Leviticus requires blood — no altar since AD 70

Contested

Serious people argue this both ways. Say so before your friend does.

What the law of Moses says

Leviticus 17:11 is direct: "it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." Atonement happens through blood placed on an altar. That altar stood in the Temple in Jerusalem, and nowhere else.

What happened to the altar

Rome destroyed the Temple in AD 70. It has never been rebuilt.

So the one thing Leviticus names as the means of atonement has been gone for nineteen centuries.

How Judaism answered

With prayer, repentance and acts of kindness. This is a serious answer, worked out by people facing a catastrophe, and it has carried Judaism for a very long time.

Treat it with respect or the conversation is over.

The question worth asking once

The Torah names blood on an altar. The rabbinic answer names something else.

So: where does the Torah authorise the replacement? Ask it gently, once, and then stop talking.

How strong is this argument?

Contested. The question is real and hard.

The Jewish answer is not stupid, and treating it as stupid will end the conversation on the spot.

What to say

"Leviticus 17:11 grounds atonement in blood on an altar. What grounds it now?"

A 1310 south German manuscript of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, the code covering repentance and prayer

Holman Hunt's Scapegoat, 1856, the goat driven into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement

The Leningrad Codex at Leviticus 14 and 15, the book grounding atonement in blood on the altar

How they answer this — at its strongest

The Bible forgives without blood too: flour, Nineveh, and a broken heart.

This answer is solid, and it is made from the Bible rather than around it. The Hebrew Bible shows atonement without blood more than once. A poor Israelite brings a flour sin-offering in Leviticus 5:11-13. There is no blood at all, and yet 'the priest shall make atonement.' Hosea 14:2 offers the words of repentant lips instead of bulls.

Solomon's prayer at the dedication, in 1 Kings 8:46-50, expects forgiveness with no Temple, through prayer and turning back. Daniel prayed without a Temple. Nineveh was forgiven for repentance alone in Jonah 3:10. Psalm 51:17 says the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.

And Hosea 6:6 — 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice' — was quoted by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai after the Temple fell, and by Jesus in Matthew 9:13. Leviticus 17:11, they add, is about eating blood, not a monopoly on forgiveness.

The verdict

Contested, and their case is real Bible, so ask the question, don't claim a win.

Graded Contested — this counter-case is real Bible, not evasion. Flour offerings, Nineveh and Psalm 51 have to be conceded. The claim that 'Judaism has no answer for sin' is simply false, and this site should say so plainly.

The open question is narrower, and worth asking carefully rather than in triumph. The Torah's own centre of gravity for atonement is Yom Kippur, the altar and the blood. Judaism after 70 AD had to build a system without them. Asking where the Torah authorises that is a fair question. Claiming Judaism has nothing to say is not.

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