Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature. DR. S Mira Balberg

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СКАЧАТЬ is to be used for other impurities as well, an idea that has no trace in rabbinic literature.³⁵ These few examples suffice to illustrate, I believe, that the enterprise of systematizing the biblical laws of purity and impurity so as to fill lacunae and to establish greater coherence among these laws was a common enterprise in early Judaism, even if it was applied by different interpretive communities in different ways and in different cases.

      Neither the Qumranic nor the rabbinic purity legislation modifies or alters the Priestly list of impurity sources in any significant way, and both essentially remain bound by the biblical scheme that includes only dead creatures, persons with genital discharges or scale disease, certain impure substances, and afflicted houses or garments as sources of impurity. The one source of impurity that both of these corpora do effectively add to the list of sources of impurity is outsiders, which in the rabbinic corpus pertains to non-Jews,³⁶ and in the corpus of Qumran apparently includes both non-Jews and persons who are not members of the community.³⁷ This addition to the biblical list of sources of impurity in both corpora speaks to the prevalence of the notion of outsiders as contaminating in the Second Temple period,³⁸ and reflects the shared cultural heritage of both the creators of the Qumranic texts and the early rabbis. However, it should be noted that the rabbis, as I will discuss at length in the fifth chapter, make a point of distinguishing the impurity of Gentiles, which they consider to be only statutory, from the biblical forms of impurity and introduce the impurity of Gentiles through analogy to one of the existing forms of ritual purity (namely, the impurity of genital discharges).³⁹ In other words, the rabbis are careful to indicate that Gentiles can be considered sources of ritual impurity only insofar as they are subsumed under one of the established Priestly categories of impurity. In contrast, the use of the terms pure and impure in Qumranic texts is much more liberal than it is in rabbinic texts, and the Qumranic authors (much like other authors in the Second Temple period) are not hesitant to use the language of purity and impurity even when referring to matters beyond the Priestly Code of ritual impurity. The frequent use of themes of purity and impurity in discussions of sin and moral atrocity in Qumran led several scholars to the conclusion that in Qumran sin was considered a source of physical-ritual impurity, and that unlike in rabbinic literature, moral and ritual impurity were not distinguished from each other by Qumranic authors.⁴⁰ Here I tend to agree with Martha Himmelfarb,⁴¹ who showed that the conflation of impurity and sin in Qumranic texts is mainly evocative and rhetorical, and should not be taken as a testament to a view that each sinner is also impure and each impure person is also a sinner.⁴² Accordingly, I do not take sin or immorality to be a source of ritual impurity in and of itself in the legislation of Qumran, and do not see a significant discrepancy between Qumranic and rabbinic texts as far as the sources of impurity are concerned.⁴³

      The main discrepancy between the Qumranic purity legislation and the rabbinic purity legislation, which led various scholars to characterize the Qumranic system as much more stringent and harsh than the rabbinic system,⁴⁴ has to do not with the sources of impurity themselves but mainly with the question of what qualifies as one of these sources of impurity and what does not. In general, rabbinic legislation tends to impose various restrictions and limitations on what can “count” as a source of impurity and what can contract impurity, whereas the Qumranic approach is on the whole much more inclusive and does not engage in the subcategorizing and classifying of potential sources in the same way that the rabbis do. To take a few notable examples: the rabbis distinguish between different kinds of genital bleeding and determine that some sorts of blood constitute sources of impurity and some do not, whereas no such distinction is traceable in Qumranic texts;⁴⁵ the rabbis distinguish between objects and materials that can contract impurity and objects and materials that cannot, determining among other things that stones and objects that are connected to the ground are not susceptible to impurity, whereas the Qumranic legislation mentions both stone objects and houses as requiring purification;⁴⁶ the rabbis do not consider a dead fetus to be a source of impurity as long as it is in its mother’s womb, whereas in Qumran a dead fetus is regarded like any other corpse;⁴⁷ and many other similar examples can be found. As Vered Noam noted, the difference between the Qumranic approach and the rabbinic approach should not be understood in terms of stringency and leniency, but rather in terms of more straightforward and inclusive readings of the biblical texts as opposed to more restrictive and scrutinizing readings of these texts.⁴⁸ To a great extent, my analysis in this book is concerned exactly with those restrictive readings introduced by the rabbis, and with the principles that guided them when excluding certain elements from the impurity system and including others. These restrictive principles have evidently not been at play in the work of earlier interpreters.

      While the rabbinic purity legislation is often viewed as more “lenient” than the Qumranic legislation in terms of what constitutes a source of impurity, the rabbinic system is far more “stringent” as far as modes of transmission of impurity are concerned. That is to say, while in the rabbinic system fewer objects or persons can potentially function as sources of impurity, whatever does function as a source of impurity is much more potent in its impact on its environment than it is in the Qumranic system. As I will show in what follows, the Mishnah introduces new and unprecedented principles regarding the ways in which impurity is conveyed from the source to other people and things, ultimately suggesting that impurity can be contracted not only through direct contact with a source of impurity but also through various modes of indirect contact with a source of impurity. These new modes of transmission of impurity speak to the more general perspective of the rabbis on the presence and impact of impurity, which focuses not only on the source but also and perhaps especially on those who knowingly or unknowingly contract its impurity. It is in this perspective, I will propose, that the mishnaic purity discourse most radically diverges from the Qumranic discourse, and for that matter also from the biblical discourse.

      The Extreme Transferability of Impurity in the Mishnah

      The biblical impurity system essentially consists of two kinds of participants: primary sources of impurity, in which impurity is either an intrinsic quality or a result of a certain bodily condition, and secondary sources of impurity, which contracted impurity from primary sources. Since the sources of impurity in the Priestly Code are quite limited in number, and their effect normally extends only to whatever has direct contact with them, in the picture that emerges from the Priestly Code impurity generally transpires as a noticeable event. Of course, some events that bring about impurity are an inseparable and even recurring part of life (birth, death, menstruation, seminal emission), whereas others are more rare and crisis-like (scale disease, abnormal genital discharges); but all these events are discernible and traceable to a particular point in time. Whoever is impure, whether on account of experiencing the bodily conditions mentioned above or on account of having direct contact with a source of impurity, is presumably aware of whatever brought about this impurity and is capable of saying at what point, more or less, this impurity transpired. As common and natural as impurity may be in the world of the Hebrew Bible, it is restricted to very specific factors and to those in their immediate vicinity.⁴⁹ Generally speaking, the basic view of the transpiration of impurity as a noticeable event, which impacts only the impure persons themselves and those in direct contact with them, is also dominant in the writings of Qumran. The Qumranic purity legislation focuses mainly on the ways in which impure persons and persons undergoing purification should take measures to distance themselves actively from the community, from sacred areas, from communal food, and so forth,⁵⁰ and on their obligation to profess gratitude and humility when eventually purified.⁵¹

      The picture in the mishnaic discourse is notably different. While the Mishnah dedicates considerable attention to questions of the diagnosis of impurity and to processes of purification, it does not introduce the concern with impurity as restricted only to the sources of impurity themselves or to those who come into direct contact with them, but rather presents it as the daily and ongoing concern of everyone, even of persons who are not currently impure or known to have had contact with a source of impurity. In other words, impurity in the Mishnah is approached not only as a noticeable event, but also, and perhaps much more prominently, as an ongoing reality.

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