Ritual & Morality: The Ritual Purity System & its Place in Judaism

by Hyam Maccoby

The book explains clearly the ritual purity system of the Hebrew Bible. Maccoby focuses on the various human conditions (corpse impurity, menstruation, childbirth, sexual intercourse, and certain diseases), which are not sinful, but which disqualify Israelites from entering the Temple unless they have been purified. Various recent theories of the origin and meaning of the rules of ritual purity are discussed, and common misconceptions are corrected. New solutions are proposed for various problems. This is the first book on the subject that is accessible to the specialist and nonspecialist reader alike.

Hardcover

First published July 15, 1999

About the author

Hyam Maccoby (1924-2004)

Reviews

[samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

• Preface
o I give an account of the ritual purity system of HB
o Not concerned here (except peripherally) with dietary laws/purity laws. these correlate to acts
o The laws of ritual purity, differently, do not concern forbidden acts. They concern human conditions or states which occur despite human volition
o Supporting abandonment of distinction between ritual and morality. Ritual is subordinate to morality. Or, rather, ritual exists as the self-identifying code of a dedicated group whose main purpose is ethical
o the ritual purity system cannot be completely explained as a monotheistic transformation of magical practices intended origin ally to combat demonic forces. Nor can all the various kinds of ritual impurity be explain ed as representing death
o There are certain aspects of both ritual impurity and its remedies that adumbrate an alternative mode of religious expression , in which both Eros and Thanatos are inextricably entwined.
• 1. the sources of impurity: the human corpse
o He’s listing various kings of persons, animals, objects which cause impurity by touch or by other means.
o Greatest source is human corpse
o It is too simplistic to suggest that every source of impurity functions as a form of death
o The severity of corpse-impurity
 Lasts for several days
 Special form of purification, the sprinkling of ashes of Red Cow on third and seventh day
 The pattern of touching someone impure from this and having a lessened sentence of impurity is postponed here: you too get seven days uncleanness. Only at the next remove is the pattern reasserted
o Strange leniency in respect of expulsion from holy areas (corpse contaminated person is not forbidden to areas forbidden to other serious impurities
o Pollution schema

• The corpse in the tent: an excursus
o Differentiation between corpse enclosed in tent and corpse that is in the open.
 When it is enclosed, it transmits impurity even to those people and vessels that have not touched it; simply to be under the same roof as the corpse is sufficient to incur impurity. In the open, however, a corpse (or even part of a corpse) transmits impurity by touch only.
o At base the tent is a device for preventing impurity from travelling further upwards. The concept of the tent, as outlined in Numbers, aroused wonder because it is the only explicit biblical example of impurity that acts at a distance
o These questions are on whether a person or vessel “overshadows” a corpse or whether the corpse “overshadows” them. Impurity flows. “distance-acting impurity”
• [I am skimming parts that he discusses rabbinic interpretations]
• Next chapters are on bodily discharges as sources: menstruation, childbirth, and ‘running issues’ from either male or female (abnormal discharge of semen, in the case of the male, and abnormal uterine bleeding, in the case of the female). Another discharge that causes less serious impurity is normal discharge of semen, whether by involuntarily nocturnal emission, or by voluntary sexual activity
• 3. The sources of impurity: menstruation
o How does this and other emissions relate to human corpse?
o Jacob Milgrom, the everything-is-about-death guy, says that blood oozing from body is sign of death.
o But what about normal loss of semen?
o Anyway Lev 15 says that menstruant woman suffers seven-day uncleanness and someone who touches her suffers only a one-day uncleanness (“until the evening.” Far less serious than the corpse.
o Yet here are certain modes of defilement not found in corpse: couch in chair. someone touching the laid-upon couch or chair gets the one-day. Contamination through space, not empty space (like with tent).
o Menstruants don’t need to be isolated from community. Isolation does happen in minority communities
o The tendency to fall back into more primitive legal attitudes towards the menstruant is connected to the concomitant tendency to relapse into primitive attitudes of fear and superstition.
o The Torah lacks hysteria and superstition. n the Torah, menstruation is merely one of the conditions which produce impurity, and impurity itself is not condemned as sinful, but regarded as a natural state, which, however, has to be corrected by purification before contact with holy areas or foods.
o
o Prohibitions against intercourse with a menstruant: Intercourse with a menstruant is the only way of incurring impurity that is also a forbidden act.
 Both parties are commiting a sin
o There never was any prohibition against touching the menstruant or her couch or chair; only against coming into contact with sanctities afterwards, without purification.
o Women only use miqveh
• 4. The sources of impurity: childbirth: the ‘zabah’ and ‘zab’
o Childbirth is certainly a normal enough condition, even highly prized one, yet it gives rise to an impurity that is greater than that of menstruation.
o Are women’s reproductive processes regarded with disgust? This can hardly be the answer, since disgust does not necessarily produce pollution (feces and urine, e.g.)
o When parturient gives birth, she becomes unclean for seven days for male baby and fourteen for female.
 During this period of uncleanness, she must not have sexual relations with her husband. And of course no contact of holy areas and foods.
 followed by 33 days for male baby 66 for female, of modified form of uncleanness. Sex w husband ok but holy places and foods not.
 To effect purification at the end of this period she must do sacrifice Lev 12
 Noth states that it’s the “cultic inferiority of the female sex” that is “Expressed in giving the female birth the double uncleanness effect
 Yet impurity is not always a sign of disrespect, sometimes the reverse.
o Zabbah is an unusual, pathological condition. suffering a definite disorder, though not necessarily a severe one. Running issue, unusual discharge.
o Zab is the male equivalent to the zabah. Genital “running issue” this is a venereal disease
• 5. Normal emission of semen
o Even these cause uncleanness, though lesser kind than zab.
• 6. Animals and purity
o One of the confusing aspects of purity in Judaism is that the same word, 'unclean' (tame') is used in two (at least) very different contexts. One is the context of animals forbidden for food, and the other of ritual impurity, which requires purification but is not in itself a forbidden state. Though quite distinct, these two areas sometimes impinge on one another.
o FORBiDDEN FOR FOOD IS NOT THE SAME AS IMPURITY
o In ritual impurity, live animals are never source of impurity (except scapegoat) Only carcasses are.
o with dead animals, unclean animals compound with unclean corpse status
o Unclean animals
 Some creatures are forbidden for food without causing impurity, recall
 only land animals are unclean, cause impurity
 the forbidden animals
• 1. cattle type that don’t both cud and cloven hooves.
o Automatically impure if eaten
• 2. Sea creatures, only those with scales an fins can be eaten. No impurity if eaten. ABominaton though
• 3. Birds, excluded not by criteria but by individual mention. Abomination if eaten, Not impure
• 4. Insects. banned for foods with certain named exceptions. No mention of impurity though abomination is used
• 5. Creeping things: only a limited number of species, mentioned by name (weasel, mouse, tortoise, ferret, chameleon, lizard, snail, mole)
o Impure! Even more impure when dead!
• 6. Animals permitted for food but dies a natural death rather than slaughtered in prescribed manner.
o Impure!
• 7. Creeping things not named in 5. Abomination, not impure.
o Vessels and foodstuffs
 The inside vs the outside the vessel
• 7. Impurity and sacrifice
o Bewildering that the performance of holy sacrifices of animals in or just outside the Temple area should produce impurity, in some cases, in those performing them
o Sin-Offerings
 One of the commonest kinds of sacrifice in the Temple was the sin-offering (hatta’t) which was brought by individuals in expiation of unwitting infringements of the prohibition of the Torah
• These are also non-individual: High Priest could perform on behalf of community.
• Ritual impurity derived from sacrificed animals
o MILGROM SAYS that the impurity derives from the transfer of human guilt to the animal, which in its turn transfers impurity to those handling it in the process of sacrifice. This impurity, he argues, would actually affect even the sacrificing priest, were it not for the sanctity of the Temple which neutralizes the impurity.
o Neusner says all areas outside temple are impure. Consequently, the bearer of the remains of the sacrificed animal becomes impure simply by virtue of performing rites on the outside. All rites performed outside the Temple (including the Scapegoat rite and the Red Cow rite) automatically confer impurity upon their participants.
o Yet neither really get the emphasis on purity. Even though they’re done outside the temple, the space must be pure and the participants must be pure. The whole paradox of the rite is that it must be performed in conditions of purity, yet it causes impurity to those who perform it.
• In the case of the sin-offerings, it should be noted that th parts that are burned to ashes and thrown on a dump, and thus rejected for Temple worship, are parts specially prized in other religions of the ancient world.
• HIS THEORY: PURITY IS ELEMENT OF AWE. Could it be that the impurity suffered by the priest who disposed of the entrails and remaining parts of the body is the last element of awe in a procedure that has been transformed from a solemn rite into a chore?
o it is significant that the remains themselves are not source of impurity. Anyone who touches them while they are being transported to the place of burning remains pure.
o THE RITE ITSELF IS SOURCE OF IMPURITY NOT THE REMAINS
o THE OUTSIDE CEREMONIES:
o The scapegoat
 Redolent of primitive thought and practice is the rite of the Scapegoat. Here we have a rite that is openly revealed as stemming from pagan belief in demons, a belief that has been banished from the rest of the Priestly document, and from the Torah generally.
 The person who performs the last stage of the Scapegoat ritual becomes unclean and must wash his clothes.
 This is usually interpreted as the effect of his participation in the transfer of sins. But it is certainly worth considering that his uncleanness may be the effect of his transaction with the demon Azazel.
 If so, then all the outside rites which cause uncleanness may retain vestiges of pre-Hebraic thinking, and for that reason show a combination of cleanness (denoting holiness) and uncleanness (denoting the uneasiness of regression and also a kind of negative holiness). Only in these outside rites do we find this ambivalence of the clean and the unclean, and their outsideness denotes that they belong, even if subliminally, to powers other than the God whose presence rests on the Temple - powers of the earth rather than of the Heavens.
 In the Priestly account as we have it, each of the two goats expiates a different category of sins. One goat dies to expiate sins committed against the sanctity of the Temple; while the other is driven out to expiate, or carry away, the sins of the whole community, whether in the moral or the religious sphere.
 The earliest narrative, indeed (as I have argued elsewhere), concerns not two goats but two human figures. One of them dies, and the other is banished into the wilderness. We see the outlines of such a story in many myths and legends: Cain and Abel, Osiris and Set, Baal and Mot, Romulus and Remus, Balder and Loki, even Laius and Oedipus.
o Calf Whose Neck is Broken
 This is the ceremony laid down in Deuteronomy (but not in Leviticus) to be performed when a murdered body is discovered and the murderer is unknown (Deut. 21:1—9):
 In some respects it is like the Red Cow - the sacrifice is a female animal which must be unworked — but its purity aspects are exiguous.
 About guilt, not purity
 It is a sacrifice though! Like, only technically though? No Temple evincing
 DEFINE YOUR USE OF SACRIFICE
• 8. The Red Cow: the paradoxes
o The Red Cow is the sacrifice that breaks all the rules, and reduced the rabbis to such mystification that they declared that even Solomon, in all his wisdom, did not understand it.
o Its overall purpose was purification; yet in both the preparation and performance of the rite, participants became unclean. There is an ambiguity about the whole procedure that reflects an ambiguity in the concept of impurity itself.
o Unblemished cow. Outside camp, killed “before his face.”
o The priest must take some of the blood of the cow on his finger, and sprinkle it seven times in the direction of the Temple. Cow burnt in his sight, her skin, her flesh, her blood, with dung, shall be burned with cedar wood, hyssop, scarlet wool.
o At this point impurity appears. Officiating priest is now unclean, must wash his clothes and body in the ritual pool. He remains unclean until evening. The person who assists (not necessarily a priest) becomes unclean
o Third person enters the scene. He must be clean, and gathers the ashes of the cow and takes them to a clean place outside the camp, where they are preserved, so that when required they may be mixed with water and used to purify from corpse-impurity. This is the mei niddah, water of separation.
o But this third person, who gathers and deposits the ashes, has become unclean in turn, and must wash his clothes and body and be unclean until the evening.
o The purification of that person is described v 17
 We need a clean person to officiate. HE takes some ashes of the Red Cow and puts them into vessel with running water. Uses hyssop as a sprinkler, sprinkles on the corpse-impure perso on the third and seventh day of his imputirity. SEVEN DAYS and finally clean.
o The water of separation becomes itself a source of impurity.
 called “sin-offering water” in rabbinic literature
 Its impure and yet it is the purest of the pure, in rabbinic literature. Extraordinary measures taken to safeguard it.
o In the case of the sin-offerings, it should be noted that the parts that are burned to ashes and thrown on a dump, and thus rejected for Temple worship, are parts specially prized in other religions of the ancient world.
o Neusner argues that paradoxes can be dissolved by applying the historical method.
 The priestly legislator therefore takes for granted that the rules of purity which govern rites in the Temple simply do not apply to the rite of burning the cow.
 He’s saying that outside Temple is default unclean
 Yet the ritual is clear that all start the ritual clean! Performed in cleanness
 Neusner is espousing radical discontinuity between Bible and rabbinic literature
o Why outside? Not bc sabbath forbids extrinsic labor—that labor is forbidden anywhere, anyway.
o The phrases “before him” and “before his eyes,” interpreted by rabbis as the ritual needing full attention, are not found in Scripture in relation to any other cultic act
o So much rabbi reading here
o On the one hand, the Red Cow rite is aimed at purification from the most serious impurity of all, corpse-impurity. It is therefore natural that extreme precautions should be taken to prevent the means of purification from contracting even a suspicion of impurity; otherwise all the subsequent purification for which the ashes would be used would be invalid. On the other hand, impurity is deliberately imported into the rite both biblically and rabbinically. How are we to explain this pervasive and systematic contradiction
• 9. The Red Cow and ‘niddah’
o Milgrom’s theory.
 Why a cow? Only when the sacrifie is from sheep or goats can the animal be a female. His A: In this case alone we are looking for a supply of ashes to be mixed with water to function as a purification for corpse-impurity. So we do need a large animal. Yet this is a sin-offering still, and these are always females. So for once the female purification offering is taken from the herd instead of from the flock.
o OP wants solution with wider explanatory force. Bot the redness and the cowness are striking features that should turn our minds in the direction of comparative religion.
o Other sin-offerigns are eaten! lev 6:26
o Mei niddah
 Niddah used elsewhere in terms of mensturation. What can it mean that the Red Cow’s ashes, mixed with water, are called ‘water of menstruation?’ Is this the greatest paradox of all, that the agent of purification from corpse-impurity is no other than menstrual blood, or its symbolic equivalent? Is this why cow is red?
 Milgrom translates niddah as ‘purification.’ Yea it could be used occasionally as metaphor for defilement in general.
• His note on Lev. 12:2 reads: 'niddah occurs twenty-nine times in Scripture and is capable of three meanings: (1) 'menstrual impurity' (here and chap. 15); (2) 'impurity in general; abomination' (e.g. 2 Chr. 29:5; cf v 16); and (3) 'lustration' (Num. 19:9, Zech. 13:1)'.
 I suggest that menstruation waters is an ancient designation, priestly author transmits without understanding it. t is a witness to an era when menstrual blood was regarded with awe and reverence as having healing and purifying power.
 Mei niddah puts the Red Cow outside the confines of the priestly system of purity
 It suggests we are dealing here, not just with a sacrificial animal, but with an incarnation of the Goddess, powerful for both good and evil.
 Red Cow is a virgin. Yoke here is, as per Mishnah, a euphemism to mean that she has never been covered by the male.
 As Erich Neumann has pointed out (1972, p. 267), the significance of virginity in primitive myth is not childless purity, but on the contrary female fecundity owing nothing to the male.
 The location of the rite is also significant. The whole rite takes place outside the Temple, even including the act of sacrifice. This makes it unique in the sacrificial system of Scripture, for the heifer of Deut. 21 is not really sacrificed but executed, and the other outside rite, that of the Scapegoat, is not a sacrifice at all, even in the rabbinic version, in which the animal is killed but in non-sacrificial fashion.
o The Red Cow is the last vestige in the religion of the Israelite Sky-God of the earth-goddess.
o The burning of the Red Cow, on the other hand, is not a destruction but a preservation, not unlike, in intention, the Egyptian mummification of the dead.
o Compare with the lustrations of mystery-cults
o A last, if much muted, appearance of the earth-goddess.

[Hunter Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maccoby adds very little to the ongoing conversation surrounding the Old Testament's ritual purity system. He proposes that the ritual purity system was devised as a means of protecting the Temple (representing eternity) from the cycles of human mortality. While certainly an interesting proposal, Maccoby's exegetical methods are.... lacking.

I did learn a great deal about contemporary academic discussion surrounding the ritual purity system in Israel. Maccoby's back and forth with Milgrom and Neusner were charitable and thought-provoking. He offered a thorough analysis of rabbinic thought at the time of first century Judaism. Whenever he dealt with the first century, his knowledge of the era was evident.

Maccoby's weakness lies in his habit of privileging comparative anthropology over linguistic and historical data regarding *ancient* Israel. For example, when discussing the ritual resolutions for corpse impurity, Maccoby claims that the phrase "water for impurity" found in Numbers 19:9 should be translated as "water of menstruation." He makes the following fantastic claim: "I suggest that this is an ancient designation, stemming from prehistoric times, which the authors of the Priestly Code transmitted without understanding it. It is a witness to an era when menstrual blood was regarded with awe and reverence as having healing and purifying power." (pg. 108). How does he arrive at this thesis? He points to this enduring belief in 20th century Papua New Guinea, a culture and era which shares little in common with the ancient near east. That is his only solid peace of evidence. In this translation, Maccoby acknowledges that neither the rabbis nor any contemporary linguist/historian list "water of menstruation" as a possible translation for לְמֵ֥י נִדָּ֖ה. This is but a single example of startling exegesis.