Levitical Games

The late Mary Douglas observed in Leviticus as Literature (75) that the list of animal organs for sacrificial animals is very selective: “it is interesting to note how very few items of anatomy receive any mention at all. Conspicuously missing in these chapters is any express mention of neck, heart, tongue, lungs, stomach, genital organs, which are usually prominent in various other sacrificial systems. Leviticus allocates meat, haunch, chest, and shoulders to different parties, head is mentioned once for the burnt offering and once for the sin offering, but of the innards only the long liver lobe, two kidneys, and suet receive special instructions, they are always to be burnt on the altar. Nothing is said about the liver itself or about other internal organs. The account is highly selective and thin. At the same time, it is very simple, only the blood, suet, and three items forbidden. The blood is ancillary to the sacrifice, it is not eaten or burnt on the altar, but smeared on it and poured out around it; the named items are always burnt on the altar.” 

The simplification and selectivity cannot, she thinks, be accidental. Something must be up: “the order of sacrifice is being used to demonstrate the boundaries of God’s pattern of the world. Some archetype or paradigm is undoubtedly being developed.” To be convincing, this pattern has to be consistent with other patterns within Leviticus. And vice versa: “Any satisfactory interpretation of Leviticus must also be convincing about the meaning of the rules against eating fat or blood.” 

Interpretation of Leviticus becomes a game of pattern recognition: “Imagine a game of building blocks in which God is the player and the object is to rearrange the dismembered body so as to model some divine construction of the universe and a teaching about life and death. In this architectural game rules about positioning, suchas ‘over’ or ‘under’, are necessary for interpreting not only sacrifice, but the whole book. In a diagram, position is everything; in a sacred text, the prohibitions that set things apart are crucial.”