Jesus and Ritual Impurity

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Readers of the Gospels have frequently concluded that Jesus was opposed to the Jewish ritual purity system. But this was not the case.

Since Yigael Yadin first identified an ancient ritual bath, frequently referred to as a mikveh, at Masada in 1963, archaeologists have discovered more than 850 such baths throughout Judea and Galilee, most of which date from the first century B.C.E. to the midsecond century C.E. These miqva’ot are unique to Jewish settlements and show that many elite and non-elite Jews in Jesus’s day were concerned about ritual impurity and invested in purifying their bodies from these impurities.^a Within this context, it is noteworthy that the canonical gospels contain no story wherein people criticize Jesus for not using miqva’ot.

In fact, the Gospel of John may even imply Jesus’s use of ritual baths. John, after all, depicts Jesus entering the precincts of the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where he heals a paralyzed man (John 5:1-9). John does not tell readers why Jesus entered into the pool complex, but early readers may have naturally assumed that he entered to immerse himself prior to the festival mentioned in John 5:1.

Admittedly, a little-known pseudepigraphal gospel found in Egypt, named P. Oxyrhynchus 840, relates a story in which Jesus faces criticism for not ritually bathing. In it, Levi, “a certain Pharisee, a chief priest,” accuses Jesus of entering into the Temple complex without having purified himself in a ritual bath. In turn, Jesus accuses the high priest of bathing in water that has been polluted by pigs and dogs. It’s an interesting story, but completely useless as a historical source both for Jesus and the earliest generations of the Jesus movement. Not only does the work date to the fourth century C.E.—centuries after Jesus lived and the earliest accounts of his life were composed—but it also implausibly portrays dogs and pigs (both impure animals) as having access to the Temple complex. Surely no author with even a passing acquaintance with the Jerusalem Temple would make such a claim. Further, the conflation of a Pharisee with a chief priest demonstrates the author’s ignorance of Jewish sects more broadly, as Sadducees controlled the Temple—a conflation that no one writing in the first century would have made.

Returning to the canonical gospels, it is significant that none of the earliest gospel traditions preserve any 067criticism or question directed toward Jesus or his followers around the issue of ritual bathing. Had Jesus or his earliest followers abandoned regular and customary purification rites, someone somewhere would have raised a question or two. It is possible that while such stories about Jesus existed, the gospel writers did not incorporate them into their accounts of Jesus’s life because they did not consider ritual bathing relevant for their later readers.

But it is more likely that such stories never existed at all—precisely because Jesus’s use of ritual baths fell within the range of acceptable practices observed by his fellow Jews. That is to say, Jesus’s attitudes and actions relating to ritual bathing were simply unremarkable.

Mark 7, Matthew 15, and Luke 12 depict Jesus’s disciples being criticized for not ritually washing their hands before eating food. Yet this criticism is related to, but distinct from, bathing to purify oneself from ritual impurity. Simply put, this was not a matter of ritual bathing after contracting the ritual impurities described in accordance with the laws of Moses (i.e., Leviticus 12-15 and Numbers 19). Instead, the Pharisees were asking Jesus about a specific concern regarding someone who was ritually impure and whether that individual could convey that impurity to food and, therefore, ingest that impurity. As later rabbis note, this belief is an innovation of the Pharisees, not from Jewish scriptures.¹ Jesus rejects it as such, but this is distinct from and tells us nothing about his belief regarding the ritual impurity laws of Jewish scriptures.

What about stories of Jesus and the ritually impure? Interestingly, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) contain a number of accounts of Jesus’s interactions with people who endure ritual impurity from the three physical sources of ritual impurity: lepra, genital discharges of blood or semen, and corpses, all of which one can read about in Leviticus 11-15 and Numbers 19.

One of Jesus’s first miracles in the Gospel of Mark is his purification of a man who has a condition that Mark calls lepra. Modern Bible translations and biblical scholars almost always translate the Greek word lepra as “leprosy,” but this is simply wrong. Greco-Roman medical writers use lepra to describe a relatively mild skin condition (or conditions), something more like eczema or dandruff than leprosy. In fact, the physical symptoms that Leviticus 13-14 provides for lepra do not match the physical appearance of leprosy (Hansen’s Disease). Yet Jesus purifies the man with this skin condition, commanding him then to undergo the final purification rites required by the law once a person is free from lepra (Mark 1:44). Matthew and Luke preserve this story (Matthew 8:2-4; Luke 5:12-14), showing their interest in Jesus and ritual impurity. And Luke adds another story of Jesus dealing with ten men who have lepra (Luke 17:12-18). Again, Jesus removes the underlying condition and commands the men to show themselves to a 068priest in conformity with the laws of Leviticus.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke also relate a story of Jesus interacting with a woman who is ritually impure due to a long-lasting genital hemorrhage (Mark 5:25-34; Matthew 9:20-22; Luke 8:43-48). The woman touches Jesus’s clothing in the hope that this contact would heal her body of a condition that has made her impure for 12 years. In Mark and Luke, this happens automatically, without Jesus actually choosing to heal her. In these accounts, Jesus’s body functions to remove the physical condition that results in ritual impurity. In Matthew, only after Jesus chooses to heal her does the hemorrhage stop.

Finally, all the canonical Gospels depict Jesus interacting with corpses, the strongest source of ritual impurity in Jewish thinking. Corpses are permanent sources of impurity that convey a strong and contagious ritual impurity to others through direct contact, through close proximity within a structure like a house or a tent, and even through the ground, if someone walks over a grave. Mark, Matthew, and Luke portray Jesus raising a dead girl back to life (Mark 5:35-43; Matthew 9:18, Matthew 9:23-25; Luke 8:49-56). Luke adds another story of Jesus raising a young man back to life as his body is being moved for burial (Luke 7:11-17), while John’s Gospel contains an account of Jesus raising Lazarus back to life after he has been dead for four days (John 11:17). Matthew even depicts numerous and distant corpses coming back to life at the very point that Jesus dies and his body becomes a ritually impure corpse (Matthew 27:50-53).

All of these interactions follow the same pattern: Jesus comes into contact with those who are ritually impure and removes the condition that causes impurity. The Gospels, then, depict a Jesus who cares about Jewish law. They portray a Jesus who cares about ritual impurity and seeks to destroy its root causes. If Jacob Milgrom, a prolific scholar of Leviticus, is right in identifying ritual impurity with death and holiness with life, then the gospel writers tell the story of a Jesus whose work, as the “Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34; John 6:69), is to purify the impure, to bring life to those under the thrall of death, and to put death itself to death.²

Readers of the Gospels have frequently concluded that Jesus was opposed to the Jewish ritual purity system. But this was not the case.