This text attempts to present the "Book of Leviticus" as more than a collection of religious legalities, and to review the whole book from an anthropological perspective, showing how contemporary Jews existed as real people. This reading challenges established prejudices against the priestly work and uncovers an archaic rhetorical style based on analogy and practical examples. First, Leviticus is a literary masterpiece elaborately constructed upon matching paradigms. Its own structure is shown to be a projection of the desert tabernacle. Second, its philosophy of God's creation is much closer to the prophets and psalms than has been supposed. Old puzzles about the forbidden animals and the defilement of sex and food dissolve in the context of God's justice and his compassion for all living beings. Confronting several traditions of Bible criticism, Mary Douglas argues that Leviticus is not the narrow theology of a crabbed, inward-turning, priestly culture but a major philosophical achievement.