A little Foretaste of... Phil's new book

Dearest reader, I'm super excited to be able to share some of my new book with you. Here is a sample, the intro and part of the first chapter.

Leviticus on the Butcher's Block:

Making Head or Tail of the Bible's Toughest Book

Foretaste: From Butchering to Leviticus

My career as a butcher began accidentally. I was at home playing Zak McKracken on my Commodore 64, still in my school uniform, when the phone rang. “G’day, it’s Gary the butcher. Do you still want a job?” 

I’d visited all my local shops asking for work, but Gary was the only one who came through with the goods. I’d clean the floors, scrub the benches, scrape the band saw, even wash Gary’s panel van. I was a quiet kid, happiest with my head in a book, and becoming a qualified butcher was not at all on my agenda. My real passion was writing, and I wanted to be an author. I dreamt of working as a journalist, and writing a trilogy of fantasy novels (about a colony of sentient toadstools who live deep beneath the Mountain of Drab their ancient ruler known as the Elder Shroom whose life spores sustain the entire Realm of Fungia so long as the Elder Shroom maintains his existence in utter darkness and silence but one day the Elder Shroom’s serenity is disturbed when evil fireflies infiltrate his cave infecting the darkness with light and shattering the Elder Shroom’s solace with their constant chatter causing the balanced biome of the Realm of Fungia to descend into chaos until a grumpy giant named Parsley is awakened from his hundred year slumber and leaves his home to find the reclusive badger wizard who is an expert in fungal magic and together the unlikely pair embark on a quest to unearth the Spore of Destiny and restore equanimity to the Realm of Fungia - will they succeed or will the evil forces of light prevail…)

But when it came time to finish school and think about a university, the Bible got in the way. The Christian school I attended had a unique knack for teaching the Bible in such a way that it became indistinguishable from any of my other textbooks. After several years of obligatory Bible study, I guess I knew the Bible pretty well, but I didn’t know the Author. I was a foie gras goose getting fat on facts from a book, but I had no love for the hand that was feeding me. As I dreamed about finishing school, and designing a pointy hat for my badger wizard, the school informed me that Biblical Studies was a compulsory subject, but it would not count towards my final exams. I was faced with a decision: stay at school and study the Bible under duress, or drop out and get a job.

The threat of banal Bible study made the decision for me and I quit school, abandoning my dream of becoming a famous fantasy writer. Somewhat unimaginatively I applied for a job as an apprentice butcher, and… I got the job. Ironically, it was the Bible that made me become a butcher, but through a strange turn of events, it would be meat that brought me back to writing - writing about the Bible no less. 

I admit there are few things stranger than loving Leviticus, and I suspect butchers who love Leviticus are even more rare. However, over time I developed a passion for ancient sacrifice, atonement, and Leviticus, so that today I could happily talk about Leviticus until the cows come home. All I will say for now is that being a butcher provides a surprising insight into the inner workings of the sacrificial process. And understanding ancient sacrifice helps demystify what Paul might mean by a living sacrifice.

You might have been exposed to a sliced meat delicacy consisting of various unknown ingredients, one of which is allegedly processed pork. In Australia we call it devon, but in other parts of the world it’s baloney. When I was a kid and Mum took us shopping, the local butcher would give me and my brother a sneaky slice of devon as an enticement. So here I am, your local butcher from Sydney Australia, attempting to whet your appetite for the book of Leviticus. Consider this book your slice of devon, a tantalising taste, that I hope will be the beginnings of an insatiable appetite for Leviticus.  

Leviticus begins by introducing the Burnt Offering, which is a good place to start as it contains all the elements of a Hebrew sacrifice. The words in bold will become the chapters for this book (plus there’s a free bonus chapter).  

“If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to bring an unblemished male. He will bring it to the entrance to the tent of meeting so that he may be accepted by the Lord. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering so it can be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the bull before the Lord; Aaron’s sons the priests are to present the blood and splatter it on all sides of the altar that is at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Then he is to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron the priest will prepare a fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Aaron’s sons the priests are to arrange the pieces, the head, and the fat on top of the burning wood on the altar. The offerer is to wash its entrails and legs with water. Then the priest will burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord.” (Lev 1:3-9 CSB)

Contents:

Foretaste: From Butchering to Leviticus

First Cut: Where Does The Burnt Offering Go?

Second Slice: Why Is The Offering Cut Into Pieces?

Third Portion: Is Yahweh Hungry For A Food Offering?

Four Quarter: Yahweh’s Invitation To Bring It To The Entrance

Bonus Chapter: How Can The Sin Offering Cleanse Contamination?

Six: What’s Significant About Slaughter?

Seven: Why Is Fat Off The Table?

Eight: Is A Dead Animal Really A Pleasing Aroma?

Nine: What Does A Hand On The Head Do?

Ten: What Does An Unblemished Life Look Like?

Eleven: How Is Splattering Blood Considered Clean?

Twelve: Can Atonement Really Remove Sin?

First Cut: Where Does The Burnt Offering Go?

What’s the best meat to roast for a family of five? Well, dear customer, my best advice to you is that whatever roasting meat you put in the oven, will come out weighing 25% less. Where does the 25% go? It goes up in smoke. Well, technically the 25% is mostly moisture loss but if you kept cooking, your family roast would eventually shrivel and disappear up in smoke. With the Burnt Offering however, the whole lot, not just 25%, was sent up in smoke to God. 

The Burnt Offering is described in chapter 1 of Leviticus, but the Hebrew word doesn’t actually mean burnt. It is, however, related to what happens when something burns. The Hebrew word literally means going up, or ascend. Ezekiel uses this word to describe “steps going up” (Eze 40:26). When something burns it is turned into smoke that rises up into the heavens. In ancient imagination God was “up there” in the heavens, and the dead went “down there” under the ground. The term offer up is all bound up in this idea of going upwards. So the Burnt Offering could be called a Going Up Offering or an Offering of Ascent. This is a good first step to understanding what a sacrifice was for: sending something upwards to God. The burnt offering is literally “turned into smoke” (Lev 1:13) and sent upwards to Yahweh. 

One of the confusions I’ve encountered is how we as modern people hear the phrase “giving up” or even the word sacrifice. In 2001 a mean spirited little man made a moderately stirring speech.

“Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.” Lord Farquaad, Shrek

If you were to open your modern English dictionary, you would find sandwiched between sacred and sacrilege the word sacrifice, with a definition something like: the act of giving up something that you want to keep. That’s pretty much what sacrifice had always meant to my modern mind: giving something up, or denying myself something good. But Biblical sacrifice is not giving something up like giving up meat for Lent, or giving up coffee for a month; it’s not giving up to go without, rather the giving is directional. Biblical sacrifice is more giving upwards.

There are five offerings described in the first few chapters of Leviticus: the Burnt Offering (Lev 1, 6:8-13), the Grain Offering (Lev 2, 6:14- 23), the Peace Offering (Lev 3, 7:11-36), the Sin Offering (Lev 4:1-5:13, 6:24-30), and the Guilt Offering (Lev 5:14-6:7, 7:1-7). The Burnt Offering is unique from all other offerings because the entire offering is given upwards to God - God gets all of it. It actually gets translated as the “Whole Burnt Offering” in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. With all other offerings, the priests get some, and with the Peace Offering, after the priest takes his portion, the rest is taken back home to the offerer’s family. But the Burnt Offering belongs entirely to Yahweh.

🔪🔪🔪

Australia's highest-priced bull, an Angus named Texas Thunderstruck, sold in northern New South Wales for $360,000, (you could buy a house in Alice Springs with that money). Today, as in ancient Israel, a bull is an expensive asset. To give a whole bull to God meant you were giving something valuable, something precious and truly meaningful. That’s the thing about the Burnt Offering; it’s about giving your very best to God. Not scrounging around in the bottom of the fridge for some floppy carrots, or regifting that shirt you didn’t really like - it’s selecting the best that you have, and offering it entirely up to God.

You may notice a hole in my analogy however; regifting a shirt may seem in poor taste, but if you think about it, who gave the bull to Israel in the first place? If you want to be pedantic, giving a bull to Yahweh could be seen as a regifted animal. Besides, what could anyone give God that He doesn’t already have?

You can keep reading here...