Log4j2 Incorrectly Uses System Property For Level Setting And Got IllegalArgumentException

We have an environment parameter in IBM WAS 9 running JAVA 8 with a name of "level" and a value of "DEVL".  This parameter is used by applications to detect the environment they are on and worked fine with log4j2.8.2.

After upgraded to Log4j2.17.1, for some reason the Log4j2 grabs that parameter during the initialization, ignoring the settings in the log4j2.xml, and spills a java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unknown level constant [DEVL] in the system log.