There is a prohibition (mentioned here and also in Leviticus) against eating blood. Your contention is that the entire chapter is talking about sacrifices. If that is the case, why would the Torah have to issue a command against eating the blood of sacrifices when the blood of sacrifices were not available for consumption anyway, since they were thrown on the Altar?
I’m not sure what commandment you are referring to. The commandment to bring sacrifices? Could only be done in the Temple, no matter where you were.
Because verse 26 is coming back and reminding us that even though we can eat non-consecrated meats anywhere we want, we should remember that sacrifices can only be brought at the Temple (it even explicitly states that it is talking about sacrificial foods).
His point about the blood was that if that passage was referring to sacrificial offerings, the statement “do not eat the blood” would have been superfluous. What to do with sacrificial blood (i.e., sprinkling it on the altar) is well-detailed in the descriptions of sacrifices.
I only see it once, but that’s neither here nor there.
The fact is, anyone with consecrated animals had to bring it to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem to sacrifice. If he couldn’t bring it to the Temple, he still couldn’t sacrifice it - he had to let it graze until it died of natural causes. This law still applies today.
The commandment has two components - a positive one, to sacrifice certain animals, and a negative component, to not do so outside the designated place. Even if one is unable to fulfill the positive in a practical manner, that does not remove the negative injunction.
It’s a natural enough progression. First it speaks of the importance of bringing sacrifices only in the designated place, when a designation is made. (verses 5-14) It contrasts it to the then-current situation (in the desert) in which the Israelites routinely sacrificed by their own tents, and ate the meat in that manner (verse 8, specifically). Then, lest the people get the notion that they are not allowed to eat meat at all outside the Temple, even if they be far away, the Torah informs them that they will be allowed to slaughter animals with a non-sacrificial status in prescribed manner, which can be eaten in any state of ritual purity or impurity (verses 15-28), while emphasizing, parenthetically, that the rules in this passage apply only to non-sacrificial animals (verses 17-18 and 26-27).
If there were, from an achaeological point of view, scarificial centers outside of Jerusalem (and I have no idea whether this is true), the “commandment” that we have been arguing about would seem to have been interpreted in ancient times in the way I suggest, not in the way the Orthodox suggest.
Malthus, did you miss the “smiley” on Captain Amazing’s post?
He was being facetious, because as scholars of Jewish history are aware, the “Temple of Chonyo (Onias)” dates from Hasmonean times, and is well-known historically to have been built and used purely as an act of political defiance, in protest over the succession to the high priesthood. At no time was sacrificial service there ever considered to be in accordance with Jewish law. But, practically speaking, it was a temple used for sacrifices (albeit sinfully), and it was in Alexandria, so it made for a humorous answer to your “practical” question, although Captain Amazing is aware that it never had any legitimacy in Jewish Law.
In about 160 BCE, a priest named Onias, who was the son of a High Priest, came to Alexandria, and got permission from the king of Egypt to build a Jewish temple in Alexandria for the Alexandrines. As Josephus puts it in his “Jewish War”
The Temple in Egypt was condemned by the Jerusalem authorities at the time, and is also, later, condemned by the Talmud.
No, but the tone of your remarks was different from his. It seemed as though you took it as genuine vindication of your point of view rather than as the joke it was. If I misinterpreted, I apologize.
In all seriousness, though, while it was built for political reasons over the sucession to the high priesthood (and also because the Ptolmeys wanted to claim to be the “protectors” of the Jews), and while you’re right, it was illegitimate under Jewish law, it did survive for over 200 years, was runthe entire time by kohanim, and was seen as legitimate under Jewish law by a lot of Egyptian Jews.
What it comes down to (and this is the same situation with the non-Orthodox now, and for that matter the Saducees of the Hasmonean and Roman periods) is the question of who has the authority to interpret Jewish law. If you reject the Oral Law as authoritative or as the word of God, or say that the rabbis of the Talmud got it wrong, then your idea of what it means to be Jewish is different than if you accept that interpretation. If you say, “We have as much right to interpret the Bible as Rabbi Akiba, and we could be right and he could have been wrong”, you’re in a different position than the Orthodox.
Ultimately, I think this debate is hopeless, because the Orthodox and non-Orthodox can’t even agree on what it means to be a devout Jew. So what it comes down to is the following:
;j You can’t say you’re good Jews. You don’t even practice a lot of the mitzvot
You can be a good Jew without doing X or Y. Those aren’t really divine commandments…they’re just reflections of ancient cultural traditions.
;j No you can’t! No they’re not!
Yes you can! Yes, they are!
;j No, you’re wrong! It’s G-d’s will!
Let’s not fight. Come on, we’ll have lunch. I’ll buy you a cheeseburger.
;j <shakes his head and walks away frustrated>
So I think that’s really the way the debate is preordained to go.
Well, I agree with that - and, IMHO, it is one of the institutional strengths of Judaism as an organized religion, is that it is not very organized. This allows for a wide divergance of opinion and practice, which I think a good thing.
