It’s a common view, and I would say misconception that Jesus dispensed with traditional Jewish ritual purity beliefs. He seems to have done so because of his association with people who were ritually unclean (something that certainly rules out the possibility of his being an Essene). But it’s my view that taharah, ritual purity, in tandem with apocalypticism, was nevertheless actually at the heart of Jesus’s program of belief and action. I would argue that Jesus didn’t reject the purity system in toto, but reinterpreted the concept of purity to apply the purity system in a deeper and more holistic way, to apply it also to our interior state, and he understood purity as proceeding from our inner being outward, not the other way around. His moral teachings then were about purifying people inwardly, so they could be sufficiently internally unblemished to be a part of the eschatological kingdom of God. His healings were also about purification, purifying the afflicted of their defects to make them fit for the eschatological kingdom of God. (It’s troubling, and not to his credit that Jesus apparently thought that physical afflictions and disabilities disqualified people from coming into the presence of God, that God would discriminate against and exclude them.) I would contend then that Jesus was not a progressive radical regarding purity beliefs, he didn’t make a radical break from those beliefs. He actually applied them in a deeper, a more holistic way, but failed to transcend them, and still thought in terms of the impure being unacceptable to God. I would be interested to know if Bart agrees with this perspective. I’ve heard him make the point that Jesus definitely wasn’t an Essene because he didn’t practice ritual purity à la an Essene; that’s of course a valid point, but does he think that Jesus’s worldview and program were completely free of any version of purity thinking?
Thank you for your reply, Robert. To clarify, it’s my view that although he reinterpreted them, Jesus’s thinking wasn’t free of purity beliefs, the belief that one needs to be unblemished to be fit and eligible for admission to the eschatological kingdom of God—pure of both internal, moral blemish; and also external blemish, such as leprosy and other medical afflictions that today most people don’t consider to be a mark of spiritual uncleanness and unworthiness. In this regard Jesus was perhaps not as advanced beyond his historical setting as modern people might hope, and as a putatively divine being might reasonably be expected to be.
Matthew 15
The kosher food laws are more common sense to me than a superstition.
Such as eating with washed hands? That’s a common sense thing if you’re a butcher. Tapeworm larva can get underneath your fingernails or wherever and then get into your stomach from there when eating. Tapeworms are horrible. Animal blood is dangerous too. If you butcher an animal improperly you can spill the poisons of the organs into the meat. So yeah, there’s obviously procedures to follow if you want the safest food possible. Jesus was fearless of getting ill and so ignored the traditional washing practices. Or he did actually get ill occasionally and cured it by fasting to cleanse the stomach.
I actually found a tapeworm 3 inches long in a turkey leg a few weeks ago that I had bought at a truckstop along the thruway in Upstate. Very common actually. It was dead obviously because it had been cooked. Butcher facilities are nasty. I’ve been to several. That’s why most meat today is frozen before it gets to a grocery store. Whatever you think is fresh meet advertising at a grocery store is a lie. Anyways, I’m on a keto diet now and have lost 30 pounds in 40 days. At this rate there’s no way to know if I have a tapeworm right now. Don’t care really anyways.
Thank you for your reply, Colin. You would probably like the book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, by Marvin Harris. I read it many years ago and recall that its thesis is that religious dietary rules have a basis in concrete health-related realities and concerns. Although there’s a historical materialist dimension to my thinking that inclines toward concrete explanations, in the case of religious dietary rules and practices I’m of the view that they have their origin in purity beliefs and not practical common sense.
In the case of Israelite religion, and ancient Judaism, purity beliefs and practices were originally bred by the theological belief that contamination with anything associated with death, or the diminishment of vitality, such as contact with a corpse or the loss of blood, is off-putting and aversive to God; and makes one unsuitable for the presence of God, God being a God of life. The object is to be pure like God and the angels, so as to be suitable for God’s presence. The etiology of these beliefs goes back to beliefs about the state of ritual purity that priests who officiated in the temple needed to maintain to be suitable for the presence of God.
There’s also a plausible feminist theory, according to which the system of ritual purity largely had to do with a patriarchal, misogynist concern to avoid pollution with the bodily fluids that are related to reproduction. It was underlyingly about limiting, circumscribing reproductive freedom as a way of exercising social control, mostly over women—in short, the invention of purity beliefs was a product of patriarchy. There are also social and cultural motivations such as establishing group identity. In short, I don’t agree that dietary prohibitions, and purity beliefs boil down to concrete health-related concerns. But if that’s your view, I would recommend Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches.
(?)
Somebody somewhere believed that a leg could be hacked off a sheep and eaten and the sheep would grow another leg eventually. A few weeks and a few dead sheep later they realized it was against the laws of nature.
One day he died so they cut off his leg to see if he regrew a new one in the afterlife.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)