Leviticus as Literature

Mary Douglas’s title Leviticus as Literature may appear oxymoronic or perhaps just moronic. For most readers Leviticus is more of an instruction manual than a piece of artistry. The layers of cultic instruction, moral laws, and interspersed stories of spewed fire obfuscate not only creativity but also theological meaning in the text. Even Calvin found it hard to comment on the book. This is not the sentiment of Douglas, though, who sees Leviticus as outlining a “modern religion” with emphases extending so far as animal justice. Yet, it is not Douglas’s ethical sensitivity which gives merit to the book--in fact, this may be her weakness. Rather, it is Douglas’s training as an anthropologist along with her literary sensitivity that stimulate fresh insight into a dusty text.

Anthropologically, Douglas has a different lens than standard commentators including even the doyen of Levitical studies, Jacob Milgrom. For example, rather that using the paucity of imperatives in Leviticus to draw inferences about authorship or dating, Douglas reads Leviticus comparatively against cultures where “direct commands are not necessary” because “authority is clear and everyone knows what is to be done” (35). Likewise, she excuses gaps in the text, reminding contemporary readers that a common cultural identity “makes explicit verbalization unnecessary” (38). Two points of particular interest are her anthropological discussions of the positive uses and benefits of divination (not in the ethical but pragmatic sense!) as well as her discussion of the problems that occur by de-mythologizing the presence of demons in the world. Concerning the latter topic, by eliminating the function of demons in the popular imagination for causing disorder, decay, and doom the Hebrew writers raise new questions relating to the goodness of creation and origin of evil. Douglas makes a consistent effort to read the impurity laws of Leviticus in harmony with the clear Genesis teaching that all of creation is good in essence and purpose. Another important insight she provides is the concrete nature of the command to love one’s neighbor. Douglas notes that in the text love does not denote an emotion, but rather a “legal idea of free and un-coerced willingness” (43).

The most provocative sections in the book, for me at least, are those dealing with the analogical structure of Leviticus. In chapter two Douglas goes to great pains to convince the reader that there are two equally valid kinds of reasoning, analogical and rational-instrumental thinking. Both occur within human societies and both are capable of focusing analytical questions. On the one hand, analogical reasoning projects patterns on the world. It is horizontal, concentric, hierarchical and usually accompanies a mytho-poetic worldview. The intellectual history of Eastern cultures exhibits this kind of reasoning. For example, Douglas notes, “Chinese mathematical thought traditionally uses analogy to construct parallel instances, and then to scrutinize them systematically, character by character, to check exactly where the correspondence lies” (31). [This sounds strikingly similar to Christian figural reading!] On the other, rational-instrumental thinking isolates, breaks down, and defines an object. As one might expect, Douglas argues that the logic of Leviticus depends on correlation and analogy, not logical or natural causation. She says, “Only the whole system of analogies in which it nests will show how it is to be read” (20). Elsewhere she extends the textual principle to Levitical cosmography: “Nothing can be justified in this universe except in terms of the proper position in the spatial/temporal order whose rightness is the only justification for anything” (39).

The application of this analogical reasoning is where Douglas’s exegesis becomes exciting. She sees a layered, tri-part pattern repeated from the initial covenant proceedings at Sinai to the structure of the tabernacle and further into the bodies of the sacrificial animals. This final correspondence is Douglas’s unique contribution to commentary on Leviticus, and she lends anthropological support to the hypothesis by drawing several parallels with totem-based cultures. She iterates, “In the space of the animal’s body [the writer] finds analogies with the tabernacle and the history of God’s revelation to Israel” (45). There are two analogical referents to the trizone anatomy: one is the way the animal parts would appear as the worshiper ‘enters’ the body with a knife; the other is the appearance of the pieces as they are arranged on the altar. The first instance mirrors entering the tabernacle from the courtyard, the second the ascent up Sinai during the initial covenant proceedings. For this reason, Douglas recommends seeing ‘inner’ and ‘upper’ as complementary.

All this may be difficult to conceptualize, so allow me to summarize the imagery. In the case of ‘entering’ the animal, the head and meat sections, which physically give access to the body, reflect the courtyard of the tabernacle and the base of Mt. Sinai where all God’s people could assemble. Thus all worshipers can consume these sections. Moving to the midriff area, one finds the dense fat that surrounds the kidneys and liver loab. These are altar portions. They are not for human consumption. Douglas imagines the layers of fat as analogous to the smoke of incense in the holy place and the cloud covering Sinai. Moreover, these ‘zones’ functioned as boundary markers separating common grounds from areas where only the elders--in the case of Sinai--and priests--in the case of the tabernacle--had access. Could the two kidneys represent the table and candelabra? Visually this works. Finally, the entrails, intestines and genitals, in which the fecundity, emotions, and feelings were supposed to reside, are analogous to the holy of holies. Here we see God as the source of vitality, life, and affection. Thus ‘entering’ the animal is a mimetic journey up Sinai or into the Tabernacle. While this may sound like Cabbalist mysticism to 21st century evangelicals, Douglas gives anthropological data of other cultures that project cosmic structures onto human and animal bodies. Personally, I like the thought of the physical construction of animal parts on the sacrificial altar as visibly reproducing the covenant proceedings of Sinai. Lest one be too skeptical of the thesis, Moses did after all see a heavenly pattern!

The parallels continue, though my time for writing fades. Douglas claims, “The structure of the text [Leviticus as a whole] is an analogy of the structure of the desert tabernacle” (198). Following the literary uses of ringlets and chiasm, she asserts that the narrative portions of Leviticus divide the book into three sections, each corresponding to a “screen” between subsequent sections of the tabernacle. For instance, the first section treats general sacrifices that pertain to all Israelites, mirroring the Tabernacle’s courtyard, etc. Microcosm upon microcosm, Douglas’s analogical reasoning builds a coherent reading of Leviticus. Allow me to conclude with a quotation: “Learning the book becomes a way of internalizing the tabernacle, in the same way as the spiritual Jerusalem was distinguished from the physical Jerusalem at the center of the world. At the same time, moving round the tabernacle with the book, they are also moving round Mt. Sinai, and even had access to part of it that only Moses had” (230). Perhaps the anonymous 14th century author and mystic of the Cloud of Unknowing was not so peculiar after all for basing a pattern of contemplative prayer on the physical dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant.