Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

Author: Yitzhaq Feder

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-11-18

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1316517578

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A novel account of pollution in the Hebrew Bible, from its embodied origins, to its metaphorical expression in moral discourse.


Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

Author: Eve Levavi Feinstein

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0199395543

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Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible examines the Hebrew Bible's use of pollution language to characterize sexual relationships. Eve Feinstein argues that descriptions of female pollution reflect a view of women as sexual property, while descriptions of male pollution relate to Israel's holiness. The book enables a more thorough understanding of sexual pollution, its particular characteristics, and the role that it plays in biblical literature.


Purity and Danger

Purity and Danger

Author: Professor Mary Douglas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1136489274

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Purity and Danger is acknowledged as a modern masterpiece of anthropology. It is widely cited in non-anthropological works and gave rise to a body of application, rebuttal and development within anthropology. In 1995 the book was included among the Times Literary Supplement's hundred most influential non-fiction works since WWII. Incorporating the philosophy of religion and science and a generally holistic approach to classification, Douglas demonstrates the relevance of anthropological enquiries to an audience outside her immediate academic circle. She offers an approach to understanding rules of purity by examining what is considered unclean in various cultures. She sheds light on the symbolism of what is considered clean and dirty in relation to order in secular and religious, modern and primitive life.


Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism

Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism

Author: Christian Frevel

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-11-01

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 9004232109

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Focusing on concepts, practices and images associated with purity in the ancient Mediterranean, this volume contributes new aspects to the current discussion about the forming of religious traditions, from a comparative perspective that acknowldges individual developments, mutual exchanges, as well as transcultural processes.


Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity

Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity

Author: David A. deSilva

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2000-10-12

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780830815722

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David A. deSilva demonstrates in this book how paying attention to the cultural themes of honor, patronage, kinship and purity opens us to new facets of the New Testament documents.


Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible

Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible

Author: Elizabeth W. Goldstein

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-09-17

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1498500811

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Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible explores the role of female blood in the Hebrew Bible and considers its theological implications for future understandings of purity and impurity in the Jewish religion. Influenced by the work of Jonathan Klawans (Sin and Impurity in Ancient Judaism), and using the categories of ritual and moral impurities, this book analyzes the way in which these categories intersect with women and with the impurity of female blood, and reads the biblical foundations of purity and blood taboos with a feminist lens. Ultimately, the purpose of this book is to understand the intersection between impurity and gender, figuratively and non-figuratively, in the Hebrew Bible. Goldstein traces this intersection from the years 1000 BCE-250 BCE and ends with a consideration of female impurity in the literature of Qumran.


Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible

Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible

Author: S. Tamar Kamionkowski

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-05-20

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 056754799X

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Recognizing that human experience is very much influenced by inhabiting bodies, the past decade has seen a surge in studies about representation of bodies in religious experience and human imaginations regarding the Divine. The understanding of embodiment as central to human experience has made a big impact within religious studies particularly in contemporary Christian theology, feminist, cultural and ideological criticism and anthropological approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Within the sub-field of theology of the Hebrew Bible, the conversation is still dominated by assumptions that the God of the Hebrew Bible does not have a body and that embodiment of the divine is a new concept introduced outside of the Hebrew Bible. To a great extent, the insights regarding how body discourse can communicate information have not yet been incorporated into theological studies.


Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual

Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual

Author: Yitzhaq Feder

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 9781589835542

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This pioneering study examines the use of blood to purge the effects of sin and impurity in Hittite and biblical ritual. The idea that blood atones for sins holds a prominent place in both Jewish and Christian traditions. The author traces this notion back to its earliest documentation in the fourteenth- and thirteenth-century B.C.E. texts from Hittite Anatolia, in which the smearing of blood is used as a means of expiation, purification, and consecration. This rite parallels, in both its procedure and goals, the biblical sin offering. The author argues that this practice stems from a common tradition manifested in both cultures. In addition, this book aims to decipher and elucidate the symbolism of the practice of blood smearing by seeking to identify the sociocultural context in which the expiatory significance of blood originated. Thus, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning and efficacy of ritual, the origins of Jewish and Christian notions of sin and atonement, and the origin of the biblical blood rite.


Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution

Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution

Author: Yohan Yoo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-31

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 100039283X

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This collaboration between two scholars from different fields of religious studies draws on three comparative data sets to develop a new theory of purity and pollution in religion, arguing that a culture’s beliefs about cosmological realms shapes its pollution ideas and its purification practices. The authors of this study refine Mary Douglas’ foundational theory of pollution as "matter out of place," using a comparative approach to make the case that a culture’s cosmology designates which materials in which places constitute pollution. By bringing together a historical comparison of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, an ethnographic study of indigenous shamanism on Jeju Island, Korea, and the reception history of biblical rhetoric about pollution in Jewish and Christian cultures, the authors show that a cosmological account of purity works effectively across multiple disparate religious and cultural contexts. They conclude that cosmologies reinforce fears of pollution, and also that embodied experiences of purification help generate cosmological ideas. Providing an innovative insight into a key topic of ritual studies, this book will be of vital interest to scholars and graduate students in religion, biblical studies, and anthropology.


Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

Author: Eve Levavi Feinstein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-09-01

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0199395551

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The concepts of purity and pollution are fundamental to the worldview reflected in the Hebrew Bible, yet the ways biblical texts apply these concepts to sexual relationships remain largely overlooked. Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible argues that, when applied to sexual relations, pollution language usually reflects a conception of women as sexual property susceptible to being "ruined" for particular men through contamination by others. In contrast, however, the Holiness legislation of the Pentateuch applies such language to men who engage in transgressive sexual relations, conveying the idea that male bodily purity is a prerequisite for individual and communal holiness. This understanding of sexual pollution, found in Leviticus 18, has a profound impact on later texts. In the book of Ezekiel, it contributes to a broader conception of pollution resulting from Israel's sins, which bring about the Babylonian exile. In the book of Ezra, it figures in a view of the Israelite community as a body of males contaminated by foreign women. Drawing on psychological and cross-cultural studies as well as philological and historical-critical analysis of biblical texts, Eve Feinstein's study illuminates the reasons why the idea of pollution adheres to particular domains of experience, including sex, death, and certain types of infirmity.