Leviticus Wrap-Up

On the Bible as Literature

Leviticus was a very difficult section of the bible to cover. I was considering this as I drove up to Ithaca the other day, listening to the Interfaith Voices podcast. Lo and behold, the podcast featured an analysis of Judaism. While this blog is not about analyzing religion, it did give some excellent food for thought.

Host Maureen Fiedler spoke of the Torah:

"There are lots of laws. Anybody who's ever looked at the book of Leviticus can go blurry-eyed at the number of minute laws and regulations, many of which would have no application in the world today or some of which would appear incredibly harsh."

I hear ya. And if you've been following this blog with blurry eyes, you hear her as well. The context of the quotation fits into a discussion of Judaism as a religion of story and law. Its scripture, too, is all story and law. Leviticus just happens to be a book that concerns law. In future books I might treat this differently - I don't seem to have maintained many readers through this exercise. I don't blame anyone for dropping off. This was a difficult section for me to read and relate, and surely difficult to relate to.

In any case, Fiedler's gues, Stephen Prothero, brought up some great points in the discussion of Judaism that when tweaked can help to elucidate a reading of religious scripture as literature. Stephen Prothero is the author of God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter. He is also a regular contributor to the new CNN Belief Blog.

Prothero sought what problem Judaism as a religion is trying to solve, and what is the solution:

"My take on it is that Judaism is the way of exile and return. The problem is exile. The problem is that we are apart from God, apart form our community, and we have to return. We have to get back to God, get back to our community. This has antecedents in the exile of the Jews from the Promised Land, the exile of the Jews from the Temple."

This helps to explain the biblical story, and those dialectical tensions I have been writing about. The divine contract of Leviticus 26 really helps to sum up the reasons for exile. It is like the plot of the entire bible is here revealed. If humans follow God, they prosper. If they do not, they will find themselves in exile. The biblical authors set up a story of people disobeying God and then returning to worship him, just as people are exiled from a land and then return. The exile coincides with a loss of faith as the return coincides with a renewal of faith. The exile and return are the religious messages, which are derived from the messages of obedience and disobedience established in the texts.

Obedience, of course, hinges on law. Therefore there is a lot of legal material in the bible. Without these laws, the Israelites would have nothing to obey or disobey. Without these laws, there would not be cause and logic in the story. The bible is a very well-crafted piece of literature, even without a religious context.