Abstract

This article proposes a transdisciplinary investigation into the Levitical sacrificial system, demonstrating that material evidence from the Ancient Near East provides more than historical scaffolding-it verifies a sophisticated anthropological mechanism of covenantal maintenance mirroring deep structures of human consciousness. By synthesizing archaeological evidence from Tel Arad and Ugaritic corpuses with Bernard Lonergan’s ‘Law of the Cross,’ this study argues that Levitical laws manifest an intelligible moral order rather than arbitrary divine dictates. Engaging N.T. Wright’s covenantal reading of Galatians and Romans alongside slavoj Žižek’s critique of the Symbolic Order and Timothy Larsen’s historicalanthropological lens, this paper explores how God, in establishing ritual law, subjects the Divine Self to a ‘Law of Love’ necessitating transformation of evil into good. Utilizing Dru Johnson’s work on biblical epistemology, the article demonstrates that the Levitical system prioritizes communal ritual performance over Western individual conscience, presenting atonement as simultaneously social-physical necessity and theological reality-a unified witness to a God operating within creation’s structural integrity..

Keywords:Levitical law; Tabernacle architecture; Atonement theory; Covenant theology; Bernard lonergan; N.T. Wright; Slavoj žižek; Spatial logic; Communal epistemology; Divine self-restriction