The thirteenth day of the fifth month in the 2729th year of our dispersion.

There is a large segment of the Christian population that is horrified by the idea of reinstating animal sacrifice. Their doctrinal presupposition is that Christ was the ultimate sacrifice and there are no more to be made. Many find the idea of animal sacrifice morally offensive, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole concept. They ignore or unsatisfactorily try to explain away Acts 21, in which Paul completes a Nazarite vow and pays for the sacrifices involved. I would like to further traumatize these Christians by making known to them the fortieth and forty-first chapter of Clement's "first" (and only genuine) epistle to the Corinthians:

"These things therefore being manifest to us, and since we look into the depths of the divine knowledge, it behoves us to do all things in order, which the Lord has commanded us to perform at stated times. He has enjoined offerings and service to be performed, and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours. Where and by whom He desires these things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His own supreme will, in order that all things being piously done according to His good pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him. Those, therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times, are accepted and blessed; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord, they sin not. For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations devolve on the Levites. The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen. Let every one of you, brethren, give thanks to God in his own order, living in all good conscience, with becoming gravity, and not going beyond the rule of the ministry prescribed to him. Not in every place, brethren, are the daily sacrifices offered, or the peace-offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only. And even there they are not offered in any place, but only at the altar before the temple, that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned. Those, therefore, who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death."

Scholars debate over the date of the writing of this epistle. It is usually placed either just before the destruction of the Temple or a few decades later, at the end of Clement's life. The fact that the present tense is used throughout this chapter is evidence to me that the Temple was still standing, but even if it were not, I see this present tense as the most startling aspect of this passage. Clement is advocating animal sacrifice after the death and resurrection of Christ. He advocates following the ceremonial law of יהוה decades after Christ supposedly did away with it. To hear critics of Torah observance try to explain Paul's actions in Acts 21 gives me a headache; they simply do not understand the historical context enough to come up with a sane explanation. But even those Dispensationalists who say, in effect, that the period of time Paul lived in was transitional and allowed for some Torah observance and some Grace, are going to have trouble with Clement coming along a few decades later and still observing that if you sacrifice an animal, as long as you do so within the parameters defined in the Torah, you are within His will and have not sinned.