Lev.17-Lev.26

About 1754 BC, three centuries before the Sinai Law, Hammurabi of Babylon issued a stele of 282 case laws. The find shows the legal climate …

Yom Kippur — the most solemn day of the year. The high priest enters the Most Holy Place to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, and a second g…

On the day after the Sabbath of Passover week, the priest waves a sheaf of the first cut barley before the Lord. The first of the harvest be…

The seven-day festival joined to Passover. From 15 to 21 Nisan no leaven may be found in any Israelite home — a memorial to the haste of the…

The spring festival commemorating Israel's deliverance from Egypt. A lamb is slain at twilight and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened br…

The Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Firstfruits. Israel brings two loaves of leavened wheat bread as the firstfruits of the wheat harvest —…

The seven-day autumn harvest festival. Israel leaves the house for a week of living in a sukkah — a temporary booth roofed with branches — r…

The date palm — whose branches meant royal welcome and whose fruit fed the poor — stood at the centre of Palm Sunday.

The setting apart of a person, place, or thing to God, and the moral transformation that follows. In Christian theology, the ongoing work of…

A small dry measure, about 2.2 litres — the daily ration of manna in the wilderness. One-tenth of an ephah, roughly two big handfuls of grai…

A trumpet made from a ram's horn, hollowed and shaped to give a piercing, primal blast. It announced the new year, called Israel to war, and…