Tithing Study Tabular Columns

Download Comparison Chart Between Levirate Marriage Law & Tithing Law
http://tithingstudy.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/leverite_marriage_law_vs_tithing_law.pdf

Levitical Tithes Versus Festival Tithes

~~~~~~~~~~	Levitical Tithe	Festival Tithe
Scripture Verses	Leviticus 27, Numbers 18:25-32 and Hebrews 7:5-11	Deuteronomy 12:16-21, 14:22-26, Exodus 23:14-17 and Deuteronomy 16:16
Where to Eat	Eaten anywhere in the promised land (only Levites could eat)	Only Eaten In Jerusalem
Who Received	Tribe of Levi excluding Aaronic Priests	All tribes of Israel
Final Ownership	90% owned by the Tribe Of Levi and 10% went to Aaronic Priests	Original Owners
Why	Substitute for Land inheritance	Teach the fear of The Lord
Option to convert to money	Add 20% to the monetary value to redeem the crops and bring it to Levites. Animals cannot be redeems.	No redemption option specified
Further Action	Levites Tithed 10th of the Tithe to Aaronic Priests	No further action – all consumed during festivals

Levirate Marriage Law Versus Tithing Law
 

~~~~~~~~~~	Levirate Marriage Law – Marrying deceased husband’s male relative	Tithing Law
Definition	Marrying deceased husband’s nearest male relative if there are no surviving male heirs	ALWAYS food, agricultural products, seed of the land, produce, oil, wine and livestock INSIDE the promised land but NEVER referred to earned income or money
How it started?	Unknown and no specific reason or commandment given	Unknown and specific reason or commandment
Purpose	To continue and preserve the male line of the deceased husband	Levite tithe is to offset the loss of land inheritance for the tribe of Levi & Festival tithe is to teach the fear of the Lord
Before the law of Moses	Practiced	Practiced
Compulsory or Optional?	Mandatory in many parts of the ancient Middle East	Not compulsory but done as a free will offering or part of a previous vow
Incorporation into the Law of Moses	Modified and adapted into the Mosaic law, also affected inter-tribe marriages	Modified and codified into the Mosaic law, different tithes introduced
How did it start?	Unknown and no specific reason or commandment given	Unknown and specific reason or commandment
Frequency	Does not matter, could happen in any year	6 years of continuous tithing and on the 7th year no tithing
Mentioned in the Talmud	Discussed at least in one tractate	Discussed at least in one tractate
Question posed to Jesus?	Sadducees posed a specific question to Jesus	No one asked Jesus about tithing
What did Jesus say?	Never explicitly abrogated and did not command the Jews to discontinue the practice	Never explicitly abrogated but asked the Jews under the law to tithe from garden herbs
Elsewhere in the New Testament	Mentioned only by Jesus and the Sadducees, not mentioned elsewhere	Mentioned by Jesus and mentioned in the book of Hebrews
Primary Subject of in the mentioned New Testament verse?	No, resurrection was the primary subject when the Sadducees questioned Jesus	No, pride vs. humility (in the parable – Luke 18:9-14), emphasis on justice and mercy (Matt. 23:23/Luke 11:42) and comparison of Levitical and Melchizadek’s priesthood (Hebrews 7:1-10).
Apostle Paul’s position	Paul never made a statement about the custom of Levirate law	Paul never mentioned about tithing
Commanded to New Testament Christians?	No, A Christian woman need not marry her deceased husband's nearest male relative if there is no surviving son	No, A Christian is not commanded to tithe to the local Church
How today’s Christian church (various denominations) follow both?	No Pastor asks a Christian widow to remarry or ask her to marry her husband’s nearest male relatives if she does not have a son even though it is practiced before the law of Moses	Pastors exhort Christians to give 10% of their gross income (money earned) stating that tithing was practiced even before the law of Moses!

 


Comparison Between Abraham’s tithe, Jacob’s tithe and tithing under the law of Moses
 

Abraham’s Tithe	Jacob’s Tithe	Under the law of Moses
Only Abraham tithed and not his servants	Only Jacob (promised to) tithe and not his sons and servants	Only Land owners growing crops and cattle owners tithed to Levites and Levites tithed to the priests. Poor and workers in the farms did not tithe
Only once paid	Promised to pay only once	Levitical and Festival tithes were yearly paid for 6 continuous years and Charity tithes were paid once in 3 years
Not from possessions but consisted of war spoils only	Promised to pay from whatever God would give him	Yearly paid Levitical and Festival tithes and Charity tithes were paid once  3 years
Abraham wanted to pay tributes to God and return the rest to the King of Sodom after rescuing his nephew Lot	Hebrew language says Jacob had fear and doubts about God and to manipulate God he made a conditional vow to tithe!	It was mandatory
Voluntary (or probably a custom in that area at that time) and tithed to Melchizadek and returned 90% back to the King of Sodom!	Voluntary but no record of Jacob paying tithes	Compulsory and followed at least levitical, festival and charity tithing systems.
Not commanded to tithe	Not commanded to tithe	Commanded to tithe
Gave the rest of the 90% to the King of Sodom	Did not give the rest to of the 90% to anyone	Levites tithed 10% to the Aaronic Priests and kept the rest of the agricultural products and livestock to themselves.
Vow (either before or after)	Previous Conditional vow	Not subject to vow
Only one variety – war spoils	Only one type	Multiple – at least 3 different tithes specified in the law
Melchizedek was the recipient	No record about the recipient	Levite got the 1st tithe and in turn tithed to the Priests, poor received the tithes and consumed by the owners during festivals
Total – 10%	Total – Uncertain	Total – 23.3% (10% Levitical, 10% Festival and 3.33 % Charity – 6 year average 23.3% & if Sabbatical year included it averages about 20%)

 


Old Testament Levites, Early Church Pastors And Modern Day Pastors
 

Old Testament Levites	Early Church Pastors	Modern day Pastors
Physical Descendents of Jacob’s 3rd Son Levi	One of the five fold minsters	Anyone who runs a Church
Got their authority to minister by the commandments given in the law of Moses	Appointed by Apostles	Seminary/Bible college qualification or self-appointments or being the son of a Pastor qualifies them. Only a few of them have a genuine calling from God
Were NOT full-time workers	Most of them were NOT full-time workers	Most of them are full-time workers
Received tithes from the rest of Israel	Never received tithes from early Christians but sometimes accepted free will gifts/offerings	Most of them receive tithes from modern-day Christians in the form of money
Received tithes from the rest of the tribes to offset their loss of land inheritance	Received freewill offerings/gifts for their labor in the Lord	Have an entitlement mentality and force believers to give, sometimes with threats
In turn tithed to Priests and the Priests did not tithe to anyone!	Never tithed to any central authority or any denominational head quarters	Usually tithe to denominational headquarters or tithe to their Pastoral friends
Always functioned as a team	Always mentioned in plural and the Apostles came first	Mostly single pastor controlled systems and per-eminence to his family
Accountable to Aaronic Priests and were not supposed to go inside the Holy of Holies	Accountable to Apostles and inter-dependent of other ministerial offices	CEOs of a religious enterprise, sometimes accountable to their denomination
Only Aaronic priests had special privilege in the tabernacle and the Levites did not control all the resources in the religious enterprise	Apostles had greater authority and followed by Prophets. (1 Cor 12:28).No single Pastor and his family controlled all resources of a religious enterprise	Usually a single Pastor controls all the resources of the religious enterprise and other associate Pastors and Church workers are employed by the Pastor
Only received money when the Israelites decided to redeem the tithe by adding 20% of the monetary value	Most of them were in secular jobs and sometimes received voluntary monetary gifts	Compulsorily collect tithes from the gross money earned from believers