This is the first critical review of this book I've found. Last year, when this title released, so many treated it like a WMD capable of ending substitutionary atonement, and every review has sung its praises. I read the book earlier this year and found much of it helpful, but various of the positions put forward didn't sit right. Thank you for offering a clear challenge to its theses and its overall triumphalist tone.
1. Yes, that's my view. A quibble: The altar is kippured, or the worshiper, not the offering.
2. Perhaps. I think it's both.
3. I think the earlier narratives are critical to understanding Leviticus. Leviticus doesn't describe the mechanism at all, so we have to find that elsewhere. Besides, I don't think metaphor and mechanism should be set off in opposition. "Mechanism" is, after all, a metaphor!
This is the first critical review of this book I've found. Last year, when this title released, so many treated it like a WMD capable of ending substitutionary atonement, and every review has sung its praises. I read the book earlier this year and found much of it helpful, but various of the positions put forward didn't sit right. Thank you for offering a clear challenge to its theses and its overall triumphalist tone.
1. Yes, that's my view. A quibble: The altar is kippured, or the worshiper, not the offering.
2. Perhaps. I think it's both.
3. I think the earlier narratives are critical to understanding Leviticus. Leviticus doesn't describe the mechanism at all, so we have to find that elsewhere. Besides, I don't think metaphor and mechanism should be set off in opposition. "Mechanism" is, after all, a metaphor!
Blessings.