The Levitical System as an Organic Body: A Necessary Contribution to Biblical Theology
The Levitical System as an Organic Body: A Necessary Contribution to Biblical Theology Introduction One of the greatest needs in contemporary biblical theology is to read Leviticus not as a depository of isolated rituals, nor as a simple collection of anticipatory types of Christ’s work,—but as a living system. The book of Leviticus does not deliver scattered pieces to us. It delivers an architecture. It does not describe disjointed ceremonies. It describes a cultic world ordained by God to sustain the encounter between the holy God and His covenant people. This observation is decisive. When the Levitical system is read solely in an analytical manner, each offering can be studied with technical precision and yet lose its function within the whole. When it is read exclusively from subsequent dogmatic categories, the system can be reduced to a mere illustration of concepts already formed in advance. And when it is read only from comparative anthropology or the history of religion...