2.4 Israelite Practices

Israelite Ideas About How God Wants Us to Live Our Lives

• Ritual purity is prerequisite to holiness
• Moral purity is prerequisite to holiness
• God expects sacrifices

Theories of Ritual and Dietary Impurity

• Hygiene
• Symbols of human vice
• Symbols of death
• Social differentiator theory
• Categories and fear of freaks

Examples of things considered impure: pork, catfish, vultures, skin disease, dead bodies, semen, menstrual blood, birth defects, male homosexuality, four-day-old meat, foreskins, rival nations.

Moral Impurity

Moral impurity is much more serious than ritual impurity

Sins: idolatry, bloodshed, adultery

Consequence: defiles the sanctuary and the land

Resolutions:

• Blood of sacrifice can cleanse the sanctuary (or else God will simply leave)
• Only exile can cleanse the land

Different Views of the Function of (Animal) Sacrifices

• Food for the gods (rejected by Israelites)
• Remove moral impurity from the sanctuary
• Redistributed to the poor
• Support the priests
• Only moral way to eat meat
• Expression of gratitude, devotion, self-sacrifice (explicit in Christianity, perhaps implicit in Israel)