Strangeness, archaicness of torah in Leviticus
I made this comment to Ivy Challis' post of 9/13 in her blog for the course here
Even though you didn't find the word "torah" in these passages, or maybe precisely because you didn't, I think you're raising the right questions. It was kind of a trick question, since the word "torah" appears only in the Hebrew of those selections from Leviticus, not in the English translation. It's translated in a variety of ways - "law," "ritual," "instruction", as I mention in the formal version of the assignment that I sent out later.
You're intuitively picking up on an important issue - how can these rules for performing bloody sacrifices be something meaningful and spiritually uplifting, not to mention authoritative, in the way we ordinarily understand "scriptures" to be - especially for us modern people? I mean in a sense, isn't it a bit weird that what are basically recipes for how to prepare meat are treated with awe and respect as scripture?! They're read as part of the weekly Shabbat ritual in synagogue, may be "performed" to mark a girl or boy's becoming an adult in the life cycle event of a bat/bar mitzvah rite of passage, are chanted according to special melodies, are painstakingly inscribed in Hebrew calligraphy by special scribes on scrolls made of specially prepared parchment, etc., etc. What's so special and relevant about these - at first sight - rather archaic sacrificial practices?
Are they laws that we're supposed to do, or instructions that have some kind of symbolic importance beyond what they literally say?
Even though you didn't find the word "torah" in these passages, or maybe precisely because you didn't, I think you're raising the right questions. It was kind of a trick question, since the word "torah" appears only in the Hebrew of those selections from Leviticus, not in the English translation. It's translated in a variety of ways - "law," "ritual," "instruction", as I mention in the formal version of the assignment that I sent out later.
You're intuitively picking up on an important issue - how can these rules for performing bloody sacrifices be something meaningful and spiritually uplifting, not to mention authoritative, in the way we ordinarily understand "scriptures" to be - especially for us modern people? I mean in a sense, isn't it a bit weird that what are basically recipes for how to prepare meat are treated with awe and respect as scripture?! They're read as part of the weekly Shabbat ritual in synagogue, may be "performed" to mark a girl or boy's becoming an adult in the life cycle event of a bat/bar mitzvah rite of passage, are chanted according to special melodies, are painstakingly inscribed in Hebrew calligraphy by special scribes on scrolls made of specially prepared parchment, etc., etc. What's so special and relevant about these - at first sight - rather archaic sacrificial practices?
Are they laws that we're supposed to do, or instructions that have some kind of symbolic importance beyond what they literally say?
posted by Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus at 2:43 PM
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