Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 16 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 56-58

Leviticus 16 - Day of Atonement—When Aaron goes into the sanctuary he needs to bring a young bullock for a sin offering and a ram for a holocaust.  From the community he shall receive two male goats to the entrance and cast lots to determine which one will be for the Lord and which one will be for “Azazal” - a name for Satan the note suggests—it translates the word as “escaping goat” hence “scapegoat”.  The one for the Lord shall be offered up as a sin offering (hattat).  The other shall be “set alive before the Lord” and then sent into the desert.

The bullock Aaron brings for himself shall be offered up to atone for himself and his family.  Incense from the altar of sacrifice shall be brought inside the veil, placed on the fire so that a cloud of incense covers the propitiatory.  The blood of the bullock shall be sprinkled on the propitiatory. 

Then he offers the people’s sin offering and does the same with its blood—he makes atonement for the sanctuary, the meeting tent, for himself and for the community, for the altar—mixing the blood of both sacrifices. When he comes out he shall place his hands on the head of the other goat and confess the sins of the community.  Then the goat is escorted out of the community, out into the desert.  He leaves his vestments in the sanctuary, bathes and puts them on again and then offers up the holocaust and burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar.

There shall be a fast on this day as well every year in perpetuity.

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

The Demons Still Mislead Men

56 – Not only did “the evil spirits” rely on their pre-incarnation stories of Jupiter and his sons, even AFTER Christ’s appearance and AFTER they learned of the prophesies regarding Him and AFTER they should have believed, the still continued to set their eyes on lesser men like Simon Magus and Menander.

We pray that the “sacred senate” and you leaders help people to avoid those evil doctrines and destroy the statue set up to honor them.

And Cause Persecution

57 – The devils can’t persuade us that there will be no eventual punishment of evil – just as they couldn’t keep Him hidden after He came.

The only thing “they who live irrationally, and were brought up licentiously in wicked customs, and are prejudiced in their own opinions, should kill and hate us.” But not only do we NOT hate them, we pity and try to lead them to repentance.

We do not fear death; all die. If they don’t believe that we exists after death, they help us by setting us free.

And Raise Up Heretics

58 – These same devils have tried to get us to list to Marcion of Pontus, “who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet to things earthly and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.”

Marcion was not trying to lure men TO THE WORLD but away from all things physical. And that is not what we are about as Christians anyway. Our savior came in human flesh to redeem the lives we live.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Exodus 9 and The Epistle of Barnabas 5-7

Exodus 9 – God tells Moses to tell the Pharaoh that he must “Let my people go so they can worship me. If you refuse to hold them and refuse to let them go, the hand of the Lord will strike all you livestock—your horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep, and goats—with a deadly plague” (9:2-3). The livestock of the Hebrews will not be touched.

Pharaoh doesn’t yield, so the Lord sends this fifth plague. Still the Pharaoh is not convinced.

Then the Lord tells Moses to take soot from a brick kiln and scatter it toward the sky so that it turns into a fine dust, a dust that will cause boils on man and beast – the sixth plague.  These boils also afflict the Egyptian magicians. Still Pharaoh is unmoved. “[T]he Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (9:12).

Again the Lord sends Moses to tell Pharaoh this: “I could have lifted my hand and struck you and your people with a plague to wipe you off the face of the earth. But I have spared you for a purpose—to show you my power and to spread my fame throughout the earth. But you still lord it over my people and refuse to let them go” (9:15-17). If they do not listen, the Lord will send a terrible hailstorm. Some of Pharaoh’s officials respond with fear and try to shelter their livestock from the storm before it comes, but “those who paid no attention to the word of the Lord” (9:21) suffered great loss in this seventh plague.

“Never in all the history of Egypt had there been a storm like that . . . it left all of Egypt in ruins . . . The only place without hail was the region of Goshen, where the people of Israel lived” (9:24-26).

This time the Pharaoh calls Moses to come to him and he says, “’This time I have sinned. . . . The Lord is the righteous lone, and my people and I are wrong. Please beg the Lord to end this terrifying thunder and hair. We’ve had enough. Ii will let you go; you don’t need to stay any longer.’” (9:27-28). Moses doubts that they really mean it, and, sure enough, once the hail is stopped, Pharaoh’s heart hardens again and he refuses to let the people go.

The Epistle of Barnabas

5 – “Now, when the Lord resigned Himself to deliver His body to destruction, the aim He had in view was to sanctify us by the remission of our sins; which is effected by the sprinkling of His blood” (163).  

Pretty amazing this passage should come up on the very day I am reading about the last plague brought down by God on Egypt – the death of all their first-born., getting ready to post it later in the week. There it is the blood of the sacrificed lamb or goat that is sprinkled on their doorposts so that the Lord will know which houses He is to “pass over.” Again, we have there one of the multitude of “types” and “figures” set forth in the Old Testament Scripture, that helps us better to understand the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. 

The writer quotes Isaiah, “he was wounded on account of our transgressions, and bruised because of our sins, and by his scars we were healed” (163).

“How deep should be our gratitude to the Lord, who thus gives us an insight into the past, as well as wisdom for the present and even a measure of understanding of the future!” (163). If we know the “Way of Holiness” and do not follow it, ruin justly awaits us.

He goes on to point out how the prophets foretold of Him. By appearing “in human flesh” and permitting Himself to suffer, “He would be able both to fulfill the promises that had been made to our ancestors, and to establish a new People for Himself” (164). He made it clear “during His presence on earth, that it was His intention to raise mankind from the dead, and afterwards to judge them” (164).

Then he says something a little shocking: “But it was in His choice of the Apostles, who were to preach His Gospel, that He truly showed Himself the Son of God; for those men were ruffians of the deepest dye, which proved that He came not to call saints, but sinners” (164, citing Mark 2:17).

6 – He continues to analyze the prophetic writings to undercover other texts that deepen his appreciation of what Christ did and who Christ was: the stone laid at great price in the foundations of Zion, the stone the builders rejected and other Old Testament images from the psalms and Isaiah.

When he looks to the writings of Moses, the author finds other ancient “types” – some I have never heard used before. The Lord’s promise to the Jews of a “land flowing with milk and honey” is seen as a reference to Christ’s mortal body “since it was out of earth that the shaping of Adam was wrought. What, then, is signified by a land that is ‘good, and flowing with milk and honey’? (Blessings on the Lord, my brothers, for vouchsafing to us wisdom and the discernment of His secrets! The prophet is speaking in a Divine figure here, though only a sagacious and instructed lover of the Lord would understand it.) (165-166).

7 – While the Lord has made much clear to us in these ancient writings, so that we would recognize His hand in the life and death of Christ. He examines other texts that “prefigure” events in Christ’s life. Some of the text is really impossible for me to understand. I get the big picture that he is finding prophecies of Christ in all the nooks and crannies of Old Testament writings, but some of the references are not legitimate – not according to the biblical texts that have come down. And some are so convoluted that they are impenetrable. Basically, though, he is simply conveying his conviction that all of Christ’s sufferings were predestined and foretold. The following is a good example of how detailed he gets on a story I am somewhat familiar with.

He mentions the scapegoat narrative in Leviticus. There are two goats spoken of in the story. The “first goat is for the altar, and the other is accursed” (168). The accursed one “wears [a] wreath. That is because they shall see Him on That Day clad to the ankles in His red woolen robe, and will say, ‘Is not this he whom we once crucified, and mocked and pierced and spat upon? Yes, this is the man who told us that he was the son of God.’ But how will He resemble the goat? The point of there being two similar goats, both of them fair and alike, is that when they see Him coming on the Day, they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel between Him and the goat. In this ordinance, then, you are to see typified the future sufferings of Jesus” (168).