Leviticus - Introduction

Introduction

It is probably true to say that Leviticus is not the most popular of books, and not much preached upon, with the possible exception of chapter 26. Indeed, when I did my work through the Bible, producing far less detailed notes than I am currently doing, I was not looking forward to doing Leviticus! However, I was pleasantly surprised at how rewarding I found it. There is a lot of stuff on sacrifices, and it points ahead to the supreme sacrifice of Christ. There are also rules about the priesthood. This occurs in the first third of the book. We then have a few chapters on the distinction between clean and unclean. The final third of the book deals with rules for holy living. Having said the book is rarely preached upon, an exception to this is James White, who has preached extensively on the holiness code in Leviticus.

The name “Leviticus” comes from the Greek translation, the Septuagint. The Hebrew version takes as its title the first word in the text, which means “And He called”.

Typically many theologians argued that the book wasn’t written until the fifth or sixth century BC. However, the Bible clearly locates it in the second century BC, and an increasing amount of evidence has been found showing that its literary form is consistent with such a date. The book follows on naturally from Exodus.

Bibliography

Leviticus (The Expositor's Bible Commentary), Richard Hess, Zondervan Academic, (2017)