Book Review: Lester Grabbe's "Leviticus"

Grabbe is a terrific scholar, and he has written a fine introduction to Leviticus. The book begins with an introduction that focuses on issues of authorship, editing, dating, the relationship of Leviticus to the ancient Israelite cult, and law. Later chapters focus on the sacrificial and purity systems, the priesthood, holiness, the cultic calendar, and the continuing relevance of the book for Jews and Christians today. Grabbe is a critical scholar, and fundamentalists will likely find little of value in his book, but readers who accept the basic methods of biblical criticism will discover a wealth of information about Leviticus.

The book has a few shortcomings, which I will mention now. First, Grabbe repeatedly says that Leviticus reflects ancient Israelite cultic practices to at least some extent, but he never presents a detailed argument for this claim. To many non-critical readers (and perhaps some critical readers), the claim will appear trivial. However, I do not think that the claim is trivial at all. I am inclined to agree with the claim myself, and I see a few ways in which one might go about trying to defend it (think of Ezra and Nehemiah), but I really think that Grabbe needed to do the work for the reader here. Critical scholarship cannot simply assume that Leviticus was ever put into practice. Another problem with the book is that Grabbe doesn’t sufficiently distinguish between ritual and moral purity. The distinction can be found in Grabbe’s book, but it’s fuzzy, and it fails to include many of the central points about this distinction that can be found, say, in Jonathan Klawan’s essay in the JPS Study Bible. Yet another shortcoming of Grabbe’s book is that his defense of the continuing relevance of Leviticus is extremely weak. I think that Leviticus is a wonderful book that is full of deep theological truths of great relevance for Christians as well as Jews. Unfortunately, I have yet to discover a single critical book on Leviticus that brings any of this out. Finally, Grabbe largely ignores the priestly sections of Numbers; and, though Leviticus and Numbers may be two different books as they now stand in the canon, any discussion of the theology of Leviticus that fails to come to grips with the priestly sections of Numbers is bound to be distorted in some ways, perhaps not as regards Leviticus itself, but certainly as regards the thought of the priests who wrote it.

These shortcomings may seem serious, but they are greatly outweighed by the many virtues of the book. I could spend a long time discussing these virtues, and perhaps I should, given the extent of my negative remarks. However, let me just say that the Grabbe provides great coverage of most of the central topics of Leviticus. I was especially impressed by Grabbe’s discussion of sacrifice, and I learned a lot from it. Before reading Grabbe, I had been convinced that the blood sacrifices of Leviticus may have expiated only ritual impurity, and that they may have had no effect on moral impurity whatsoever, contrary to how the book has been by Jews and Christians (including the book of Hebrews) for the last two thousand years at least. I am certainly convinced that Leviticus views blood as a ritual detergent that removes ritual impurity, and that ritual impurity and moral impurity are very different things. (For arguments, cf. Jacob Milgrom.) As I say, I think that these things are clearly true; and, if they represent the whole truth about blood sacrifice, then such sacrifice has nothing whatsoever to do with the removal of moral impurity (sin). I still think that this may be the case, but Grabbe has convinced me that there may not be enough evidence in Leviticus to reconstruct a complete theology of blood sacrifice. He has also convinced me that some parts of a ritual may have no meaning at all, and that some parts may have multiple meanings, so that blood may expiate both ritual and moral impurity. This may seem like commonsense, but I’m not sure that it’s widely understood by scholars of Leviticus, and I think that Grabbe came to appreciate this point through anthropological studies of modern blood sacrifice. At any rate, Grabbe’s discussion of blood sacrifice is very helpful.

I want to discuss one last issue. One of the features of priestly law that most interests me is the priestly calendar, which includes the Sabbath, new moons, annual festivals, sabbatical year, and jubilee year, and Grabbe’s discussion of the calendar is quite engaging. For example, he notes that the some passages in Leviticus suggest that the jubilee year coincided with the seventh sabbatical year (25:8), and that other passages suggest that the jubilee year falls on the year following the seventh sabbatical year (25:10-11). I had puzzled about this myself. (If the former is true, then the jubilee year occurred every forty-nine years, and the land was never fallow for more than one year; but, if the latter is true, then the jubilee year occurred every fifty years, and the land would lie fallow for two consecutive years.) Grabbe notes that we have records from the Second Temple period that confirm that Jews cancelled debts in sabbatical years during that period, and that they also allowed the land to lie fallow. However, he also notes that there is no evidence that the jubilee year was ever honored. Of greatest interest to me, Grabbe notes that many scholars have recently argued that the Sabbath was not an exilic or post-exilic invention, and that it was likely observed as early as the eighth century, and perhaps as early as the tenth century.

Finally, Grabbe says that “there is no passage in the Old Testament which explicitly makes [the new moon] a holy day, nor was it treated as such in anything known from later Judaism” (86). It may be true that no passage in the Old Testament regards the new moon as a holy day on par with the annual festivals; and, it may also be true that Jews never celebrated the new moon as a holy day on par with the annual festivals. However, Numbers 28 and other texts specify special offerings for the new moon, and passages such as 1 Samuel 20:5 suggest that it was not treated as simply one day among many. Furthermore, it seems to me that the new moon was celebrated in special ways during the Second Temple period and later. So, while Grabbe’s remarks about the new moon may be true, they also seem misleading to me. But perhaps I am wrong. At any rate, Grabbe has some very interesting things to say about the priestly calendar.