The Laws of Clean and Unclean Animals in Leviticus 11: Their nature, theology and rationale

Written by Jiøí Moskala Reviewed By David W. Baker

This useful volume is a dissertation completed in 1998 under the supervision of Jacques Doukhan at the Adventist Theological Seminary. This issue is especially relevant to the Seventh-day Adventists, whose approach to OT law has been stricter than that of many other Christians. The work exhibits both strengths and weaknesses of the genre. The strengths include a detailed, 96-page look at the status questions of clean and unclean animals and food, and a 100-page bibliography up to 1998. Both show that the problem of Hebrew dietary laws has been a vexed one for a long time. The weaknesses include no attempt to be ‘user-friendly’, with no indexes of any kind.

Moskala surveys previous study in two ways, chronologically from the pseudipigrapha to the present, and thematically, discerning 14 different rationales which have been proposed to explain the biblical dietary restrictions. The third chapter looks at the texts themselves. First there is a partial exegetical study of Leviticus 11 exploring literary context, literary structure and lexicon. Here he usefully categorises types of cleanness, noting in tabular form which are natural and permanent, and which are acquired and temporary. He also spends considerable time indicating intertextual links between Leviticus 11 and various other texts (Gen. 1–2, 3, 6–9; Deut. 14:3–21), including parallels and divergences in vocabulary and theme. On the basis of these links the author proposes that the food laws can best be understood within a nexus of creation-fall-new creation. This means that the dietary restrictions are creational and permanent in value rather than cultic and thus temporally or culturally bound. A key link he sees is with the prohibition of the consumption of blood and its relationship with death.

The fourth chapter is theological, looking at aspects of the character of God and creation, and developing a theology of eating. He summarises by stating that ‘the leitmotif for the Pentateuchal dietary laws … is respect of the Creator’ (344).

The volume is a welcome study of a difficult though vital issue: the relationship between the Testaments, or the Christian and the law. At times its simple approach feels like a fresh breeze, but the approach is also problematic. While Moskala says that his approach is diachronic rather than synchronic, he nowhere addresses issues related to the authorship and integrity of what he terms ‘the Mosaic dietary laws’. How does his comparisons between Leviticus 11 and texts attributed by mainline scholarship to J, P and D take into account the critically espoused development of tradition? While a lack of source critical discussion on one level was refreshing, on another it was troubling, since there needs to be dialogue with, and critique of, alternative contemporary views. The subject also raises other questions which he does not even acknowledge, much less address. One example is the difference in periods of uncleanness of a mother who has a boy or a girl baby. While this is not the central issue of the project, if the difference is raised by the study, it should be addressed. A positive aspect is the eagerness to address the NT and contemporary practice. The author is not content to keep the two horizons of then and now separate, even in a dissertation.

Moskala is to be thanked for tackling this important issue, ably summarising the state of scholarship, and pointing us toward ways to move forward. The volume should be in serious theological libraries and will need to be consulted by all doing work on Leviticus, law and gospel, and Christian ethics.


David W. Baker

Ashland Theological Seminary