Impurity And Gender In The Hebrew Bible

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.

The central argument of my dissertation is based on two bodies of literature. The first area deals with the categorization of biblical impurity and is articulated most effectively by Jonathan Klawans. Klawans demonstrates that there are two ideologies of purity in the Hebrew Bible, ritual and moral. The state of ritual impurity pertains to the human body, is unavoidable, temporary and can be cleansed. Conversely, moral impurity is incurred through behavioral choice. Three grave sins cause moral impurity : murder, violation of sexual prohibitions, and apostasy. No purifying activities can reverse the impurity. Moral impurity, unlike ritual impurity, has severe consequences. Either the land will expel its inhabitants or violators will be subject to krt, being cut off from their people. I have also based my argument on source critical scholarship and linguistic studies that demonstrates that priestly writing predates the writing of the exilic prophet Ezekiel. I show that Ezekiel distorts priestly ideas about women and their blood by intentionally confusing the categories of ritual and moral impurity. Furthermore, in the still later book of Ezra-Nehemiah, the word ndh, a term that previously referred only to menstruation, a cause of ritual impurity, has now come to refer to the general contamination of moral impurity. In Ezra, this transition has occurred, perhaps, unbeknownst to its author. Thus, there is a correlation between the ideologies of impurity in the Bible (ritual and moral) and an increasingly negative portrayal of women and their bodies. For prophetic writers, moral impurity became an effective way to speak about the experience of exile (586/7-530). The deity literally expelled the people for their sins. To the detriment of women, a regularly occurring bodily function, which even the pre-exilic priestly writers viewed as normative, became the symbol of the people's gravest transgressions.

Gender differences between men and women are not just a matter of sexual differentiation; the roles that men and women play are also socially and culturally determined, in ancient Israel and post-biblical Judaism as in every other context. That is the theme of these ten studies. The first part of the volume examines the gender definitions and roles that can be identified in the Hebrew Bible's legal and ritual texts. The second part uses archaeological and anthropological perspectives to interrogate the biblical text and the society that formed it on issues of gender. The third part explores similar gender issues in a range of material outside the Hebrew Bible, from the Apocrypha through Josephus and Philo down to mediaeval Jewish marriage contracts (ketubbot). Among the questions here discussed are: Why are men, but not women, required to bathe in order to achieve ritual purity after incurring certain types of defilement? What understandings of masculinity and femininity underlie the regulations about incest? Was ancient Israel simply a patriarchal society, or were there more complex dynamics of power in which women as well as men were involved? What do post-biblical re-interpretations of the female figures of Wisdom and Folly in Proverbs 1-9 suggest about heterosexual masculinity? And what kind of rights did mediaeval Middle-Eastern Jewish women have within their marriage relationships?

Abstract: This thesis seeks to demonstrate that the gender bias in the laws of Leviticus regarding genital discharge reflects both the fear of blood's power to give and take life, and the fear of a woman's power due to her unique God-given role of producing life. This thesis will first explain the different classifications of blood that occur in the Hebrew Bible, and then analyze the differences between male and female discharge. Leviticus 12 and 15 will be major areas of focus, with concentration placed on the rules and regulations accompanying the discharges, and on the animals chosen for purification and burnt offerings. Additionally, occurrences of female genital discharge outside of Leviticus will be analyzed. Finally, the natural processes of menstruation and childbirth will be compared to the human inflicted circumcision, demonstrating that infant circumcision was a male-manufactured attempt to reassert the male's dominant and "chosen" role in Hebrew society

This book offers a new perspective on the extensive rabbinic discussions of menstrual impurity, female physiology, and anatomy, and on the social and religious institutions those discussions engendered. It analyzes the functions of these discussions within the larger textual world of rabbinic literature and in the context of Jewish and Christian culture in late antiquity.

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.

This book offers a careful study of biblical texts on menstruation and childbirth in the light of their ancient Near Eastern background. Close reading of the biblical texts, based on classical and feminist biblical interpretation, and supported by comparative study of ancient Near Eastern sources and anthropology, reveals a rich and varied picture of these female events. Fertility and impurity are closely connected to menstruation and childbirth, but their place and importance are different in priestly and nonpriestly writings of the Bible, which are therefore separately dealt with. This book contributes to a better understanding of physiological, social, cultural, and religious aspects of menstruation and childbirth in the larger context of body and society and women and men.

The so-called purity laws in Leviticus 11-15 reflect a cultic and social view of the male and female body. These texts do not give detailed physiological descriptions. Instead, they prescribe what to do in the cases of skin disease, delivery and wo/man's genital discharges, but the particular way of dealing with the body and the language used in Leviticus 12 and 15 ask for clarification: how do these texts construct the male and female body? Which roles does gender play within this language? By means of themes such as menstruation and circumcision, Erbele-Kuester unfolds the language used for the body in Leviticus and its interpretation history. Her study provides material for a contemporary anthropology of bodies which relates the human sexed body to God's holiness.

Because gender is an essential component of societies of all times and places, it is no surprise that every prophetic expression in the ancient social world was a gendered one. In this volume scholars of the biblical literature and of the ancient Mediterranean consider a wide array of prophetic phenomena. In addition to prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible, the essays also look at prophecy in ancient Mesopotamia and early Christianity. Using the most current theoretical categories, the volume demonstrates how essential a broad definition of gender is for understanding its connection to both the delivery and the content of ancient prophecy. Attention to gender dynamics will continue to reveal the fluidity of prophetic gender performance and to open up the ancient contexts of prophetic texts. The contributors are Roland Boer, Corrine Carvalho, Lester L. Grabbe, Anselm C. Hagedorn, Esther J. Hamori, Dale Launderville, Antti Marjanen, Martti Nissinen, Jonathan Stökl, Hanna Tervanotko, and Ilona Zsolnay.

The term Niddah means separation. During her menstrual flow and for several days thereafter, a Jewish woman is considered Niddah -- separate from her husband and unable to practice the sacred rituals of Judaism. Purification in a miqveh (a ritual bath) following her period restores full status as a wife and member of the Jewish community. In the contemporary world, debates about Niddah focus less on the literal exclusion of menstruating women from the synagogue, instead emphasizing relations between husband and wife and the general role of Jewish women in Judaism. Although this has been the law since ancient times, the meaning and practice of Niddah has been widely contested. Women and Water explores how these purity rituals have affected Jewish women across time and place, and shows how their own interpretation of Niddah often conflicted with rabbinic views. These essays also speak to contemporary feminist issues such as shaping women's identity, power relations between women and men, and the role of women in the sacred.