Bible Club: Leviticus

[madnak]

I'm officially way behind. I'll get around to it. In the meantime, those who are still on track can feel free to discuss.

[Magic_Man]

QUICK SUMMARY: Leviticus makes God look silly. Some of the laws are particularly funny or contradictory, and God is still FAR from benevolent. If you skip the next few paragraphs, please read the end.


Read it yesterday, on the offchance we'd do Numbers today, but I'm fine waiting till next week. I don't have a whole lot to say about Leviticus; it's probably the silliest book so far, and most of it is just about how to make sacrifices properly. In all these OT books, I have a very similar reaction; God often looks like a complete nutcase to me. He makes ridiculous, complicated demands about how to properly worship him, from the way that you have to sprinkle blood around altars to cutting off pieces off your penis. If a person made sacrifices today the way they are described in Leviticus, they'd probably be shunned as a pagan. Once again we see God's malicious side too, killing the sons of Aaron for a mistake in worshipping. I don't know how anyone could possibly keep track of all these rules. There must have been a HUGE market for turtledoves and pigeons. If a woman has to sacrifice two of them EVERY time she menstruates, I'm actually surprised that they didn't run out. I will laugh inside every time I hear "The 12 Days of Christmas" from now on.

There are plenty of other rules I could pick that are silly, but probably one of the most ridiculous that's been mentioned here before is that you cannot wear clothing made from 2 kinds of material. Seriously, what is up with The Big Man? Passages like this make him look insane. Also, it is confusing to me that blind, lame, deformed, (etc.) people cannot go near the altar. If God created them, then he CHOSE to make them that way, and now he's saying that they are unpure. Talk about a dose of low self-esteem. Funniest part by far was that a man with "crushed testicles" cannot go near the altar, but I'm guessing they'd have trouble walking anyway. I'm having a LOT of trouble figuring out where the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God idea came from.

There was a lot of emphasis on not cutting or otherwise altering yourself, which I already knew was a tenet of Judaism. I find it funny that the same set of laws that says to hack off pieces of your penis also says not to cut yourself.




And now, a deeper interpretive note, to make Leviticus more interesting. I often hear, especially from reformed Jews, that the kosher laws and other biblical rules (such as those about leprosy, quarantine, etc.) existed mainly for health reasons. That is, whether God actually decreed it or not, it's arguably a good idea to not eat certain forbidden foods, and I suppose the medical advice may have been helpful back in the day. HOWEVER, it's these sentiments, coupled with the "list of laws" style in Leviticus, that actually makes the "bible as the word of God" idea MORE dubious to me. It appears that the authors of the bible may have realized that these were good ideas, and then stuck them in there as laws laid down on Mt. Sinai. This also would explain the prejudiced ideas about men, women, and cripples. If the alternative is that God is a sometimes-malicious, sometimes-bigoted crackpot, then I'll take the "bible was made up by confused and possibly well-meaning men" view.


~M^2

[ChrisV]

One thing I enjoy about Leviticus is the constant references to burnt offerings as "a pleasing odor to the LORD". Speaking as an Australian, I'm happy that God pays proper respect to the place of the barbecue in society. I'm still awaiting a ruling on whether those BBQ aprons with fake boobs on the chest shall be an abomination unto us.

[Magic_Man]

Bump for the latecomers. Leviticus is a quick read, especially if you just skim through the extremely repetitive "if you commit sin A, sacricifice X, and do it like this.......but if you commit sin B, sacrifice Y, and do it in this way.......but if you commit sin C, sacrifice sqrt(Z)-2*Y+X^(A/Z), unless you are a woman, in which case you are unclean".

Here, I'll make it easy for you.