Sometimes I think I should explain more about the footnotes and what this bible babble supposedly means. For example, Leviticus 16 is the foundation of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Then I think, if you want to become a biblical scholar, I might not be your best resource. So if you're wondering why I don't say something that's obvious about a given reading, it probably was not obvious to me as I read this POS. And/or I don't care.
And now, I'll continue summarizing and commenting on my reading in any way I see fit.
The children of Israel are to meet once a year for a mass sin offering. There's dead animals and blood sprinkling and the standard slaughter rituals we've grown accustomed to by now. To me the most interesting thing in Leviticus 16 was the introduction of the scapegoat. Did you know that pushing the blame on an innocent party has a biblical origin? In this case, the priest symbolically places the sins of the Hebrews on the head of a goat. So the first scapegoat was literally a goat. Wild.
If you kill an ox, lamb or goat, and it's not for the purposes of an offering, then you'll be cut off from the chosen people forever. If you eat an animal that died of natural causes or was killed by another animal, you are unclean until the evening and need to wash your clothes. Leviticus 17 rehashes the same tired old dead animal rituals: sprinkling the blood round about the altar and so on.
And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. What?
If you eat blood (WTF??) you're also out of the gang, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. Also, eating blood would be disgusting.
Short summary today but this book is so GD repetitive. Gear up for next time - Leviticus 18 has some absolute gold about nakedness. It also reveals there's no Adam and Steve... or does it?
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