BibleProject - The Law as a Revolution - Law E3

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

In part 1 (0-21:30), the guys recap their conversation so far. Jon says that often the law is the first place people go who look to take issue with the Bible, saying it’s archaic or barbaric. Tim points out that too often, we don’t understand how cross-cultural it is to read the Bible. Instead, we often impose our own cultural mindset on the Bible. Jon recalls from their discussion that the ancient law code of Israel was not the supreme authority, but instead illustrative of the relationships between the parties involved. In part 2 (21:30-26:30), Tim talks about the wisdom of the laws in the Hebrew Scriptures. Tim shares this quote: “The Hebrew Bible strongly suggests that the earliest forms of disputes… were resolved… by intuitions of justice against a background of custom, rather than appeal to formulated rules. The biblical sources which talk about the establishment of the judicial system in Israel give no indication that judges were to use written sources. Rather, judges are urged to avoid partiality and corruption and to ‘do justice.’ But what was the source of such justice? The version attributed to king Jehoshaphat is the most explicit, ‘God is with you in giving judgment’ (2 Chronicles 19:6). Divine inspiration is also attributed to the king in rendering judgment: Proverbs 16:10, ‘Inspired decisions are on the lips of a king; his mouth does not sin in judgment.’ Solomon’s judgment (1 Kings 3:16-28) is presented as an example of just such a process…. This is not to say that judges were expected to go into some kind of trance or function as an oracle. Rather, they were called to operate by combining local custom with divinely guided intuitions of justice…relying on the ‘practical wisdom’ that existed within the social consciousness of the people as a whole.” (Bernard Jackson, Wisdom Laws, 30-31) In part 3 (26:30-40:30), Tim says the laws embody a set of ideals. Laws related to similar topics work together as a symbolic ritual system. They embody a set of ethical, social, and theological ideals for God’s ancient covenant people, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” living out the Garden-of-Eden ideal in the world. He shares five ideal “buckets” or categories to help readers understand different laws: Ritual Calendar: The 7-day Sabbath cycle is all about the anticipation and re-enactment of new creation (note the literary design of the days in Genesis 1: There is no end to the seventh day). Ritual sacrifices: sacrifices involved offering the life of a blameless representative who would “ascend” to the heavenly mountain on behalf of the offerer (Leviticus 1 begins with the “‘olah” or “ascent” offering) Ritual holiness: symbolic purity boundaries embodied the conviction that God’s presence is the source of all life, and health is separate from the mortal and immoral Civil law: creating a new-creation community structured to carry the poor and prevent injustice toward the vulnerable Criminal law: zero tolerance for those who corrupt the holy covenant family: no blood feuds, theft, idolatry, or sexual behavior that disrupts the social web In part 4 (40:30-end), Tim goes over the sacrifices in the “ritual sacrifices” bucket. He cites a book by Michael Morales called Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A biblical theology of Leviticus. Tim also goes over civil and criminal laws in ancient Israel. Jon asks Tim for a few specific examples. Tim goes to these passages: Deuteronomy 24:21-22 “21 When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. 22 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.” Deuteronomy 25:1-4 “1 When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. 2 If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, 3 but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes 4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Deuteronomy 25:11-15 “11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.” “13 Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. 14 Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. 15 You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 16 For the Lord your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.” Tim admits that these laws are very hard to understand. He points out that there are no narratives of these laws actually being put into practice. Regarding verses 11-12, Tim points out that the woman would have been endangering the entire family and bloodline by seizing a man’s genitals. Tim also notes that the differing weights are about not counterfeiting money. Thank you to all our supporters! Show produced by: Dan Gummel, Jon Collins Show Music: “Defender Inst” by Tents “Good Morning” by Amine Maxine “I don’t need you to say anything” by Le Gang “Shipwrecked” by Moby
 Show Resources: Bernard Jackson, Wisdom Laws Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A biblical theology of Leviticus


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 in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. If you've ever tried to read through the Bible, you won't get far into the story. When you'll come across a bunch of Israel's ancient law code, thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that. Some of these we know well like the Ten Commandments. Don't steal, no murder, but other laws give really narrow and specific and sometimes strange, and there's a whole lot of them. Yeah, it's a lot.

It's a significant portion of the first main section of the Bible, enough that it makes most people not want to read through the Bible if they start on page one. And some of these laws, frankly, seem barbaric to modern standards. They paint a picture of a culture you and I actually wouldn't want to live in. And so it's easy to read the laws and then have a problem with it. If I view the Bible as a law code, drop from heaven, stating the divine will,

then I have problems with that. If I view this as customary common law and the God is revealing himself to Israel calling them to a higher standard of justice but as he finds them as an ancient Near Eastern culture and work a revolution from within and moral revolutions are slow and they happen on on a worldview level not just by rewriting the laws. Okay so the laws in the Bible were given to a specific culture in their time in human history. For them, why do I need to read it?

What kind of value can I get out of reading the law? The laws are an embodiment of a set of ideals. Any given law is just an application or an expression of some higher ideal. And so if you back up and say what are the core main ideals underneath the laws, there's actually just a handful of things being worked out. So in this episode, we're going to look at four divine ideals that you can categorize all of the laws in the Bible, like you. The holiness of God, sacrificial system, divine justice, and sacred time.

That last category gives us into a conversation about the Sabbath. Yeah, it's a day where I declare that God, God's ideal for our world, isn't the daily death struggle of subsistence living, that that isn't the meaning of my existence. We're created as royal images of God to rule in partnership and injustice and community

over a creation that responds to us in harmony. And so Sabbath is a way of saying the meaning of human existence isn't defined by our work and toil and labor. It's defined on where creation's going. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. So as we have this conversation, we're talking about how to read biblical laws, which are interspersed throughout the Bible throughout the Bible. Yep, specifically in Torah. For five books, yep.

But not in the first one. But not in the first one. But not in the first one. That's right, books two through five. And so this whole conversation is really about how to read 600 and some odd verses in the Bible. Mm-hmm. Yeah, sometimes a law will be a case law that's a few verses, but yeah.

Yeah. So it is a small portion, scripture. Now, 600 of anything in the Bible is a lot. Yeah, but there's no other, we're not. There's not even 600 proverbs in the book of Proverbs. Okay, there's about 400. And we're gonna do a whole how to read. Yeah, at least about for wisdom literature.

Yeah, it's a lot. It's a significant portion of the first main section of the Bible, right? Enough that it makes most people not wanna read through the Bible if they start on page one. But isn't there something like 11,000 verses in the Bible? How many verses are in the Bible? Oh, I don't know.

How many verses? It's 23,000 verses in the Bible. Oh, I don't know. How many verses? There's 23,000 verses in the Bible. Sure. So 600, 2.5% of the Bible. This whole conversation we're having is about 2.5% of the Bible. No, but most of the laws, I'd say half the laws are sometimes two to four verses in length. Okay. So we're moving up towards 10%. We're moving up towards 10% of the Bible. All right. It is ancient Near Eastern.

That seems like a lot. Legal and ritual laws. Yeah. Yeah. It's a significant portion. And because it's in the front, it attracts more attention. And it's often the verses, it attracts more attention. And it's often the versus skeptics. Correct.

Yes, yes. We'll go to talk about how irrelevant, more messy or barbaric the Bible is. Sure. And it's often even people who are faith-friendly, or Bible-friendly, will these get thrown or disturbed by the same passages, yeah totally. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so it creates this basic tension. If I come to this book saying, this is where I find God's will. Yeah. For my life and about what the world is, and then I

get one book in and I'm reading hundreds of ancient laws. Yeah, really throws people for a loop. Yeah. So it's worthy to make a video about. We made one that's about how they fit into the narrative flow of the biblical story, but this is going to be a little bit more about the sense that they made in their ancient context and then how to read them in their literary context. So you want to do a little recap for us? The last two upsets? You want me to? Usually. Because you synthesize things in the way different than I do.

I like it. Well, so we started talking about the law. And you know, what I kind of wish we had done was maybe give some examples. People were listening. They never actually read the law code. Oh, yeah. How long are listeners ship people haven't never actually read the law code. Oh, yeah. Along our listenership, people haven't tried to read the law.

Maybe some of them. Yeah. I mean, because there's some that we talked about the different types like, and the problems people have with them, some are just confusing, kind of like, who the heck cares, like we being two types of material together. Sure. To make clothes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't put tattoo marks on yourselves in honor of the dead. Yeah. Yeah. That wasn't my Saturday. No. Yeah. You weren't tempted to do that.

And then some seem way too brutal or violent. No. Yeah, especially ones about holy war, or what you do with women and children captives, you know, shave their heads and clip their fingernails. Yeah. So some that seem morally primitive. Morally primitive.

From our cultural point of view. Others are just mind numbingly boring. Sure. Like just blueprints. Blueprints? Yeah. Personally, even though I really think the overall picture of the sacrificial rituals is really profound.

We'll talk about that a little bit later. But actually reading the ritual codes for how to slaughter these animals, it's boring. It's a sludge. It's repetitive and kind of boring, even for me, still. And we had a whole conversation about how many there are, which isn't a real necessary conversation, but it's really fascinating and we got to read some tomad. We got to read the tomad. And remember the point there is even though there's a lot of laws, there's not enough to cover all areas of life. So the rabbis and the tomad have

to extrapolate and create more. And they were doing two things, they were creating more. But they were also trying to consolidate into themes. And it was really cool to see how they showed how different profits were doing that. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And Rabbi Simlai came to the same conclusion that the Apostle Paul did, that obeyed the laws you need to live by faith. Live by faith.

Quotes. A backer. Yeah. Anyway,ic, yeah. Anyway, that's cool. Very cool. And then we just talked about, oh yeah, the problems that the law creates. And for people who want to follow the law, who would generally be Jewish people, a lot of the law is centered around temple worship.

Yeah. Worship in the temple. For life in the promised land. For life in the holy land. And so if you want to be Jewish, but you don't live in the promised land, or you don't have access to the temple, which is everyone, there is no temple. What do you do? You can't follow those laws anymore. And if the point of the law is to follow it to the T, you've got a big problem. Yeah. So that becomes a problem for Jewish people, which they work through by replacing temple worship with other things. Yeah. Or they discern a principle or truth underneath the sacrificial rituals that you could do at any time and any place.

But you do it by having to work around the actual meaning of the law and have to turn it into some other truth or idea. Sacrifices of prayer instead of animal sacrifices. And throughout human history, there's been non-Jewish people who have wanted to follow the law as well. And when that happens, there's different. Part of the law is to show a distinction, a very clear distinction. Well, yeah. Between this people who are in this covenant relationship and those who are not.

And circumcision is one of those very clear. Yeah, kos those who are not and circumcision is one of those very clear. Yeah kosher kosher diet becomes one because You just can't hide how you're eating. Yeah, ask any vegan Yeah, it just becomes very fast ancient Greek or Roman city men can't hide the fact that they're not circumcised Because there was a lot of public being public naked venues in those cultures. Yeah. And then keeping the Sabbath was a massive marker. Huge. No one else was doing that. Yeah. And it's really, really sent you apart. And so the question became for anyone who wants to

follow the Torah but isn't Jewish, is do I have to follow all of these things? And it specifically became a big issue as it pertains to all of these followers of Jesus. Yeah, a Messianic Jewish movement. Messianic Jewish movement. It starts taking on non-Jewish disciples. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, that's a big debate. Yeah. Should all these non-Jewish people adopt the entire

all the laws or not? And some of, yeah. And some New Testament wrestles through that. The early apostles wrestled through that. And Jesus himself had to address the issue. Yep. When did Jesus address the issue? In the Cerminon the Mount.

What did he say? Well, he addresses people accusing him in his movement, setting aside the laws of the Torah. And he says, no, I'm not setting them aside. I'm fulfilling them. Yeah. And then he goes on to discuss six commands from the Torah to show what he means. Got it. Yeah. That was the first episode. And then we, and the second episode, you introduced that there's six different perspectives about the law that we want to walk through and in the episode we just looked at one. Yeah, the longest one in our conversation. And these are perspectives that helped you understand how to read. How to read them, how they fit in the ancient Israel's culture and how they fit into the storyline of the Bible.

Yeah. And your first one, you framed it as the laws are not law code, and then I had this big, like, but they come from law code and do they, but it's a kind of law code that comes from a covenant relationship, but don't all laws come from some sort of relationship and those. But the real point of that is that what we find in the Bible is not a comprehensive list of laws, but more than that, whatever it came from isn't judicial law code.

It's what you would call custom-marry law code. one is the common law tradition, I think in English speaking countries or legal traditions, that's what it's called common law versus a more modern form of law practice called statutory law. Statutory law. So I think this was super helpful because any modern coming to the Bible and going, oh there's laws in here, is going to immediately throw our paradigm of what law is onto what they're reading. And our paradigm is you've got a body of text that's written, and that is the law that everyone will point to and say, that's the standard. That's what we have to adhere to.

And anytime we have a conflict, we're going to go and consult that and do what that says. Yep. And if that's not clear enough, we'll modify it. We'll make amendments. We'll make amendments. Yeah, that's right. And but the law code is king. Correct. It's the final authority.

And there's an unspoken, or at least often unspoken assumption there, that the written law code is itself an embodiment of our highest moral ideals. So there is a higher moral ideal than the law. That's why we would amend the law sometimes because the law should be an embodiment of some higher ideal. But in actual practice, in day to day practice, in cases in disputes, the wording and text of the law is authority. Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to legal matters, when it comes to just day-to-day life, you don't actually really live that way necessarily. Like me and my wife don't have a whole list of obligations and rules and things. We made a relational vow to love each other and then

just day to day, you just kind of try to work it out. And we are also appealing to a higher sort of code, but we don't consult it via some like text. We instead consult it by appealing to all sorts of things, stories that we both have adopted, just wisdom in general. Yeah. Our common experiences together, that inform all these things. Yeah, ethical values. But again, ethical values as such are just words or ideas to explain them to each other. We use all kinds of ways.

Stories, poems, parables. Yeah. Yeah. For followers of Jesus, this is how the story of Jesus functions, right? When somebody, a follower of Jesus behaves in a way that's unworthy of Jesus' life and teachings. And what you'll do is not, well, what one person might do is actually open a Bible and be like, look here, Jesus said, forgive with my boys, when they won't forgive. I'll tell the story of Jesus dying on the cross, forgiving the people killing him.

I just did that the other day. And they had to stop and think about it. And so that was a form of moral, relational education, but I'm using a narrative to do it, as opposed to a command of Paul, forgive as you have been forgiven. I could quote Ephesians 5th, or I could tell a story about Jesus on the cross. Yeah. And so that's a different way to think about how we decide what how society should act. Correct. Now within that, you also have what we as moderns call law code. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And this happens too. Like my wife is like, John, you're gonna get out of bed before seven o'clock every morning. And it's like, okay. Yeah, yeah.

And that's in a sense like lock code in our household. Sure. But it's not the final authority. Yeah, your wife doesn't hold you accountable to the written text. Yeah, it's the spirit of that. The spirit of that is I want you helping get the kids ready. Correct.

And if you're up too late, then it's a chaos in the morning. That's right. But certain mornings are different. And if it's 7 or 7 or 5 or whatever, it's really more the spirit of why that logs is. And what you were showing is that an ancient law code was never used as the final authority. Correct. used as the final authority. It was always used as an illustration of the wisdom of the higher authority behind it. And so you wouldn't find any sort of judicial moment where they appeal to the law code. And that happens in the

Bible and also another ancient. Yeah, we looked at the code of homerabi, whose famous law code from ancient world, which is everywhere copied and nowhere quoted. Yeah. Never quoted in any ancient law case, and in all the ancient law cases from that region and time, what judges actually are deciding and disputes sometimes contradicts the code.

Yeah. And so it's a completely different paradigm for how to deal with written law. Correct. That it isn't the supreme authority, it is an example of, an example in one time and place of how one could embody the ideals.

And if we treated like American law that way, it would all fall apart. We would need a completely different system. So it's a completely different paradigm. Correct. And most of human history has worked in a common law society. Because people knew each other well, small bands of people who were homogeneous in their values, and then also just the technology of the written language wasn't highly accessible. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time.

So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time.

So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the time. So you just couldn't have all the technology of the written language wasn't highly accessible, so you just couldn't have all of this text floating around as easily. Something happened in the last couple hundred, three hundred years, where there was a transition. In our culture. In our culture, in the West, especially, but all over the world. And it was really interesting to look at that transition in Germany. And that's, we looked at that with the Brothers Grimm and how, as German society was moving to a more judicial law code, they had this whole project of finding all the common law

and making sure it informed the judicial law. Yeah, the very folk talesales of the brother's grim, that famous collection was collected by lawyers. Yeah, right. To create a collective moral conscience. Yeah. This is the moral conscience of our people, and this is what we use to train people.

So that when they enter into disputes in their adult years, their moral instincts are trained. That's what Cinderella does to children. Apparently. Fascinating. The first important perspective when reading biblical law is that it comes from an era of law being customary law. Customary law.

Which means when you sit down and read a law in the Bible, it was written for a time and a place as an example of how a higher set of values and authority would manifest in that moment. And to put a pin on that point, we looked at how even in the Bible, laws would change. Yes, that's right. And the most obvious one was whether you boil roast. Yeah, boil or roast the Passover lamb.

Yeah, Exodus 12, it says roast it, do not boil it. Yeah. And then in Deuteronomy 12, Moses says, when you go into the Promised Land, boil it. Yeah, boil it. Boil it. Again, yeah. So it's just a perfect illustration. If you're viewing each of those statements within a different narrative context, one is when they're leaving Egypt hastily. The other is once you're settled in the promised land in a house. So the log gets appropriated differently. We don't have any laws about how to celebrate something. You know, like you must put up American flags on the words of July. You know what? Are there some of those? Yeah.

Yeah, like you can't let the flag does the ground. Oh, sure. Interesting. There's certain times you have to do certain things. That's an American thing. I wonder, yeah, there may be. I don't know. The way holidays work in modern nation states is both similar, but also different from how

they work in more ancient societies. Yeah, and in the Bible, a lot of the laws around the V-stays. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah So there's one helpful quote that we didn't read last time, but it's from one of the godfather scholars in this paradigm shift within biblical studies. One guy's name Raymond Westbrook, another scholar is named Bernard Jackson. He wrote, probably the most important and kind of like authoritative commentary on the first block of laws in the Bible, which is the Ten Commandments and then the Covenant Code in Exodus,

chapters 20 to 23. Yeah. Exhaustive. It's a fat book. But the title of it and the thesis is fascinating. The book is called Wisdom Laws. Because the whole point, again, is that all of these law codes are a part of a wisdom tradition, a moral wisdom education. And so this is, he's summarizing what we're talking about right now. He says, the Hebrew Bible strongly suggests that the earliest forms of disputes in ancient Israel were resolved by intuitions of justice against a background of custom rather than appeal to formulated rules. He's saying in a very articulate way what it took us a long time to say. The biblical sources, which talk about the

establishment of the judicial system in Israel, give no indication that judges were to use written sources. We looked at that in previous part of our conversation. He goes on, rather, judges were urged to avoid partiality and corruption and to do justice. But he asks, what is the source of such justice? The version attributed to King Jehoshaphat is the most explicit, quote, God is with you when you give judgment. 2nd Chronicles 19. Divine inspiration is also attributed to the King in rendering judgment. Proverbs 1610, inspired decisions are on the lips of the King. His mouth doesn't sin in judgment. Solomon's judgment in 1 Kings 3, this is the story of the two women who can't agree on who son is who. He's presented as an example of just this process.

He doesn't consult a rule book to figure out how to resolve this dispute. He just knows what to do. So this isn't to say, Jackson, correct. He says, this isn't to say that judges were expected to go into some kind of trance or function as an oracle. Rather, they were called to operate by combining local custom

common law with divinely guided intuitions of justice, relying on practical wisdom that existed within the social consciousness of their people. It's a good technical summary of what we're saying. It's interesting that if part of the equation is your own intuition, this whole idea of can we have wisdom on our own terms or not? Yes, so much more significant. That's right. Yeah, this is why the book of Proverbs is what it is. It's not just like good advice.

It begins by saying the fear of the Lord is the first step of true wisdom. Moral humility before a definition of right and wrong that I don't get to change. It's interesting to think in this kind of tradition then, judges, the most important qualification of a judge isn't their scholarly expertise in the legal texts. Yeah. It's their moral character. Mm. Right.

I mean, I won't give any more commentary, but just to say, think of the moral character of a judge in a statutory law society, because less important. Less important. Still important. It's supposed to be important. It is. We're supposed to feel it's important. You know what, weak. But isn't it interesting? You know what? It's important in a customary supposed to be important. It is. We're supposed to feel it's important. You know what, weak.

But isn't it interesting? You know what? It's important in a customary way, not in a judicial way. Correct. That's correct. That's right. So you can have law. You can have judges who are morally compromised in some ways.

But as long as they're upstanding enough generally and have legal expertise in the text, then put them in that position. Isn't that interesting? Yes, it is. In a common law society, no, never float. You would never get nominated as a judge if you had a morally compromised past. Interesting.

Yeah. So that's just worth observing. I'm going to do it. Alright, that means that we have five more. It'll go much quicker. I think depends on you, John Collins. So the first is the laws don't represent a comprehensive law code. The laws in the Pentateuch, along with the narratives in the Torah, are in embodiment of wisdom, their wisdom literature. This is really what that principle should be. The laws in the Torah are not a law code, but wisdom. Covenant wisdom, terms of a covenant, and therefore wisdom.

and therefore wisdom. Okay, so here's the second perspective, and this is actually a little more, it's a concept underlying a tool that I've discovered for how to group laws together. Okay, so here's the positive statement, second perspective on the laws. The laws embody a set of symbolic ideals. The laws are an embodiment of a set of ideals.

We've already talked about this in a sense, that any given law is just an application or an expression of some higher ideal. And so if you back up and say, what are the core main ideals underneath the laws, there's actually just a handful of things being worked out in all of the different laws. And this is the whole exercise of trying to distill the law code into it.

Totally, that's an excellent. That's a very ancient tradition in Jewish interpretation, boiling things down. So for example, dozens and dozens of the laws are all about, you just, we talked about, about the feast days, about Sabbath, about the Numen, about all the annual holidays, and so on. So, it's a big chunk. So, all of those are an embodiment of one core worldview about the nature of time, sacred time, versus profane time, normal time, versus holy time.

So it's a way of saying, whenever I come across laws addressing a similar topic in my mind, I'm supposed to file them in that drawer. These are the calendar laws. And so then once I begin to read law after law, I put together the larger ideal that they're all expression. Same with sacrifices, or laws about sacrifices in Leviticus, but also in Exodus and also in numbers.

And all of them are embodying just a core set of basic concepts of what is sacrifice, what does it mean? Are you with me? There you go. So it's actually a very simple idea, but once I was taught how to do it, I stopped being so bewildered when I came in

to different laws or a restatement of laws. I can now just assume, oh, we're back to that ideal and we're just gonna fill that ideal out a little bit more now with some more laws. Anyway, that's the basic concept. Well, so then that leads me to ask, why didn't God start with that? I want you to like, that should have been the 10 Commandments. Let me give you the buckets, the ideals.

Yeah, sure. And by the way, guys, every law comes from these. Well, here's the thing, is that the laws aren't the only expressions of these ideals. Right. Here, let me just read you the list. Here's my five. Here.

So one is about calendar. Well, Israel's calendar, every single mention of Sabbath, Newman, annual feasts are all working out and developing one core theological claim about time. The calendar calendar. Okay. So let me stop. I said this is the same thing that the profits are doing with the profits are doing seem

a little different now. I'm looking at your list. Your list seems more like how a seminary professor would yeah, organize these. Yeah, totally. Well, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm just one brain, even at this. Okay.

Virtual calendars won. Yeah, so all the calendar laws are working out one basic set of ideals that are introduced to you on page one of Genesis in a narrative, namely the concept of Sabbath. Now, what's the ideal behind this, though? Well, so yeah, we'll talk about it. Oh, okay. We'll talk about it. All of the sacrifices yeah, are working out a core concept about humanity's relationship to God. Okay. Holiness and purity. So I think this is as diverse as what you can touch, what you can touch, dead bodies, what you eat, whether there's mold in your home, bodily fluids, all really different kinds of laws, but they're all working out really simple set of ideas about holiness and purity.

Okay. Civil law, this is essentially laws that govern how you and I relate to each other in business and neighborhood and when we talk about law, I automatically start thinking about civil law. Civil law and then your fifth bullet here. Yeah. So civil law is like everything from guardrails on your rooftop in Deuronami, to how to honor the boundary lines of our land. Yeah, ours is like handrails have to be built in the exact same specific way. Yeah, animals, animal safety. Handrails have to be built in the exact same specific way. Animals, animal safety.

Yeah. Yeah. All this kind of stuff. Oh, yeah. How you relate to the poor, debt, laws, all this kind of stuff. Yeah. It's all civil law. And once again, we're just back to a pretty core couple of ideas

underneath all those different laws. And the last one would be criminal law. This is addressing damages due to violent conflict, which is working out a core idea or two. So there's just four, there's just a couple of five buckets that all of the laws on similar topics fit into. And once you look at the bucket, it's just a core concept being worked out in all these different laws each bucket has one core concept being one ideal being worked out Yeah, yep, that's the point that I'm making That's right And over time over the years that you read through the Bible when you come to the laws

I found that it's helpful. Ah, I'm in the Sabbath calendar bucket right now, sacred time. And so, yeah, so you said for calendar the ideal is this thing called sacred time. That's a whole conversation to itself. Totally. Yeah, each of these five could be a whole video or conversation. Again, the point is in how to read laws in the Bible video, this is just a very helpful concept for me. I think what I'm getting hung up on is you call them symbolic ideals. Yeah, but then you phrase them as just categories.

Well here, let's just read them. This very short sketching it out here. The whole ritual calendar is based off of the seven-day Sabbath cycle. All the holidays are based off of patterns of seven, either happening on the seventh day, or happening four seven days, or happening in the seventh month. The seventh month of the calendar is packed full of the most of these days, and they'll stack on each other and so on. But it's all rooted in the concept of Sabbath on page one of Genesis. This is endless.

I have so much more reading and learning and reflecting I want to do on Sabbath. It's so much more than just take a break every Sabbath does. So the pattern of God bringing order and beauty and goodness out of chaos in six days of work in Genesis one, and then declaring that there's a day which he rests from his work to rule and enjoy it for ruling and enjoying. That's the pattern in Genesis 1. There's a handful of things. One is every day of in Genesis 1 begins and ends with a formula. And God said begins every day. And And God said, begins every day, and then the last sentence of each day,

this evening and morning, the first day, the second day, the third day. When he gets to the seventh day, he declares it holy, he takes up his rest, which means to pick up your role as king and then to enjoy. But there's no concluding formula to the seventh day. And then what follows from that is a replay in Genesis 2 but there's no concluding formula to the seventh day. And then what follows from that is a replay in Genesis 2

from another angle of a story of chaos to beauty and order. And what you see is humans fail to achieve the divine rest. They're banished from the garden instead of taking up their rest as images of God, like God. So the whole point of the Sabbath is that God intends history and the human divine ideal partnership to culminate in a time of rest and rule. And the seventh day doesn't end on page one of the Bible because it has no ending because in the narrative flow it was never realized.

The Sabbath day had never actually happened. The point of the Sabbath is it would be a permanent thing. So the calendar is really a way of all of this ritual calendar stuff is saying, let's find time to start living like it actually started happening. Yeah, yeah, the weekly Sabbath in the calendar, the symbolism is we are reenacting God's own rest, but we're doing it as an anticipation of the day when all creation will finally reach the Sabbath that God intends for it. So it's both backwards looking to imitate what God did. It's also a forward looking into the new creation.

It's a new creation, ritual. The ideal behind it is living in the new creation. Yeah, it's a day where I declare that God's ideal for our world isn't the daily death struggle of subsistence living, that that isn't the meaning of my existence. We're created as royal images of God to rule in partnership and injustice and community over a creation that responds to us in harmony. It's Genesis 1. It's like you're looking at a beautiful snow globe.

I mean, Genesis 1. And of course, we know we don't live in that world. And so Sabbath is a way of saying the meaning of human existence isn't defined by our work and toil and labor. It's defined on where creation is going in the new creation. It's beautiful. It's so beautiful. And so all of a sudden, why Passover is a seven day festival? Because it's about the liberation of creation from slavery

into the new creation of Promised Land. The Passover becomes framed as a Sabbath celebration. All everything. The day of atonement happens in the seventh month. Tabernacles happens in the seventh month, four, seven days. What is the seventh month in the Jewish calendar? There's multiple calendars at work in the Old Testament. Just like there are actually still today, I think we have a financial year.

It's different from the calendar year. It's different from daylight savings. We have all these, so same in the Old Testament. So the ritual calendar begins with Passover, that's the first month. And then the seventh month is where you get David Tonman. So what's the seventh month in our calendar? Oh, well, the beginning of the Jewish New Year

and Passover always happens in the spring of the Western calendar. It coincides with Easter. Yeah. And then it's always in the fall somewhere. Somewhere in the fall is the seventh of October. Yeah, October, November. Because that one, there's like Sukkot and there's all that stuff. Correct. Yeah. David Tom and Tabernacles are always in somewhere in the October region. That's cool. It is cool. It's a whole month to really focus on Southwest. Yeah, totally. Yeah, in Hebrew they're called the... The days of fear. It's like the Yameh Hanora. The days of Ah. It's the month of the year where

you're most aware of the meaning of history. That's cool. That's awesome. Yeah, it is awesome. So all of the holidays are working out this basic claim that our world is sacred but compromised. We haven't yet achieved the Sabbath. The ultimate Jubilee. The Jubilee every 49, 50 years is about a Sabbath of Sabbath, seven times seven. It's all connected. So it's making a claim about our world,

it's looking backward and it's anticipating the ultimate Sabbath. It's awesome. It's really cool. Yeah. And so every time you see, you come across the ritual calendar laws, you upload that theological ideal, that's that symbol.

And then I'm looking for, ooh, how does this holiday develop and work out that beautiful life? How did they, in this specific time and culture, work out this ideal? Correct. Yeah. So letting, yeah, you resting and think of Deuteronomy and your slaves' rest, your animals' rest, your animals at rest. Yeah.

It's amazing. What a beautiful symbol. We're like in the realm of Isaiah 11, you know, where humanity at peace with the animals, the lion and the lamb and the wolf and the calf and so on. Okay, so we don't... let's not go through all of them, but there's a gem of symbolic ideal behind all these booklets. Yeah, I'll just try and do it quickly. Okay, so sacrifices, the first sacrifice is offered by Noah.

That's right. And then the second by Abraham. Oh, so Ken and Abel's those weren't sacrifices? Oh, I'm sorry. That's right. We talked and then the second by Abraham. Oh, so can enable those weren't sacrifices? Oh, I'm sorry. That's right. We talked about this before, buddy. The first sacrifices, the first offerings are being offered by can enable.

Yeah, right, outside the gate of these are offering offerings. But the first sacrifice that seems to deal with or cover over humanity's evil is now as after the flood. The fundamental, like the default core sacrifice is called the Ola. It's in Leviticus 1, it's what Noah offers, Abraham offers, it's called the Ola, and the Ola is the word ascent to go up.

And the basic concept underlying all of the sacrifices is after humanity's banished off the Eden mountain, the hope is to one day ascend back up to the mountain, Psalm 15 and 24, who can ascend the hill of the Lord? Going up to Zion, Isaiah 2, all the nations go up to exalted Zion, the New Jerusalem, so it's the whole hope, and sacrifices, and you have to be blameless and whole to ascend the mountain of the Lord. Just like Noah was be blameless and whole to ascend the mountain of the Lord.

Just like Noah was a blameless and whole meaning morally complete. So righteous and complete. Only the righteous and complete can go back into the new Eden Jerusalem. And so in the meantime, what we do is we offer whole and complete animals, What we do is we offer whole and complete animals, and the sacrifice translates them to ascend into Eden on our behalf. It's a substitute, because I'm morally compromised. I can't ascend the holy mountain unless God does something to change me. But in the meantime, I can offer up one who will go on my behalf, and this is the Ola offering, and all of the other sacrifices are different variations of the Ola concept. So the ideal is to also be prepared. Yeah, the ideal

is for me to ascend the Holy Mountain to go back to Eden, which is the New Jerusalem and New Creation. So while the calendar is about being in new creation in terms of our rule and rest, in time, in terms of time, and well, and it's using time as the construct for us to practice it. Yeah, that's right. This is using sacrifice as a construct to practice, but to meditate on and realize that how do we get there? Yeah, I offer sacrifice when I don't love God and my neighbor when I wrong somebody. So why are we not in the New Jerusalem?

Because of me and people like me and the stupid stuff that I do. But God has promised that there is a way back to the New Jerusalem that we're all gonna go on one day. And I offer this sacrifice as an anticipation, but as a substitute of one who goes up on my behalf. As the smoke rises up, it's what's called the going up offering.

The going up offering. Yeah. Is that what Ula means? Ula means ascent or going up. Ula. Dang. And there's a major motif in the Hebrew Bible. The return to the New Jerusalem, the going up. And there's a major motif in the Hebrew Bible, the return to the New Jerusalem, the going up. Which I always would just kind of go, well, that's for them, because I don't live in Jerusalem and

you know, are around there. But it's all connected to this. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's totally connected because the idea is God banished us from the Eden mountain so that we don't introduce death and evil into his perfect creation, which is what Eden and the New Jerusalem represents. So we're down here killing and hurting each other. And so, as a substitute, this animal dies, just like we die and kill each other. This animal dies, but because it's a righteous and blameless animal It can ascend. It can go beyond its death to translate up. It's like resurrecting and it'll or not, but it's like yeah, it's transforming and moving up. Yeah, it's a symbol of it, but it is a symbol of resurrection in that This lamb has to transform its mode of existence

To ascend to the New Jerusalem. Yeah. Just like we have to go through death and some transformation of our being to enter into the new creation. Did the sacrificial system is about resurrection and atonement for sins. Wow. It's powerful stuff, did. Yeah, if anybody's interested in this, I've learned a lot recently from a scholar named Michael Morales, who wrote probably I think one of the most important contemporary treatments of Leviticus, but in touch with the whole history of Jewish tradition, it's

called Who Shall Assend the Mountain of the Lord? Anyway, so sacrifices, sorry I said this would go quick. I know, but that's fine. This is also, okay, look, sorry, holiness. Beautiful. This is about impure versus pure. Yeah. Pure is about life and wholeness and health and goodness of the new creation.

Yeah. Impurity is things associated with death and decay and mortality. Yeah. So essentially, I can't waltz into the sacred court of the tabernacle if I have a skin disease, a sign of death. If I just recently had sex, man or a woman, the bodily fluids, which are in their understanding like you're leaking out life fluids, you can't waltz in with the signs of your mortality

on you. You have to wait seven days, take a bath, that kind of thing. And it's a symbol system of ritual behaviors that remind you that God is the source of life and goodness and beauty. It's separate from the realm of life and death and mortality. And to be in God's presence means that I need to symbolically be, it's about resurrection again, and the hope of being in the new Jerusalem in the presence of immortality in life. That's all the holiness laws. Boyle down to that.

The civil laws are about loving your neighbor because they're an image of God. Treat them the way you want to be treated. That was pretty basic. Yeah, love each other. Yep. Criminal law. These are the ones that I think we have a hard time with. Sexual misbehavior was a form of criminal activity. Adultery is considered criminal in this kind of community. You're attacking, again, back to common law, smaller, homogenous societies. You're actually destabilizing our whole community when you break the marriage bond and sleep. It affects us all.

It affects us all. No such thing as like private life. Sexual behavior in this kind of culture. So that's hard for us to get to deal with. At least I think we need to honor this culture. We may not agree with how they apply it or whatever, but if you get to the ideal, I think there's something really powerful there.

I think most people would agree that adultery affects more than just the two people committing it. That's right. Just sexual corruption or misbehavior of any kind. Yeah. And of course, it all depends on who defines what that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.. And so again, we're

back to Genesis 1, right? With the image of God, male and female, covenant of marriage. That's not a law, but it's an ideal. And so that's the ideal in the Jewish Christian ethical tradition about sexuality and all the laws are different expressions of that. And so and all the laws are different expressions of that. And so, it's the same concept of just like death and corruption and lying and theft have no part in the new creation. So, for this covenant community, they're trying to anticipate that future now by having zero tolerance for those kinds of behaviors.

It's an ideal. You can't just baptize a society instantly. It's very different mentality, I think, from we don't create civil laws because we're like, as an ideal. Well, yeah, it's almost, they are an ideal.

They are an ideal, but we don't like, they're, I imagine them that way. We don't sit around, I think, I'm making a big generalization. But I think for the most part, we're just going, man, how do we just get through the year?

How do we get through? How do we make it so we just don't destroy ourselves? There's enough peace that wealth can be created and we can, like, you know, it's like, what's the least? Yeah, and so, yeah, that's what the civil and criminal laws in the Bible are doing. However, we don't typically think of like, more mundane, but like the law, you know, the speed limit.

Yeah. I don't look at the speed limit and be like, ah, the highest ideals of the people that we drive safely and not kill each other. But that is what's actually underneath that law. Yeah, and I guess, I guess, of the people that we drive safely and not kill each other. But that is what's actually underneath that law. Yeah, and I guess, I guess probably the people creating laws and legislation stuff, they probably do think about an ideal

of humans loving each other. Absolutely. Yeah, I live pretty close to a high pedestrian foot traffic street in Portland's popular street, lots of food and boutiques and stores. And a pedestrian was killed because of somebody irresponsibly speeding in a high pedestrian zone. So there's this whole new crosswalk put in there.

The speed limit has been lowered in that section to 20 miles an hour. There's like a really beautiful kind of like memorial there for the person that was killed. And though you walk through that and you go the speed limit is an embodiment of an ideal. We love each other. I don't need to get where I need to go fast enough to put someone in danger.

So that's an example of the speed limit is an ideal, but that's not normally what comes into our mind. And it was a tragedy that made that all necessary. Man, there's something about encasing yourself in the metal that can drive around on roads, that just makes you forget that you're a human, that needs to love other humans. So dangerous.

It's so dangerous for one, but I think it just puts me in a different mentality of life. There's me in the road. That's true. I am a grave threat to everyone around me when I drive an automobile. Oh, man.

I don't normally think about that. Totally. It's the most dangerous thing we ever do for ourselves and for others. Yes. And there are signs all around us reminding us of that fact. Yeah. Write to her and only.

And stop. But I'll take a moment to check a text. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So, okay, that's the second point. I think we can pass on from it, but it's a really productive principle. Whenever I'm reading, I should have a small little row of buckets of what laws fit into what bucket, and then just a statement of the ideal, the theological, symbolic ideal

that these laws point to. And then all of a sudden, diverse laws can start to, there's some order. Can you give me an example of one or two laws though? It's a hard for you to fit into this schema. Of course I can. Okay, so let's just, we're going to Deuteronomy 24. It's one of these chapters that feels like a grab bag. Chapter 24 and 25.

Let's go down to verse 21, actually at the very end of chapter 24. When you gather grapes from your vineyard, don't go over it another time. That belongs to the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow. Remember, you were a slave in Egypt. That's why I'm commanding you to do this. So this is what we call a civil law. Yeah. So if it's in the bucket. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Okay. Yeah, I'm just going to go through a few to show how kept. Okay. The first sentences of chapter 25. Oh, okay. Great. If there's a dispute between two men and they go to court and the judges decide

their case, they will justify or declare righteous and condemn the wicked. Now, it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be beaten. Oh. Is and is that clear in another place when someone should be beaten? No, no, no, no, no, nowhere is there a law about what deserves a beating versus imprisonment versus a fine? So that's just the customary thing. Yep. Customers are like, this guy should be beaten. Yeah. The judge will make him lie down and he'll be beaten in his presence but with the number of stripes according to his guilt, but no more than 40 times.

It's like a limit on beatings. So that he doesn't beat him with many more stripes than these and so that your brother isn't humiliated or degraded. So striking someone physically, this is culturally acceptable in ancient Israel, but they're putting a limit on it. And actually, if you look at this limit in comparison to other ancient law codes, this is very generous. The generous limit.

Yeah. And it's interesting, the point is no more than 40 so that he's not humiliated. And you're like, I'm pretty sure 38's really humiliating. I think at 10 and I'm feeling it a little bit. Yeah, that's right. Okay. All right. Next one.

Don't muzzle your ox while he's threshing grain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is obviously, this is a famous one because it's the Apostle Paul quote. Yeah. The Apostle book, what book would you put that in? I think in terms of civil law as it relates to your animals. So civil law is usually how I co-exist with my neighbors.

Yeah. And in a farming community, animals are very much my neighbors. Yeah. Love your neighbors. Yeah, so here it's. Love your own. Yeah. So you asked me what ones are hard to put in.

I guess I'm more showing you. That one was hard. A diversity. But don't muzzle the ox. So I guess the idea is love your ox as you would love yourself. Right. And that's how the apostle Paul took it. But does it, I guess it fits into

civil law. Yeah. How you treat your neighbor. How you treat your neighbor. Your neighbors are are also animals. Let's go down versus, ah, 25 versus 11. This one's hard for me. If two men, a man in his neighbor are fighting and a wife of one of them comes near to save her husband from the hand of the one striking him and she puts out her hand and grabs his genitals cut off her hand. That's a very specific situation. Yes. Yeah. Oh, this one's always bothered me. Yeah. Does this mean that as a principal would reverse hold if there's two women fighting? In a man-grant-sper-genitals two women fighting? In a man, grand, super genitals.

Yeah. I think the idea, again, ancient culture, different view of conception and of the family, that's what you're endangering is the future of this family. Right. If you're trying to damage their reproductive organs, you are damaging the entire future of their family. Of that tribe. It's like taking someone's savings. Yeah, it's like taking someone's life savings. Children. We're burning down the house.

And the extended household is your inheritance, it's your social safety web. So if you're aiming. It really makes family jewels make a lot of sense. That's right. Yeah, totally. However, I still even honoring that. Yeah, it's pretty extreme. It's extreme. It's very extreme. And so here's what you can say. You can say, well, is this a statement of an ideal? Was this ever actually practiced? Well, there's no narratives of anybody's hand being cut off like this in ancient

Israel. However, there are cultures even still today that do this. So I have to assume that ancient Israel was a part of a larger cultural custom. Cutting off people's hands. That's just hard for me to square with the teachings of Jesus. However, if I view the Bible as a law code, However, if I view the Bible as a law code, right, drop from heaven, stating the divine will, then I have problems with that. If I view this as customary common law and that God is revealing himself to Israel,

calling them to a higher standard of justice, but as he finds them as an ancient Near Eastern culture, this, I at least expect this kind of thing. Namely that God is going to meet Israel as he finds them as an ancient Near Eastern culture and work a revolution from within. And moral revolutions are slow and they happen on a worldview level, not just by rewriting the laws, you know.

That is similar today. You can't just drop a whole new alien ethic on a people. By a set of laws, you have to tell new stories, enact new possibilities, and the way people think about it. So there you go. But still, this one bothers me. I guess this is a civil law. But it feels like a criminal law.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. this my father's I guess this is a civil law right feels like a criminal law right yeah yeah and no one would appeal to this law and making their decision of what to do if you were a judge and something this case came to you yeah this doesn't become case law in the sense that we have case law correct like oh well you, Moses and Deuteronomy, yes, as this came up, and so we did this. So that's the case law. It wouldn't work that way. You would just have judges who are wise and moral,

and they would be seeking out after the higher ideal. Yeah, and there may be some cases where they think that this custom should be, what happens, should be the sentence. But there would be other times where they wouldn't. And the classic example, we looked at this, there are trial court scenes talked about in the Old Testament, and the majority of them

have people making decisions in contradiction to the laws of the Torah. Yeah. And not saying whether it's good or bad is just saying that is a reality. The laws of the Torah were not ever treated like a statutory case law. They're wisdom, burn ejection, they're wisdom laws. Verse 13, do not have two different weights in your bag when having someone like. Yeah, right.

Don't have two different measures in your house when large and when small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that two different measures in your house when large ones small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's right. We can all get behind that one. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so this is essentially about counterfeit currency.

Yeah. Those would be our equivalent. Oh, right. Yeah, don't counterfeit. Yeah, yeah. Don't cheat people. Yeah, this is how these laws work. They'll be what looks like a grab bag of different

assortments. But if you put them in the buckets, think about the higher ideals to which each bucket points, you can start to see what I think is a very noble, beautiful set of moral ideals. Even though particular applications might really throw me for a loop. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project Podcast. The video that we made on the law is out. It's a short video. You can find it on our website, thebibelproject.com. You could also watch it on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the Bible Project. Today's episode was produced by Dan Gummel. The theme music is by the band Tense. The Bible Project is a crowd-funded nonprofits. Hi, this is Larissa from Germany. I am excited to be part of making the Bible project videos available in German.

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