الاثنين، 4 فبراير 2013

Things banned in Leviticus

Selections from a compilation of 76 things, several of which are punishable by death:
2.     Failing to include salt in offerings to God (2:13)
3.     Eating fat (3:17)
4.     Eating blood (3:17)
12.   Letting your hair become unkempt (10:6)
13.   Tearing your clothes (10:6)
17.   Eating – or touching the carcass of – any seafood without fins or scales (11:10-12)
20.   Eating any animal which walks on all four and has paws (good news for cats) (11:27)
22.   Eating – or touching the carcass of – any creature which crawls on many legs, or its belly (11:41-42)
23.   Going to church within 33 days after giving birth to a boy (12:4)
24.   Going to church within 66 days after giving birth to a girl (12:5)
36.   Having sex with a woman during her period (18:19)
39.   Having sex with a man “as one does with a woman” (18:22)
42.   Reaping to the very edges of a field (19:9)
48.   Holding back the wages of an employee overnight (not well observed these days) (19:13)
50.   Perverting justice, showing partiality to either the poor or the rich (19:15)
54.   Mixing fabrics in clothing (19:19)
56.   Planting different seeds in the same field (19:19)
58.   Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it (19:23)
60.   Trimming your beard (19:27)
61.   Cutting your hair at the sides (19:27)
62.   Getting tattoos (19:28)
65.   Not standing in the presence of the elderly (19:32)
66.   Mistreating foreigners – “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born  (19:33-34)
72.   Working on the Sabbath (23:3)
73.   Blasphemy (punishable by stoning to death) (24:14)
75.   Selling land permanently (25:23)
I have not cross-checked these with the Biblical referents, so its possible some are overstated, but the general sense is probably correct. 

I seem to have been guilty of 13 of these (I'm wearing mixed fabrics at this very moment).  I'm posting this not to mock, but to inquire how a modern, sensible Christian should reconcile the realities of daily life with the admonitions of the Old Testament.  Personally I ignore things like many of those listed above as historically valid but now outmoded.  This attitude of course then falls right into the criticism that "the Old Testament doesn't apply except for those parts we say do apply (so we create whatever Bible and religion we want) and the ludicrous stuff doesn't apply because of Jesus."  But then Jesus said "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I didn't come to destroy them, but to fulfill them."  And how could his coming erase some guidelines, but not others.  There doesn't seem to be an easy way out.

ليست هناك تعليقات:

إرسال تعليق