BibleProject - Leviticus Q+R

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

This summer we've been releasing a Q+R series we did on Youtube covering hard questions in the Old Testament. This week we are in the book of Leviticus, a very confusing, very ancient book. Tim and Jon discuss issues about being "unclean" in the Old Testament, whether Christians should get tattoos and many other things. Thank you to all our supporters! You are so meaningful to us! Q's and Timestamps: What’s the deal with the law against tattoos in leviticus? And how should modern christians interpret these ancient, obscure laws? (6:34) What’s the deal with the law against tattoos in leviticus? And how should modern christians interpret these ancient, obscure laws? (6:34) Would the original readers of Leviticus have known the divisions between ceremonial and moral laws? (14:50) Would the original readers of Leviticus have known the divisions between ceremonial and moral laws? (14:50) Why animal sacrifices in the old testament? Why not tree or grain sacrifices? (19:00) What is the deal with menstruation and uncleanness? (30:23) Urim and thummim in the Bible? Casting lots and flipping coins? (35:08) In what ways should Christians who are referred to as priests in the new testament emulate the priests in the old testament? (38:55) How does the offering model in the Old Testament relate to tithing and the giving practices in the new testament? (41:57) Links: Original video conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgs_287IGKo Leviticus videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-FekWUZzE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmvyrLXoQio Additional Resources: Eric Zanger, German theologian. "who died tragically before he completed his work on the psalms"

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hi, this is John at the Bible Project. We've been releasing a series of Q&Rs which stand for question and response. It's a recording of Tim and I during a YouTube live stream that we did over a year ago where we answered questions about different books in the Old Testament. This episode is on the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is one of the strangest books in the Old Testament or the hardest to read through. It's full of ancient law codes about how ancient Israel was supposed to live together as a community. All based around the sacrificial system, the Jewish festivals, it calls them to be a people

that are different, set apart from the neighboring countries, and a people who uphold justice and righteousness for themselves and others. It's pretty confusing for modern people. So we're going to look at questions like how should modern readers interpret these ancient laws, what's the deal with laws against tattoos, and more. This audio originally came from the YouTube channel so it's not as high quality as usual, so we apologize about that.

Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Today we're gonna interact with your questions on the book of... Livedicus. Livedicus, the book you left to hate? I don't know. The book you hate. The book you give up reading the Bible with?

Yes, that's right. You get to this book and you're like, you know what? I don't think I'm gonna read the Bible this year after all. Yeah, I'm gonna read the Bible in a year and then late February, you get to Livedicus and you're just over it. Yeah. It's ancient law code. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all.

You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all.

You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after all. You're after really significant and important book in the Old Testament storyline. And it doesn't have all the laws, not all of the laws in the Torah or in Leviticus. No, a whole bunch are. But a whole bunch are. The narrative of the Pentateuch grinds to a halt actually once they get to Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus, so the whole book is set with God speaking to Israel through Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. So most of this is happening? So it's mostly, yeah, laws being revealed to the people. So all of Ithacus takes place at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Foot of Mount Sinai. They're just getting soaked in the lockout. Oh, yeah, Moses is compiling the priestly tech manual. Here's Leviticus. Yes. And what you've kind of shown in this poster is the cemetery in Halleviticus is organized. Yeah, yeah. It's really the way that the book works. Yeah, it's as a symmetry. If you're interested, there's a German Old Testament scholar

named Eric Zanger, who's just unbelievable. He's written mostly on the Psalms. He died tragically a year ago before he was able to complete his commentary on the Psalms. But he has a number of really great essays. You can Google and find them online and on the book of Leviticus. And he put forward, I don't know, the idea a long time ago, and most everybody accepts it now, that the book of Leviticus

is arranged as a symmetry. So it opens with a big block of laws about the five different types of sacrifices that Israel was to offer. Then you get a block of stories about the priesthood of Aaron being ordained. And then you get a big block of these things called the ritual purity laws, clean and unclean.

I'm sure we'll talk a lot about that. Then you get the day of atonement stuff. But then what you get is a block of laws about the purity of the people, but specifically their moral purity in contrast to the Canaanites. And then over here you get a big block of laws about the qualifications for being priests.

And this is what Zanger points out. He says this section right here, for all the world, should come right after chapter 10. Right. Or correct to it. Why break that up? Because it's the same topic as, here's the priest getting ordained, and here's how they're supposed to live.

If somebody has cracked these two apart, and then put these two blocks of purity laws with the Day of Atona at the Center. And then this block of ritual laws is matched by a block of ritual laws about, not sacrifices a bit about the feast days, and then it's concluded with a little bit of narrative. So anyway, what is...

So the structure is beautiful in another set. Yeah, and it's drawing all of the focus towards the central- They have a ton of sacrificial ritual right in the middle of the book. Yeah. And then also bigger picture than even the symmetry of the book is the up here. Yes.

Tell us about the narrative. Leviticus begins- That's right. And then how numbers begins. Yeah, so though, even though there's not a lot of narrative in the book, it's framed by a narrative, like a plot tension. So God's come to live among His people, but we know from Exodus, the Golden Calf debacle that Israelites are really screwed up and unfaithful.

So when God finally does show up at the end of Exodus to live among his people, Moses cannot go into the tent. It's really anti-climactic. It's like, how much shows up? The tabernacle's done, and then Moses can't go in. Which you might not think anything of, you might think, I wouldn't want to go in. Either there's a storm cloud over it.

But the moment you begin the first sentence of the book after Leviticus, it begins with Moses in the tent. Someone pointed this out to me a long time ago, and I thought, man, that's such an easy way to think about what the book of Leviticus is. God's come to dwell among his people. And because of their own sin and unfaithfulness,

they can't enter. Moses, their representative, cannot enter. So whatever this book is about, it's about God revealing away for his own sinful, broken people to get into the tent, enter into his presence. Cool. If you don't learn anything about Leviticus from the rest of the discussion, just that simple fact

helps you frame how it fits into the storyline. Yeah. So we've got a question from Joe, Joe Hicks from Texas. And you asked about tattoos in Leviticus. You said, why does Leviticus consider tattoos to be unclean? And what does that mean for modern day Christians? I'm going to look up the actual, here it is, 1928. Yeah, Leviticus 1928. Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourself. I am the Lord.

Yep. This is a great example. So we'll talk about this as an example, but it opens up a much bigger set issues about what Leviticus is doing in the Bible, and what not just modern readers, but what readers throughout history, specifically Christian readers, have thought what they're supposed to do with this book. So just to address this one, in context, tattoos don't appear by themselves in this law given to this divine body. It's connected to cutting your body's body.

Yeah, it's connected to some kind of self-mutilation for the dead. So this still happens in many cultures today, like Eastern cultures that do acts of ancestor worship, you know where they will provide offerings of some kind to their dead ancestors to get their favor and guide them and so on. So Israel wasn't to do that. These laws, this comes in the section of laws right here. And this whole section 18 to 20 is opened up by saying don't live like the Canaanites.

And so many, if not most of these laws, in these chapters, which is this one, target some practice in Canaanite culture and says, yeah, don't do that. And so this is one of them. We know for sure that was one of them. We're just guessing. No, we know. Think of the story, the mutilating yourself, as some kind of way of getting favor from the gods. Think of the story of Elijah and the prophets of

Baal on Mount Carmel. And after a while that their god doesn't answer them, if I'm right, heaven they start cutting themselves. There's also a parallel to this law in the book of Deuteronomy that doesn't mention tat, it's in Deuteronomy chapter 14, and it doesn't mention tattoos that mentions don't cut yourselves or shave your heads for the dead. So these two laws are giving us some window into some canonite practice of putting tattoo marks or self-laceration or shaving your head, has some sort of ritual to gain favor from your debt ancestors. So I don't think, unless... That's why most Portlanders get tattooed.

It's for their debt ancestors. Yeah, that's right. So I actually think it's a violation of the author's intent to pull that line out of Leviticus and say, God hates tattoos. Right. Because that's not honoring the context of the verse itself, much less the cultural context of what these laws

were all about. So I mean, if I wanted to go get a tattoo of my grandpa and then say prayers to my grandpa like that, okay, then we're in the ballpark. But that other than that, there's just a totally different. Then I should confront you about that. Yes, I would want you to get my face about that one. Yeah, so what that raises is the bigger question of for a Christian like how do I relate to these laws? Right, that's the bigger

question. Yeah, that's the question Joe, Joe's asking what does that mean for modern day Christians? Yeah, what does that mean for modern day Christians? I mean, well, so we have a whole video on the law that we talk about how Jesus' fulfillment of the law, how he summarizes it as love, God, and love others, and how Paul then uses the law sometimes to, he still respects it, and he will use it, and he'll find wisdom in it, but that he also would agree that you don't have to follow the law. So I guess with any of these, it sounds like first you got to go and say, what's this law actually saying in its nature context? And then as a Christian, as a Christ follower who, where Jesus has fulfilled the law, then what's the wisdom in that that I should follow?

Yeah, that's right. So there we go to somewhere like Paul's letter, first letter to the Corinthians. He'll quote from a law and doodronomy about oxen, or something about what you do with your ox. But then he, it doesn't have anything to do with ox. From his point of view, he derives a wisdom principle out of it and then applies that to an issue in the life of the Corinthian Church.

So I think Paul becomes a model for us about what to do with obscure laws in the Pentateuch. These laws don't define the covenant relationship terms by which I relate to Jesus. They don't. This was how ancient Israel related to God, but it's not how I relate to God through Jesus. So the principle behind this law, the wisdom, is don't participate in activities that end of themselves are not wrong necessarily, but that are trying to get you to go into some spiritual realm that's not. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

I mean, yeah, across the whole biblical storyline, Old Testament and New Testament, doing ritual practices that are trying to get you in touch with spiritual beings and powers so that they'll work for you or do things on your behalf. That's not good. That's not a huge issue., huge, huge role of you. You're really...

I think you should be doing it. Yes, because first of all, you're not acknowledging the one true God who truly is the author of life and has power to guide you and so on. But second, it's that you're messing with fire. You're messing with really mysterious spiritual realities. Now, however, that you're messing with fire. You're really messing with really mysterious spiritual realities. Now, however, that this is nuanced in like Paul's discussion of eating meat, sacrificed to gods, that he's saying, well, look, we know that these gods don't have any power.

Yes, that's right. So if it's not causing you or anyone else to sin or doubt or get confused, then eat the meat. So you can still participate as long as you're not doing it for the purpose of the spiritual practice. Paul definitely puts a prohibition on going to pagan temples and eating the sacrificial meals in the pagan temples. He just says, straight up, you're sharing the presents of demons. He says that.

But if you're in your own home and a cow, you're eating a steak that was sacrificed to the Zeus earlier that day, it's like hybrid. Yeah, sure. Yeah, a big deal. Yeah, Zeus is a big deal. Everyone's cool with this. It's a Zeus steak.

We're all good. Yeah, it's no big deal. We's cool with this? It's a Zeus steak. We're all good. Yeah, so we know God made this cow, and we're gonna accept it with. Okay, so if you run into a tattoo parlor, and they specialize in tattoos for the dead, right? And that's their thing, is they're like, you probably shouldn't go in there and get a tattoo, even if it's just gonna be of your mom.

You know, well, your mom, that's a back zone. But it's gonna be of like, Wiley Coyote or something, or the forum. You shouldn't probably shouldn't do that. And I don't wanna downplay the fact that there is a whole underbelly of like, a cult, magic, subculture. At least I know of here in America. It's pretty dark stuff.

And part of it is piercings and some of it is tattoos. Yeah. It's part of that. That's part of it. For some people. Yeah. And I think the point is stay away. It's clear that stuff.

So good question, Joe. Ben asked a question. The kind of relates to that, about the first readers of Leviticus, whether they recognize the divisions of ceremonial and moral laws. What about readers in Geo's day and in the early church? So the book of Leviticus recognizes some distinction when it groups together ritual purity laws, sacrificial laws,

from a group of what we would call moral purity laws. But I'm being a little too general in the poster here because if you read through 18 to 20 of Leviticus, there are lots of like, love your neighbor as yourself. It comes from right here. But then- Like actually before the, yeah, tribal in, or the- Yeah, totally. But then right after that is a sentence

of not wearing clothing made of two kinds of material and not sewing two different kinds of seed. So- The book of Leviticus itself doesn't really seem to acknowledge a group of ritual ceremonial laws about sacrifices and then a group of moral laws. That's more, actually that division within the laws comes from much later in Christian theology in the reform movement of the reformation in those writers.

And the common way to say it is that the ritual laws are not applicable to Christians, but the moral laws still are. And that's one way to make sure things are good. Because if you're saying that all of this, all of the law is can be summarized with love, then the moral laws are a lot more specific to love. So it's a lot, they usually divert a lot less. Correct. So they're much more easy to. But for the author of Leviticus

and for ancient Israelites, it was all one thing. Yes. I love God. Because I don't wear two different kinds of things. And I love God by not wearing two kinds of clothing. So I don't think in their minds there was a separation between the two. And so I don't think it's actually helpful to say, some of the laws aren't applicable anymore, but some are. And we need to figure out some checklist. I think it's more true to the biblical storyline

and what Jesus and the apostles say about the law is that the law, the laws given to Israel were fulfilled in Jesus Israel's Messiah, and that he has opened up a multi-ethnic family of God's people, and the terms by which Jesus' family relates to God, are in continuity with these terms, but they are not these terms set out in the book of Leviticus. They're just different.

The New Testament's pretty clear about that one. It was very controversial in their day and it's still controversial in our day too. Yeah, it was super controversial back then because all these converts, a lot of them were Jews. That's right. Yeah. The original following these laws,

it's the whole first generation of Jesus followers were grew up, you know, observing most of this. And so then that became the huge conflict within the early Jesus movement was, you have all these non-Jewish followers of Jesus. And some people said, yeah, they need to learn how to follow the book of Leviticus. And the apostles, this is in the book of Acts chapter 15, discerned that no, the law given to ancient Israel at Mount Sinai was temporary. It was for a season of how God worked out his covenant story, but now through Jesus the Messiah, he relates to them on different terms.

And Jesus fulfills the purpose of all of this. That's the view presented in the New Testament, especially the Book of Hebrews. Kevin, Duchenne, you've got a question about a big, big theme in the Book of Leviticus about animal sacrifice. So you asked Kevin, what is the purpose of animal sacrifice? Why not grains or trees? Why animal sacrifice and ultimately blood?

Great, great question. So one thing is, they didn't, the ancient Israelites weren't to offer trees, but they did offer grain. They did offer grain. So there are five different types of sacrifice described in these opening chapters of Leviticus. And one of them is entirely non-meat, non-animal sacrifices. So you could offer grain or flower or wheat or barley. So of the five sacrifices, there are two main purposes. Two of them were just for saying thank you to God.

So those are what's called the grain offering and the fellowship offering or the peace offering. And those are just the symbolic offerings where you take from your field or your field. So if you had a, if you were growing trees, maybe you would, yeah, if I could say. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's about bringing the fruit of what you've grown as a symbol to say thank you to God who provided it to you in the first place. Which was grain and

food and that kind of stuff. That's right. So God sends the rain, He made the earth fruitful and so on. And so you give back to God this symbolic token of what he's given to you. So two of the offerings were for that. Another one of the offerings, the burnt offering, was the same exact purpose but with animals, and so God provides from the flock, and so you offer from that. It's a burnt offering. There are two other offerings. So these are like, thank you offerings.

There's two other offerings that I call, I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you offerings. And then I'm sorry offerings. And this is where you get into blood and the animal's life and so on. What's interesting is that within these laws themselves, these laws never tell you why sacrifices work. Why these animal sacrifices work.

What they tell you is if you sin against your neighbor, you need to go pay them back, and then you need to go restore your relationship with God. And then you do that through the offering of the sacrifice. And it says, when you do it, that your sins are atoned for and that you're forgiven. It doesn't say how or why. Atoned meaning covered. Yeah, that's right. So the word atonement literally means to cover over. It works in English. It's actually perfect in English. I think I've done this before. If you and I go out to lunch, which we often do, and then let's say I forget my wallet or whatever, in English I'll

just say, dude, can you cover me? Yeah. And that's exactly it. That's exactly the meaning. It's a financial word, but is being applied here to a relational breach or rift. And so when I wrong you, I literally owe you. And I've created this wrong or rift in the relationship.

And so if I'm asking you to atone for it, I'm asking you to cover over it. Which doesn't mean you just say, oh well, no big deal. You can say no big deal, but somebody's got to pay for the food. We can't walk out of the restaurant. Well, we can't tell the waiter,

I forgot my wallet, like no big deal. Like you've got to cover it. So that's what the word means. And then a tone is linked with forgiveness then when you offer one of these sacrifices. So the definition, why the blood is defined right here in the day of atonement laws. And it's essentially that when human beings break relationships through wrongdoing and sin and evil, we are creating ruin and death in God's good world.

And the idea is that God wouldn't be good if he turned a blind eye to all of the horrible things that human beings do to each other. He actually wouldn't be good. And so you can choose to own the consequences of your own evil and selfishness. Or this animal's blood, which is a symbol of its life, can be offered to cover over the death and the evil that you've created. So it's a symbol. It's a whole symbol system.

But the whole point is that if you offered like a goat, like try and put yourself in an ancient Israelite situation, where you raised one of these animals, and you have to take it to Jerusalem. I've never slaughtered an animal. I've never done it either. I actually think that if you eat meat, you should slaughter an animal once. Probably.

It's probably your obligated to. I think so. I think I would be really bothered if I were to. Maybe we should bring one in and do it. Actually, this annual camping trip that I just came back from last weekend and one of the things I wanted to do is just bring out like a pig and then roast it and but that sound so barbaric to water it out there. Right, yeah, but we'll go have like a hamburger, a bacon hamburger.

Totally or a pork slider. Right, but I mean I really think if I were to slit a pig's throat, let's not use pigs, because they didn't sacrifice pigs. Like a goat's throat. Like it's gasping. It's visceral. The blood's gurgling out.

I would be really bothered. Yeah, you can't just be like, oh, no big deal. You'd be like, this is intense. Yeah, you would be like, I create, this is what I create. And unleashing the world every time I cheat my neighbor, we're cheat on my spouse and like backbite

and gossip about someone. I'm creating death and relational death in the world. And this is this visual experience where you're undergoing death. And except it's not your death. And so you're both really weirded out by it, but at the same time, it shows you that our moral decisions have really high stakes.

So I understand from a modern point of view, these seem weird and barbaric, but if you try and sympathetically put yourself into this culture, it's an extremely powerful symbol about how important our moral decisions are and the consequences of our everyday moral decisions. And so in that sense, it's really powerful. You can see how it would affect them.

Scott made a point, Scott, and noise, that if you're slaughtering an animal every day to eat it back then, you'd kind of get desensitized a little bit. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. I might be imposing my... Modern. Modern, my non-rural. Yeah, my modern.

Yeah, non-rural. Non-rural mind-blowing. But still, the point is you do. You still feel it. A goat costs something. Yeah, that's true. And usually when you kill an animal, it's so that your family can eat it and live. But here, you're killing an animal just simply to give it away.

Yeah, so you feel the economic part of it. The symbol would have its effect on you, even if you were used to slaughtering animal. But I think the point of the ritual is, even if you're desensititized is to go through it and participate all rituals desensitize us. I mean, how many times are you taking the blord supper and you're thinking about a football game or something?

No, it's just like we get desensitized to rituals. Wouldn't you be thinking about a soccer game? Yeah. You'd be thinking about soccer. Well, I'd depends if it's like Super Bowl season. Oh, I guess that is football. Yeah, and it is football. Goes either way.

And then blood is important, though. I mean, blood is a very significant element. Yes. And it goes all the way back to cane, enable, right? Blood, crying out from the ground. Blood's crying out from the ground. Is life in the blood, where does that come from? The life here.

The symbol of the blood is right from chapter 17 here. So that is then in the New Testament talk about the blood of Christ. That's why the blood of Christ becomes so important. Yeah, this is why, yep, the book of Hebrews, it's interesting. If you read the gospel account, so Jesus crucifixion, they don't really draw attention to blood much at all. The gospel of John does, but it's not Jesus' hands bleeding. It's when he gets stabbed in the side by the Roman soldier that he mentions the blood

in the water. So it's more as the apostles reflected back on the cross when they came to see that Jesus's death on the cross was fulfilling this, that he was dying in the place of sinful Israel, just like the sacrifice, animal sacrifices were. Then they came to use and highlight the blood of Jesus as being effective for atonement and forgiveness and so on. But nobody standing in front of the cross and watching Jesus died would have said, oh, an animal sacrifice. Oh, this guy, the criminal. This guy, the Romans must have hated this guy.

So it was the apostles, it was Jesus himself who had the last supper made the connection, his death was going to be a sacrifice and then the apostles reflected back on it and highlight the role of Jesus' blood as being like the blood of one of the people. There's a lot of our hymns and stuff have the blood of God.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus will wash away my sins. Yeah, that's right. But it's a symbol. What's interesting, I found in Christian tradition, is that the blood has kind of come to have meanings that it actually doesn't have in the New Testament itself. So the idea of being that when him there is a fount drawn from Emanuel's vein. Yeah, that's pretty graphic. And for anyone who's

blocked his under the blood. Yeah, and not there's a horror film. Yeah, nowhere in the in the Bible do you have an image of people getting blood poured all over them? It's like carry in the, Yeah, there's symbolic sprinkling, sometimes, of people. But, yeah, there are lots of pagan rituals about pouring bathing and animal blood and so on, but that's nothing to do with the Bible. So anyway, that song has always bothered me. Yeah.

But the symbol is of the blood of the sacrifice symbolically cleans or purifies me. That's a very biblical image. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Forrest, you asked a question about an embarrassingly uncomfortable for some people. A topic in the book of the Viticus. Forrest, you asked, what is the deal with menstruation and uncleanness? In the read scripture video of Leviticus,

but also in the color animation one, we talk a lot about this incleanness or impurity. So it's a cultural symbol system related to the idea of God's holiness. So God's holiness, as we talked about in the holiness video, is connected to his unique role as the creator of all that is in the author of life. And so Israel was to reflect culturally the fact that the author and source of all life was camped out, right, and it's missed in the 10th. And so they had this cultural system of marking certain people as being impure, which didn't mean that you're sinful.

Impurity is not sinful. It means that you are marked in some way that makes it non-permissible for you to go into the presence of the author of life, to go to the temple. You know, when we were first working on Leviticus, you, and this didn't make any progress or anything, you were talking about how we sort of have this idea in Western culture. When it comes to like bathrooms and sanitary spaces. Yes, yes, that's right. So like, if you go into a bathroom and you come out

and you haven't watched your hands, you're unclean. You're unclean. You're impure. You're impure. Or if you take your dinner into the bathroom and sit on the toilet and eat. Your dinner becomes impure. I've done surveys in large rooms before with this question.

And everybody agrees that that's really great. Yeah, you don't eat that. But you sit on the toilet or stand in the bathroom all the time and stick things in your mouth. It's called your toothbrush. Right. What's the difference between eating dinner in the bathroom and brushing your teeth? It's a mentality. It's a mentality. And cultural anthropologists call these taboos.

Every culture has them and they're not usually rational. They're symbolic. So it's symbolic that you don't eat in the bathroom, but that's the place where you poop out your dinner, not the place where you consume your dinner. And in reality your keyboard has more germs on it than your toilet seat. Totally, yeah. So if you didn't know that already I'm sorry to give you that information. Yes, but. So that's a cultural analogy. So that's the least

way of saying Leviticus isn't weird or barbaric for thinking this way. All cultures have these types of impurity taboos in them. And Israel's was related to the idea that the author of life is in their midst. So if you look at the types of things that make somebody impure, we talk about them in the video, it's just a handful. It's contact with bodily fluids.

So this brings up the menstruation thing that you brought up for us. But it's not just about women, because men, if they have any contact with reproductive fluids as well, then they are also rendered impure for a period of seven days. If you touch any form of skin disease, if you touch any mold growing on your house, if you touch a dead body of a human or an animal,

you are rendered impure. It's not sinful. You're marked by death. It's almost as if these bodily fluids are like radioactive, right? Because these fluids are the source of life. It's like they're radioactive. So to touch them is to come into contact with the forces of life. It's like they're radioactive. So to touch them is to come into contact with

the forces of life and death. And so it's all symbolic. And by the end of seven days you offer sacrifice, you take a bath and you're pure again and you can go into the temple and so on. So it's not sinful to be in pure. It was normal every day of life. You know? Hey, you want to go to the temple and play soccer this week? I can't, I'm in puer, you know? But I'll join you next week. It wasn't, I think. It wasn't like, oh, you're in puer?

Come in, we should probably talk about your walk with God. That's right, not at all. They're like, oh, okay, you touched something else. Yeah, you buried your father. You buried your grandfather. Yeah, you ran up a lesson or something. So that's the deal with it. It's a cultural symbol system that's foreign to us,

but we have our own issues that is realized. It's what have poked fun at, like our inconsistencies with brushing our teeth in the bathroom. Anyway, great question for us. Let's see. Cruisin had a question that I just, we haven't talked about yet. And it's been brought up in

the Exodus and Leviticus. Cruisin, is that your actual name? It seems suspiciously like a cruisin. It's a rat name. Cruisin. It's probably just not English. So you asked a question about the Urim and the the tumim. Do you have any insight on the urem and the tumim? You can throw our way, do they glow? Is it just casting lots? What is the deal? What is the deal, cruzene? So the urem and the tumim, they're interesting words.

Urem is just the Hebrew word for lights, and Tumim is the Hebrew word for things that are perfect or whole. So the old King James translates it to lights and perfections. And these were some form of little dice, little cubes, that the priests would keep in a little pouch. And then when the priests were consulted by someone who wanted to know God's will on a certain decision, should I build a farm here or should I not? Should I go to Jericho and do this? And you can get told a priest and they would just throw a role, the uream and thumming and then give you. So it sounds suspiciously like something pagan. Yes, it's very odd.

It's very odd. The pagan sailors in Jonah. They cast lots. Yeah. The apostles in the book of Acts cast lots to figure out. Yeah, so there's a number of times in the biblical story where they use this cultural practice of rolling sacred dice. There's no use like saying it's not there in the

Bible because it totally is and I don't know, I don't make it a habit of rolling dice. There's nowhere in the biblical story that tells you the reader, hey, this is a way that you should discern God's will. We're just given narratives where some people do it in the storyline and there you go. So they're trying to think if I do anything that's like an equivalent to rolling dice trying to make decisions sometimes. For real decisions? Like important ones. Yeah, well you're just like, I don't know, like this is 50-50 for me. Yeah. I guess you just start asking friends, and you just start like, at some point,

they just have to make a decision, and how you're gonna make it. You're just gonna like, yeah, the Book of Proverbs offers a different point of view. They say there's wisdom in the council of elders, like asking old wise people who know you really well. The Quakers have a cool tradition, where like they come around,

and they don't. They don't. A discernment process. Yeah. They. Yeah. That's right. It's cool. Yeah. Paul the Apostle says within your church community, you can through the guiding of the spirit, the game wisdom. Rocks of... Okay, but scissors. Rock, that's what they said. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Not for really important things. Like, should we get married? OK, I'm rock. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so the early even Thomey were a great example of things that people in the biblical stories do. The biblical stories aren't, therefore, telling you, you should go do this, too. They're just telling you, this is what they did. And that's one of those things where I just kind of leave it You should go do this too. They're just telling you this is what they did. And that's one of those things where I just kind of leave it at that. Some biblical characters did that, and I don't really recommend it as a way for making important

decisions. And I don't think the Apostle Paul or the Book of Proverbs do either. But if you flip a coin to decide something, you're not orspiancy. Why should we go eat lunch? Or should we go eat lunch? Yeah, and yeah. Great question, Kruzen. Steve Brooks had an interesting question about, in what ways should Christians who are

referred to as priests in the New Testament emulate the characteristics of the priest in Leviticus. So, yeah, at the foot of Mount Sinai, God called the whole nation a royal priesthood or a kingdom of priests, and the Apostle Peter, and his first letter, a first letter of Peter, uses that same phrase to refer to the early Christian communities of royal priesthood.

So absolutely, every follower of Jesus is given the title of priest. I think in the same way that Israel as a nation was given this role of priest. Which is not in the same way that Aaron and his tribe were given. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, so Aaron and his crew are a select group of priests. Among the royal priests are they're a select group of priests. And from the qualifications given in Leviticus here, they were given an even higher standard of ritual purity

because they worked in proximity to the God's holy presence and so on. So, I mean, I do think that carries across in the whole area of holiness, which is about a distinctness and a set of partners. And the primary way in the New Testament that G.S.S. followers set a part is through a commitment to radical acts of love and service for your neighbor, and then a passionate commitment to moral purity and moral holiness.

And those two things, radical service and radical moral holiness will set anybody apart in most any city or neighborhood on the planet. And so in that sense, totally a straight line from the priesthood to the New Testament. Radical, Siddhas, too again. Radical acts of love and service, like Jesus washing the feet, do as I've done to you, and then a commitment to moral purity and holiness, which isn't just sexual purity, though the apostles really emphasize that, but it's a commitment to moral purity in our speech and how we operated relationships and our work, integrity, and so on. And then the New Testament also talks about the Christian community as the temple too. That's right.

So now we're the priest. The temple. Yes. And then in regards to the temple Paul talks about sexual purity. Don't go sleeping around with prostitutes. You're the temple. That's right. That's what he's there.

That's his argument. But then it's also more importantly, it's the reason why we should go and spread the message to good news because I was appointed a temple. It's a point of the temple. It's a temple. It's just Brad God's glory. That's right. So, it's cool. Yeah, it's John Horton, staff pick. How does the offering model in Leviticus relate to the practice of tithing in the church

today? In a nutshell, tithing just means one-tenth. Tithing is not a practice described in the New Testament. Radical generosity that is sacrificial is the norm in the New Testament. According to one's means, as Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, so tithing was a way that Israelites did it. Israelites, for the Israelites, for the early Christians, the only ceiling was no ceiling for the level of your generosity.

Radical generosity, according to what you have, is the standard in New Testament. All right, thanks, guys. Peace out. Happy Tuesday. See you. That's it for this episode of The Bible Project Podcast. If you like this podcast, we have lots of other resources available.

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