I read through chapters 1-13 and here is my take away:
Leviticus is full of laws and rules. Today, because of Jesus, we don't live in the world of Leviticus. For example, His self-sacrifice made the sacrifice of animals unnecessary. He replaced the high priest as our representative before God. Also, I'm starting to wonder if some of the laws in Leviticus ever did apply to us if we were not originally Israelites. The Gentiles, with different eating habits and customs, didn't have to change these things to become followers of Christ later on. In fact, it is pointed out that even if you don't eat pork and someone else does, it doesn't mean you can't both be followers of Christ. Acts 10 is where God shows there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the animals labeled "unclean" in Leviticus.
This got me thinking about when people like to use Leviticus to discredit the Bible, like Ch. 11:9-12 where it talks about not eating shrimp and stuff. It doesn't make sense to me to try to use one crazy rule from Leviticus in this way. Let's face it, the whole point of this time frame of laws was that God was trying to set a nation/people group apart for the first time. For the reason of forming a nation that was notably different from any other, couldn't it be plausible that God was purposefully being arbitrary when it came to these rules? These rules applied at that time for the Iraelites. Jesus fulfilled the law, and as I said earlier, some of these rules didn't seem to apply to none Iraelites that were believers.
Additional reasons for these rules could also have been health related for that place and time. Foot note from my student Bible:
"Scholars point out that many clean and unclean rules have good health habits behind them, such as the rule to quarantine a person with an infectious disease or the rule against eating pork (which carries many parasites). Others say that dietary laws were meant to keep the Israelites apart from their neighbors. Pigs were prominent in Canaanite worship; therefore the Israelites were not to eat pigs...The uncleanness rules of Leviticus are outmoded because of Jesus' declaration that all things are clean (Mark 7:19; see also Acts 10:9-16). But the lessons behind these rules remain valid. God still may not be approached carelessly. Each person must examine his or her life, to be certain that God's purity is not violated."
So as I was saying, trying to use one example from Levitical law as a reason to discredit the Bible as a whole seems baseless to me. People use it to point out that "there are lots of crazy rules in the Bible that are outdated and no longer apply to us so how can we trust anything in the Bible?". I don't feel this is fair. The Bible explains, so I'm not sure how it can even be used as an argument. You have to read the entire Bible and take it in context. It tells us when rules no longer apply and when they do. Also, if you see other examples where a rule still applies, and it's clear through out the Bible it's what God intended for us and applies to both Jews and Gentiles, Old Testament and New, before Jesus and after, then no, that's not the same as the one rule about shrimp that only shows up in Levitical law in the Old Testament. And, just because there is a rule that we no longer follow, because we do not have to, it does not mean we are advocating for picking and choosing parts of the Bible to accept. As Jesus said, unclean was made clean. We do accept that at that time, for the Iraelites, it was a way to set them apart from other nations. You have to read it to get it, and it aggravates me when people try to talk bad about the Bible based on things they clearly do not understand. Obviously I do not claim to be all knowing either, but help me out here, what do you think? Do people reference verses like this negatively just to justify their own picking and choosing?
