Dirt - Revisiting Biblical Purity

8/16/2019 Dirt - Revisiting Biblical Purity

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Journal for the Study of the Old Testament01 37.3 (2013): 265-294

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DOI: 10.1177/0309089213475397

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W here here Is Dirt, Is here System?

Revisiting Biblical Purity onstructions*

T.M. LEMOS

Huron University College at Western University, 1349 Western Road, London, Ontario N6G1H3, Canada

ق article contends that biblical scholarship on impurity has often been concerned withattempting to hnd one symbolic system underlying Israelite purity constructions. Thistendency is clear 111 the work 01' Maiy Douglas and Jacob Milgrom, but even in more

محوا scholarship hie tendency to treat the diverse body of teHs discussing impurity as a‘system’ has continued. Even recent attempts to place all of lliese texts into Iwo or morecategories 01' impurity have had to force biblical texts to ht categories ttiat supposedlyencompass all ofthe HebrewBible. This article presents various important inconsistencies

«1ج the purity constructions of different biblical texts in order to demonsirate tliat theseconstructions are not ill fact ‘systematic’. There is no ‘system oflsraelite impurity’. More-over, 111 positing such a system, scholars have displayed assumptions and utilized metliods

* Earlier versions of tiiis study were presented at the Society of Biblical Literature

Amiual Meeting 01 124 November 2008 in Boston, MA and at Rhodes €011ege, Memphis.TN 0 1 1 12 February 2009.1 ttiank Baruch Schwartz and the others present on both those

i f tii i t d ti ll Th K S l Ol

Abstract

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266 Journal for the Study ofthe Old Testament 37.3 (2013)

that are at odds with those of contemporary ritual studies. This article argues instead for anembodied approach to studying Israelite purity constrictions tliat moves beyond Cartesiandichotomies and seeks to contextualize the evidence from different biblical texts, treating

differences between texts not as obstacles but as analytical opportunities.

Keywords: impurity, ritual studies, embodiment, priestly writers, Leviticus, Ezekiel,Ezra-Nehemiah.

1. Introduction

In her seminalwork بما'م and Danger, Mary Douglas wrote, 'Where

there IS dirt there is system'.1That is, where one finds eonstruettons 01' purity and ¡

آ

' ت

. one finds a symbolic system that gives rise to sueh

constaterions. Purity and Danger, 1think most w ould agree, is fire singlemost important book ever written on the study of purity, and it hasu ^rp rising l} / had a great influence upon the work ol'biblieal scholars.Though many have found fault with various details of Douglas's schema,

often scholars have followed her irr attempting to uncover the rationale,the single unifying system behind Israel's purify laws. At least a dozen of

tire books of the Hebrew Bible refer to eustoms ٠٢ regulations sur-rounding purity, texts as disparate in style and provenance as Leviticusand Lamentations, Lzel


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267LEMOS Where There Is Dirt, Is There System '/

at work have often distorted the evidence and not accounted well for thediversity 0 ' i1npu1'it> language !'ornicl in the biblical corpus. It is my viewthat assessing this diversity should play a far more central role irr schol-arship 0>r impurity, as should, too, examining the relationship betweenimpurity eonstnretions and the live ( c^rcricuccs o f Israelites.

2. Attempts to Systematize Biblical Purity Constructions andCritiques of these Attempts

'lhat Purity and Danger was an cvtrcincly influentialW01'l< for biblicalscholarship on Israelite purity is beyond question. So compelling was it in

fact that many 'م>1ة oír Israelite purity ideas written after ft havefollowed Douglas's lead irr attempting to hud the one system that under-

lies these ideas, even as they have often critiqued the details oflrer work.The major arguments of Purity a nd Danger are quite well known, and soI will review them only briefly here. In this work, Douglas argues for aclose correlation between purity ideas and concerns over social bouirrla-

ries. Conceptions o f impurity not only lend order to human experience—Douglas famously wrote that impm'ity. or dirt, 'is matter out ofplace' and

that ft 'offends against orelcr'3— but also reflect a group's social concems. Anxiety over social boundaries is symbolized by a preoccupationwith the body and with bodily orifices. She writes: 'We cannot possibly

interpret rftuals concerning excreta, breast mftlr. saliva and the rest unftsswe are prepared to see the powers and dangers credited to social structurereproduced in small on the human body '.3 She says of the Israelites

specifically: 'The threatened boundaries of their body politic would bewell mirrored in their care for the integrity, unity and purity of the

physical body'.م Douglas treats Israelite dietary laws at Icmgtlr in Purity andDanger in a chapter entitled 'The Abominations ofLeviticus ', where

she explains the particularities of which animals are considered pure orimpure in terms 0!'Israelite conceptions ofw hat animals o f different ةء־)

should be, tliat is, what physical characteristics a land animal or a hsilshould possess or not possess. Animals seen as anomalous were deemed

impure. Although influential, this chapter does depart in some ways fromthe arguments and methods ol'flrc rest o f the book, and this is even more

the case in Douglas's most recent rt^ iir c iit s o f Israelite religion, where

2 D l P i d D 2 36


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Journalfor the Study ofthe Old Testament 37.3 (2013)268

she exhibits a very different approach to Israelite texts and customs than

tire one she utilizes in Purity and Danger to assess the purity coirccptioirso f other groups throughout the world.5Nonetheless, Puri ty and Danger was and remains an influential work among biblical scholars both for itstrcatincuts of Israelite ideas and for its wider analysis of purity rituals

cross-culturally. In both, Douglas emphasizes the systematic nature of purity conceptions. "Where there is hrt '. she avers, "there is system'.

Like Mary Douglas, lacob Milgrom has been a towering figure hr thestudy of Israelite purity, and like Douglas, Milgrom has proposed aunified basis for the purity laws. According to Milgrom, Israelite purity

conceptions are grounded not in a symbolic view of fire body, as Douglas

argued, but rather in a priestly regard for life. Thus, things that were

5. In fact, in the preface٠١tile 2002 edition of, Purity and Danger, Douglas goes so faras to reverse her earlier analysis oflsraelite dietary laws, stating it was a ‘major mistake’in various ways. She writes tliat she was particularly mistaken to ‘have accepted uiiques-tioiiingly that the rational,نص, compassionate God ofthe Bible would ever have been soinconsistent as to make abominable creatures’ (pp. xiii, XV). This is a remarkable about-face, corresponding ؛1ا Douglas’s move away 0س antliropological approaches toward

the theological ones exliibited in her books. In the Wilderness (1993; rev. ed., London:Oxford University Press, 2001); Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999); and 's Teat's: The Priestly Work oض«م f Reconciliation ( 0خ : Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2004). For ail extended critique of tiiese works, see T.M. Lemos, ‘TheUniversal and the 1 ه'11م ; Mary Douglas and the Politics 0 fI111 purity’,./jR 89.2 (2009),

pp. 236-51. The fact that Douglas calls the analysis found in her 1966 book a ‘majormistake’ should 110t, I believe, prejudice one unduly against that analysis, considering theinfluence that PurityandDangerlias had and the fact tliat Douglas’وmore recent work 011 tile Israelites departs so drastically nonnative inوه® the methods tliat have been seenرهthe discipline of anthropology for decades, as varied as that discipline is and has been.

6. otliers before Milgrom, too, have comiected purity/impurity to a life/death opposi-tion, but the tlieory best associated with Milgrom, who most developed it. One ®rlierdiscussion of note may be foundطAugust Dill11)11111 . Die BftcherExodus mid Leviticus (ed. Victor Ryssel; Leipzig: F. Hirzel, 3rd edn, 1897). While Milgrom is sometimesthought of as limiting his impurity-as-symbol-of-deatli explanation to p, this is in actualitynot borne out by Milgrom’s own words. For example, he wi'ites

عا

’ /آ

׳ ./ .· A Book / ٠

ه'/ حءح 'إ (Mimieapolis: Forfress Press, 2004): ‘111the Israelite liiind, blood wastile chief symbol of 1

ن

. .. Thus it was tiiat Israel—alone among tile peoples—restrictedimpurity solely to tliose physical conditions involving tile loss of vaginal blood and

»®en , the forces oflife, and to the coqise and to scale disease, wliich visually manifestedthe approach 0 ' deatli’ (p. 123). Virtually the exact saille statements are found 111M t ’ t k hi A h Bibl t L i i 1 16 4 T


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Joiirnalfor the Study ofthe Old Testament 37.3 (2013)270

towards this particular animal that was the primary impetus for therequirement that animals must chew tlicir cud to be considered clean. Inthis way, Milgrom connects prohibited animals with death. He 1'urtlicrhirhs the dietary laws to his life/death opposition by arguing that dieselaws are meant to 'teach die Israelite reverence for life by ...reducing hischoice o f flesh to a ط animals'.'''

What o fth e other sources o f defilement? Douglas sees the proposed purity system as symbolizing the social body by assigning impurity to the physical one. Hence, purity rules centering on the body's cirlranccs and

exits relate to social boundaries and not merely physical ones. Yet,Milgrom A approach, as we saw, is very different. According to him and

various others before and after him, the' sources o f impurity all relate todeath. In the case of some impurities, tliis relationship is obvious. Forexample, one ofthe major sources ofimpurity is tliat brought on by con-tact with an actual corpse. Another major source is skin disease, which is

explicitly associated with death ill Num. 12.12. There. Yahweh punishesMiriam for criticizing Moses by striking he rw ith skin disease, and Aaron

pleads with Yahweh, saying, 'Do not let her be like one stillborn, whose

flesh is half consumed when ft comes out o f its mother's w om b'.11

Connecting the o ther sourecs o f defilement with death requires a bit morecreativity. According to Milgrom, abnormal genital discharges in men or

women defile because, like skin disease or corpses, they 'symbolize theforces of death '.'1Milgrom, however, is not as explicit as one would likeabout how this is so, leaving one to surmise that it is because thesedischarges interfere with tire body’s reproductive system, and thus withits ability to produce life. Milgrom connects menstruation with death in a

similar fashion. Menstruation defiles because blood represents the 'life

force' and its loss 'represents death'.'1One also surmises that urenstrua-tion defiles because a woman's blood fiow marks the time where she is

unable to conceive, and is thus in opposition to her ability to produce life,though Milgrom does not state this explicitly. Certainly, Milgrom is clearin rejecting Douglas's rationale for such impurities, which is that adischarging body lacks wholeness, and that 'the idea ol' liolliress was

10. ^lilgrnin, Leviticus 1-16, p. 735.

11. Biblical translations are 0س tire N R SV , unless otiierwise note !, though I substihite‘impure’ and ‘impurity’ fortheNRSV’s ‘urrclean’ aird ‘uncleanness’ irrfranslatiirg forms ofth H b t d d ti t t t ‘¥ h h’ th ti ‘L d ’


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given an external, physical expression in the wholeness cITbe bcdy seen

as a perfect container '.14As Alllgi'cur summarily states: ■physical perfec-tion is required only for saerifiees and priests ', not for lay Israelites.15

But what of seminal emissions and ehildbirdr, whieh also defile?Despite the het that semen is a necessary part o f conception, Alllgi'cur

connects it with deatlr by stating that it, like blood, is a h l'c force, and thatits loss, too, symbolizes death.10' Childbirth, tliough it is obviously the

beginning o f life, defiles because ofthe loss 01' blood and lochial fluids,which symbolizes deatli. And what of human waste, which varions

biblical texts treat as defiling? ^'lllgrcm hr fact do^uplays the defilingnature ofhu man waste, presumably because the Priestly, or p, texts■5of

Leviticus and Numbers do not seem to consider it an Impurity. He states:'Hum an feces were... not considered impure (despite Deut. 23.10-12: andEzek. 4.12)2* Why, wonders Dillmann, does uot fee Bible label humanfeces impure...? The answer is clear. The elimination of waste hasnothing to do wife death; on fee contrary, it is essential to life. ٠ Thisseems an odd statement, however, in light ofthe fact that semen and.ildbirth, too, are essential to life.

^'lilgi'om's rationale for the sources of impurity, though it remains

fairly popular in some quarters, has been faulted for other reasons, aswell.20Howard Eilberg-Schwartz has pointed out that although various

biblical texts do state that 'blood carries the essence of life (Gen. 9.4;

14. Duuglas, Purity . Danger , p. 53ح»أ . Mllgroni, Leviticusئ1 / ة /ه p. 766.16. In his comments on Leviticus for The Harper Collins Study Bible, Milgrom

writes: O ne can understand tirat seminal emissions, being a total loss oflife-giving fluids,were regarded as impure, but what of the emission in conjugal union, the act of pro-creation? Obviously, the priestly legists were aware of flie fact that it is Are rare seed thatresults hr procreation; mostly it is wasted’ (Harold w. Atiridge etal. [eds.j, The Harper Collins Study Bible [San Francisco: HarperCollms, 2006], p. 173).

17. Throughout this shidy, I will capitalize the word ‘Priestly’ when it refers to thetexts biblical source critics have attributed to the Priestly author, or P; I will leave tireword lower-case when it merely refers to texts or matters related to Israelite priests moregenerally,

18. 1 would add to fliese 2 Kgs 10,27 and probably Zech. 3.3-5; these texts will be

discussed at a later point.19. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p. 767.20 F f l iti 01’ Mil ’ i th di t l H t


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Lev. 17.11-14; Deut. 12.23)', ‘...only [the loss وه some kinds ofbloodare contaniinating'.؟ ' Richard Whitekettle similarly states:

Note that tire Levitical interest 111 blood was limited to vaginal discharges. Numerous situations in which there is potentially fatal bleeding, ة aswoimds or وس 111 the workplace, are not the subject of legislativestrictures. If there is no concern with an ‘aura of death’ ill many situations inwhich it would seem appropriate (e.g., a woodchopper whose hand has beencut off), it could not have been a concern 111 more inappropriate situations(N.B., 110 «Oman has ever menstruated to death). ־

Eilberg-Schwartz points 10Stil other ‘anomalies that stubbornly resist

|h'lilgrom 's| symbolic 1 ،وهه ". among them the t'aet that semen is

less polluting than menstrual blood and that the 1'oriiier ‘is contaminatingeven during intercourse, die very aet o f procreation '.23 ‘Furthermore', he

writes, the priests do not proscribe sexual relations during pregiianeyeven though there is no chance of eoiieeption. And if life and deathsymbolism totally controls the distinetions among the body fluids, why is

the blood of birth impure, when it eould be a sign par excellenee ofreproductive success?’24

These are valid questions indeed, but they do not in 1'aet lead Eilberg-

Schwartz to reject Mllgroiu's schema out of hand. On ى1 contrary, hefeels that the ‘analysis which treats body emissions as symbolic of lifeand death has a great deal to recommend it ’ . Eilberg-Schwartz therefore

deals with the anomalies just listed by introducing another criterion thatworks in conjunction with the life/death dichotomy—uncontrollability.

21. Hnward Eilb»g-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism . An Anthropology o f Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 179.

22. Richard Whitekettle, ‘Levitical Thought and tile Female Reproductive Cycle:Womb®, Well springs, and the Primeval World’, IT 46 (1996), pp. 379-91 (377).

23. Eilbeg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism, pp. 183-86.24. Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism, p. 186,25. Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism, p. 184. It is wortir noting tiiat, hr

anotlier work, Eilberg-Schwartz critiques the tendency to systematize Judaism. He writes:‘In relying on the idea of cultural contradictions, 1 depart from the general tendency to1 of Judaism as “a system” or series of systems, a lnetaphor tliat implicitly and oftenض

explicitly guides research on Judaism. This metaphor induces interpreters to produce acoherence tliat does not always exist; the result is that one impulse of the culture is

selected as exemplary at the expense ofthe others’ (‘The Problem ofthe Body for thePeople of tire Book’, in Timothy K. Beal and David M. Grum [eds.j, Reading Bibles, W i i B di Id i id h B k [L d R tl d 1997] 34 55 [34]) Y t


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٦٦١̂ [ i s . ،ت more controllable a 1 1 is, the less defiling it is. This, in his

view, explains why semen is less defiling than menstrual blood, becauseone has greater control over the emission ofthc former. It also accounts

for why urine, saliva, and mucus do not contaminate—because they arecoatiOllablc—aad why non-seminal discharges are so defiling— because

they are not.20'Though the proposal of Eilberg-Schwartz has won some acceptance

among scholars, it, too, has been critiqued. As Meir Malul points out:"Eilberg-Schwartz stresses the idea ofbein g able to control one 's bodily

discharges... This, however, does not seem to explain the whole pic-ture.’ He gives the examples of nocturnal emissions ol'seumu. which,

despite being uncontrollable, are not more defiling than regular seminalemissions, and of emissions of other bodily fluids such as sweat andvomit, which are almost always uncontrollable, but are considgfeddefiling.28 One could add to this list blood flowing ٦٦


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W right’s work 0!r impurity is both insightful and important. As with

the other explanations discussed, however, one could raise variousquestions in response to his proposal. First. W righ t's explanation seemsnot to make sense of the duration of impurity assigned to different polhiRtirts. For example, why is childbirtli more polluting than corpses? Is birth more contrary to Aahweh's nature than death? Smilarly, why iseating certain foods defiling rather than the act of consumption in gen-

eral? Another issue with Wright’s proposal is that Robert Parker makes acomparable argument for ancient Greece, despite the fact that in Greece

divine beings were seen as being sexual.31 Parker's reasoning, in light ofthe latter point, seems 'oi'cccl to me, and would be forced, as well, were it

applied to ancient Mesopotamia, where gods at times also engaged insexual acts and could even be killed. The explanations proffered byParker aud Wright see ritual practices as secondary to theological ideas;that is, purity conceptions derive 1'roin certain conceptions o f deities. Aseven Milgrom concedes, the sources o f impurity in Mesopotamia in manycases parallel those o f ancient Israel. Thus, ouc cannot help but wonderhow Israelite theological ideas, which—at least according to biblicaltexts—see the deity as immortal and خسة-آ.132 could produce pru'ity

conceptions in which the same bodily events are seen as elcfiliug as wasthe case in a culture area, Mesopotamia, whose theology // / allow fordivine death and copulation.’’’

Despite the potency o f criticisms sucfi as these, the scholarship that hasmost threatened to derail the pro cct ol' fiiidiug one underlying rationalef'or Israelite purity rituals has done so almost by accident. I rA'crto recentscholarly discussions ofthe issue of'm ora l iirrpurity'. Beginning in ه 1980s—or, if one counts the work of Adolph Bficlficr and David Zvi

Hoffman, many decades earlier—scholars began to notice that the wayacademic work on Israelite conceptions of impurity described theseconceptions failed to account for the manncrin which some bibhcal texts

31. Robert Parker, Kliasma: Purification and Pollution in Early Greek Religion (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1983).

32. Of eourse, there is a fair amount of evidenee that some Israelites did see Yalrwehas having a eonsort. See, among other works, Jndith M. Hadley, The Cult ofAsherah in

AncientIsraelandJudah:EvidenceforaHebrewGoddess(Can\b1idge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 2000), and William Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology’ and Folk R li i i A i I l (G d R id E d 2005)


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talk about impurity.34 ؛¥ €ة-11ل discusses various sources o f defile-

٥^١١ !, most of which are temporary, and prescribes different ritual procedures for purifying oneself 1'1'oin each of tliese defilements. ThePriestly texts do not attribute to these impurities sinfulness or transgres-sion. One should in fact be I'ruitl'ul ajid multiply, but one must deal with

the fluids associated with one 's fecundity in the manner outlined by thesetexts. Leviticus 15.16-18 reads: T fa man has an emission of semen, hewill bathe his whole body in water, and be iiupurc until the evening.Everything made of cloth or of skin on which the semen falls will bewashed with water, and be impure until the evening. 11'

د

man has sex witha woman and has an emission of semen, both of them will bathe with

water, and be impure until the evening.' This text is straightforward,technical, and not in any explicit fashion concerned with morality, and itis typleal ofthe ritual laws in this section ofLeviticiis. Y

ت

. one has onlyto look to the Holiness Code in Lcvltieus 17-26 to find different con-ceptions of impurity. For example, Lev. 18.19-25 reads:

¥ou shall not approaeh a woinan to uncover her nakedness while sire is in hermenstrual mipurity. ¥or; shall not have serial intercorrrse35 witlr yourklnsnian’s ث؛ه and defile yourself with her. You shall not give any of your

offspring to pass them over as a Wiofet'-offering3 and thereby profane thename pi your God—I am Yahweh... Do not defile yourselves hr any oftlreseways, for by all oftlrese practices tire nations I am casting out before you havedefiled tiremselves. Thus the land became defiled, and I visited its iniquityupon it, and tire land vomited out its inhabitants.37

Prcvlcusly . when scholars addressed the very different impurity languageofthe Holiness Code, they saw it as being a metaphorical, secondaryusage ofthe normative Priestly language ofimpurity that is exemplified

by the earlier chapters ofL eviticus. Seeing the m atter differently, TikvaFrymer-Kensky suggests ur an article entitled 'Pollution, Purification, and

Purgation in Biblical Israel' that

34. See Adolph Büchler, Studies in Sin cmdAtonement in the Rabbinic Literature o f the First Centnty (London: ©xford University Press, 1928), and David Zvi Hoffnramr,

Das Buell Leviticus (Berlhr: M. Poppelauer, 1905-1906).

35. As Milgrom writes, the plirase is literally ‘You shall not use your lying for seed(semen)’ or ‘You shall not use your penis for sex’ (Leviticus 17-22: A New Translation

i h I d i d C [AB 3A N Y k D bl d 2000] 1550)


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Biblical Israel had two separate sets of what anthropologists would consider‘pollution beliefs’: a set discussed extensively as pollutions 111 the ?riestlylaws...and a set of beliefs that we niight tenn ‘danger beliefs’. The deeds that

involve these danger beliefs dille!· 1 1ل111ل11إ ·from tile deeds that result illritual impurily. Tliere is a clear implication ofwrong-doing, for the individualhas placed himself in danger by doing something that he and the people have been expressly forbidden to do; the danger is seen as a divine sanction for thedeeds.^

Frymer-Kensky also points otfi that while the rilual pollubons last a set

period oftim e and can be cleansed by ritual Ul ;aus. what she ealls "danger pollutions’ last indefinitely, and eaititol be ritually ameliorated, Also,

while many l'itual pollutions are contagious—for example, someonesuffering from skin disease or venereal disease can make someone elsedefiled for a day through touching th mt—daug ;r pollutions are not

contagious in this way. As she puts it, "One does not share the danger o f

an adulterer or of someone who has eaten blood by touching h im ... Thereis, however, an ultimate danger to fire people, for if too mauy individualscommit these deeds, then the whole society might be considered pollutedand might thus be in langer 01'a collective catastrophe. 39 Lcvitieus 18

threatens just such a ظ0ح against the Israelites if they engage in

certain behaviors, and asse'1'ts that the "vomhmg out' ofthe previousinhabitants ofth e land was due to such mt'ractions

Like Frymer-Kensky, David Wright also sees two major types of

impurities in the biblical a ^ u s ; these he calls "tolerated impurities' and"prohibited impurities .١٠Temporary impurities like those deriving f'rom

sexual contact, disease, and οοφβεβ, as well as those deriving 1'roincertain types of sacrifices, all of which may be cleansed through ritualmeans, are classified by Wright as tolerated impurities. This eatygory

generally corresponds with what Ftymer-Kensky calls ritual pollutions.W righ t's category o f prohibited impurities, however, does not overlap asneatly whir F^ urcr-Kcusky's Imrgcr belief's. For example, Wright subdi-

vides prohibited impurities into two classes, those that are intentional,

38. Tikva Fiymer-Kensky, ‘Pollution, Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel’,in Carol L. Meyers and Michael ©’Connor (eds.). The Word ofthe Lord Shall Go Forth:

Essays


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such as adultery, incest, sacrificing one’s child, and purposefully defiling

sacred items, and those that are unintentional, for example, the case ofsomeone who becomes defiled and only realizes it after the period of

purification has passed, or the case o fa Nazirite, who is prohibited fi־om becoming corpse-contaminated, coming 1 0 a ecrpse accidentally.41

While Wright attempts to achieve a greater degree o f precision 1 Frymer-Kensky, both his teriniiietogy and that o f Frymer-Kensky have

been critiqued by Jonathan Klawans in his influential reels / ;/?///'ر ’and Sin in Ancient Judaism for being cumbersome and imprecise. Klawansobjects particularly to W righ t's use o f the terms 'to lera ted ' and ■permit-ted' to refer to elefileuieuts resulting from 'activities drat are obligatory,

including procreation and buria l'.42 Klawans instead suggests that theterms 'ritual impurity' and 'moral impurity' be used. According to his

definition, ritual impurity is contracted primarily through natural andunavoidable processes such as menstruation, ejaculation, and ^uldb irth .and may be cleansed through rites o f purification. It is a temporary statethat is not connected with uiorality. Moral impurity. however, is brought

about by 'idolatry, murder, and sexual sins', canuot be ritually cleansed,and lead s to the defileuieut o f the land and the vomiting out o f its

inhabitants. Klawans contends, moreover, dim Jacob Neusner and othersare wrong in seeing this impurity as being metaphorical and secondary toritual impurity. Moral impurity, he argues, is found in texts both early and

late.43He also claims tha tdre division between moral impurity and ritualimpurity is one that can encompass essentially all ofth e biblical texts thatuse any type 0l'defil m1eut language.

I say ‘essentially all' because Klawans concedes that the dietary lawsfit poorly into his schema. This is because eating impure foods is not ¡ust

defiling, but prohibited, and unlike other prohibited behaviors, the

41. Wright, ‘The Speetrrini efTriestly Defilement’, pp. 1 6 .ئ 2-842. . ؛ى 1لا Klawans, Impurity mid Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2000), p. 17.43. Klawans, Impurity andSin, pp. 10-12,32-33. See also Jacob Neusner, The Idea o f

Purity in Ancient Judaism (Leiden; Ë.J. Brill, 1973). Thomas Kazen, however, critiquesKlawans’s understanding of metaphor and his distinction between ‘ritual hiipurity’ and

‘moral impurity’ more generally. See Thomas Kazen, Jesus : ITalakhahم/ ׳« Was Jesus Indifferent ٠ Impurity? (ConBNT, 38; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2002),

204 207 d ‘Di t d Di t B d d M lit i Bibli l T it L ’ i


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Joiirnalfor the Study ofthe Old Testament 37.3 (2013)7-7*

defilement caused by eating a forbidden food or even touching the corpse

of a forbidden animal is ritually, rather than morally, defiling. That is,

unlike the defilement brought about by murder or adultery, the defilementcaused by touehing 0آ


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Interestingly, Klawans recognizes that in drawing a distinetion between

ritual and moral defilement, he is problematizing the venture of finding asingle symbolic system that can explain all o f the biblical purity laws. Hecites in particular the ideas © ' Douglas and Wright, the latter of whomstatesthat 'all the defilement-creating conditions in the priestly legislationare o f the same conceptual I'amily and system '.48While 1 certainly agreewitlr Klawans that his proposals, and the very similar ¡rr©p©s1ls ofFrymer-Kensky and Wright, only highlight fire inadequacy ofattem ptingto fit all of the Hebrew B ible 's purity constructions ntto one system, hehimself could be seen as going in the same direction by attempting to

t'orcc the great variety of impurity constructions found in the biblical

corpus into only two rigidly defined categories.This problem is seemingly also inherent in ffiristiirc Hayes's proposal

that one add to Klawans’s categories of defilement 'genealogical impu-rity ', which she finds ط Ezra-Nehemiah,49and perhaps also in the recentwork ofEve Levavi Feinstein. Feinstein, drawing on the work ofKazen ,has been critical of Klawans's conception of 'moral impurity' while

putting 'ortli instead a different category of defilement she calls 'sexual pollution' that overlaps with some of what Klawans would group undvr

the rubric © 'moral im purity '. Feinstein 's proposal is far more limited inscope than that o f Klawans, but does argue that this type © 'impurity is'كصه irr a variety of texts throughout the biblical c©rpus. She definessexual pollution as toe pollution arising 'roin ' my sexual act that departedfrom toe ideal ©I'lll'etong marital fidelity o fa female to a male' and cliar-acterizes this type o f pollution as generally affecting only women.51

Feinstein sees this pollution at work irr Genesis 34; Num. 5.12-31; f)eut.24.1-4, and in various passages in Ezekiel. It is also present in Leviticns

18, which presents 'striking departures' from the other texts in itsc©nst1ncti©n of sexual pollution defiling men rather than women, and in

Ezra 9, tlr©uglr that text presents a new type ofsexual pollution, accordingto Feinstein.51Although it is surprising that Feinstein does not explicate

48. Wright, ‘Spectrum’, p. 165.49. Christine Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and

Conversion from the Bible ٠

the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).50. Evehevavi Feinstein, ‘ Sexual Pollution in tire Hebrew Bible: ANew Perspective’,

111 S. Tamar — · - and Wonil Him (eds. ), Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology o f f/íeífeérew,SíWe(LHBOTS,465;NewYork:T&TClarkIntemational,2010),pp.ll4-45


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٦٠١١!< ritual purity and 'sexual pollution' relate te one another or

how 'sexual pollution' might overlap with conceptions of shame, what ismore im portantfor our purposes is that even a proposal as comparativelylimited as that of Feinstein, where only a few passages are addressed,arguably 'alls short in being able to encapsulate the purity language found

in those texts without major qualifications. Within this limited category of pollution, there are still 'strik ing departures' and new types. Feinsteinstates further that sexual pollution is a 'non-technical' category whose

particular usage depends on the 'rhetorical needs’ o f passages. One mightask,

٠١

® , whether٠٢

not it makes sense to group the particular construe-

tious of impurity found in these texts under a new label, rather than

exploring instead how conceptions of impurity, gender, and shameintersect in each o f these passages and how individual texts and autlrorsdraw upon and manipulate these conceptions. Is this intersection not whatleads to a certain similarity of thought in these texts, rather tiran thesimilarity arising from the texts ' ^inp lil'y ing a bounded category ofthought that one might term 'sexual pollution’?

It is, I think, by now elea rthat scholars' attempts to schematize Israel-

it : purity construetions have raised and continue to raise many questions.

One may identify yet further trends ill this scholarship. A prime exampleis that many ofth e proposals for understanding Israelite purity construe-

tions demonstrate an internst in symbolism on the part o f scholars. This isobvious in the case o f Douglas, but also in the case oltylilgrom. Wright,and others. If one penetrates inore deeply, however, one sees that a largenumber o fth e explanations ol'biblical impurity texts mak i the assump-

tion that rituals stem from a symbolic structure, aparticular theology, or adistinct worldview. Thus, beliefs are primaty and ritual practices are

secondary. For example, h'lilgi'om argues that the Priestly regard for lifeled substances and events associated with death to be classified as impure.Once classified as such, certain ritual praetiecs followed. This assumption

ofth e primacy o f symbolism or o f beliefs in general is at odds with theapproaches and arguments most influential in contemporary ritual studies.I refer te the approaches of Catherine Dell and others who, influenced

very much by Foucault and Bourdieu, share a similar outlook that the body and mind are not separate entities, and who see the eoueomitaut

ritual/bclicfdichotomy arising from the body/mind divide, too, as false.־؟

52 S ti l l C th i B ll Ri l Th // )//' (N Y k O f d


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None of the major works on impurity surveyed above seem to have

accounted fo rth is major shift having occurred in ritual studies.53The shiftis not overly recent, ft must be said—already it began in the 1970s, andwas well established by the late '90s. Even those scholars who are notvery interested in symbolism, for example, Christine flaycs. have not

displayed the focus on ritual or pravis that one might expect.This is not to state, let me make quite clear, that various biblical

scholars have not done work on ritual that is in conversation with currenttrends in ritual studies. Certainly, such work has been done.54 But the

most influential works on Israelite purity have not been steeped incontemporary ritual studies. Often, rcsearch on Israelite sacrifice has been

rite1̂-l'oeus xl. in contrast to research on Israeli!© purity, which has beensymbolism-focused or belief-focused, as if purity were at base an idea rallier than a set ofpraetices. when in I'act biblical texts discuss purityrituals as much as they do purity conceptions. One exception to thistendency has been the work of Saul M. Olyan, particularly ¡(¡¡es and

Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations a/('¡¡I¡, which highlights

purity rituals and recognizes that purity and impurity are, in essence, bases of inelusiou and exclusion 1'or ntualized environments. Olyan

writes: contrast between what is clean and what is unclean detennines who orwhat gains admission to tire sanctuary. It detennines who, among tiróse whoare privileged, may have contact with holy items or foods... All persons whoare classed as clean may enter holy precincts... In confrast, all persons andtilings classed as rmclean are baimed from the sanctuary sphere, from contactwith holy items, aird from quasi-cultic rites requiring purity.55

Olyan examines in detail how cuhic and other social hierarchies are both

created and maintained by purity coirstructioirs. in contrast to Klawans,wlro maintains, in my view unconvincingly, that biblical purity laws

are not fuirdanrcntally concerned with promoting social hierarchies.51؟

53. The work ofKazen is a noteworthy exception.54. See, for example, Olyan, Rites and Rank, William K. Gilders, Blood Ritual in the

Hebrew Bible: Meaning mid Power (Baltimore: The Jolms Hopkins University Press,2004); James w. Watts, Ritual and Rhetoric


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282 Journal fo r the Study ofthe Old Testament 37.3 (2013)

Although Olyan's approach Is more ٥ line with what has become the

norm in ritual studies, his scholarship has not garnered the level ofattention as has the wod ofKlaw ans and others whose primary focus has bccu in grouping and systematizing conceptions o f purity rather thau inexamining wha tpurhy constructions do, lrow they functioned in Israelite

culture and society to establish and reinforce lines between social groups,as well as to shape give order to the lives o f Israelites.٢

Anotlier tendency of scholarship on Israelite impurity is that manyseholars have made the assumption that the authors o fp , ifn ot explicit in

providing explanations f'or purity customs, were nonetlreless systematic intheirpresentation ofimpurity rules. Certainly, the p writers are systematic

in the sense that tlrey delineate in one collection a wide variety ofpru'itylaws. This was clearly a conscious process on the part o fp , which dil'l'cr-entiates these writers’ treatment ofimpurity from that 01'. for example, thewriters ofthe books 01' Kiugs. who merely refer to impurity customs

offhandedly if they relate to the larger narrati ve they are presenting andare not concerned with defilement as such. P s process o f compilation is

not equivalent, however, to inventing a purity system out of whole cloth

As stated above, purity concerns are attested irr a wide range 01' biblical

sources. Virtually all ofthe major sources 01' impurity irr p are also seenas defiling in other biblical texts. 'I'lris was tire case with seminal impu-

rity. menstnral impurity, corpse impurity, and so forth.58p may have beenorganizing and delineating, and in all likelihood expanding, but what the

p writers were building upon were purity conceptions and practicesst irrin gly already widespread in their own culture. It does not make goodsense, then, to speak ofthe symbolic system underlying P 's purity collec-

tion in Lcr iticu 1 , as if p had invented these customs surroundingق-إ

impurity.The purpose oftlris review of scholarship has been to demonstrate that

various issues are inherent in tire most important proposals put forth forunderstanding Israelite purity constructions. While it is in the nature of

37. The desire ١٠find the conceptual origins ؛'خ'ل purity ideas seems in someways to be tied more to contemporary theological concerns tiran to a desire to understandIsraelite crrlture and society. For more on filis issue, see Lemos, ‘The Universal and theParticular’

58. For example, 1 §am. 21.2-10 sees sexual intercourse as defiling; 2 Sam. 11.4refers to menstrual impurity; 2 Sam 3.29 refers to someone witir an abnonnal genitaldi h 2 K 23 14 l l h b d fili G 7 2 8 8 20 d J d


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LEMOS Where There Is Dirt, Is There System '/

scholarship to attempt to 1 تاآ1ه . and it is incumbent upon scholars to

present explanations that can uiulre sense ofth e material they study, it ismy position that the continuing search for a single rationale, or cecn two

or three' rationales, underlying all of the biblical texts that speak ofimpurity has in some ways distorted rather than enhanced our understand-

ing of Israelite culture and religion. This tendency has also, as 1 willdemonstrate below, glossed over major inconsistencies among differenttexts’ صكهآ$سطة o f purity while also placing undue emphasis uponLcvitieus 11-1؟ It is my contention that all o f this has resulted in anobscured understanding of biblical purity constmctions

3. Incnnsistencies amnng the Purity Ideas of I3ifferent Biblical Texts

Much of the scholarship on Israelite impurity customs has shared a propensity to smooth over the inconsistencies between texts or to treatthe construetions of Priestly texts as paradigmatic md somehow morelegitimate than the purity constructions of non-Priestly texts. 1suggesthere that it is on the contrary not only necessary but quite ['ن< to take

seriously the dil'I'crciiccs between texts. One reason that it is important to

account 'or these inconsistencies is because o f scholars' continuous use ofthe word system ’ to describe the eoiistellatioii of purity ideas and prac-

tices in the Hebrew Bible and o fth e frequent attempts toward systema-tization outlined above. What does the word 'system ' mean? Definitionsofth is term emphasize orgamzat ou. coherence, and non-contradiction.59

Because ofthis, it is appropriate to turn now to some ofthe points of

contradiction between texts. If the io n s is te n c ie s are significant, as I believe they are, this would problematize tire use cl'tire word 'system ' to

describe biblical purity constructions, as well as caution one againstattempting to uncover a system underlying these eonstruetioiis by finding

59. Definitiun 1 a. in the Oxford English Dictionary states that a ‘sy steni’ is: ‘A set orassemblage of things connected, associated, or interdependent, so as to form a complexunity: a whole composed of parts hr orderly arrangement according to some scheme or

plan’ (http://www.oed.com.proxy2.lib.11wo.ca:2048/view/Entry/196665?redirectedFrom= system#eid). The New Encyclopedia o f Philosophy states that a ‘system’ comprises awhole ‘not contradicting itself but cohesive’ (j. GrootenandG. .10 steenbergen et al.,New

Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy [trails., ed., and rev. Edmond van den Bossche; New ¥ork:Philosophical Library, 1972], p. 425. William L. Reese, hi the Dictionary ofPhilosophy

d R li i E d W Th h (N J H iti P 1980]

http://www.oed.com.proxy2.lib.11wo.ca:2048/view/Entry/196665?redirectedFrom=http://www.oed.com.proxy2.lib.11wo.ca:2048/view/Entry/196665?redirectedFrom=


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one rationale, or even two o r more overarching rationales, by which they

coa all be explained. The hollowing examples suggest that there is notone purity 'system ' in the Hebrew Bible, but rather many different sets of

purity constructions.Ezra-Nehemiah is a good starting point because it has created prob-

lems for Klawans and others. 1 referred above to Christine Hayes's proposed category o f 'geirealogical impurity ', a category she generates because she believes Klawans’s category ofuio ra l impurity to be inade-quate for describing the impurity in Ezra-Nehemiah.0 Aeeordiug to

Klawans, moral impurity results from certain grave sins, such as idolatry٠٢ adultery, that is, from immoral behaviors. !>٦Ezra-Nehemiah, inter-

marriage with Gentiles is strongly condemned. Klawans states drat this is because '־inK'cnrarriage will lead to sin’.1 While it is true that Neh. 13.26says as much, orre finds a different rationale I'or prohibiting marriage withforeigners in Ezra 9.1-2, which characterizes foe mixing o fth e holy

seed’ of Israel with the peoples of foe lairds as a sacrilege (mcfal ).Though the word tôcëbôt, or 'abominations’- a te r m that Klawans arguesis used ofm oral impurity—is found in Ezra 9.1 ,the reference to the 'holyseed' of Israel and to intermarriage as a sacrilege makes clear that the

writers of Ezra-Nehemiah were concerned not only wifo Israel’s behavior, but wifo the sanctity o f its very bloodlines, a sanctity main-tained onty by retraining free of contamination by the seed of Gentiles.(Ehis becomes even clearer when ouc considers tlrat the term 'seed' IS

used for semen in various biblical texts.) Tims, foe way that Ezra- Nehem iah constructs sexual immorality is unlike dial of any otlrcrbibli-

cal text— but not even Ezra-Nehem iah is internally consistent.62 Bofo

Klawans and Hayes strongly insist that ritual impurity is never attributed

to Gentiles in the biblical corpus. Yet. Nehemiah 13 calls tlris assertioninto question.* The text iirt'oi'ins us that Nehem iah grew extremely angry

60. Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities, particularly p. 7.61. Klawans, Impurity and Sin, p. 45.62. Saul M. Olyan’s article, ‘Purity Ideology as a Pool to Reconstitute the

Comm unity’,2004 )35 / ),pp .1-16,where he differentiates between various sources inEzra-Nehemiah and the imparity ideas found in each, is very much relevant here.

63. The book of Juditir, too, implies that Gentiles transmit impurity. As Jdt. 12.5-9

states, every night Juditir would leave Holofemes’s camp to pray, brrt before praying,would batiré herself. Verse 9 says: ‘Then she returned purified (,kathara)... ’ From what

ld J dith h b d fil d d il b i if t th G til H l f ’


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LEMOS Where There Is Dirt, Is There System '/

upon hearing that Tobiah the A aunomte had been given a chamber in the

courts of the Tempie and that after he had had Tobiah's belongingsthrown out of the room, the space was ritually cleansed. According to

Klawans, moral impurity cannot be purged by ritual means, and so theonly way to make sense o f this text is if its writers // / attribute to

Gentiles ritual impurity. The importance o f all ofth is for our purposes isthat one huds in Ezra-Nehemiah a multi-faceted and perhaps even iucon-sistent usage ofim purity language that, like the impurity language used inthe dietary laws, is unique and only with grcat elilf ־ cult> grouped together

with the impurity constructions ofotlrer biblical texts.A second area that has presented problems for some scholars is the

issue o f whether ٠٢ not fccal matter was considered defiling in ancientIsrael. We saw above that Mdgrom denies that this was so, as do Frymer-Kensky, Malul, and others.04 Yet, in Deut. 23.12-14, the text states thatIsraelites must go outside the camp to relieve themselves, because thecamp is ^holy , and in 2 Kgs 10.27, Jehu and his followers destroy thetemple 01' Baal and make it into a latrine, presumably in order to polluteit. Even more strikingly, hr Ezek. 4.12-15,Yahw eh commands Ezekiel to

bake a barlcy-cakc on human dung as a sign-act representing that the

Israelites will eat their bread, impure, among the nations. Ezekiel, whowas in fact an Israelite priest, then protests, stating, 'Lord Yahwch! I have

never defiled myself; from my youth up to now I have never eateu whatdied by itse lf or was tom apart by animals, nor has "carrion-ficsh" comeinto my moutlr.' These verses make clear that Ezekiel, himself a priest,considered human waste defiling. Why Leviticus and Numbers do not

seem to consider this substance elefiliirg is difficult to say, but one canstate with certainty that at least some people in priestly circles did and

that their viewpoint was shared by those in deuteronomistic circles."٩Another problematic area lies in the particular ways different texts

gender defilement.00' Eilberg-Schwartz and others have sought to problem-atize the longer period o f defilement prescribed by Lcr iticus 15 for

seems to be the only plausible reason for her ritual bathing. Jdt. 9 is also rife withambiguous pollution language that might refer to Gentiles eonveying impurity.

64. See ‘Pollution, Purification, and Purgation’, p. 401; Malul,

Knowledge, Control, and Sex, p. 380; among ofiiers, Eilberg-Schwartz is a bit mom speci-fic and says ‘Israelite priests do not list excrement as a source of contamination’ (Tile S i J d i 189)


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menstmation versus seminal emissions. However, when one considers the

fact that ejaculation normally takes place in under thirty seconds and thatmenstruation lasts days, it is in my opinion difficult to see Leviticus

ذ

as

somehow privileging males, especially in light of ffie chiastic structuringofth e chapter and ofth e severity it assigns to male venereal impurity.'؟

However, ffie gender balance of Leviticus 15 is not shared by other textsthat refer to menstrual defilement. Interestingly, both Ezekiel andLamentations seem to regard menstruation as emblematic of severeimpurity, even though Leviticus 12-15 considers venereal and skindisease to be far worsc.'^ Ezekiel ffie I-Lililíes Code ol'Leviticris even

list having sex wiffi a menstruating woman among the most grave of

transgressions, with ffie latter stating ill Lev. 20.18 that those whoengaged in such an act would be cut ol'l'l'rom the people of Israel. Despite

this, not even in the Holiness Code and Ezekiel does one find agreementin ffie way defilement is gendered. We see hr Eeviticus 15, and even iunon-Priest!)’ texts such as 1 Sam. 21.2-10, that sex defiles males, as wellas ffie females they are having sex with through tlreir coming into contact

wiffi the semen, yet Ezekiel at various points describes illicit sex acts asdefiling only the woman.® While one might attempt to see Ezekiel's

construction of sexual defilement as being somehow peculiar to moralimpurity rather than peculiar to Ezekiel, the Holiness Code, which is also

extremely concerned with what Klawans calls 'moral impurity', clcuriysees illicit sex acts as defiling Irotlr the woman and the man.؟

It is also useful to examine intersections between what mairy scholarssee as ffie separate categories ©!'physical cleanliness, or what one might

call 'hygiene’, ritual purity, and moral purity in various biblical texts.Zechariah 3 serves asause l'ul example o fth e connection between purity

and materialist hygienic concerns that one sometimes finds in ffie HebrewBible. There, the prophet has a vision ofth e high priest loriinn standing

67. Tirzalr Meacham, ‘An Abbreviated Histoiy of the Develepnrent of tire JewishMenstrual Laws , in Rahel R. Wasserfall (ed.), Women and \Vater: Menstruation in

Jewish Life « Lawأ (Hanover, NH: Brandéis University/ University Rress 01' NewEngland, 1999), pp. 23-39 (26), makes a similar point about ٠٠longer duration of1 س '11 versus ejaculation.

68. See, e.g., Ezek. 36.16; Lam. 1.8.

69. See Ezek. 18.6, lb, 15; 22.11; 33.26.7b. See Lew 18.20,24-30; 20.21.71 L t k l ti ât I d t th t ‘h i ’ i d b t i l i l


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LEMOS Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? 287

flanked by the angel ofY ahweh and the angebe accuser. Verse 3 tells us

that Joshua was wearing ■filthy garments', hegctdtm sfpîtn. The adjectiveused for "filthy’

٠٢

"dirty' refers elsewhere to vomit (Isa. 28.8) Ol'hunianexcrement (2 Kgs 18.2?: Isa. 36.12), and the noun form ofth is root صئ to human waste in those very passages in D mt 'rono1uy (23.14) and

Ezekiel (4.12) that attribute Impur¡ t> to this substance. Perhaps even moreinteresting is that the verses that follow state that Josh ua's filth-covcrcdclothing should be replaced with ■festal apparel' and with a "cleanturban'. The word used here for clean is tàhôr, the very term signil'yingritual purity in so many biblical texts. One must ask, then, whether

٠٢

not

the author ol'Zcchariall truly recognized a distinction between "dirtiness'

and impurity, for certainly Joshua's clotlung would hall under bothcategories. It would be difficult indeed to argue that clothing covered inhuman feces was ever merely ritually defiling and not "dirty'. In a similarI'asluom tire Hebrew root h-r-r can designate both ritual purity and hygienic cleanliness. In Isa. 49.2 the root is used to describe polishing anarrow, but just three ehapte rs later, in Isa. 52.11, the same root is used tomandate ritual purity ("touch no impure thing... purify yourselves[,hibbem't ], you who carry the vessels ofYahweh'). A similar situation

obtains with the' roots z-k-'n and z-k-k. These roots generally refer tocleanliness in a hygienic or aesthetic sense, but an adjective derived I'roinfire latter root is used in Exod. 27.20; 30.34, and Lev. 24.2 to refer to

pure, as in unmixed, olive oil and frankincense to be used in ritual contexts. Relevant, too, is Ps. ?3.13. which states, Vainly, I have made־my heart clean {zikkîtî I'hcihl) and washed my hands in innocence'.7

Proverbs 20.9 even puts fire root z-k-'n in parallel eoirstruetion wiffi the

root t-h-r: "Wlro can say, ""I have made my heart cffian {zikkîtî libbî); I am

pure (.tâhartî) from my sin”?' Isaiah 1.16 similarly reads: "Wash your-selves; make yourselves ele'air (,htmakkû); remove the evil ofy ou r doings

I'rom before my eyes'. These verses reveal a fuzzy semantic boundary between hygienic eLanline:ss. moral cleanliness, and ritual purification.

The above passages also discuss washing in conjunction wiffi whatKlawans would call moral impurity. They are not tire only texts that

Klawans would classify as dealing wiffi moml impurity that speak ofiruril'ying oneself ¡'■

٦٦

©■ sin throughritual means. Another example is

Jer. 2.22-23, which reads: ""‘Though you wash y ou rsc lf\؟ itl1lye and usemuch soap, tire stain of your guilt is still before ٦٦٦٥”, says the Tord


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Yahweh. "How can you say, '1 am not defiled, 1 have not gone after the

Baals'?’’' Here, moral impurity is tied to idolatry, one oftirc three majorelasses o f sins leading to moral impurity, according to Klawans, but ritual

purification is also described. If this 1־؛، purification is only figurative,tiren must not the purported 'moral' inrpurityalso be figurative? (Klawans

has argued strenuously against moral impurity being merely figurative,metaphorical, or secondary in nature to ritual impurity.) I f the ritual

purification is a reflection o f real practices, then would this not demon-strate that at least some Israelites thought one could purify oneself from

sin by ritual means?73 O f course, Jerem iah's point is that this is notactually possible; sin cannot be thus cleansed. Nonetheless, Ezekiel 36

presents a similar situation. Klawans cites this latter text as one thatevidences moral impurity,74 but V . 25 speaks ol'Yalrweh sprinkling waterupon the people to cleanse them. Again, is ft plausible to see the moralimpurity׳ in this passage as non-metaphorical while maintaining that theritual purification is metaphorical, or while maintaining that moralimpur¡ ly׳ cannot be purged through

؛أ

tuai means? The writers ofthe Dead

Sea Scrolls saw impurity and sin as being clo$ fly related, and prescribedritual purification for sin.75 If they confused these categories, perhaps

some 01' tire Israelites who came before tireur had done the same. Or perhaps no such clear separation o f the categories o f ritual impurity,moral impurity, siu. and hygiene even existed in the minds o f Israelites,

or some Israelites, to begin with.All ofthe eases¡ ust described make it abundantly clear that there is not

one, but rather various sets of purity constructions in the Hebrew׳ Bible.

While there are o f course areas o f agreement between these, there are alsomany areas of disagreement and even areas o f internal inconsistency. In

my view, none of this should be surprising. It has been argued for sometime now that the desire for consistency, rather than being a universal

value, is instead a ha l l m a r k of modernism and o f Western intellectual

thought more generally?" Not even the writers of ?, who are the mosttechnical and the most explicitly concerned with purity, claim to be putting forth a consistent purity system or tell us why they think certarn

73. See alse Kazen, ‘Dirt and Disgust’, p وه. , saAEmoríons in Biblical Law, pp. 27-

29, fer a critique ef Klawans’s treatinent 1ه' tliis and etlier passages.74. Klawans, Impurity ه«Sin, p. 30.73 A Kl hi lf di S I i d Si ti l l Ch t 3


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LEMOS Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? 289

things are defiling. Why does one find different ideas about purity in

different biblieal texts? It is because rituals are by nature constantlysltil'ferg and. more often than not, localized. It also seems probable thatdifferent Israelites may have had differing perspectives. There is noreason to think that ideas about purity were any more static in ancient

Israel than were ideas about intermarriage, kingship, or the proper way toworship ¥ahw eh , all o f which scholars widely agree changed over feecourse o f Israe l's history, and iu some cases varied from region to region.

4. Conclusions and Avenues for Futu re Researeh

What, then, can one conclude about Israelite purity constructions? Whileone cannot know exactly how Israelites iu any one place and time con-

ceived ofpurity , some conjectures can be made utilizing the broad rangeof biblical texts that discuss iui purity. The most important conclusion towhich one can come, examining the biblical corpus as a whole, is thatmarking a distinction between purity and impurity was an important part

of life throughout ancient Israel·* There are references to such adistinction in a wide variety © 'biblical texts; these texts are ol'botli early

and late, priestly and non-priestly origins. Unlike what many scholarshave thought in the past, it was not just the Israelite priests who cared

about defilement, hi fact, it is perhaps more accurate to say that priestscared about defilement because Israelites in general cared about defile-ment. In other words, priests, like oilier Israelites, were in all likelihoodsocialized in such a maimer that they viewed certain bodily processes as

being impure. This would explain why many biblical texts seem non-technical in their use ofpurity language; the Israelites were perhaps less

reliant upon rules ٠٢ laws in canying out practices surrounding impuritythan many scholars assume.

Another broad conclusion that one may draw is that the Israelites werenot nearly so consumed by the question of why certain b() lily processesand substances were impure as modern seholars have been. It is note-worthy that tire writers ofLeviticus 11-1 قwere frustratiiigly sitent on the

reasons underlying the purity rules they present. Why do seminalemissions ٠٢ mimstruation defile? The text does not tell us. Why does the

former defile I'or one day and the latter I'or seven? Again, die text does notsay The Holiness Code is more forthcoming wife its explanations, but


26/31


that text is normally seen as the produet of a dil'l'ereut. though still

priestly, set ofw riters. And. though the writers ofth e Holiness Code were €ت o f approach 1 am proposing.

In the books of Ezekiel and " one finds fascinating cases

ofhow impurity language ،ة in response to toe trauma of conquestand exile at the hands ofthe Neo-Babylonians. These books' impurity

78. See Chapter 3 ef Kazen, Emotions in Biblical ¿«׳١٦. While Kazen’s treatment ofthis issue is strong 011 the whole, I do ظ1 that he underestimates the extent to whichW ^ t t li ti A d l ld b ti d


27/31


language has been seen as less precise and systematic than that of the

Priestly authors o f Leviticus, and has thus been treated far less ol'tcii byscholars. Yet, each ofthese books presents an interesting and potentiallyinstructive example ofh ow Israelite impurity constructions were shapedhr response to ccrtaiu historical events. More specifically, in Ezekiel and

Lamentations, impurity, shame, and othcrciuotious are all marshaled andinterwoven to convey tírese authors" traumatized responses to exile anddefeat.

In the book o f Ezekiel, one sees this particularly in chs. l b aird 23 o f

tire book, where Jerusalem is described as the adulterous wife o f Y a h ^ hIn these chapters, the word záncL "whore", is applied to Jerusalem more

than two dozen times, and one also finds the following ten ns repeatedlyused: tôcëbôt, "abominations'; zimâ, "lewdness"; cerwâ, "nakedness";krlimmâ,

٠

shame"; and various forms ofthe root t-m-3, ‘to be or becomedefiled". Ezekiel 23.28-30 reads: 'Lor drus says the lordYahw eh: ! willdeliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands ofthose from whom you turned in disgust; and they shall deal with you inhatred ... and leave you stark naked ( cërôm w cerwâ% and the nakedness ofyour whorings shall be exposed. Your lewdness and your ^Irorlngs

(w mmmâtëk wetaznûtayik) have brought this upon you, because youwhored o u rs e lf out to the nations, and defiled yourself witli then Idols.

رب

The combined and repeated use o fth e terms listed above woi'lss togetherin these chapters to express the overwhelming sense of disgust thatEzekiel feels,؟״ and wants the reader to feel, toward the transgressions ofthis allegorical woman, Jerusalem, and toward the defeated Israelites she

represents. Them is a primal nature to the emotions conveyed by this text,a feature that it shares with Lamentations, a book that responds to the

selfsame historical events.! amenlations, hl


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made the Judeans 'trash refuse'; 4.14 states that the people wander

the streets 'defiled with b lood '; 4.21 again speaks of nudity; and 5.1 o fherpâ, 'sham e'.81Although there is no partieular reason to think that theauthor 01' L^u mtat ons was a priest like the prophet Ezekiel was, onenonetlreless sees here a blending ofim purity language with othertypes of

language, tire purpose o f which is to articulate a eery deep sense o f dis-gust and humiliation. The fact that these Israelite writers, who very muchappear to have been suffering 1'rom what we would term 'traum a',1 drawupon impurity language to express their traumatized emotionality in my

view demonstrates the centrality ofim purity to Israelite culture. A senseol'uuirurity.1 and seemingly one centered very much in the body, was just

as present irr their ^y ch es as was a sense o f shame, rage (in the case o fEzekiel), and profound loss ( ه the case 01' Laiucntations). There is nosystematizing objective in these works and, in the case 01' f omentationsin particular, tire cult is not the primary 1'ocal point. Yet, the book still

repeatedly uses impurity language. 1 would argue that attempting to plaee:the impurity language in these texts into one particular category of

impurity misses the point, telling us far less about these texts and theirwriters than does examining how these writers were responding to the

traumas that bcfidl them and using the imagery and terminology of defilement to ١٨so.

What I suggest, then, is a move away from a synchronic approach inwhich one examines the biblical purity system ' to a more lustoricizctl

perspective assessing how different authors and different communitiesmade use of purity construetions. and also manipulated these construe-

tions in different contexts and as a response to different lustoriealsituations. While the question o f how biblical texts reflect actual social

practices is ath om y one, it is a question that eannot be sidestepped if oneis to make any attempt to reconstruct Israelite culture and society, pr even

.. Translations mineإ882. On the ;!لا of Ezekiel, see T.M. Lentos, ‘“They Have Become Women”:

Judean Diaspora and Tostcolonial Theories of Gender and Migration’, in Saul M. Olyati( yà .\SocialTheotyar 1dtheSfttdyofIsmeliteReligiorr:Essaysin Retrospect aidProspect (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), pp. 81-109, where I cite recent worksdiscussing Ezekiel and trauma. See also Ruth ?oser. Das Ezechielbuch «/

Trauma-

Literatur (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012).83. I draw here upon tile ideas of ?ietre Bourdieu regarding tile sense ofhonor, and

C tli i B ll’ l t d id f di f it l S B di O li f Th


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theological concerns. To put the matter simply, the type o f analysis thatseeks ever to schematize almost always sees ritual as secondary to belief

and the body as secondary to the mind. Yet, in assuming such simplisticdichotomies, we lim it ratlierthan expand our knowledge o flsraelite ritualand Israelite culture more broadly.


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مآورلم؛

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Dirt - Revisiting Biblical Purity