Summary: After healing a leper upon his earnest request, Jesus told him not to tell anybody but go to the priest and “offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (Mark 1:44 NASB). Based on Leviticus 14, any leper healed must bring two birds to the temple, one to be killed and the other to be set free. So did Jesus really support sacrificing innocent creatures’ lives? The answer is no. For Jesus desires mercy, NOT sacrifice (Matt. 9:13); God Himself explicitly says that He detests animal sacrifice (Isaiah 1:13; Hosea 6:6); and instead expects humans “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with…God” (Micah 6:8); all those animal sacrificial rituals in the OT are inserted by the “lying pen of the scribes” (Jer. 8:8) (cf. Tabor 2024); there being two sets of Moses’ Law (2 Kings 22): one genuine-vegan; the other fake-anti-vegan (cf. Waters 2024), Jesus the Vegan Christ must be referring to the former; above all, Jesus died for opposing the sacrificial cult in the Temple (Akers 2020). Swords2plowshares’ (n.d.) theory that Jesus’ instruction to the leper is verbal irony doesn’t hold, because Jesus never lies and will not shy away from offending the Chief Priests if necessary.
Full Text Link: https://www.vegantheology.net/post/jesus-never-wanted-the-leper-to-sacrifice-an-innocent-bird-to-the-temple-by-dr-chapman-chen
1. Jesus Desires COMPASSION, Not Sacrifice
Firstly, Jesus twice unequivocally said, “I desire COMPASSION, rather than sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13; 12:7 NASB), quoting God’s own words in Hosea 6:6. God Himself clearly indicates, “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me” (Isaiah 1:13 NIV); and would rather humans acknowledge Him (Hosea 6:6), “act justly … love mercy and …walk humbly with…God” (Micah 6:8 NIV); and “learn to do right; seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17 NIV).
2. Beware of the “Lying Pen of the Scribes”!
Secondly, it’s not specified by Jesus here what Moses actually commanded. Nonetheless, according to Leviticus 14, a healed leper is supposed to go through the following ritual:-
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “This shall be the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest. 3 And the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him; and indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper, 4 then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. 5 And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. 6 As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. 7 And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. 8 He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. (Leviticus 14:1-8 NIV)
However, the Mosaic Law had probably been corrupted by “the lying pen of the scribes” (Jeremiah 8:8 NIV) so that the quotation above is NOT necessarily genuine and real.
2.1. The Genuine Vegan Moses’ Law vs The Fake Anti-Vegan Moses’ Law
Prof. James Tabor (2024) argues that all animal sacrificial rituals are interpolations added by greedy, carnist priests like the priestly writers of Leviticus 3:12-16, Numbers 28: 2-6, and Exodus 29; whereas Godly prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah are pro-compassion and anti-sacrifice. For example, “Samuel declared: ‘Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to His voice? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and attentiveness is better than the fat of rams.’” (1 Samuel 15:22 BSB).
Kam(eron) Waters, the co-director of the 2024 documentary, Christspiracy, also notes that in the Bible, it says in 2 Kings 22 that another law of Moses was discovered by Hilkiah the priest during the reign of King Josiah. When it was shown to the King, he ripped his robe and said “we have been doing it wrong!” (The name of the father of Jeremiah the vegan prophet was none other than Hilkiah.)
Similarly, the vegan Ebionites believed that there’re false insertions into the Jewish scriptures:-“And neither do they receive the whole Pentateuch of Moses, but cast out certain passages” (Panarion 30.18.7). When Jesus said: “Blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20 NIV), he was probably referring to the Ebionites (for not all poor people are good, righteous people that deserve to be blessed).
It follows that in the story of the leper, by “what Moses commanded”, Jesus is probably referring to the genuine vegan version of the Mosaic Law.
3. Jesus is a Martyr for Animal Liberation
Thirdly, and most importantly, Jesus Himself even died for liberating animals from the sacrificial ritual in the Temple. In emptying the Temple of animals about to be slaughtered for sacrifice, and in calling the Temple-turned-butcher-shop "a den of thieves" (Mark 11:16, Luke 20:46, Matthew 21:12-13 KJV), He debunked the business fraud of animal sacrifice and disrupted the chief priests' and scribes' lucrative revenue stream (Akers 2020: 117-119; Chen 2024), who immediately afterwards conspired to destroy Him (Mark 11:15-18), eventually leading to His arrest, trial and crucifixion.
4. Is Jesus’ Instruction to the Leper Verbal Irony?
Swords2plowshares (n.d.) thinks that Jesus’ instruction in Mark 1:44 is a kind of verbal irony. His reasoning is as follows: The Sadducees and Pharisees were eager to find a reason to accuse Jesus of sin so they could justify killing him. If Jesus didn't instruct the healed man to follow the Mosaic law concerning what animal sacrifice a cleansed leper must make to the Temple, he would be seen as teaching against Leviticus 14, making him guilty of sin and giving his enemies the chance they needed to condemn him. Understanding this motivation, let's look at what happened. Jesus often knew people's hearts, pasts, and future actions (e.g., the woman at the well in John 4:17-18, Peter's denial in Mark 14:71-72, and the tax coin in the fish's mouth in Matthew 17:27). In Mark 1, the healed leper didn't follow Jesus' instructions and instead spread news about him. It's likely Jesus knew this would happen, meaning he wasn't sending an innocent bird to its death. Instead, Jesus healed the man, who then became a believer and spread Jesus' message, all without Jesus violating Leviticus.
5. Objections to Swords2plowshares’ Argument
I dare not agree with Swords2plowshares for the following reasons.
5.1. Jesus Himself Died for Opposing Animal Sacrifice
Number one, as aforementioned, Jesus Himself died for opposing the sacrificial cult of the Chief Priests. He will not timidly avoid offending them, if really necessary.
5.2. How about the Tax Coin in the Fish’s Mouth Story?
Number two, saying something what one does not really mean is lying. Jesus Christ, of course, is not a liar. As regards the story of Jesus’ directing Peter to go hook a fish and dig a coin from her/his mouth in order to pay a temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27), it could not be real for, firstly, it was never executed; secondly, it's improbable that Jesus would have performed a complex miracle in order to pay his own tax; thirdly, how could Jesus, who died for animal liberation (Akers 2000), have had the heart to order his disciple to do such a cruel thing to an innocent fish?
Thus, this instruction, if ever existent, was a sarcastic joke cracked by Jesus to brush off the temple tax collector who wanted to trap Jesus. A refusal on His part to pay the tribute would be represented as disloyalty to the temple; while the payment of it would be taken as justifying their denial of Him as a prophet, for prophets were customarily exempted from the temple tax (cf. White 1898/2017:376-377). The sarcasm of the joke in Matthew 17:24-7 is so obvious that it does not amount to lying. (We are unable to see the bodily gestures of Jesus when He uttered the “instruction” in Mark 11:4. If they were insinuating that it’s a sarcastic joke, then it’s not a lie even if it’s really referring to animal sacrifice.)
6. Conclusion
To put it in a nutshell, Jesus desires compassion instead of sacrifice; God detests burnt offerings. There’s no good reason to believe that the Vegan Christ, who was eventually fatally plotted against by the chief priests and scribes precisely because of his disruption of the sacrificial cult in the Temple, would instruct the leper He healed to have an innocent bird killed by the priest as a testimony. The kind of testimony that Jesus had in mind must be “act justly … love mercy and …walk humbly with…God” (Micah 6:8 NIV).
References
Akers, Keith (2020/2000). The Lost Religion of Jesus. Lagos: Lantern Books.
Swords2plowshares (n.d.). “Why in Mark 1:40-45 Did Jesus Command a Leper to Bring an Animal Sacrifice Offering to the Temple?” Swords to Plowshares.
Tabor, James (2024). “Lost in Translation: The Jerusalem Temple as a Den of Ravenous Wild Beasts.” James Tabor (YouTube Channel), Jun 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svCkRq9gR1U&t=61s
Water, Kam (2024). “Was Jesus Actually a Vegan? DEBATE: Christian Animal Activist vs Reverend Hunter.” In The Ellen Fisher Podcast, Youtube channel, Jun 25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKxvjoikeeU
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