On the other hand.....

The Old Testament legal material can be hard-nosed, to say the least. Each of these acts, for instance, earned the perpetrator the death penalty: murder, attacking or cursing a parent, kidnapping, failure to confine a dangerous animal resulting in death, witchcraft and sorcery, sex with an animal, doing work on the Sabbath, incest, adultery, homosexual acts, prostitution by a priest's daughter, blasphemy, false prophecy, perjury in capital cases, and false claim of a woman's virginity at the time of marriage.

In my last post, I noted that the harsh attitude toward certain behaviours, or even physical states (being a eunuch, for instance) softened as the centuries went by. Failure to observe Sabbath-keeping, for instance, while punishable by death in the early Old Testament (OT) legal materials, was a matter of indifference by St. Paul's time, and was abandoned by the early church.

Another example is the rite of male circumcision. Look at the progression in these verses:

Genesis 17:10-14 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.

Exodus 12:48 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.

Acts 15:1ff But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”  

Acts 16:3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places....

Colossians 3:11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.  

Galatians 5:2-11 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 

Galatians 2:3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 

Sorry for this long list, but what I am trying to illustrate is that while physical circumcision was prescribed in the strongest possible terms for God's people in the Old Testament, St. Paul rejected its physical necessity for God's people in the new order. While pragmatically counseling the young Jewish Christian Timothy to obtain circumcision so as to not be a distraction to the more conservative Jewish elements, he saw absolutely no necessity of it being applied to the Gentile Christian Titus, nor to Christians generally. He re-applied the notion of circumcision from being an outward and physical manifestation of a holy relationship with God to a matter of no consequence for Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile. Why he did this will be discussed later.

Let's take a very conservative position on this. In understanding what is going on with OT legal material, we'll assume a high view of Scripture:

1. That God in some fashion inspired the writing of all of our present scriptures, and that all of the Bible is intended to be of value to people of faith (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work). 
2. That later writers did not intentionally dismiss or contradict earlier sacred writings, but rather clarified or otherwise altered them in ways that they thought consistent with God's inspiration. 

Working within these parameters one cannot help but be struck by two things:

1. That the way in which people of faith were defined took a 180 degree turn by the time of the New Testament (NT) writers vis–à–vis the Old.
2. That behaviours that were viewed in one light in the OT were seen in quite another in the NT, suggesting either that the principle underlying the laws was now being applied differently or that the laws were a reflection of a certain culture, or a certain objective.

All of this will become important as we look at the Levitical material on homosexuality.