a. [f. as prec. + -AL.]
1. Pertaining to the Levites or the tribe of Levi.
1535. Coverdale, Mal. iii. heading, Off the abrogation of the olde leuiticall priestheade.
1650. Trapp, Comm. Exod., 74. The Sacrifice of Consecration shewed the difference between the Levitical Priests and Christ.
1776. G. Horne, Ps., II. 297. We read, 1 Chron. ix. 33 that the Levitical singers were ‘employed in their work day and night.’
1867. Lady Herbert, Cradle L., vii. 168. Later, it became a Levitical city.
1898. Expositor, Oct., 255. Deuteronomy 18. 6–8 does not invest a Levite with priestly but Levitical functions.
2. Of or pertaining to the ancient Jewish system of ritual administered by the Levites; also, pertaining to the book of Leviticus. Levitical degrees: the degrees of consanguinity within which marriage is forbidden in Lev. xviii. 6–18.
1540. Act 32 Hen. VIII., c. 32 § 2. Any mariage without the leuiticall degrees.
a. 1665. J. Goodwin, Filled w. the Spirit (1867), 140. Framers of the whole Mosaical economy and Levitical dispensation.
1726. Ayliffe, Parergon, 52. By the Levitical Law, both the Man and the Woman were stoned to death.
1892. E. P. Barrow, Regni Evangel., i. 56. For the proselyte’s bath of Levitical purification, was substituted the penitent’s baptism in token of moral cleansing.
1895. J. A. Beet, New Life in Christ, III. xiii. 103. We have here under levitical forms important Gospel truth.
† b. nonce-use. Pertaining to ritual. Obs.
1670. Milton, Hist. Eng., IV. Wks. (1847), 515/2. Austin … sent to Rome … to acquaint the pope of his good success in England, and to be resolved of certain theological, or rather levitical, questions.
Hence Leviticalism = LEVITICISM. Leviticality nonce-wd., Levitical character or obligation. Levitically adv., in a Levitical manner, according to Levitical law. † Leviticalness, Levitical character or quality.
1892. A. B. Bruce, Apologetics, II. vii. 204. *Leviticalism … may be conceived of as a husk to protect the kernel of ethical monotheism.
1900. Speaker, 8 Sept., 624/1. We do not find in St. Paul any conception of Leviticalism as possessing a religious significance.
1621. Bp. Mountagu, Diatribæ, 387. The *Leuiticality … of Tithing, being confined vnto place, the Land of Promise.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., I. v. What right of jurisdiction soever can be from this place *Levitically bequeath’d, must descend upon the Ministers of the Gospell equally.
1892. T. H. Huxley, in Times, 4 Feb., 6/2. An example of any Levitically clean animal to which the term ‘reh-mes’ is applied.
1639. F. Robarts, God’s Holy Ho., vii. 48. The *Leviticalnesse of things of the Tabernacle, or Temple, consisted not in their materials … but in their typical relation to Christ.
