I recently had an email exchange with a friend over the Book of Leviticus. He suggested I should post some extracts from my email here. Thanks for your comments, Ken.
You wondered why I consider Leviticus one my favorite books of the Bible. Couple of reasons. I am still a historian at heart and I find Leviticus extremely rich in historical data on the Jewish society of the period, their fears, frustrations, attitudes to physical and mental purity, understanding of expiation, attitude towards different classes within the society, etc. Much of what we know about the Greek society has also been extracted from its laws preserved on stone monuments. It can be quite tedious to read legal documents, ancient or modern for that matter, but I have come to appreciate them for the abundance of details they provide on the inner workings of a system. I don't come from a fundamentalist background, so I have personally never experienced cultural conditioning that would attempt to implement OT legal strictures today. I feel free to read Leviticus as it is. And when actually placed in its proper context of mid-1st millennium BCE Mediterranean, it is quite progressive in comparison with the legislation found elsewhere in the region.
[Leviticus] is a collection of ancient documents that cannot (and, really, does not need to) compete with modern science or withstand its scrutiny. Fundamentalist religion does need to do these things, but that's a self-imposed race against both time and common sense. I see the Bible standing as a silent witness to their folly. The Bible actually does make sense when read contextually, and the more seemingly tedious or backward a text is, the more sensible and meaningful it becomes when put in its historical and social context. In that sense, Leviticus is firmly grounded in a particular time period and gives a vivid portrayal of the people, whereas some other books or narratives within them do not. The creation narratives, a lot of the Psalms, Job and some other are timeless and universal. Leviticus, being a legal code, is very specific and grounded in time. While it may not have the poetic beauty of some of the other texts, it is still invaluable.
