Sunday Sermonette: Okay, but why?

I warned y ' all that Leviticus is generally quite boring. We ' re now about to do chapter 5 and it ' s still specifying the rules for sacrifice. (We do get a first mention of " uncleanness, " which will be a big subject soon.) So I got to wondering; why do they have this idea that God wants them to burn parts of animals? I did a little research -- okay, I read the Wikipedia article.It turns out that animal sacrifice was very widespread in ancient Europe and the Near East -- basically the Mediterranean region cultures that are the focus of the history most of us are taught. The idea was apparently tempting enough to people elsewhere that it had to be explicitly forbidden in Hindu and Buddhist scripture. Generally at least part of the animal is burned, as in Leviticus. What I haven ' t found, however, is any convincing hypothesis as towhy people thought this was the thing to do. In most situations here with the Hebrews the priests get to eat the good parts, so it ' s easy to see why they would promote the idea. But it had to seem plausible. They had neighboring cultures to point to as examples, which presumably helped. This just seemed to be the norm in the region. (Remember that the whole camping out in the desert thing never actually happened.) Anyway I ' ll let you contemplate that, to me it ' s a head-scratcher. Here ' s  chapter 5.5 “‘If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or l...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs