HISTORY OF RELIGION
It is no profound statement to say that religion has been around for a long time. Although Christians and Jews like to think that their religions began with Abraham, they are ignorant of the significance of their religions in the greater historical context of all religions.
AUTHORS’ NOTE: We recommend these Wikipedia links for quick overviews of the history of religion.
Religious people who highly value their own religion might tend to devalue the historical study of all religions thinking that the study of their particular religion is the only study that matters. The way we see it, this attitude is rooted in myopic, religious pride. Worse than that, it disagrees with God’s many warnings about mixing other religions and following their customs.
From Genesis to Revelation, God presets religion in any form (including Old/First Covenant religion) as the antithesis of New Covenant discipleship. Religion is introduced as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil alongside the Tree of Life, and is the focus of every book of the Bible thereafter.
Religion in the Bible is not recognizable to readers who are unfamiliar with Bible symbolism, but it is everywhere for those who understand that repetitive references to Egypt, Babylon, Canaanites, Amalekites, Philistines, Pharisees, nations, temples, sacrifices and the world are code words for religion.
It would be a great mistake to imagine that these religions and their practices are only ancient religions that have no presence or practical application in modern times. It is better, however, to give God credit for including these references in the Bible for instruction of the fact that the Defiled Religion practiced by these ancient religions has always existed in one form or another — even into these modern times and even though the form of it has evolved over time.
Readers who are surprised that the Bible is so full of examples of defiled religion may wonder why God talks about it so much. The reason is that he wants his people to learn to distinguish between clean and unclean and good and evil where clean and good are equated with the New Covenant and unclean and evil are equated with the Old/First Covenant. Thus God provides hundreds of examples of good and evil so that his people can learn to recognize counterfeit religion when they see it because they know the truth found in the New Covenant.
In Bible times, Israelites and Jews, of course, were well aware of the forms of counterfeit religions. They had spent several generations in Egypt and were surrounded by religious nations in the Land of Canaan (i.e. the Promised Land). Nevertheless, God saw fit to include detailed instructions about clean and unclean animals, objects and people so that they would learn to distinguish between what is holy and common (i.e. clean and unclean). Contemporary Jews and Christians will also be edified about what is holy and common when they are able to interpret clean and unclean symbolically and not just literally.
It is not an overstatement to say that the literal interpretations of how to treat clean and unclean things are difficult to understand and impossible to apply. And yet, we must consider that these difficult scriptures are not exceptions to what God said about the usefulness of all scripture. It is necessary, therefore, for Jews and Christians to understand the symbolic intent of all those scriptures that deal with clean and unclean regulations.
STUDY TIP: See DISCERN BETWEEN CLEAN AND UNCLEAN, HOLY AND PROFANE for more about clean and unclean.
Understanding the symbolism found in scripture is really quite simple when considered in the context of religion. All references to clean things are to Pure Religion and references to unclean things are to Defiled Religion. How do we know this? We know it from scriptures that connect clean and unclean with holy and common where common is also defined as profane or unholy. In other words, clean things are holy and unclean things are unholy.
Making these distinctions is God’s way of training his people to choose between worldly religious practices and his ways. This is what Leviticus teaches.