Today’s Scripture Reading
(October 7, 2018): Leviticus 18
Our traditional understanding
is that Moses wrote the Books of Moses (Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy); the one who met with God
face to face. Critics have pushed back on this ancient tradition. And part of
the problem is that portions of these five books are written with different
voices and styles, often using different words for God, and that would seem to
indicate that different people, or groups of people, wrote them.
The other side of the problem
is that the books originated in what was essentially an oral culture. And
because we don’t understand oral cultures, we misunderstand ancient writing.
For us, the only way to protect the integrity of the message is to write it
down. We don’t memorize as much as ancient cultures did. When the books of Moses were first conceived, the
literacy rate of the people would have been very low. The message would have
been protected through memorizing of the message and then passing it down to
the next generation, who would, in turn, memorize it, share it, and provide the
message to be memorized for the generation that followed them. And they
valued and practiced this kind of memorization. Vast amounts of information
were simply known and repeated in a way that we can’t imagine.
But at some point, this
information had to be written down to be protected. And it is at this point
that we begin to find the different voices of the book that we now possess. The
traditional author may well have been Moses, or the tradition the sprung out of
his leadership. But it was several groups who later committed to putting the message down in written form.
Biblical critics argue over this
section of Leviticus. Leviticus 17 – 26 seems to have a different feel from the
rest of the book. It is marked by the
repetition of the words “I am the Lord your God,” “I, the Lord, am Holy,” or
some variant of the formula. It also tends to revert to more of a list of commands with many of the laws being presented
in a brief form and packed tightly together.
We have called this section
“The Holiness Code.” And the problem, no matter how this section of the law
came to be, is that there is no explanation here for the regulations. We know
that these behaviors are wrong, but not necessarily why. So the reality is that
we have treated this section of the law differently. Some of this law we follow
voraciously; for example, the notes on sexual practice. Others, such as shaving
restrictions and a prohibition on tattooing, we readily ignore. And in the end,
it is our inconsistent handling of this section of the law that might be the
most problematic.
The other thing that we need to
understand is that this, along with the Ten Commandments, might have been the
earliest portions of the law that was committed to writing. The message,
applied to all of the brief laws in this section, is very simple. You are to
follow these laws because “I am the Lord” and I have left you with these
instructions. And it is with those words in the back of our mind that we need
to read this list of instructions.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Leviticus 19
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