Holiness

The sanctification of all Israel in Leviticus 17–26—expanding the obligation to be holy from the priests to a collective requirement for all Israelites—further elevates the priesthood to a hegemonic social position.

In pre-exilic texts, לְהַבְדִּיל lehavdil means “to select, appoint, designate.” In the Priestly text, the term is used to refer to physical separation, while in the Holiness Text, it takes on an abstract meaning, to distinguish between objects and people in a cultic sense. The book of Ezra uses a new form of the term, לְהִבָּדֵל lehibbadel, to urge separating from non-Jews, prompting Trito-Isaiah to argue against separating (lehavdil) any faithful person from YHWH and His Temple.

In the Priestly Torah and the Holiness School

How does the Torah envision that keeping kosher makes a person holy?

Emphasizing the Holiness of Ethics over the Ritual

In a fight with an Israelite, the son of an Egyptian man curses YHWH and is stoned to death. This story, one of only two in Leviticus, highlights a larger concern regarding the need to maintain the holiness of the camp on one hand and the rights of gerim (strangers) to live among the Israelites as equals on the other.

Leviticus 21 and Ezekiel 44 regulate whom priests may marry. What rationale lies behind these laws?

Impurity is transferred through physical contact. Theologically speaking, could the same be true for holiness?

Is the focal point of the book the Camp or the Tabernacle?

“And the Lord Blessed the Seventh Day and Consecrated It” (Genesis 2:3). Can time be blessed?

YHWH commissions Isaiah to distract the people of Judah so that they continue to sin and then YHWH can punish them harshly. In contrast to other biblical figures such as Abraham and Moses, Isaiah is silent at this injustice.

Three different sources in the Torah express the Israelites’ separation from their neighbors as a core ideal.