Ephraim Radner on Leviticus

Ephraim Radner, Leviticus, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008).

Ephraim Radner contributes the volume on Leviticus to a series which is self-consciously devoted to offering a theological reading of the Bible as Christian Scripture.

Brazos have made the introduction to the commentary available online here.

Radner begins with a lovely quote on Leviticus from Origen:

‘If you read people passages from the divine books that are good and clear, they will hear them with great joy… But provide someone with a reading from Leviticus, and at once the listener will gag and push it away as if were some bizarre food. He came, after all, to learn how to honor God, to take in the teachings that concern justice and piety. But instead he is now hearing about the ritual of burnt sacrifices!’ (17)

For Origen, of course, we must understand ‘that the dull details are filled with promise’ (17).

Leviticus is among the least-read biblical books by Christians today, and the least-cited in the New Testament (albeit that 19:18 – ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ – is significant in Jesus’ teaching).

Moreover, Leviticus has become a ‘dark bogeyman’ (18), in particular with its commands against certain forms of sexual behaviour, the interpretation of which is further complicated by other commands Christians have left behind.

Radner avers that, slowly but surely, interpretation of Leviticus has ‘narrowed through ever elaborated historical interest in the sociological details of ritual, to the point that the text’s even potential Christian character has disappeared almost wholly’ (18).

Even Origen’s exegesis of the book was a response to the widespread sense in his own time that Leviticus was difficult, irrelevant, or even hostile to Christian concerns. Origen’s ‘spiritual’ reading of the book sought to open its details ‘to the broad range of divine action and purpose in the world of creation and of history as a whole’. Important in this respect is the letter to the Hebrews, showing that ‘the spiritual reference of Leviticus would be primarily bound to the body and acts of Jesus as the Son of God’ (19).

Radner also highlights Blaise Pascal’s reading of Leviticus which follows Origen’s lead (20-22, 25).

‘Although the forms for reading Leviticus are not given in advance, we… know that any proper Christian reading of the text will somehow detail the redemptive work of the humiliated Christ upon the broken hearts of human beings and of the whole created order. “Figural” reading is the name we give to the outworking of this “somehow”’ (22).

Tertullian and Augustine tended to approach the book in terms of its place within the history of God’s teaching of Israel, but Origen’s spiritual exegesis dominated the interpretation of specific texts, and medieval exegesis largely followed suit – though increasingly Leviticus became little more than a handbook of Christian tropes, disconnected from salvation history (23-25).

Radner describes his own approach to Leviticus as that of ‘a Christian reading, bound to the life of the church and its reality as the body of Christ, but deeply informed by the Jewish discipline of treating the Scriptures as a still-inhabited universe’ (27).