The Book of Leviticus (from Greek Λευιτικός, Leuitikos, meaning "relating to the Levites"; Hebrew: ויקרא, Vayikra, "And He called") is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah (or Pentateuch).
The English name is from the Latin Leviticus, taken in turn from Greek and a reference to the Levites, the tribe from whom the priests were drawn. In addition to instructions for those priests, it also addresses the role and duties of the laity.
Leviticus rests in two crucial beliefs: the first, that the world was created "very good" and retains the capacity to achieve that state although it is vulnerable to sin and defilement; the second, that the faithful enactment of ritual makes God's presence available, while ignoring or breaching it compromises the harmony between God and the world.
The traditional view is that Leviticus was compiled by Moses, or that the material in it goes back to his time. However, the tradition is comparatively late (it dates from Josephus, a 1st century AD historian), and scholars are practically unanimous that the book had a long period of growth, that it includes some material of considerable antiquity, and that it reached its present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC).
Read more about Book Of Leviticus: Contents According To Judaism's Weekly Torah Portions, Structure, Summary, Composition
Famous quotes containing the words book of, book and/or leviticus:
“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A really great poet is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“This book was written in good faith, reader. It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one.... I am myself the matter of my book.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he’d take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)