Jesus directly contradicted Leviticus:
Is it then at all possible that Leviticus was wrong? Keep in mind that this was before Jesus abrogated the Old Law that he contradicted Leviticus. Maybe he was correcting Scripture that had been diluted?
Please note that this is a hypothesis and I would just like to see what others think about it.
I think that part of the problem we have is that we view the Old Testament with the New Testament’s revelations… the Old Testament is the Old Covenant under the old economy: a direct relationship between the temporal world and temporal discipline (and eye for an eye… the various sacrifices…).
Yet, even while the old economy existed, there was a projection into the new economy ("…God is Spirit and true worshipers must worship in spirit and truth…"); the practices of the Law were meant to move Israel into the New Covenant… that is why Scriptures seem to be contradictive (sacrifice and holocaust I did not want…) when it states both the establishment of the Mosaic Law (old Covenant) and the requirement of the Life in Christ (new Covenant).
Note that the physical demands of the old Covenant were only a mirror to the Spiritual requirements of the new Covenant:
1 So, since the Law contains no more than a reflection of the good things which were still to come, and no true image of them, it is quite incapable of bringing the worshippers to perfection, by means of the same sacrifices repeatedly offered year after year. 2 Otherwise, surely the offering of them would have stopped, because the worshippers, when they had been purified once, would have no awareness of sins. 3 But in fact the sins are recalled year after year in the sacrifices. 4 Bulls’ blood and goats’ blood are incapable of taking away sins,
5 and that is why he said, on coming into the world: You wanted no sacrifice or cereal offering, but you gave me a body. 6 You took no pleasure in burnt offering or sacrifice for sin; 7 then I said, ‘Here I am, I am coming,’ in the scroll of the book it is written of me, to do your will, God. 8 He says first You did not want what the Law lays down as the things to be offered, that is: the sacrifices, the cereal offerings, the burnt offerings and the sacrifices for sin, and you took no pleasure in them; 9 and then he says: Here I am! I am coming to do your will. He is abolishing the first sort to establish the second. 10 And this will was for us to be made holy by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ made once and for all. 11 Every priest stands at his duties every day, offering over and over again the same sacrifices which are quite incapable of taking away sins. 12 He, on the other hand, has offered one single sacrifice for sins, and then taken his seat for ever, at the right hand of God. (Hebrews 10:1-12)
When the old Covenant Laws were practiced devoid of Love and Obedience they were devoid of any value to Yahweh God; only in our fellowship with Christ do we acquire true value in the eyes of God.
Maran atha!
Angel
