“And CALLED [Vayikra] Yahuah al Moshe, or to Moses,” this parsha begins, as does the Book by that name, aka “Leviticus” in most English versions. (Vakikra/Lev. chapters 1 through 5). And what He then said has turned out to be a major source of division.
Because this Book starts off with one of the most twisted, and thus problematic, elements of what much of xtianity claims (along, indeed, with most of the “Olde” Testament) has been “done away with”, most of us have heard things like:
Why should we care about, much less ‘study’, any of this?
The Erev Shabbat telling of the whole story begins to answer that question, by observing (as Yahushua later made very clear) that ‘what we have been TOLD it said” is not necessarily what was actually Written.
The deeper Sabbath day examination begins with a look at why so many of the arguments abaout how the “law of Moses is done away with,” “nailed to the cross,” or otherwise immaterial in the whore church ‘dispensation’ are one of the biggest lies in human history (along with “you can be like God,” and “you will not die.”) Not only did Yahushua dispel that whopper in His very first public address (Matthew 5:17-19, in the ‘Sermon on the Mount’) but the more specific claims about “sacrificial law” too often ignore a distinction that cannot be missed in the instruction “as Written”: there is a difference between korbon, or offerings, and tzebach, aka ‘sacrifices.’ More important stil, the text is careful, especially in this parsha, to talk about procedures that deal explicity with “UN-intentional” transgressions, sin in ignorance, inadvertant wrongdoing. The Hebrew term introduced here is “shaggagah.”
There’s also an interesting twist in the Scripture when it comes to the question of WHEN, not “if” a nasi, or leader, sins. (And, as you might expect, quite a bit of contrast with the situation a lawless world lacking any such leadership, too.)
Was it EVER possible that the “blood of bulls and goats,” actually “took away sins?” And why does the same author that made that observation say immediatly thereafter that, “if we sin WILLFULLY after having come to a knoweledge of the Truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin?”
All of which leads straight to the ‘CONTRADICTIONS’ in chapter 10 of the letter to the Hebrews, that are NOT, if we just read what is Written in His Torah first.
“Vayikra: What About Ignorance, Sinful ‘leaders,’ and Lazy Shaggagah”
The combined two-part teaching is here:
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