Review 6: Passover Imagery in 1 Corinthians

The final main chapter is on 1 Corinthians in Jane Patterson's Keeping the Feast. Previous chapters reviewed include:

• Introduction
• Sacrifice as Metaphor in Paul
• Jewish and Greco-Roman Sacrifice
• The Meaning of Sacrifice
• Sacrificial Giving in Philippians

1. Chapter 5 is titled, "1 Corinthians: The Community That Keeps the Feast." The previous chapter applied Patterson's understanding of sacrifice and metaphor to Philippians. This chapter does the same with 1 Corinthians.

Her aim in this chapter is to show that "metaphors relating to the Passover appear to bring together a number of Paul's counsels in 1 Corinthians, and to offer a set of associations to guide the community's ethical reflections in the future" (117). The chapter is largely set out by looking at the metaphors in 1 Corinthians section by section, following the rhetorical structure set out by Margaret Mitchell.

“Entailments of metaphors of the Passover (leaven, holiness, unity, freedom, wilderness, blood, covenant, remembrance) challenge the church at Corinth to become a community of belonging, to God and one another, by imaginatively placing themselves both within the exodus narrative and within the ongoing community of commemoration” (157). There is the essence of this chapter. Since I have a tendency to ask questions like, "What were the earliest layers of this book?" I tend to see the chapter on Philippians as very early, probably the inspiration for the book (I'm picturing this as originally being a dissertation). So the chapter on Philippians seems sloppier to me (sorry). By the time the chapter on 1 Corinthians was written, it feels like a bit greater sophistication might have developed. Mind you, this might all be in my mind. So she doesn't try to sweep all the metaphors of 1 Corinthians into a paschal pattern but recognizes a “layering” of metaphors.

Patterson finds sacrificial imagery and imagery relating to the Passover as far as chapter 13. As with Philippians, it is not clear to me whether the Passover plays as strong a role in the meaning of 1 Corinthians as Patterson sees. As far as the first four chapters, she takes the phrase logos tou theou in 1:18 as an expression of the “logic” of the cross rather than the “message about the cross.” Although she does not identify this logic with the later Passover metaphor, she believes it works in concert with it. Not sure I agree. For the time being, I'm sticking with the message of the cross.

Other images in the first main proof of the letter (1:18-4:21) similarly work in concert: the community as a building and the community as a temple. She sees an allusion to the scapegoat of Yom Kippur in 4:13. These two paragraphs were fascinating.

2. Certainly she is correct to see imagery relating to Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread in 1 Corinthians 5. She rightly notes that this sacrificial imagery is not principally about atonement. For example, the call to unity properly characterized those who kept the Passover feast. There was a preparation necessary to celebrate the Passover, so the Corinthians needed to prepare themselves properly for their ongoing life together. “The use of a metaphor of Passover, in a letter devoted to rebuilding true community among the congregation at Corinth, undergirds arguments against divisiveness by focusing on behavior within the community that Paul regards as corrupting” (135).

I don't know if I believe that the Passover metaphor lingered in Paul’s mind beyond 1 Corinthians 5. Patterson sees synergies with the purity and sanctification language of 1 Corinthians 6 and 7. She sees a synergy in the “higher slavery” to Christ in chapter 7. The “puffing up” of the Corinthians in chapter 8 is antithetical to the right kind of preparation for the feast. Just not really sure about this.

1 Corinthians 10 does evoke imagery of Israel just after the exodus. For Patterson, there is a consistency in this imagery, because “Paul continues to map the experiences of the Corinthian community onto those of the Israelites who were delivered from bondage in Egypt on the night of the first Passover sacrifice, wandered in the wilderness, and then kept the Passover immediately upon entry into the land” (145).

The Lord’s Supper was likely a Passover meal. She has helped me out with the historical Jesus here by pointing out that “The Passover is the only sacrifice that is set distinctly for nighttime” (150). Scholars like Hans Conzelmann and Richard Horsley have denied a connection to the Passover in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. Of course she disagrees. I think she would say that the kind of sacrifice in view is not an atoning sacrifice but a covenant making and restoring sacrifice. Maybe I'm groggy but thought she could have been clearer here.

Concluding Chapter
3. In the conclusion of chapter 7, Patterson does not provide a thoroughgoing study of sacrificial metaphors in Romans, but she does suggest the kinds of conclusions such a study might bring. “The use of cultic metaphors in Romans is as contextually specific and rhetorically strategic as those of Philippians and 1 Corinthians” (161). She sees a number of “partial frequencies” or sacrificial resonances in Romans, with a wide variety of sacrifices in view: Yom Kippur, the Akedah, the firstfruits, the shelamim and more.

Although she does not develop the idea, she stakes her claim with those who emphasize that the Jewish sacrificial system “was about life, not death, and that the modern preoccupation with the death of the victim is misplaced” (165). Meanwhile, none of the metaphors of Romans in any way undermine the continued functioning of the Jerusalem Temple.

So I personally really liked this book. I learned a lot. She gave me a lot of good fuel for thought.

Review 5: Sacrificial Giving in Philippians

Now we get to Philippians in my reading of Jane Patterson's Keeping the Feast. Previous chapters reviewed include:

• Introduction
• Sacrifice as Metaphor in Paul
• Jewish and Greco-Roman Sacrifice
• The Meaning of Sacrifice

1. Chapter 4 is titled, "Philippians: Sacrificial Giving." In this chapter we finally get to the direct application of the dynamics that have been unfolded thus far in the book to the book of Philippians.

The chapter begins with a very brief run through the rhetorical structure of Philippians with a view to possible sacrificial metaphors. Patterson's claim is that these sacrificial metaphors are more than "rhetorical flourishes" but are "a tool of active thought" (113). She wishes to show that "the shelamim sacrifices (sacrifices of thanksgiving) constitute a pattern of offering that Paul applies metaphorically and imaginatively as a guide for the actions of the Philippians" (86).

The core thank-offering metaphors occur in 2:17 and 4:12. Yet because Philippians was meant to be read over and over, this metaphor would have developed a persuasive power in rereading (83) as the entailments resonated throughout the whole. As examples, there is the language of holiness in 1:1 and the image of the audience as holy and blameless (1:10; 2:15).

More controversially, she would extend the entailments of this metaphor to the Christ Hymn of 2:6-11 and to Paul's thoughts on his possible death in 1:20-26. All these images are meant to suggest a model of living to the Philippians. "The shelamim sacrifices (sacrifices of thanksgiving) constitute a pattern of offering that Paul applies metaphorically and imaginatively as a guide for the actions of the Philippians" (86).

2. The Christ hymn is a linchpin in Patterson's argument. She aims to show that there is a pattern of self-offering in the hymn that may be described as sacrificial (90). Christ empties himself, which is similar to the pouring out of the servant in Isaiah 53:12. Ralph Martin has critiqued this idea, claiming that the hymn would surely have been more explicit about the sin-bearing nature of Christ's death if the author had Isaiah 53 in mind. Her response is that the sacrifice in view is not a sin-offering but a thank-offering.

Nevertheless, aspects to her argument in this section seem confused. Does not Isaiah 53 have the bearing of sin in view, not a more general thank-offering? She is arguing that the hymn is sacrificial in part because it may have Isaiah 53 in its background and yet she denies that the kind of sacrifice evoked by Isaiah 53 is in view. In one paragraph she seems to suggest that the whole burnt offering has also impacted Paul's imagery of the thank-offering (87-88). Most puzzling is a moment when she seems to apply the modern metaphorical sense of personal sacrifice to the Christ hymn as an argument in favor of a sacrificial undertone (89).

3. In the latter part of Philippians 2, she suggests that a passage from Numbers 28 stands in the backdrop. This passage in Numbers takes place as Israel is about to take the land of Canaan and the Greek of this passage has common language with Philippians like "sacrifice," "aroma of sweetness," "pour a drink offering," and "blameless." She thus suggests that "The effect of this scattering of sacrificial references is to link the actions of Paul and the Philippians with the ancient record of God's direction of the Israelites on their coming into the land, even as the Philippians are called to see the place where they now live as the ground upon which they will enact their heavenly citizenship" (93).

Suffice it to say, this connection seems somewhat of an over-read of the evidence. The constellation of similar terms would go together in any context and, if Paul had Numbers in view, he surely did not make the connection very obvious. We might say the same of any sacrificial connotation in the Christ Hymn. On the one hand, she acknowledges that the cross in the hymn is not mentioned in relation to atonement (89-91). Yet she seems far from being able to demonstrate that Paul has anything along the lines of a thank-offering in view.

4. She also discusses the possibility that Philippians is a letter of friendship and how ancient friendship included gift-giving. Since "gift-exchange between heaven and earth is one of the fundamental patterns of sacrifice," she sees this aspect of Philippians as part of the patterns of sacrifice that permeate the letter. She also tries to place the metaphors of sacrifice in Philippians into an apocalyptic framework. One of the more interesting comments in this section is when she notes that the imagery of 4:18 "almost seems to describe the ascent of the smoke of the sacrifices" (106).

Finally, she sees the metaphor of thank-offering as a way to bind joy with suffering. "Rejoicing is the natural accompaniment to a sacrifice of thanksgiving" (110), even though a death is involved. "A dedicatory sacrifice... is a complex event that suggests a whole series of entailments, as it brings together a community's understandings of holiness, friendship, morality, reciprocal gift-giving, the relationship between suffering and joy, and commerce between heaven and earth" (115).

5. I personally found this chapter to be more scattered and less persuasive than the others. To what extent does the metaphor of a thank-offering dominate the rhetoric and thought of Philippians? It is clearly present in 2:17 and 4:12. Could Paul have had it in mind when he spoke of the possibility of his own death? It is possible but the evidence is not definitive, even less so when it comes to the Christ Hymn of Philippians 2. We can hardly find evidence for it in the mention of Timothy and Epaphroditus.

There is a good deal that is suggestive in this chapter, Patterson has a way of throwing out possibilities that the reader might think she will develop later but that she never seem to. We are thus left with possible readings of Philippians for which we seem to lack sufficient evidence to embrace.

Review 4: The Meaning of Sacrifice

The reading of Jane Patterson's Keeping the Feast continues. Previous chapters reviewed include:

• Introduction
• Sacrifice as Metaphor in Paul
• Jewish and Greco-Roman Sacrifice

1. Chapter 3 is titled, "Sacrifice as an Object of Study." This chapter reviews scholarship on sacrifice in the modern era. The key take-aways from the chapter are, first of all, a distinction between sacrifices as practiced by the ordinary person and sacrifices as competing "literate cultic specialists" vied to win others over to their particular emphasis in interpreting sacrifice. Paul is one such person vying for his interpretation.

The chief voices in his way of analyzing ancient sacrifice are Stanley Stowers and Daniel Ullucci. As for the ordinary person taking part in sacrifice, both Stowers and Ullucci see the practice as grounded in basic human practices of reciprocity. The precise nature of that reciprocity could vary from context to context.

Then religious professionals competed with one another on what deeper significance sacrifice might have. What they were not arguing about, Patterson suggests, is whether to sacrifice or not. These literate religious specialists tended either toward the conservation of traditions or innovative reinterpretation. "Christianity," she says, "had its beginnings in an intellectual reexamination and reinterpretation within Judaism, as an outcome of criticism of the collusion of first-century Jewish leadership with Rome. The letters of Paul are an artifact of this 'entrepreneurial' intellectual reassessment" (75).

2. As a potential critique, she has repeatedly claimed that Paul did not see Christ's metaphorical sacrifice as entailing an end to sacrifice. It seems clear to me that this claim fits well with her repeated sense that using sacrifice as a metaphor did not imply the rejection of the practice of sacrifice. However, although I agree with her, she has offered very little in terms of actual argument to this end so far.

We catch our first glimpse in footnote 56 on page 79. "In the case of Paul, I am assuming that if it still made sense to portray Paul as participating in the Jerusalem cult by the time Acts was composed, then he most likely did continue to participate in sacrifices when he was in Jerusalem." I agree, but this bare footnote so far seems her only actual argument to that end.

3. By siding with Stowers and Ullucci, Patterson rejects the quest for a single essential meaning for sacrifice. She sides with Bruce Chilton in concluding that "there is no global explanation for the whole phenomenon" (73). By contrast, the quest for an essential meaning is reflected in the various scholars she analyzes in the first part of the chapter, along with the central idea each suggests: Edward Burnett Tylor (gift-giving), Robertson Smith (totemism), Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss (proxy for death of offerer), Mary Douglas (ordering the world), René Girard (mimetic desire for violence), Nancy Jay (reinforcing patriarchy), William Beers (male identity formation), and Marcel Detienne (cuisine to enforce political power).

She also rejects all evolutionary schema that create hierarchies of more or less advanced understandings (e.g., Tylor) or more or less spiritualized understandings (e.g., Stephen Finlan). A given text may manifest multiple "levels" at the same time (78). Nevertheless, she believes that the varied suggestions of all these scholars may give the interpreter of someone like Paul "an ear for some of the entailments of sacrifice that might otherwise be hard for a nonsacrificer to discern" (80). "When sacrifice is used as a metaphor, these are some of the entailments that will either be heightened or masked in the use of the metaphor."

Review 3: Jewish and Greco-Roman Sacrifice

I continue to read Jane Patterson's Keeping the Feast today. Previous chapters reviewed include:

• Introduction
• Sacrifice as Metaphor in Paul

1. Chapter 2 is titled, "Sacrifice as Greco-Roman and Jewish Practice." In this chapter she looks at what she has called the "entailments" of sacrificial metaphor both in broader Greco-Roman and in specifically Jewish sacrificial practices. The audiences both at Corinth and Philippi participated in both symbolic universes. As Gentiles, the Greco-Roman entailments of sacrifice were their cultural default.

Paul was of course enculturating them to more specifically Jewish entailments, although the two were not at all entirely distinct. Paul was "grounding his communities in a Jewish matrix of meaning" (35). On the whole, "the sacrificial metaphors he uses are intended to underscore the invitation to the Gentiles to become part of the people of the Jewish God, YHWH" (36).

2. The metaphors of sacrifice in Philippians, Patterson argues, had the greater degree of overlap between the Jewish and Greco-Roman frames of reference. In Philippians, the shelamim or thank offerings of Judaism overlapped significantly with the predominant nature of Greco-Roman sacrifices as commensal in nature. That is, Greco-Roman sacrifices provided an opportunity for celebration and feasting with the god in question.

Patterson spends several pages exploring the general functions of sacrifice in the Greco-Roman world, which she effectively divides into two categories: commensal sacrifices and covenant sacrifices, the first of which was by far the most common. She also notes the critique of sacrifice that existed in the Greco-Roman world.

In the commensal sacrifice, a portion of the meat is offered to the god, followed by a communal meal filled with merriment and joy. Thus, "Greek sacrifices had mainly to do with cuisine" (57), and some descriptions of Greek sacrifice almost sound like recipes. In such celebrations, "the boundary between human beings and the gods seems to disappear" (38). The god joins the celebration.

Less commonly, what some call "covenantal" sacrifices have to do with moments where a covenant is either made or broken. In such cases, the violence of sacrifice is highlighted, an element missing from the commensal sacrifice. "The consequence of a broken oath are shame and violent death for the perpetrator, and these consequences radiate out from him to all his family" (42), Patterson notes of what would happen to a person who might break covenant with Zeus in The Iliad.

Some have of course seen parallels in some Greek critiques of sacrifice to Paul's sacrificial language. Yet even a philosopher like Epicurus, who did not believe that the Greek gods were real, saw sacrifices as central to civic and public life. One of Patterson's central claims in this book is that "Paul's use of cultic metaphors relies upon the power of the practice, not upon its denigration" (43). "Paul was using metaphors of sacrifice at the same time that he participated in the cult itself" (48).

4. Next she turns to the Jewish sacrificial system. Patterson argues that while the whole burnt offering of the Jewish system has pride of place in the thinking of the priestly layer of the Jewish Scriptures, the shelamim reflected a much more "customary form of sacrifice in actual practice, the offering most frequently experienced by Jews" (47). Another central thesis of the book is that "when Paul refers to sacrifice in Philippians, without any qualifier, it is my contention that his repeated language of rejoicing suggests that he has the shelamim in mind" (47).

Some of the entailments of sacrifices of thanksgiving were festive joy and celebration. They reflected the whole-hearted dedication of the offerer and an intimate relationship with God and one's community. There was often a fragrance associated with them. These entailments "communicate metaphorically across a wide spectrum of ancient cultic experience" (53) and thus made thank-offerings an effective image for Paul to use with the Philippians.

5. The chapter ends with a discussion of the entailments of the more specifically Jewish sacrifice made at Passover. At its root, the sacrifice was probably apotropaic in nature, used to avert evil forces (56). In that sense it has some of the nature of a covenant sacrifice. It thus reinforces the dangers of breaking the covenant and binds together the people of Israel as a unified whole (57). Although the rite may have originally taken place in and around people's homes, at the time of Paul it took place in the Temple courts.

In that sense, there may be a stronger connection than might at first appear between the Passover metaphor of 1 Corinthians 5 and Paul's claim that the Corinthians are a temple of the Lord. The joining of Passover with the Feast of Unleavened Bread suggests an entailment of purity concern connected with the Passover metaphor. Other entailments of the Passover metaphor are those of liberation and of return to faithfulness.

Review 2: Sacrifice as Metaphor in Paul

Reading Jane Patterson's Keeping the Feast today. My thoughts on the Introduction are here.

1. Chapter 1 is entitled, "Sacrifice as Metaphor in Pauline Rhetoric." In this chapter she reviews some of the main theories of metaphor from the ancients to today while illustrating them in light of Paul's use of sacrificial metaphor. [1] Then she briefly engages how such metaphors might interact with the rhetorical nature of Paul's writings.

One observation at this point of her book is that these chapters are short and sweet. One wonders if she was asked to truncate longer dissertation chapters, whether she is only warming up, or whether this is her writing style. It of course makes for excellent reading. One gets the point. One gets a good overview of the subject. And there are plenty of references for further study. Frankly, it's my kind of book.

2. This chapter reveals one of her main goals in writing this book. "It is my hope that this study may recover some of the shock and tension of the original use of sacrificial metaphors in Paul's letters" (28). We have become so accustomed to the doctrinalization of sacrifice as a metaphor that we forget that this image once was fresh and unheard of. At first, Jesus was cruelly crucified by the Romans in a bloody act of capital punishment. Then someone made an "imaginative leap" (15), and his death became like an animal sacrifice.

In history, the practice of sacrifice came first. This was a familiar category. Then at some point in time, it became a metaphor "to explain the not-yet-understood implications of Jesus' life and death for the Christian moral life" (13). "The metaphor of sacrifice is one way among others... to unpack the implications of the cross of Christ" (14). One of Patterson's goals is "to catch Paul in the act of working out the complex of meanings that are born when one begins to use sacrifice as a metaphor in Christian thinking, and to allow the specific concerns of 1 Corinthians and Philippians to surface through a study of their particular range of uses of sacrificial metaphors" (16).

3. Her review of the history of metaphor takes us first to Plato and Aristotle, then to Paul Ricoeur and some twentieth century thinkers, then finally to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's cognitive theory of metaphor, Metaphors We Live By. Aristotle gives us a very limited sense of metaphor, but is still helpful in showing us that metaphors see similarity between things that are at least different on the surface. Patterson's main interest in Paul Ricoeur's work is the way he shows that metaphors can reach far beyond a comparison between two words such that they can pull in sentences, paragraphs, even whole works. She aims to see Paul's metaphors in 1 Corinthians and Philippians as having such a reach. [2]

Clearly Lakoff and Johnson have been the key influencers on her thinking. She identifies four characteristics of metaphor that she draws from their work. First, metaphors usually have a basis in human physicality. For example, it is common for human beings to relate "up" to good and "down" to bad. One of the shocking aspects of Paul's thinking is that he tries to make down to be up and up to be down. Crucifixion in the ancient world was bad, but the earliest Christians made it good.

A second aspect of metaphors is their "capacity not only to reveal but hide" (23). When the cross becomes a sacrificial metaphor, the Romans are disempowered as its agents and are sidelined by God, who becomes the primary actor. Metaphors also bring with them "entailments." Far more than one word compared to another, a metaphor can bring with it a whole host of potential resonances.

Finally, metaphors have a predictive capacity. "In a sense, a lively metaphor is out in front of one's ability to conceive of a thing" (27). Nice! "New metaphors, or new uses of existing metaphors, not only describe a state of affairs that had not been described before, but they are actually capable of creating new realities by inspiring a new set of behaviors congruent with the metaphor" (29). [3]

4. In the final section of this chapter, she connects Paul's use of sacrificial metaphors to the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians and Philippians. "In the letters of Paul, sacrificial metaphors are used primarily as high-stakes tools of persuasion" (30). After all, sacrifice was a central institution of the ancient world. One of her main claims in this section is that sacrifice is not an idea in the mind of Paul but a metaphor that drew its true life from the community for which it is trying to make sense of Christian living. Sacrifice is not a metaphor Paul is downloading to Corinth. It is a shared image from which Paul is trying to create a shared understanding.

[1] She references a study on 1 Peter that I did not know but that she has mentioned more than once as exemplary in its review of the history of how metaphor has been understood over time. Something to look into next pay day: Bonnie Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor and the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter.

[2] Again, I am waiting to see this argument. I absolutely believe a metaphor can permeate a work--I have more or less argued this of Hebrews.

[3] There is a brief acknowledgement that Lakoff does not like the idea of a "dead" metaphor because it is ambiguous. Metaphors can die in very distinct ways.

Sacrifice as Mediation

This is part of the dictionary article I'm writing:
________________________
Theories abound to explain how sacrifice functions in religion. A key element in most of these is sacrifice as a mediating factor in the relationship between gods and mortals. Certainly sacrifice functions this way in the Old Testament. Yet within the pages of the Old Testament we find more than one sacrificial paradigm, and thus more than one perspective on sacrifice as an instrument of mediation between God and humankind.

On one end of the spectrum, embedded within the biblical narratives, are glimpses of Israel’s pre-scriptural past. We hear rumblings of child sacrifice (e.g., Ezek. 16:20-21; 1 Kings 11:7; cf. Deut. 13:2) and puzzle over God’s command that Abraham offer up Isaac (Gen. 22:1-19). We are unsure what is taking place when Zipporah touches Moses with the foreskin of her son so that God does not kill her “bridegroom of blood” (Exod. 4:24-26). Similarly unfamiliar is the strange ritual where Abraham cuts a heifer and a goat in two and lays with them an uncut turtledove and pigeon (Gen. 15:12-21). Then when he is sleeping, the LORD reveals the future and a flaming torch passes between the cut pieces. These obscure artifacts of Israel’s pre-biblical past play into the hands of sacrificial theories that connect sacrifice to human violence and the appropriation of divine power on the human plane (cf. 2 Kings 3:26-27). Sacrificial mediation in such instances has less to do with the person of God than with the intrinsic power of the sacrificial acts themselves.

In terms of mediating value, the two most important functions sacrifices can perform are 1) their function as gifts to God and 2) their function in expiating sin and uncleanness. Since all sacrifices and offerings involve the presentation of something to God, the gift aspect of sacrifice is perhaps its most fundamental characteristic. It is no coincidence that the most generic Hebrew words for sacrifice have the connotations of a gift: minchah, mattanah, and qorban.

As gifts, sacrifices perform the same meditating functions that gifts do between humans. Some are offered to secure God's favor, such as when Saul offers a sacrifice before going to battle (1 Sam. 13:9). Votive sacrifices and offerings are either offered when making a vow or upon its successful completion. Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter is such a sacrifice after he returns from a victorious battle (Judges 11:30-31, 39). The gift of a sacrifice can propitiate God's wrath toward an individual or a people. After the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel for David’s census, God’s anger is finally satisfied when David erects an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and offers burnt offerings there (2 Sam. 24:15-25).

In this same vein sacrifices are offered regularly to maintain God's favor and to give him thanks for good things. Such gifts function somewhat like the tributes one might give to a king for his protection and blessing. The gift of the firstfruits of harvest give God thanks for the way he has blessed the soil and look to future blessing. Sacrificial gifts thus mediate good relationships between God and humanity in ways that humans can easily understand.

The function of sacrifices in relation to sin and impurity is both one of the most familiar and yet most misunderstood. In general, sacrificial law was not designed to restore an individual's relationship with God for intentional sin, so called "sins with a high hand" (e.g., Num. 15:30-31). The chatta't or "sin offering" thus more mediated impurity and uncleanness than what we would consider "moral" sin, the distinction between the two being very loose in Old Testament times (cf. Lev. 4:2). A person "impaired" by things like childbirth, leprosy, or the inadvertent violation of a taboo might be restored to wholeness by way of this "purification offering."

The idea that the sacrificial animal substituted for the person sacrificing perhaps has some element of truth, but is prone to overstatement given modern debates about penal substitution. In the Day of Atonement ritual, we should probably think more of defilement being transferred from the community of Israel to the animal, which then takes that miasma out of the community and into the desert.

Modern notions of guilt seem anachronistic in relation to the Levitical system of Israel. The so called "guilt offering," the 'asham, functioned almost like a fine, a penalty offered because one has inadvertantly wronged God (cf. Lev. 5:14, 17). Yet even in this case, the amount of the sacrifice is not gradated in accordance with the level of the offense. It thus does not figure well as some kind of substitution for the offender.

In general, the mediation provided by these kinds of offerings had far more to do with cleansing impurity, as the verb kipper seems to indication, perhaps having a fundamental sense of wiping away...