The Holiness Code appears at Leviticus 17-26, and is so called due to its highly repeated use of the word Holy. The style is noticeably different from the main body of Leviticus: unlike the remainder of Leviticus, the many laws of the Holiness code are expressed very closely packed together, and very briefly. Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, also the third book in the Torah (five books of Moses). ...

The Holiness code also uses a noticeably different choice of vocabulary, repeating phrases such as I, The LORD, am holy, I am the LORD, and I the LORD, which sanctify..., an unusually large number of times. Additionally, Leviticus 17 begins with This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, saying.., and Leviticus 26 strongly resembles the conclusion of a law code, despite the presence of further laws afterward, such as at Leviticus 27, giving the Holiness Code the appearance of a single distinct unit.

Even among conservatives (in this context, perhaps best described as Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Christian fundamentalists), it is debated as to how much of this passage can be of applicablity today, as the Levitical priesthood and animal sacrifices ended with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. Many in these groups see all of the laws regarding sexuality as being of binding applicability today and as being reiterated for emphasis elsewhere in the Biblical text. Haredi Judaism, also called ultra-Orthodox Judaism, is the most theologically conservative form of Judaism. ... Fundamentalist Christianity is a fundamentalist movement, especially within American Protestantism. ... Jerusalem and the Old City. ... For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation) The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian (better known as Augustus), until its radical reformation in what was later to be known as the Byzantine... The Bible (sometimes The Book, Good Book, Word of God, The Word, or Scripture), from Greek (τα) βιβλια, (ta) biblia, (the) books, is the classical name for the Hebrew Bible of Judaism or the combination of the Old Testament and New Testament of Christianity (The Bible actually refers to at least two...

Embedding in the Priestly source

In the documentary hypothesis, the Holiness Code is considered part of the Priestly source. However, it is believed, under the hypothesis, to have been an originally separate legal code (referred to as "H") which the Priestly source chose to embed into their writing. The hypothesis further asserts that the Holiness code was subjected to editing by the Priestly source. Some such editing is simply the addition of phrases such as And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,, designed to put the code into the context of the remainder of a code being given by God, as is the case for the remainder of Leviticus. The documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed by many historians and academics in the field of linguistics and source criticism that the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual. ... The Priestly Source (P) is one of the sources of the Torah postulated by the documentary hypothesis. ...

It is also alleged, by critical scholarship, that several additional laws, written a style unlike that of the Holiness code, but like that of the remainder of Leviticus, were inserted into the body of the text, by the Priestly source. These alleged additions are

• The prohibition against consuming the naturally dead (Leviticus 17:15-16)
• The order to make trespass offerings after sexual involvement with an engaged slavewoman (Leviticus 19:21-22)
• The prohibition against an anointed high priest uncovering his head or rending his clothes (Leviticus 21:10)
• The prohibition against offerings by Aaronid priests who are blemished (Leviticus 21:21-22)
• The order to keep the sabbath, passover, and feast of unleavened bread (Leviticus 23:1-10a)
• The order to keep Yom Kippur, and Sukkot (Leviticus 23:23-44)
• The order for continual bread and oil (Leviticus 24:1-9)
• Case law concerning a blasphemer (Leviticus 24:10-15a and 24:23)
• The order for a trumpet sounding on Yom Kippur (Leviticus 25:9b)
• Rules concerning redeeming property (Leviticus 25:23 and 25:26-34)
• Order to only keep heathens as slaves (Leviticus 25:40, 25:42, 25:44-46)
• Rules concerning redeeming people (Leviticus 25:48-52, and 25:54)

The section concerning continual bread and oil is, in critical scholarship, viewed as part of the description of the structure of the tabernacle, and vestments, present at the end of Exodus, which has accidentally become inserted at this point due to scribal error. The case law example of blasphemy is believed to be the work of one of the later editions of the priestly source, in which several other case law examples were added, such as that concerning the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 36). The remainder of the alleged additions deform the laws from the manner they would otherwise have, to the laws supported by the priestly code. Whether these represent alterations to the law over time, lawmaking by the writer of the political faction supported by the priestly source, or simply details present but not originally thought worth mentioning, is a matter of some debate. Aaron (אַהֲרֹן;, a word meaning bearer of martyrs in Hebrew (perhaps also, or instead, related to the Egyptian Aha Rw, Warrior Lion), Standard Hebrew Aharon, Tiberian Hebrew ʾAhărōn), was a Levite and the elder brother of Moses and the eldest son of Amram and Jochebed (Exodus 6:16 ff. ... This article concerns the Sabbath in Christianity. ... Passover, also known as Pesach or Pesah (פסח pesaḥ), is a Jewish holiday, beginning on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan, that commemorates The Exodus and freedom of the Children of Israel from Ancient Egypt. ... Passover, also known as Pesach or Pesah (פסח pesaḥ), is a Jewish holiday, beginning on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan, that commemorates The Exodus and freedom of the Children of Israel from Ancient Egypt. ... Yom Kippur (1878) Yom Kippur (יום כיפור yom kippÅ«r) is the Jewish holiday of the Day of Atonement. ... Sukkot (סוכות or סֻכּוֹת sukkōt, booths) or Succoth or Sukkos is a Biblical pilgrimage festival which occurs in autumn on the 15th day of the month of Tishri (mid- to late-October). ... Case law (precedential law) is the body of judge-made law and legal decisions that interprets prior case law, statutes and other legal authority -- including doctrinal writings by legal scholars such as the Corpus Juris Secundum, Halsburys Laws of England or the doctinal writings found in the Recueil Dalloz... Heathen is a term used both to describe a person who does not follow an organized religion, and also a modern practitioner of Heathenry. ... Look up Blasphemy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Blasphemy is the defamation of the name of God. ... This entry incorporates text from Eastons Bible Dictionary, 1897, with some modernisation. ... Numbers can mean: Number The Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible NUMB3RS, a CBS television show This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

More recent critical scholarship, particularly that of Israel Knohl, and Jacob Milgrom, has argued instead that Holiness Code (H) was the appendage, and the Priestly Code (P) the original. This view also identifies passages outside the traditional area of H, specifically in Exodus and Numbers, as belonging to the Holiness Code rather than P, such as the order to sound a trumpet on certain dates. In consequence, this view sees the author of H as the editor of P, rather than the reverse, in particular as P is able to be read coherently even when devoid of H. Nethertheless, the presence of what appears to be a clear ending to H, specifically Leviticus 26, which would be expected to have been moved, such as to be after Leviticus 27, if H was the addition, rather than the original, has presented some problems for such revising of the theory. Israel Knohl is the professor of Biblical studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. ... Jacob Milgrom is a lecturer, and researcher, in the field of Biblical Studies at the University of California. ...

Composition

The Holiness code is a collection of many laws concerning several subjects. Critical scholarship therefore regards it as being generally a work constructed by the collecting together of a series of earlier collections of laws. One of the most noticeable elements of the work is a large section concerning the following sexual activities, which are prohibited lest the land spue you out:

• Do not be sexually involved with your father
• Do not be sexually involved with your uncle (on your father's side)
• Do not be sexually involved with your mother or step-mother
• Do not be sexually involved with your sister, step-sister, or sister-in-law
• Do not be sexually involved with your daughter-in-law
• Do not be sexually involved with your granddaughter
• Do not be sexually involved with your neighbour's wife
• Do not be sexually involved with a woman as well as her daughter
• Do not be sexually involved with a ritually unclean woman
• Do not be sexually involved with a man as you would with a woman
• Do not be sexually involved with a beast
• Do not pass your seed through the fire to moloch

These are listed within Leviticus 18. They are also listed again, shortly afterward, with the same admonition against following the practices of the Canaanites lest the land spue you out, at Leviticus 20. While Leviticus 18 presents them as a simple list, Leviticus 20 presents them in a chiastic structure based on how serious a crime they are viewed, as well as presenting the punishment deemed appropriate for each, ranging from excommunication to execution. Leviticus 20 also presents the list in a more verbose manner. A father is traditionally the male parent of a child. ... Uncle may refer to: A family relationship, see Cousin chart Blind Uncle Gaspard Dutch uncle Kill Uncle My Uncle Benjamin Rich Uncle Pennybags Royal Uncle Cao The Man from U.N.C.L.E. the eponymous character from the Uncle series Uncle Albert Uncle Anesthesia Uncle Ben Uncle Buck Uncle... Look up mother on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Sister may refer to: a female sibling a member of a sorority a female member of a religious institution or congregation, often referred to as a nun in common language a female member of a mutual organisation such as a trade union one of a pair or larger group of... A step-sister is a sister to whom you bear no blood relation, but one of whose parents has remarried to one of yours. ... A sister-in-law is your: brothers wife spouses sister spouses brothers wife (This meaning is accepted by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, but not by all authorities. ... A family of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1997 A family is a domestic group of people, or a number of domestic groups, typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by comparable legal relationships including domestic partnership, adoption, surname and in some cases ownership (as was the case in the Roman... Neighbourhood is also a term in topology. ... Marriage is a relationship that plays a key role in the definition of many families. ... Image of a woman on the Pioneer plaque sent to outer space. ... Note: Daughters is also a band. ... Image of a woman on the Pioneer plaque sent to outer space. ... A mediaeval copy of the Bible. ... Leda and the Swan, a 16th century copy after a lost painting by Michelangelo, 1530 (National Gallery, London) This article is about zoophilia and bestiality. ... It has been suggested that flame be merged into this article or section. ... Moloch or Molech or Molekh representing Hebrew מלך mlk is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of sacrifice associated historically with Phoenician and related cultures in north Africa and the Levant. ... This article is about the land called Canaan. ... Chiastic structure is a literary structure used most notably in the Torah in those passages attributed to the priestly source. ... Excommunication is a religious censure which is used to deprive or suspend membership in a religious community. ...

Furthermore, Leviticus 22:11-21 parallels Leviticus 17, and there are, according to textual criticism, passages at Leviticus 18:26, 19:37, 22:31-33, 24:22, and 25:55, which, have the appearance of once standing at the end of independent laws or collections of laws as colophons. For this reason, several scholars view the five sections preceding between each of these passages as deriving from originally separate documents. In particular, the two segments containing the sexual prohibitions, Leviticus 17:2-18:26 and Leviticus 20:1-22:33, are seen as being based on essentially the same law code, with Leviticus 20:1-22:33 regarded as the later version of the two. Textual criticism is a branch of philology that examines the extant manuscript copies of an ancient or medieval literary work to produce a text that is as close as possible to the original. ...

Chapter 19, which ends in a colophon, has a similarity with the Ritual Decalogue, though presenting a more detailed and expanded version, leading critical scholars to conclude it represents a much later version of that decalogue. Notably, it contains the commandment popularly referred to as love thy neighbour as thyself, and begins with the commandment ye shall be holy, for I, Yahweh, am holy, which Christianity regards as the two most important commandments. This chapter is widely regarded as a very elegantly written development of ethics. The term Decalogue (δέκα λόγοι) is the Greek translation of the Biblical Hebrew phrase עשרת הדברים Aseret ha-Dvarîm, in English variously translated as the Ten Commandments, the Ten Words, the Ten Utterances, the Ten Statements, or the Ten Terms of the Covenant. ... Ethics (from Greek ethikos) is the branch of axiology – one of the four major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and logic – which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. ...

By this reckoning, there are thus at least five earlier law collections which were redacted together, with an additional horatory conclusion, to form the Holiness Code. Two of which contain a list of sexual prohibitions, and one of which was a development of the Ritual Decalogue. This article contains information that has not been verified. ...

Comparison with other biblical law codes

The large majority of both critical scholars, and religious commentaries, regard the Holiness code as having strong resemblences, in several places, to the writing of Ezekiel. Ezekiel dwells repeatedly on offences which the Holiness code condemns, and spends little time concerned with those outside it (e.g. Leviticus 18:8-17 in comparison with Ezekiel 22:10-11), and several extensive lists of such parallels exist. There is also a great similarity between Ezekiel's writing and the hortatory elements, particularly the conclusion, of the Holiness code. These strong similarities have led many, critical, scholars, to question whether Ezekiel was the author of the code, or at least the collector, and it remains an open question whether the Holiness Code influenced Ezekiel, or Ezekiel influenced the Holiness Code. Ezekiel the Prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures is depicted on a 1510 Sistine Chapel fresco by Michelangelo. ...

The Holiness Code has a similarity of structure with both the Covenant Code and the Deuteronomic Code. Like these, it opens with a law regulating ceremonies at the altar, lists a series of disparate laws, and then closes with a set of promises for obeying the law, and curses for failing to do so. While some of the laws appear more developed than Deuteronomy, for example, the law concerning weights and measures is more detailed, the majority show less development, and the implication of multiple sanctuaries implied by the Holiness Code's laws, concerning altar ceremonies, is usually understood to imply a date prior to the banning of sanctuaries outside the temple at Jerusalem. A similar comparison with the covenant code implies that the date of the Holiness Code is between that of the Covenant Code, and that of the Deuteronomic Code, highly suitable for the position it finds itself within the torah. The Covenant Code is a text appearing in the Torah at Exodus 21:2 - 23:33. ... The Deuteronomic Code is the name given, by academics, to the law code within Deuteronomy, except for the portion discussing the Ethical Decalogue, which is usually treated seperately. ... An ancient Roman altar An altar is any structure upon which sacrifices or other offerings are offered for religious purposes. ...

Although it is superficially plausible for the Holiness Code to be an updated version of the Covenant Code, and the Deuteronomic Code a later version still, the quite different manner in which the individual laws are presented, as well as the manner in which they are ordered, has lead to a large majority of scholars concluding that while the structure of the code is copied, indicating that the writer of each code knew the code of its predecessor, the laws themselves were collected together independently on each occasion. Nethertheless, it is similarly acknowledged by the majority, of critical scholars, that these three codes represent a gradual development of the underlying laws, as would be expected for a period of some 200-400 years.

In the documentary hypothesis, the priestly source is a work which, after its initial edition, suffered under the hand of several later, less skilled, editors, who each variously inserted documents, added additional laws, or expanded on the laws already present. Thus the original narrative, and the legal code within it, became surrounded by an extensive body of legal, and ritual, elements, as well as numerical, genealogical, and geographic, data. The underlying narrative, in the hypothesis, is based on JE, which already possessed a legal code, namely the Covenant Code and Ritual Decalogue. The majority of critical scholars thus support the position that, while the Ritual Decalogue was replaced by the Ethical Decalogue, the Holiness Code was chosen, or designed, to replace the Covenant Code. JE is an intermediate source text postulated by the documentary hypothesis for the torah. ... The term Decalogue (δέκα λόγοι) is the Greek translation of the Biblical Hebrew phrase עשרת הדברים Aseret ha-Dvarîm, in English variously translated as the Ten Commandments, the Ten Words, the Ten Utterances, the Ten Statements, or the Ten Terms of the Covenant. ... The Ethical Decalogue, is one of two Decalogues included in the Bible, and is better known as the Ten Commandments. ...

External links

• The holiness code, in isolation, at wikisource