first for America's highest court.

The brief, written by the father-daughter team of Nathan and Alyza Lewin and reviewed by former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Menachem Elon, delves into the biblical and talmudic texts relating to execution in Jewish law.

— The Jewish Journal

I just finished Leviticus, and I must admit the last chapter leaves me utterly befuddled. I read Alter's translation and didn't understand it, then his notes which made things only slightly clearer, then the French translation by Louis Segond, which is very similar to Alter's and therefore just as confusing. Are the people supposed to consecrate some of their belongings to the LORD, and then pay the monetary value of those belonging to the priests instead of handing over the goods?

This seem like rules that were just hanging around, and so were tossed here at the end of Leviticus. I don't think they were ever important, at least not in the last 2500 years. If I were being cynical, I would say that, like US Congressmen/women, the Levite authors wanted to be make sure they were well paid.

Yes, I got this general idea. But the details are fuzzy. Is this about mandatory or voluntary contributions? The fact that they devote so much time calculating monetary equivalents seems to hint to a kind of tax, otherwise why would you need to know how many males between 20 and 60 make up for a field? And then in the middle of it there is a mention of people (war prisoners according to Alter) being put to death. Rather chilling if you ask me.

Anyway, I started on the introduction to Numbers, so I'll see you in the next thread.

Chilling is a good word for numbers...starting in chapter 11.

I don't remember the text well enough here, don't recall whether the tax was given voluntarily or not.