Torah Portion
Was sacrifice centralized in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, or were the people permitted to sacrifice wherever they pleased? This straightforward question defies a simple answer.
To consume meat, Exodus (20:24) requires that the animal be sacrificed at a local altar, i.e., in any place where YHWH proclaims His name. When Deuteronomy centralized the cult to “the place,” it had to permit secular slaughter for those who lived far away, and it did so by presenting this innovation as an interpretation of the older law.
The promised land is described in Deuteronomy (12:9) by the hendiadys מְנוּחָה, menuchah, and נַחֲלָה, nachalah—a resting-place and heritage-land—and both terms are used several times in the Bible to refer to the land of Israel. Millennia later, these terms are given an afterlife in Jewish liturgy in reference to Shabbat; sacred space is anchored in time.
In the 1950s, Yehezkel Kaufmann challenged the regnant Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis that the Priestly Text was the final Pentateuchal source to be written, and that it dates to the Post-Exilic Period. One pillar of his argument is that the Priestly Text seems wholly ignorant of Deuteronomy’s 7th century B.C.E. law of centralization of worship, and thus dates to earlier in the First Temple period. And yet, a closer look at P’s laws shows that it is simply taking centralization for granted.
Slaughtering domesticated animals was always a sacrificial act, and even on the battlefield, King Saul builds an altar so the soldiers can slaughter their animals properly. To work around the limits of centralized worship, Deuteronomy introduces “profane” slaughter—but this did little to change Israelites’ enduring sense of meat as sacred. The rabbinic requirement of ritual shechitah even for wild animals makes all slaughter “quasi-sacrificial.”
The Bible often provides explicit motivations for adhering to its laws, raising the question: How do these motivations align with contemporary psychological theories of moral reasoning?
Hezekiah’s centralizing worship in Jerusalem, one altar for one God, failed in part because it created a spiritual vacuum for the average Judahite villager living far from the capital. Less than a century later, Deuteronomy revives the law, adding new provisions—a stipend for unemployed Levites, permission to slaughter animals outside the sacred precinct, and a requirement to make pilgrimage to the holy site three times a year—to address the law’s challenges.
Biblical dietary laws forbid consuming animals that shed the blood of other animals, reflecting an ideal world without violence among humans or animals. But what counts as blood?
2 Kings 18:4 describes Hezekiah as having abolished the bamot, worship sites outside Jerusalem. Archaeologists have discovered decommissioned temples and altars from this period in Lachish, Beersheba, and Arad. What do these findings really tell us?
The original biblical prohibition before it was interpreted to forbid cooking or consuming meat and milk together.
The festival calendar in Deuteronomy 16 began as a short revision of the calendar in Exodus 23. As it was expanded to clarify and adjust its details, it merged its springtime Matzot festival with the Pesach offering, which was originally connected to the consecration of firstborn animals.
Deuteronomy’s requirement to destroy a city whose inhabitants worship another god and to leave it as an eternally desolate mound, can be understood in the context of ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties. Specifically, Hittite texts describe how kings dealt with rebellious vassal cities, by destroying them utterly and dedicating their land to the gods.
Jews have long understood “the place that YHWH will choose” to mean Mount Zion in Jerusalem, while Samaritans have interpreted it as Mount Gerizim near Shechem. Archaeology and redaction criticism converge on a compromise solution: it refers to a series of places, one place at a time.
Fishbone remains discovered in eight different excavations in Jerusalem, from the Iron age to the early Islamic period, give us a sense of what fish the locals ate, and from where they were imported.
According to Deuteronomy, a false prophet who has no message from God, and advocates worshiping other gods, can still successfully perform miracles and predict the future.
The rabbis claim that a “subverted” or “apostate” city, which Deuteronomy 13:13-18 condemns to destruction, “never was and never will be” (t. San. 14:1). Yet the account in Judges 19-21 of the destruction or ḥerem of Gibeah, its inhabitants, animals, and property, suggests that such “internal ḥerem” was an Israelite practice, and that Gibeah is being presented as a subverted city.
Deuteronomy commands centralizing worship of YHWH at the Temple once peace is obtained. When was this supposed to occur according to the Deuteronomic History, and when did it happen historically?
But Chicken and Egg Remained Permitted
And the challenges of putting it into practice.
Moses’ first set of laws in Deuteronomy (11:31–12:28) requires the Israelites to destroy Canaanite sites of worship and to centralize sacrifice for Yahweh at the site of His choosing. It also allows them to eat meat without sacrificing the animal, under particular conditions. A close look at the terms of Moses’ speech shows that the text has been supplemented no less than three times.
Leviticus (17:13) requires covering the blood of undomesticated animals; Deuteronomy (12:15) requires pouring out the blood of slaughtered domesticated animals onto the ground. How do these laws reconcile with each other? The sectarians in Qumran have one answer, the rabbis another, the academics a third.
In Leviticus and Numbers, ma’aser (tithing) refers to a Temple tax; in Deuteronomy, however, it refers either to what must be brought and consumed on a pilgrimage festival or to charity. This dichotomy led the rabbis to design the cumbersome system of the first and second tithes (maaser rishon and maaser sheni).
A classic example of source criticism applied to Torah legislation.
Deuteronomy’s centralization of worship (in Jerusalem) is commonly seen as increasing the power of the cult. However, it is also part of Deuteronomy’s laicization program, which shrinks the power of priests and Levites, and extends covenantal holiness requirements to all Israel.
The Torah states “do not cook a kid in its mother's milk.” What does this phrase mean, and how did it develop into the prohibition of mixing meat and milk?
The Torah first describes a world that is created to be vegetarian. It is only after the Flood that humans were allowed to eat meat. Leviticus restricts meat consumption to the sacrificial offerings only, whereas Deuteronomy permits even non-consecrated meat. How do we understand the tension between these approaches?
