Noah, a priest and an outcast walk into the Bible
Among the many inspirational passages in the Bible there are some, quite a few in fact, that seem to be exceedingly dull. Chapter 14 of Leviticus appears to be about as uninspiring as any. It deals with the purification ritual for someone diagnosed with the disease we erroneously translate as leprosy. The previous chapter described how the sufferer was declared unclean and quarantined outside the camp; chapter 14 describes the ceremony they undergo, once cured, to allow them home.
But dull as it might sound, the chapter has hidden depths. It contains several motifs which, occurring elsewhere in the Torah, draw our attention to similarities between different passages. If we could only understand them properly, these similarities might lead us to identify a complex web of connections linking all the symbolism in the Torah into a literary whole. Continue reading