Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The sources of impurity: the human corpse
- 2 The corpse in the tent: an excursus
- 3 The sources of impurity: menstruation
- 4 The sources of impurity: childbirth: the zabah and zab
- 5 Normal emission of semen
- 6 Animals and purity
- 7 Impurity and sacrifices
- 8 The Red Cow: the paradoxes
- 9 The Red Cow and niddah
- 10 Leprosy
- 11 The purification of the leper
- 12 Corpse and leper: an excursus
- 13 Ritual purity in the New Testament
- 14 Milgrom on purity in the Bible
- 15 From demons to ethics
- 16 Ritual purity and morality
- Appendix A The haberim
- Appendix B The rabbinic system of grades of impurity
- References
- Index of quotations
- General index
2 - The corpse in the tent: an excursus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The sources of impurity: the human corpse
- 2 The corpse in the tent: an excursus
- 3 The sources of impurity: menstruation
- 4 The sources of impurity: childbirth: the zabah and zab
- 5 Normal emission of semen
- 6 Animals and purity
- 7 Impurity and sacrifices
- 8 The Red Cow: the paradoxes
- 9 The Red Cow and niddah
- 10 Leprosy
- 11 The purification of the leper
- 12 Corpse and leper: an excursus
- 13 Ritual purity in the New Testament
- 14 Milgrom on purity in the Bible
- 15 From demons to ethics
- 16 Ritual purity and morality
- Appendix A The haberim
- Appendix B The rabbinic system of grades of impurity
- References
- Index of quotations
- General index
Summary
One of the most difficult topics in the study of ritual purity is that of the corpse in the ‘tent’, and particularly the question of how the biblical law expressed so briefly in Numbers 19:14–16 proliferated into the complex system found in Mishnah Ohalot and elsewhere.
Numbers says simply: ‘When a man dies in a tent, this is the law: everyone who goes into the tent and everyone who was inside the tent shall be ritually unclean for seven days, and every open vessel which has no covering tied over it shall also be unclean. In the open, anyone who touches a man killed with a weapon or one who had died naturally, or who touches a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean for seven days’ (NEB).
These verses differentiate between a corpse that is enclosed in a ‘tent’ and a corpse that is in the open. When it is enclosed, it transmits impurity even to those people and vessels that have not touched it; simply to be under the same roof as the corpse is sufficient to incur impurity. In the open, however, a corpse (or even part of a corpse) transmits impurity by touch only. A grave, on the other hand, has its own individual impurity, by which it transmits impurity by touch in the open, even if the corpse itself is not touched.
Rabbinic law fills out this account in certain commonsense ways that are not problematic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ritual and MoralityThe Ritual Purity System and its Place in Judaism, pp. 13 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999