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This volume, like each in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, is designed to serve the church--through aid in preaching, teaching, study groups, and so forth--and demonstrate the continuing intellectual and practical viability of theological interpretation of the Bible.
320 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2007
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June 23, 2025
Ephraim Radner is an Anglican theologian who serves at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. He is known for his writings on practical theology, ecclesiology, and biblical interpretation. His contribution to the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible Series with his commentary on Leviticus not only fully displays the depth and breadth of his reading and research, both in Jewish and Christian traditions, but also demonstrates the complexity of his thought and prose. No doubt, Leviticus is a difficult commentary on an already difficult book of the Bible. Radner does not write his commentary in a similar structure to most contemporary commentaries that proceed through the text with clearly demarcated sections on specific verses. Rather, Radner’s structure is much looser with his chapters being devoted to an entire chapter or two of Leviticus. This is no accident; the structure of Radner’s commentary reflects the method and content of Radner’s overall approach to the text of Leviticus, namely a figural method (which is of central importance for this digest).
Figural reading, according to Radner, captures historical and metaphysical aspects of reality, joined together by God’s providence. Although exactly how this is may remain mysterious, it is nonetheless vindicated by the New Testament, especially the book of Hebrews (21). Indeed, Hebrews 10:5 is of archetypal significance for how to read Leviticus figurally: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.” Radner continues: “The reality of the law as shadow (Heb. 10:1) and of particular sacrifices as images of some heavenly pattern (9:23), that is, given its substantive appearance in the fleshly person and sacrificial history of Jesus (10:2), located the entire Old Testament in a relation of meaning and purpose that was novel and peculiar, certainly in reference to Jewish exegetical precedents for spiritual reading like Philo’s. It is one thing to say that the letter of the text indicated some higher spiritual truth; it is quite another to identify that truth as Jesus the Christ. Furthermore, by wrapping Leviticus up, as it were, in Jesus – ‘sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body hast thou prepared for me’ (Heb. 10:5, quoting Ps. 40:6) – Jesus himself was interpretively given over to all the details of that book’s (and the Old Testament’s) wide reach” (19–20). To perhaps reiterate the same point but in more concise and metaphorical terms, all of the Old Testament, but especially seen in Leviticus, it is as it the weight (qabod) of the Son of God is impressing down upon the time and space of creation so that, like a sheet molding around a person laying down upon it, all of creation and history conforms to the shape and body of the Son, even to the point of when the sheet rips open and the person of the Son is incarnated as Jesus Christ in the fullness of time. Importantly, Radner later clarifies that “the very notion of modeling — that all the world and its history follows a heavenly original — is less a philosophical claim analogous to Platonic metaphysics than it is a theological assertion about God’s purposes: the divine model constitutes the reality of creative love in that it represents the fact of God’s intention to create distinctive creatures that can be articulated — traced and mapped — upon the surfaces of time” (167). Radner thus differentiates his figural method and metaphysic from others who would more explicitly maintain a Neoplatonic position.
Radner, in another place, states a very important point regarding figural interpretation: “Although the forms for reading Leviticus are not given in advance, we therefore know that any proper Christian reading of the text will somehow detail the redemptive work of the humiliated Christ upon the broken hearts of human beings and of the whole created order. ‘Figural’ reading is the name we give to the outworking of this ‘somehow’” (22). The foundation for figural reading therefore is finding the ultimate meaning and referent for any and all biblical texts in the person and work of Christ Jesus. The methodology for discerning how specific texts do this, however, remains mysterious here, but in his other work, Time and the Word, he dives deeper into figural reading, and even contends that it is less a method and more a metaphysic, which is an attitude that Radner echoes shortly later: “[Origen’s] method of spiritual exegesis… is less the pursuit of a formal exercise than it is an engagement with a word that is understood to be intrinsically reflective of the full historical work of the Spirit that animates it” (22). Further, Radner aligns himself with specific interpretive traditions within the church, namely those that see the incarnation of the Son of God as a foundational theological premise that informs the legitimacy of figural interpretation, such as Orgien and Pascal: “The figural meaning of the text represents and encloses the whole history of God’s work with the world, the movement of the Logos in creation, judgment, and redemption, and the movement of the human soul within this larger current of divine work” (22). Radner’s summary here points out the numerous theological loci that overlap within the framework of figural interpretation (creation, judgment, redemption, history, anthropology, Christology, etc.). The reading and interpretation of Scripture is to interact with the divine economy which is providentially figured in God’s created reality. This figural revelation discloses the nature of the divine life and mission: “We are called to read the Scripture as participants in a divine economy through which the meanings of material realities – world and written – are given in these realities’ disclosure of divine life. The full ranger, therefore, of Levitical referents reflects the creative breadth of the Logos himself, in his Spirit-led mission from the foundation of the world and into the church’s life as bound to the incarnate one’s body” (22–23).
All of Leviticus in its entirety of details and distinctions that touch upon the world and life of Israel, and therefore of the church, not only point forward to Christ in a typological sense, but are comprehensively gathered up into Christ in both straightforward and paradoxical ways. For example, the significance the stoning of the memzer of Leviticus 24 finds fulfillment in Christ (not that this story has no integrity on its own) both in principle and in narrative: “From a Christian point of view, narrative and principle are properly held together precisely by Jesus’s own historical embodiment of their meaning” (257).
Radner’s final chapter is especially helpful for understanding the theological underpinnings for his commentary, wherein he articulates a christological explication of creation that is based primarily on Hebrews 10:5–10 and Colossians 1:15–20. Christ gathers into his person and work all of space and time in a mysterious and glorious way; both creation and redemption find their origin, purpose, meaning, and perfection in him, and so all things find their origin, purpose, meaning, and perfection in his self-offered body of sacrifice. This chapter and one section in his treatment on the Day of Atonement (169–171) seem to imply a kind of supralapsarian christology that may require a presence of death prior to the fall, which is something he has hinted at in some of other works. If this observation is correct, this is one point that must be met with reservation and potential critique.
Overall, this difficult work is deeply profound and worth reading slowly. It challenges common evangelical positions and assumptions about the nature of the Old Testament, the significance of Leviticus as Christian scripture, the substance of typology, and more. When read alongside Leviticus itself, Radner can truly have a revolutionary impact on how one understands creation, redemptive history, the person and work of Christ, and the Christian life.
Figural reading, according to Radner, captures historical and metaphysical aspects of reality, joined together by God’s providence. Although exactly how this is may remain mysterious, it is nonetheless vindicated by the New Testament, especially the book of Hebrews (21). Indeed, Hebrews 10:5 is of archetypal significance for how to read Leviticus figurally: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.” Radner continues: “The reality of the law as shadow (Heb. 10:1) and of particular sacrifices as images of some heavenly pattern (9:23), that is, given its substantive appearance in the fleshly person and sacrificial history of Jesus (10:2), located the entire Old Testament in a relation of meaning and purpose that was novel and peculiar, certainly in reference to Jewish exegetical precedents for spiritual reading like Philo’s. It is one thing to say that the letter of the text indicated some higher spiritual truth; it is quite another to identify that truth as Jesus the Christ. Furthermore, by wrapping Leviticus up, as it were, in Jesus – ‘sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body hast thou prepared for me’ (Heb. 10:5, quoting Ps. 40:6) – Jesus himself was interpretively given over to all the details of that book’s (and the Old Testament’s) wide reach” (19–20). To perhaps reiterate the same point but in more concise and metaphorical terms, all of the Old Testament, but especially seen in Leviticus, it is as it the weight (qabod) of the Son of God is impressing down upon the time and space of creation so that, like a sheet molding around a person laying down upon it, all of creation and history conforms to the shape and body of the Son, even to the point of when the sheet rips open and the person of the Son is incarnated as Jesus Christ in the fullness of time. Importantly, Radner later clarifies that “the very notion of modeling — that all the world and its history follows a heavenly original — is less a philosophical claim analogous to Platonic metaphysics than it is a theological assertion about God’s purposes: the divine model constitutes the reality of creative love in that it represents the fact of God’s intention to create distinctive creatures that can be articulated — traced and mapped — upon the surfaces of time” (167). Radner thus differentiates his figural method and metaphysic from others who would more explicitly maintain a Neoplatonic position.
Radner, in another place, states a very important point regarding figural interpretation: “Although the forms for reading Leviticus are not given in advance, we therefore know that any proper Christian reading of the text will somehow detail the redemptive work of the humiliated Christ upon the broken hearts of human beings and of the whole created order. ‘Figural’ reading is the name we give to the outworking of this ‘somehow’” (22). The foundation for figural reading therefore is finding the ultimate meaning and referent for any and all biblical texts in the person and work of Christ Jesus. The methodology for discerning how specific texts do this, however, remains mysterious here, but in his other work, Time and the Word, he dives deeper into figural reading, and even contends that it is less a method and more a metaphysic, which is an attitude that Radner echoes shortly later: “[Origen’s] method of spiritual exegesis… is less the pursuit of a formal exercise than it is an engagement with a word that is understood to be intrinsically reflective of the full historical work of the Spirit that animates it” (22). Further, Radner aligns himself with specific interpretive traditions within the church, namely those that see the incarnation of the Son of God as a foundational theological premise that informs the legitimacy of figural interpretation, such as Orgien and Pascal: “The figural meaning of the text represents and encloses the whole history of God’s work with the world, the movement of the Logos in creation, judgment, and redemption, and the movement of the human soul within this larger current of divine work” (22). Radner’s summary here points out the numerous theological loci that overlap within the framework of figural interpretation (creation, judgment, redemption, history, anthropology, Christology, etc.). The reading and interpretation of Scripture is to interact with the divine economy which is providentially figured in God’s created reality. This figural revelation discloses the nature of the divine life and mission: “We are called to read the Scripture as participants in a divine economy through which the meanings of material realities – world and written – are given in these realities’ disclosure of divine life. The full ranger, therefore, of Levitical referents reflects the creative breadth of the Logos himself, in his Spirit-led mission from the foundation of the world and into the church’s life as bound to the incarnate one’s body” (22–23).
All of Leviticus in its entirety of details and distinctions that touch upon the world and life of Israel, and therefore of the church, not only point forward to Christ in a typological sense, but are comprehensively gathered up into Christ in both straightforward and paradoxical ways. For example, the significance the stoning of the memzer of Leviticus 24 finds fulfillment in Christ (not that this story has no integrity on its own) both in principle and in narrative: “From a Christian point of view, narrative and principle are properly held together precisely by Jesus’s own historical embodiment of their meaning” (257).
Radner’s final chapter is especially helpful for understanding the theological underpinnings for his commentary, wherein he articulates a christological explication of creation that is based primarily on Hebrews 10:5–10 and Colossians 1:15–20. Christ gathers into his person and work all of space and time in a mysterious and glorious way; both creation and redemption find their origin, purpose, meaning, and perfection in him, and so all things find their origin, purpose, meaning, and perfection in his self-offered body of sacrifice. This chapter and one section in his treatment on the Day of Atonement (169–171) seem to imply a kind of supralapsarian christology that may require a presence of death prior to the fall, which is something he has hinted at in some of other works. If this observation is correct, this is one point that must be met with reservation and potential critique.
Overall, this difficult work is deeply profound and worth reading slowly. It challenges common evangelical positions and assumptions about the nature of the Old Testament, the significance of Leviticus as Christian scripture, the substance of typology, and more. When read alongside Leviticus itself, Radner can truly have a revolutionary impact on how one understands creation, redemptive history, the person and work of Christ, and the Christian life.
April 18, 2018
I've been working my way through the Old Testament with the aid of various commentaries. I anticipated that Leviticus would not be the most exciting book, but I hoped that a good commentary would provide historical context for the harder-to-understand passages and illuminate the interesting theological issues. This was not that commentary.
Each volume in the Brazos series is written by a different author, and I've had mixed success with the previous two books. R. R. Reno's Genesis had a lot of good content, but I thought it could have used another round of editing to make it significantly shorter. Thomas Joseph White's Exodus was fantastic and highly recommended.
I had never heard of Ephraim Radner before picking this up, but from some googling, he seemed reasonably well-respected. I can't speak for his other writing, but I found his commentary on Leviticus unenlightening and mostly inscrutable.
The first problem I encountered was simply parsing Radner's text. He often uses long, elliptical sentences densely filled with parenthetical citations that interrupt the flow of words. For example, I just opened the book to a page at random and found this 100-word sentence: "In the sequence of praise that begins Rabbah 11, this centering is used to explain the continuity of the world's history, which is the product of God's wisdom (based on Prov. 9:1-6, wherein wisdom is joined with a cosmic sacrifice [upheld by Ezek. 39:17-20]): from creation to the temple to the giving of the Torah to final eschatological feast—all is undergirded by the consecrated reality that attends Aaron's initiation into the priesthood, whereby the glory of God is joined to the earth in the form of Israel and extended in all directions temporally by the sacrifices themselves."
The second problem, which may also be evident from that quote, is that I frequently had no idea what Radner is talking about. For example, the above sentence comes early in the commentary on Leviticus chapters 8 and 9 dealing with the ordination of Aaron and his sons. As he so frequently does, Radner skips right past directly commenting on the basic text and toward making vague, grandiose proclamations—the paragraph ends with: "The point here is simply, yet massively, that Aaron's time provides a vision of the whole creation's time as given by God." These kind of wild statements abound in the commentary, and I was frequently clueless what to make of them. I assume these are references to some sort of theological program outlined in more detail in Radner's extensive scholarship, but none of it is explained here and most of it seems only tenuously connected to the Leviticus text actually being discussed.
What I'd like out of a commentary, particularly one on a book as tricky as Leviticus, is at least a foundational discussion of traditional Christian teaching. Radner frequently makes gestures at some of that, but he almost never explains it before launching off into his own orbit. He constantly cites to other work (and to other portions of scripture) with only a few words characterizing its content, often as a preface for presenting his own interpretations. As a result, despite having read 300 pages of Radner, I don't feel that I have a good grasp of even the basics of the Christian view on most Levitical issues.
For example, any modern reader will of course be interested in commentary on Leviticus's well known banning of homosexual behavior. Radner brings up the "ritual/moral law"-type distinctions that have been central to Christian wrangling with Leviticus only to sweep them away in favor of his own confusing approach. I will quote here, in full, a paragraph of his writing on that topic to illustrate:
"Lev. 18 constitutes an instrumental description of how the history of that communal life that grows with and follows God will and must unfold. The prophetic character of its regulations represents the obedience of time to God's will here. In this light, the highly charged discussion over the meaning of abomination as applied both to homosexual acts in particular and to the chapter's entire set of prohibited acts (18:22, 26, 29-30) can easily get bogged down on the question of its regulative specificity (details in Gagnon 2001: 117-21, but his discussion lapses into this quagmire). Rather, we ought to see the abominable as including all that rebels against the shape of God's coming into and passage through the world. And this rebellion is overwhelmed by the coming and passage of God. This is the key: God comes in this particular way, as described in Lev. 18. And this is the nature of the injunctions' figural weight: the world is shaped by this coming. This is the life that the laws provide ( 18:5)."
I consider myself a reasonably sophisticated reader, and I'm willing to work with difficult texts. But despite my best efforts, I was rarely able to extract insight from jumbles of words like the above.
Radner doesn't help the problem with his almost total refusal to include any sort of organizational headings or subdivisions. Each chapter is labeled simply with the verses of Leviticus to be discussed, and with only a few exceptions, they contain no further breaks. In the most egregious example, I estimate that the chapter "Leviticus 23:1-24:9" contains a huge chunk of ~10,000 words with no subdivisions at all.
Maybe someone with more of a theological background will find this all very enlightening. But it was a complete waste for me. I persevered to the end mostly out of stubbornness, and also because I didn't find any other clearly great Leviticus commentaries I should switch to instead.
I actually ended up finding Leviticus itself alright. Sure, it is filled with a lot of boring and repetitive sacrificial rules. But it makes for fairly quick reading, and as always, I enjoyed the commentary in Robert Alter's translation. But my progress was definitely slowed by procrastinating reading the next chapter before I felt certain I could take another round of Radner.
Each volume in the Brazos series is written by a different author, and I've had mixed success with the previous two books. R. R. Reno's Genesis had a lot of good content, but I thought it could have used another round of editing to make it significantly shorter. Thomas Joseph White's Exodus was fantastic and highly recommended.
I had never heard of Ephraim Radner before picking this up, but from some googling, he seemed reasonably well-respected. I can't speak for his other writing, but I found his commentary on Leviticus unenlightening and mostly inscrutable.
The first problem I encountered was simply parsing Radner's text. He often uses long, elliptical sentences densely filled with parenthetical citations that interrupt the flow of words. For example, I just opened the book to a page at random and found this 100-word sentence: "In the sequence of praise that begins Rabbah 11, this centering is used to explain the continuity of the world's history, which is the product of God's wisdom (based on Prov. 9:1-6, wherein wisdom is joined with a cosmic sacrifice [upheld by Ezek. 39:17-20]): from creation to the temple to the giving of the Torah to final eschatological feast—all is undergirded by the consecrated reality that attends Aaron's initiation into the priesthood, whereby the glory of God is joined to the earth in the form of Israel and extended in all directions temporally by the sacrifices themselves."
The second problem, which may also be evident from that quote, is that I frequently had no idea what Radner is talking about. For example, the above sentence comes early in the commentary on Leviticus chapters 8 and 9 dealing with the ordination of Aaron and his sons. As he so frequently does, Radner skips right past directly commenting on the basic text and toward making vague, grandiose proclamations—the paragraph ends with: "The point here is simply, yet massively, that Aaron's time provides a vision of the whole creation's time as given by God." These kind of wild statements abound in the commentary, and I was frequently clueless what to make of them. I assume these are references to some sort of theological program outlined in more detail in Radner's extensive scholarship, but none of it is explained here and most of it seems only tenuously connected to the Leviticus text actually being discussed.
What I'd like out of a commentary, particularly one on a book as tricky as Leviticus, is at least a foundational discussion of traditional Christian teaching. Radner frequently makes gestures at some of that, but he almost never explains it before launching off into his own orbit. He constantly cites to other work (and to other portions of scripture) with only a few words characterizing its content, often as a preface for presenting his own interpretations. As a result, despite having read 300 pages of Radner, I don't feel that I have a good grasp of even the basics of the Christian view on most Levitical issues.
For example, any modern reader will of course be interested in commentary on Leviticus's well known banning of homosexual behavior. Radner brings up the "ritual/moral law"-type distinctions that have been central to Christian wrangling with Leviticus only to sweep them away in favor of his own confusing approach. I will quote here, in full, a paragraph of his writing on that topic to illustrate:
"Lev. 18 constitutes an instrumental description of how the history of that communal life that grows with and follows God will and must unfold. The prophetic character of its regulations represents the obedience of time to God's will here. In this light, the highly charged discussion over the meaning of abomination as applied both to homosexual acts in particular and to the chapter's entire set of prohibited acts (18:22, 26, 29-30) can easily get bogged down on the question of its regulative specificity (details in Gagnon 2001: 117-21, but his discussion lapses into this quagmire). Rather, we ought to see the abominable as including all that rebels against the shape of God's coming into and passage through the world. And this rebellion is overwhelmed by the coming and passage of God. This is the key: God comes in this particular way, as described in Lev. 18. And this is the nature of the injunctions' figural weight: the world is shaped by this coming. This is the life that the laws provide ( 18:5)."
I consider myself a reasonably sophisticated reader, and I'm willing to work with difficult texts. But despite my best efforts, I was rarely able to extract insight from jumbles of words like the above.
Radner doesn't help the problem with his almost total refusal to include any sort of organizational headings or subdivisions. Each chapter is labeled simply with the verses of Leviticus to be discussed, and with only a few exceptions, they contain no further breaks. In the most egregious example, I estimate that the chapter "Leviticus 23:1-24:9" contains a huge chunk of ~10,000 words with no subdivisions at all.
Maybe someone with more of a theological background will find this all very enlightening. But it was a complete waste for me. I persevered to the end mostly out of stubbornness, and also because I didn't find any other clearly great Leviticus commentaries I should switch to instead.
I actually ended up finding Leviticus itself alright. Sure, it is filled with a lot of boring and repetitive sacrificial rules. But it makes for fairly quick reading, and as always, I enjoyed the commentary in Robert Alter's translation. But my progress was definitely slowed by procrastinating reading the next chapter before I felt certain I could take another round of Radner.
September 29, 2012
This is the only commentary on Leviticus I ever read that made any sense. It is worth the introduction. The entire series is good.
November 4, 2022
Radner, for those that are unfamiliar, is truly a unique thinker. He tackles Leviticus from a theological perspective and as such his figural exegesis comes to the fore. If one is looking for a traditional commentary on Lev, this is not the place to look, but if one is looking for a book that deeply engages with how Jewish and early Christian writers understood and interpreted it, as well as Radner's own unique musings, this is something of a masterpiece. Highly recommended.
February 8, 2016
A good commentary to ponder on a difficult book of the bible.
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