Interpreting the perennially perplexing sexual regulations of Leviticus 18-20 in a radically new way, Calum M. Carmichael offers a key to understanding not only the texts themselves but also the nature of lawgiving throughout the Pentateuch. Incest is chief among the topics in these chapters of Leviticus, which range over other sexual and nonsexual matters as well.

Carmichael turns to biblical legends rather than to purported social conditions to make sense of the material. Reading these laws in Leviticus against the events described in Genesis, Carmichael asserts that the conduct of biblical ancestors - from Lot's fathering of children with his daughters to Abraham's marriage to his half-sister - was the inspiration for the incest rules in Leviticus. He maintains that the Levitical codes cannot be separated from their larger narrative framework.

Invaluable for biblical interpretation, Carmichael's approach also has broader applications, clarifying as it does the tendency of lawmakers to formulate general rules in response not to obvious but rather to idiosyncratic problems.