LEVITICUS BIBLE STUDY
Here are some questions Donna Brooks and I used in a Bible study for Lesbian Christians on Leviticus. My answers are given in bold type. These answers may not be the same as yours and yours may be better..write me your answers.
1.a. What prominent OT characters are the offspring of an incestuous relationship forbidden in Lev. 18:12?
Moses the Lawgiver and Aaron the first High Priest. (Exodus 6:20)
What OT character had relationships in contradiction to Lev. 18:18?
Jacob married Leah and Rachel. Then there is Lot, the righteous man of Sodom who escaped the burning of his town to have sex with his daughters, although they got him drunk first and they wanted to preserve the purity of the family line.
b. Did God use, bless, have dynamic relationship with these people?
It seems so.
c.If so, how can this be? Were they sinners?
One could say that the law wasn’t given yet, but it still seems odd that the lawgiver/receiver and the High Priest would be given a law that their lives contradicted! More liberal scholarship says the Leviticus laws were compiled by the Priestly class either in David's time or during the Babylonian Exile and were not given in such detail to Moses, despite what the Bible literally says. And then there is Boaz who married a Moabite woman, Ruth, which was forbidden in the law. Also the prophets are always being inclusive of foreigners and strangers and other oddballs such as eunuchs, while the law says to exclude them from the worship assembly. I think the law was given “in part,” while Jesus fulfills, ie, completes and interprets more deeply, the law, with love.
Does God sometimes make exceptions to God’s own law?
This is one way of looking at it. I mean Jesus was called on “breaking the law” several times: healing on the Sabbath, telling a man to “pick up his mat and walk” on the Sabbath, while a man in the OT was stoned for gathering firewood on the Sabbath. The legalists of the day, the Pharisees, were always trying to trip him up on the letter of the law. It seems that the people of God are supposed to apply the "higher" law to the interpretation of the "lesser" law.
b. Question: from the beginnings and endings of Chapters 18 and 20, 20:22-26 and 18: 3 and 18: 24-30, why were these laws given?
To separate the people of Israel from the evil, idolatrous practices of those cultures around them. They were the “called out” people, to be holy.
c. Why are the laws in Chapter 18 repeated in Chapter 20? What is different?
Punishments are given in Chapter 20, often stoning or being “cut off” from the community. Some have said that one list is for the Levitical Priests and one for the people but you can’t tell this from what it says in Leviticus.
d. Is there anything in Leviticus about a woman lying with a female?
NO.
(Some say that the prohibition against men lying with males should carry over to women lying with females, but you can reverse this logic and say that if the issue were homosexuality in these laws, then God would have included laws for women also. Since God doesn’t, include the women, then the problem is NOT homosexuality.) Is there anything in the Hebrew Bible (OT) against lesbianism?
NO.
Why or why not?
I think because lesbianism was largely invisible and/or ignored. Also I believe that the laws against men lying with males was because that is what was done in pagan cult sex. The women were also “cult prostitutes” but they had sex with men who came to them, not with women. There is no “seed” involved with woman to woman sex, so it is unimportant to the religious morality of the day. It does not imitate pagan practices.
e. Why else, besides a blanket condemnation of homosexuality, could these laws about men lying with males, have been written?
Men wasting sperm; the “baby” was considered to be all in the sperm, they didn’t know about the egg. There is a law about not pouring seed over the idol Molech--seed referred not just to children and babies who were thrown into the fire surrounding the Idol, but also to sperm. The idea of giving seed to Molech was to sacrifice one’s fertility to the god to beseech him to return fertility in the form of children, crops, cattle, and other bounty.
Cult sex served the same purpose in fertility religions. Male cult priests would become the god or goddess (sometimes castrating themselves) and receive the sacrifice of sperm from the “worshipper.”
f. What does “abomination” mean? (Hebrew, “to’evah”) Try to look this up in a concordance (index) or a lexicon (Hebrew Bible dictionary).
The “to” part means not, the “evah” means what is the standard or is right in the Israelite religion. In common usage, really bad sin against God, usually with an obvious connection to idolatry. Some say that the connection to idolatry is always there.
2. a. What do Jesus and Paul say about legalism and the Law? For example, look at the sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5) and Paul in Romans 7 & 8. In Romans 7:6 and in 7:14, Paul says the new law is spiritual. How does this differ from the old written code?
Both taught Spirit of the law versus letter of the law. This is not just NT. In Ezekiel, God says, “I will write the laws in their hearts.” I think this means so that one understands the true meaning of the law, not just the outward meaning. Jesus and Paul both preached against legalism, that is, trying to be righteous by following the law.
b. What does Jesus mean that He has come to fulfill the law, but that not one stroke of a letter would be removed from the law until all is accomplished? (Matt 5:17-20)
I think we “understand in part now” and “see through a glass darkly now” and that God is in the process of revealing the deeper meaning of what God has said in the past. I think some of the laws of the Bible were written for a particular time, for a particular situation or problem and not meant to be applied for all times, for all situations. In Matt. 19, Jesus says that Moses gave the law about divorce because “Your hearts were hard” and it was not what God intended from the beginning. In other words, the law was specific and for a particular time. As Christians I believe as we strive to become Christlike and be one with Christ, the need for the law drops away. But Paul says we can’t throw it out because we need it as a reminder that we are not perfect yet.
c. Are Christians supposed to follow the laws of Leviticus? Other OT laws?
I believe some laws are more relevant than others. All must be interpreted from the “lens” of loving God, self, and others. Some that seem to have an irrelevant meaning “come to life” if understood in a deeper way; I think that’s what Jesus meant by saying the law not to murder really meant not even to hate. Rabbis always interpret law; Jesus was no exception. I believe that responsible Christians today are also supposed to interpret Biblical laws. Rabbis today know this; ministers should also
d. How do we know what to follow and what to disregard?
I think the first thing a Christian is supposed to do is to “get Jesus on the inside of us.” Prayer. Talking to others in one’s Christian “family.” More prayer. Trying to “see with the eyes of the heart.” Looking at one’s motive. Loving first, interpreting laws second. Applying laws to oneself first. Loving oneself before that.