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Jesus and Purity

Relief from Nonsense

I want to express my appreciation for Paula Fredriksen’s “Did Jesus Oppose the Purity Laws?” BR 11:03. Professor Fredriksen’s article is a welcome relief from the much-publicized nonsense propounded by the likes of Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Burton Mack and Robert Funk & Co. (the Jesus Seminar)—scholars intent on wresting the historical Jesus out of his first-century Jewish context. Professor Fredriksen puts it very well: “A Jesus who rejects his own religious culture turns out to be a 20th-century person in ancient garb—a modern secular liberal offended by impurity’s sharp lines.” Let’s have more in BR from Paula Fredriksen.

Fredriksen’s Errors

Paula Fredriksen’s point was well made, on the surface. However, careful analysis reveals flaws in her arguments.

First, Fredriksen makes the error of assuming that the practice of Judaism in Jesus’ day was congruous with her understanding of its scriptural basis. “Liberal” scholars widely assume that the practice of the purity codes made them burdensome (if not impossible) for many, forcing certain classes into permanent states of ritual impurity. Also, liberal scholarship maintains that the permanently impure were regarded as outcasts by the religious and social elites. Questions about the application of the purity laws need to be informed by hard archaeological evidence and writings from the era, not simply by interpretations of Scripture.

Secondly, Fredriksen misses the importance of the prophetic tradition as it related to the Law. She ties Isaiah’s vision of global harmony to final purification. This might be used by First Isaiah (Isaiah 1–43) as a metaphor for the eschaton, but one can question if the rest of Isaiah links purity with the final completion of creation. Certainly, the larger prophetic tradition contains strands that are strongly critical of ritual (such as Amos 5:21–24) and impose a different definition of what is at the heart of the Law. This has implications for understanding what Jesus means when he says that he has come to “fulfill the Law and the Prophets.”

Fredriksen also errs in her assumption that the strongest attribute of Jesus’ Judaism must be his continuity with it. If Judaism was as fragmented as scholars now think, what does it mean to say that Jesus stood within Judaism? To which party of Judaism did Jesus belong? If Jesus were just another teacher of his day, what in his teaching was so bold as to capture the imagination of so many? Fredriksen comes across as cynical in her insistence on finding nothing revolutionary in Jesus’ teachings. In comparison, the liberal scholars have an obviously greater appreciation for the inspirational nature of Jesus’ teachings.

The longer I struggle with faith, the more clearly I see that we all bring prejudices to our encounter with the Scriptures. Fredriksen uses Jesus as a reflecting surface no more or less than those she accuses of doing the same thing. We all could stand to be more honest about what we bring with us into our scholarly dialogue.

Paula Fredriksen responds:

First, our literary evidence is much better than our archaeological evidence for the application, interpretation and practice of purity laws. What archaeological evidence we do have (much, alas, from the period following the closing decades of the Second Temple: miqva’ot [ritual baths], for instance), does seem to attest to widespread observation, though with a variety of interpretations (the miqva’ot frequently 008do not conform to the rabbinic paradigm). I survey literary evidence of the observance of purity laws in Jesus’ period in my article (“Did Jesus Oppose the Purity Laws?” BR 11:03).

Second, prophetic traditions criticize Israel, not Torah. Their point is not cult or ethical behavior, but cult and ethical behavior. This is true of the Amos passage as well. Some Gentile Christians eventually read the prophets as repudiating the Law, most especially circumcision, food laws and cult: This was part of their interpretive technique for holding onto the Bible as Christian revelation while repudiating Jewish practice. All these texts come after the destruction of the Temple (70 C.E.), when many purity rules and the cult itself could not be observed in any case.

Third, we do not know how many Jews belonged to what “party” in the first century. (Josephus gives us some figures—6,000 Pharisees and 4,000 Essenes, for example—though most scholars are cautious in accepting them.) Most Jews, clearly, belonged to no “party”; and I see no reason to assume that Jesus did.

To the degree that we can reconstruct them, Jesus’ teachings are recognizable variations on traditional Jewish themes; and they found their greatest audience long after his death, among people he never preached to. In his own lifetime, on the evidence of Paul, Josephus and the Gospels themselves, Jesus did not “capture the imagination of so many” Jewish contemporaries. To repeat a main point of my article: The inspirational ethics so admired by the “liberals” are most often not Jesus’, but their own.

Fourth, everyone has an agenda, true. That does not mean that we cannot recognize good history, or bad, when we read or write it. Naming an agenda does not settle an argument. Measuring evidence against interpretation, discerning anachronism, explaining as much data as possible: This is both how we construct historical descriptions and argue against bad or inadequate ones. Insinuation does not an argument make.

Finally, I have trouble seeing what possible relevance Jesus’ personal observation of purity laws might have for contemporary Christians—unless, of course, those Christians are themselves ethnically Jewish: In the latter case, arguably, halakah would still be binding on them. (See the debate, on precisely this point, in the Spring 1995 issue of Modern Theology.) Most Christians, however, are Gentiles, as free in the 20th century as they were in the first of the obligations of the Torah.

Which Torah?

Paula Fredriksen’s useful article fails to address a question I’ve puzzled at: Is it possible that Jesus might have accepted written Torah and not oral?

Paula Fredriksen responds:

Interesting suggestion, though even the Sadducees, credited with not holding to “oral Law,” had their own extra-textual interpretations of Torah. The Bible itself is simply not specific enough.

Blame It on Paul

I enjoy and profit from BR. I particularly appreciated Paula Fredriksen’s research regarding Jesus and the purity laws. She might well have mentioned Peter’s eating only kosher foods; Acts 10:9–17 makes it obvious that Jesus and his disciples were kosher-observing Jews. Paul in Acts 22:2 brags of being “a true born 009Jew” and “a pupil of” the famous rabbi “Gamaliel.” It was Paul in the Hellenist Diaspora who became “all things to all men” and thus transformed the pristine beliefs and practices (for example, purity and kosher laws) of James, Peter, etc. into a new gentile religion.

Ancient Medicine

Did the Israelites Know the Heart Pumped Blood?

I am a regular reader of both BR and Biblical Archaeology Review, which I find interesting, informative and generally factual. However, I noted an incorrect statement in the article entitled “Did Ancient Israelites Have a Heart?” (sidebar to “Ancient Medicine” BR 11:03). In paragraph three, Robert North writes, “Although the term leµb (and its variant form leµbab) occurs more than 850 times in the Bible, it never refers specifically to an organ pumping blood. Ancient Israelites were apparently unaware that the blood circulated throughout the body.”

True, in the great majority of its occurrences in the Scriptures, the word “heart” is used figuratively. However, the Bible does refer to the actual organ pumping blood. In Exodus 28:30, we read: “And in the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thumim, and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart [Hebrew, lev]” (RSV). The breastpiece was put over the area of the chest where the organ pumping blood is located (i.e., over the heart). Speaking of Joram’s (or Jehoram’s) death, 2 Kings 9:24 also refers specifically to the organ pumping blood:

“And Jehu…shot Yoram between the shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart [Hebrew, mil-lib-boh]” (RSV).

Hebrew scholars recognize that the Bible specifically refers to an organ pumping blood. Lexicon in Veteris Testimenti libros, by Koehler and Baumgartner, notes regarding the use of lev (levav): “pumping organ, the heart:…2K 9, 24.” Also, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, by Harris, Archer and Waltke, states: “Concrete meanings of leµb referred to the internal organ and to the analogous physical locations. However, in its abstract meanings, ‘heart’ became the richest biblical term for the totality of man’s inner or immaterial nature.” Typically, Hebrew vocabulary is composed of concrete 010words from which abstract and figurative meanings have been derived.

Does North really have any basis for his statement: “Ancient Israelites were apparently unaware that the blood circulated through the body”?

Robert North responds:

I am grateful for reader Bowen’s attention. “In the Bible the heart is not an organ of the blood circulation” (J. Preuss & F. Rosner, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine [1993], p. 194) and similar statements (like mine) can be disproved only and easily by citing concrete contrary examples. This cannot be done.

As for “a shot through the heart” being fatal (2 Kings 9:24), it is true that our modern outlook would normally assume that the (blood-pumping) heart was meant; but equally fatal would be a shot through the “internal organs,” which I claim leµb to mean.

I confess I do not find in Exodus 28:30 Bowen’s implication that the breastpiece is to be put “where the organ pumping blood is located.” Like some other biblical occurrences, this use is compatible with the assumption that leµb is properly “heart,” but also compatible with the claim that “internal organs of cognition and control” is meant.

Dr. Tamar

As pointed out by Hector Avalos (“Ancient Medicine” BR 11:03), a “doctor” in ancient Israel was a prophet, priest or midwife. A better understanding of ancient medicine can shed light on obscure biblical passages, such as 2 Samuel 13.

From King David’s response to his sick son Amnon’s complaint and request, we can determine who the “doctor” was. Languishing on his bed as if he were ill, Prince Amnon asked his father, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of heart-loaves in my sight, so that I may 011break fast from her hand” (2 Samuel 13:6).

King David sent home this brief message to his daughter, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house and perform the ‘Purity of Yah’ (habboµryaÆ, hyrbh)” (2 Samuel 13:7). Later we learn she was wearing a me>iÆl (ly[m, 2 Samuel 13:18–19). Though this term for a garment is common in Israel today, in the Bible such a garment was most often recorded as worn by the high priest Aaron and his sons and by the prophet-priest Samuel. Notice that what Tamar wore declared her status as a royal, virgin princess.

Princess Tamar, wearing her priestly robe, went to her brother Amnon’s house. She took dough, kneaded it, formed hearts (teálabbeµb, bblt) in his sight and baked them (halleábiboÆt, twblh). Then she took the server and poured before him, but Amnon refused to eat. Amnon said, “Send out everyone from me,” and everyone went out. Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the ‘Purity of Yah’ into the chamber, so that I may break fast from your hand.” So Tamar took the hearts she had prepared, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother (2 Samuel 13:9–10).

Jonadab, son of David’s brother Shimeah, first used the name of the ritual, Purity of Yah (habboµryaÆ), privately to Amnon, who did not mention it to his father. Instead, Amnon named the bread, a form of the word “heart,” which prompted the king to direct Tamar to perform the ritual. From this sequence of private conversations employing different terms we can see that everyone knew Tamar was the “doctor” and what her prescribed ritual for Amnon involved.

Tamar’s procedure resembled that of a Hittite woman healer, whose methods included going to a house and placing bread and a pitcher on a table. In one case, the Hittite healer reported feeding portions of sacrificial loaves to a patient, as Tamar was about to feed Amnon. Then the Hittite patient drank three times for the deity invoked. The aim of the Hittite healer’s ritual was to induce in the patient a dream that the practitioner would then interpret.

HabboµryaÆ, or Purity of Yah, includes the shortened name of Israel’s deity YHWH. The title suggests YHWH was the deity Tamar would invoke. Purification was an especially important element in healing rituals among Israelites and Hittites (see D. H. Engelhard, Hittite Magical Practices: An Analysis [dissertation, 1970], p. 71). That King David commissioned Tamar, a woman, to perform this purification ritual suggests that there was a royal priesthood separate from the exclusively male priesthood that served at the Tabernacle. This may explain the curious note concluding a list of David’s officials in 2 Samuel 8:18: “And David’s children were priests.”

The term “heart”-loaves (halleábiboÆt), the feminine plural of lev (heart) is unique to this chapter in the Bible. As BR readers are aware from Robert North’s “Did Ancient Israelites Have a Heart?” (sidebar to “Ancient Medicine”) heart meant “the seat of intelligence and emotion.” It appears that Tamar made the loaves to resemble the ancient notion of “heart” as the offering, part of a purification ritual that might aid in invoking YHWH to restore the well-being of an ill person of the royal house.

Taking advantage of her spiritual gift and service, Amnon raped his sister. Later he was killed by Absalom, who avenged his sister’s humiliation and then went into exile, returned, initiated civil war and was in turn killed.

Matters of the Heart

The wonderfully illustrated article on “Ancient Medicine” by Hector Avalos, was absorbing, especially to a physician. However, I would like to add an idea to Robert North’s “Did Ancient Israelites Have a Heart?” (sidebar to “Ancient Medicine”) concerning the Hebrew term for heart, “leµb” and its variant form “leµbab.”

The term “leµbab” (in modern Hebrew pronounced levav) merits an extensive consideration. It appears in Deuteronomy, and the Talmud (Mishnah Berahot 54a &amp 61a) suggests that both the good impulse (yetzer tov) and the impulse to evil (yetzer ra) originate from a levav, a duplicate heart, or in the alternative, from the right kidney (yetzer tov) and the left kidney (yetzer ra).

Clearly the origin of levav derives from anatomy rather than morality. 046Someone must have noticed that the heart (in animals and, by inference, in humans) was a double organ, with right and left chambers and, moreover, that these worked synchronously and harmoniously; hence the expression levav shalem, a whole heart (2 Kings 20:3).

Potpourri

Reinterpreting the New Testament Is Not Enough

Helmut Koester (“Explaining Jesus’ Crucifixion,” BR 11:03) makes several statements worth considering, among them: “The followers of Jesus had repeatedly experienced the hostility of Jewish synagogues—a fact recorded by the apostle Paul.” Yet this statement, in its generality, encompasses those Jews who were friendly to Jesus and his followers. Furthermore, by using the term “followers of Jesus” without distinguishing which followers they were, Mr. Koester unwittingly perpetuates a canard spawned at the end of the first century that the Jews rejected Jesus and his movement.

The first followers of Jesus were Jews and completely adherent to the Torah. They were called “Nazarenes” and “Zealots of the Torah.” Jesus’ brother James, who led this group, was said to be “strong for the Torah.” Even the early Jesus follower, Stephen, accuses his executioners of disloyalty to the Torah (Acts 7:53) and of lying about his purported rejection of it (Acts 6:13). Jesus taught that those who taught others to follow the Torah would have the highest place in the kingdom of heaven, whereas those who taught people to shun it would have the lowest (Matthew 5:19). In Paul’s final trip to Jerusalem, James shows Paul exultantly how many people are following his brother Jesus and are zealous for Mosaic law (Acts 21:20). Here, then, we have the Nazarenes believing that Jesus was the Messiah and that he had been resurrected but remaining passionately adherent to Mosaic law.

If so many Jews either joined or supported the Jesus-following movement, where, then, is this hostility from the Jews of which Helmut Koester speaks? The answer lies in a second group of Jesus followers created by Paul of Tarsus. This group also believed that Jesus was the Messiah and that he had been resurrected from death, but they did not accept the Torah as a pathway to God. Supplanting it was a new requirement: a belief in Jesus’ sacrificial death. The second group later became known as Christians, while the first one kept its original title: Nazarenes. To the Nazarenes, rejection of the Torah was a sin, and thus a war over Jesus ensued. The hostility to which Helmut Koester refers came from those who followed the Torah (which included the Nazarenes and the first disciples) and was directed against those who rejected it.

The Torah was the nemesis of Paul’s gospel, and it had to be discredited. One tactic was to denigrate Jews, the guardians of the Torah. Every time the Jews did something good to Jesus and his followers, the New Testament writers did not call them “Jews” but rather “the people,” “the throng,” “the multitude,” “the crowd,” “a woman,” “the young man,” “the whole city,” “every one” and other such non-specific terms. Every time the chief priests did something bad to Jesus or his followers, they were called “the Jews.”

The statement that the Jews objected to Jesus and his followers is a testimonial to the successful obfuscation of the truth by Pauline writers. It has resulted in well-meaning scholars lumping Nazarenes and Christians together into one common-believing group and in attributing to the Nazarenes a belief that they actually rejected. Indeed, tens of thousands of Jews joined or supported Jesus and his followers. It was Paul and his Torah-abrogating group who were rejected by Jesus’ disciples, the Nazarenes and other Jews.

Finally, the accusation that the Jewish people killed Jesus (or desired his death) and that they desired the death of his followers is found throughout the New Testament and is accompanied by the already mentioned attempt to hide the fact that the Jews supported him.

Helmut Koester, I believe, has written his essay as an act of Christian love, an effort to stem or divert any hatred of Jews into an ostensible misinterpretation of Scriptures. I am touched by his motive and I appreciate his intent, but my dedication to truth leads me to a different conclusion, 047because complete, impeccable honesty by New Testament writers is not what I have found. The New Testament says what it says, and whitewashing it with claims of misinterpretation cannot alter the words. Future generations, untempered by Mr. Koester, will read these words and interpret them verbatim anew.

As long as the writings are given immunity from examination and are considered sacrosanct or infallible or unassailable, it will be necessary for men of good will to avert the damage they cause by “reinterpreting” them every few years, while the words themselves remain unchanged. Is it not better for us to be honest and objective and to admit that they are wrong if the evidence shows that they are? Christianity in its entirety is not challenged by this, and improving Christianity in the light of new evidence may engender a wider embracement of Jesus than even the most skeptical prelate could imagine.

BR—End PC ASAP

Dennis Olson’s review of J. Cheryl Exum’s Fragmented Women (Bible Books, BR 11:03) displays the sort of PC nonsense that is increasingly marring your journal—which is why I recently allowed my subscription to lapse. When anti-historical biblical literalists read scripture according to their own sectarian inclinations, BR treats them with unveiled contempt; but when an anti-historical feminist engages in exactly the same activity, for the allegedly enlightened purpose of resisting “phallocentric” scholarship and “subvert[ing] patriarchal readings,” she can be guaranteed a comically fawning review. BR and its much-vaunted “scholars” are really no more scholarly than Pat Robertson: You cheerfully abandon scholarship whenever it conflicts with an ideological agenda you admire. Ask yourself this: If a Christian fundamentalist “celebrated the freedom of the reader to read texts as she or he wills,” could he expect to be reviewed in BR, let alone praised?

Dennis Olson responds:

The brief review in question consisted of 71 lines of text, each one simply descriptive of the contents, argument and methodology of Exum’s book—except for these three lines, which contain the following evaluation: “Exum is one of the ablest and most perceptive feminist biblical critics on the scene today. She writes with clarity, insight and wit.” For those interested in seeing how feminists read the Bible, Exum is one of the more accessible and interesting. This hardly constitutes “a comically fawning review.” Whether one agrees with the wide range of contemporary feminist biblical scholarship or not (the letter writer obviously does not!), it is at least important to be informed of the variety of ways in which the Bible is being studied so that one can make decisions about their help or hindrance in reading and interpreting the Bible.

Dahood Lecture and Award Announced

The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit, Michigan, announce the resumption of the Mitchell Dahood Memorial Prize Competition in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic.

Intended to foster the work of young scholars, the competition is open to qualified junior faculty and graduate students under 40 years of age (by December 31, 1996). Entrants must be recommended by an established senior scholar and hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree, or be in the final stages of completing such a degree. All manuscripts must be submitted by February 28, 1996.

The competition committee consists of Frank Moore Cross, Jr., Marvin H. Pope, Jack M. Sasson and David Noel Freedman. The winner will read the prize-winning paper at the 1996 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans and will receive a $1,500 cash award.

All nominations, inquiries, manuscripts and other correspondence should be sent to the Dahood Competition Committee, c/o Dr. Astrid Beck, Program on Studies in Religion, 445 West Engineering Bldg., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1092.

While the search for a winning paper by a young scholar is underway, Marvin Pope will deliver the 1995 Dahood Lecture at the SBL meeting in Philadelphia. Entitled “Bronze Age God-Talk from Ugarit: The Impact of Ugaritic on Bible Studies,” Pope’s lecture is scheduled for Saturday, November 19, 1995 at 5:15 p.m.

Jesus and Purity