Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible
From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor

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

Yitzhaq Feder (Author)

9781316517574, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 November 2021

350 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.65 kg

'… any scholar interested in this topic will need to reckon with Feder's nuanced, thought-provoking approach … Highly recommended.' J. S. Kaminsky, Choice

In this book, Yitzhaq Feder presents a novel and compelling account of pollution in ancient Israel, from its emergence as an embodied concept, rooted in physiological experience, to its expression as a pervasive metaphor in social-moral discourse. Feder aims to bring the biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence into a sustained conversation with anthropological and psychological research through comparison with notions of contagion in other ancient and modern cultural contexts. Showing how numerous interpretive difficulties are the result of imposing modern concepts on the ancient texts, he guides readers through wide-ranging parallels to biblical attitudes in ancient Near Eastern, ethnographic, and modern cultures. Feder demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary and psychological research can be applied to ancient textual evidence. He also suggests a path of synthesis that can move beyond the polarized positions which currently characterize modern academic and popular debates bearing on the roles of biology and culture in shaping human behavior.

I. Setting the Stage: 1. Introduction
2. What is pollution?
II. Embodying Pollution Through the Life Cycle
3. The 'touch' of leprosy: diagnosing disease between language and experience
4. The missing ritual for healing skin disease
5. Diagnosis sin
6. Naturalizing disease: pollution as a casual theory
B. The soul: from the table to the grave: 7. You are what you eat: impure food and the soul
8. Death and the polluting spirit
C. Mating: 9. Sexual pollutions: the moralized body
10. Gender fluidity and the danger of leaky manhood
11. Did women need to wash? III. Images, Codes and Discourse: 12. Contagious holiness
13. Conclusion: naturalizing a religious concept.

Subject Areas: Judaism [HRJ], Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG], Old Testaments [HRCF1], Bibles [HRCF], Religion: general [HRA]