Leviticus

This was the best scene from Gummo

I'll give you the quick rundown on Leviticus, which I learned from a Christian Jew, learned in the Hebrew, who makes a living repairing copies of the Torah.
The Torah has five books, and in the middle of the middle book we find a passage sometimes called the heart of the Torah, "and ye shall be holy, for I am holy" (Leviticus 11:44). Leviticus is the book, out of all the others in the Hebrew scriptures, which instructs God's people on how to be holy. It does so by giving a lengthy set of commandments and prescriptions, which if followed are sufficient to make God's people holy.
The commandments fall into three major categories: proper diet, proper sex, and proper worship. And so there are three organs of holiness in the human body: the belly, the loins, and the knees. The belly- what one eats and drinks; the loins, one's sexual conduct; the knees, what one bows down to worship. And so in Leviticus we find dietary restrictions, no pork, no shellfish. We find rules for sexual conduct, no homosexuality, no bestiality, no close relatives. And we find many ordinances and ceremonies detailing proper worship of YHWH.
Note the impact of all of this on the New Testament. The Pharisees were legalists, and believed that by strictly observing the Law they could be holy. In one instance, the scribes and Pharisees criticized Jesus' disciples for not observing lengthy ceremonial washings prior to eating- remember, the belly is one of the organs of holiness. But then Jesus comes out with his masterful teaching, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man" (Matthew 15:10). Jesus takes the legalistic reading of the Torah espoused by the scribes and Pharisees and breathes life into it, the new life of spirit and not the oldness of letter. He reminds them that the great two commandments are not rules to be checked off a list, but to love God (here he quotes the Shema, Deuternomy 6:5) and to love one's neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18).
Much of the conflict in the New Testament, then, amounts to exegetical disputes around the Torah. If you want to understand it, and you should, you need to read the Pentateuch through and through.

>Animal sacrifice indistinguishable from that of Mediterranean polytheists
so this...is the power...of monotheism...#woah

I have a book on Canaanite sacrificial inscriptions, they describe literally the same stuff as in the Bible. They even had religious booths for an Autumn festival, just like the jewish Sukkoth.

wow really makes you think user

>it's Malkovich's brother, Dewski

kek these

Skip it, Jeremiah 7:21-22
21 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh.

22 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:

God pretty much forgot that part too.

is that Dewey or the Gummo kid

>Leviticus is only about sacrifice