db114 purity & impurity, or pollution ~~~~~~~~~~~~
(TUMA'H VETAHARAH)
is an entirely separate system of rules & regulations
that apply to a different sphere of life, namely, the laws having to do
with the touching of various objects, such as dead humans or humans who have touched dead humans
& not washed properly, as well as with other causes of im-purity such as skin diseases or fluxes from the body,
including menstrual blood & semen (but not excreta), which render a person "impure" according to the Torah but carry no moral opprobrium.
People may become impure without any deed on their parts at all! In fact, most Israelites were impure most of the time (& today we all are all the time), since it requires a trip to the Temple to be purified from some kinds of ubiquitous impurities. The touch of such "impure" persons renders certain perfectly kosher foods forbidden to be eaten by Priests or by Israelites who are entering the Temple. During Second Temple times, there is much evidence that many Jews sought to avoid such impurity & to purify themselves as quickly as they could according to the rules from the Torah even if they were not planning to go to the Temple. The Pharisees extended there practices, even legislating that eating kosher food that as been in contact with impurities renders one impure ~~~
According to the biblical system (to which, apparently, the Galilean practice might very well have corresponded), the two sets of rules are kept quite strictly apart. A Jew did not eat non-kosher food, but rules around defiled kosher food depended on various circumstances of the eater's life & certainly did not render the body of the eater impure. The pharisaic tradition seems to have extended that prohibition against eating defiled kosher food & also rendered the eater him- or herself impure through this eating. The Pharisees sought to convince other Jews to adhere to their new standards of strictness (this is apparently the meaning of them going over land & sea to convert - they were attemp-ting to "convert" other Jews, not Gentiles). They therefore instituted a practice of ritual hand purification by pouring water over the hands before eating bread, so that the hands would not make the bread impure. Thus, in order to understand what Yehoshua is talking about in the Gospel, we must have a clearer sense of what his terminology might have meant in his cultural world, NOT ours. In the Gospel, we are told that Pharisees have come from YERUSHALAYIM, apparently to proselytize for their understanding of the Torah & its rules, including these ex-tensions of the purity regulations, such as the washing of the hands. YESHUA protests, asserting that foods that go into the body don't make the body impure; only things that come out of the body have that power to contaminate. So really what the Gospel describes is a Yesh who rejects the pharisaic extension of these purity laws beyond their original specific biblical foundations. He is not rejecting the Torah's rules & practices but upholding them. What strikes me, Mor, is the possibility & probability of 'perfecting' human life from conception to departure, by using stories that try to 'cover' all situations between 'creation' & 'perfection' ('ending'
:
as early as at least 'several thousands of years' we as humans have been trying
to digest all we feel, think, do & don't by parables, similitudes, comparisons,
stories & examples ~ bible stories and their universal interpretation
are about 'living our life at the fullest' even though
we stutter & stumble, flutter
& mutter all the time
~~~~~
is an entirely separate system of rules & regulations
that apply to a different sphere of life, namely, the laws having to do
with the touching of various objects, such as dead humans or humans who have touched dead humans
& not washed properly, as well as with other causes of im-purity such as skin diseases or fluxes from the body,
including menstrual blood & semen (but not excreta), which render a person "impure" according to the Torah but carry no moral opprobrium.
People may become impure without any deed on their parts at all! In fact, most Israelites were impure most of the time (& today we all are all the time), since it requires a trip to the Temple to be purified from some kinds of ubiquitous impurities. The touch of such "impure" persons renders certain perfectly kosher foods forbidden to be eaten by Priests or by Israelites who are entering the Temple. During Second Temple times, there is much evidence that many Jews sought to avoid such impurity & to purify themselves as quickly as they could according to the rules from the Torah even if they were not planning to go to the Temple. The Pharisees extended there practices, even legislating that eating kosher food that as been in contact with impurities renders one impure ~~~
According to the biblical system (to which, apparently, the Galilean practice might very well have corresponded), the two sets of rules are kept quite strictly apart. A Jew did not eat non-kosher food, but rules around defiled kosher food depended on various circumstances of the eater's life & certainly did not render the body of the eater impure. The pharisaic tradition seems to have extended that prohibition against eating defiled kosher food & also rendered the eater him- or herself impure through this eating. The Pharisees sought to convince other Jews to adhere to their new standards of strictness (this is apparently the meaning of them going over land & sea to convert - they were attemp-ting to "convert" other Jews, not Gentiles). They therefore instituted a practice of ritual hand purification by pouring water over the hands before eating bread, so that the hands would not make the bread impure. Thus, in order to understand what Yehoshua is talking about in the Gospel, we must have a clearer sense of what his terminology might have meant in his cultural world, NOT ours. In the Gospel, we are told that Pharisees have come from YERUSHALAYIM, apparently to proselytize for their understanding of the Torah & its rules, including these ex-tensions of the purity regulations, such as the washing of the hands. YESHUA protests, asserting that foods that go into the body don't make the body impure; only things that come out of the body have that power to contaminate. So really what the Gospel describes is a Yesh who rejects the pharisaic extension of these purity laws beyond their original specific biblical foundations. He is not rejecting the Torah's rules & practices but upholding them. What strikes me, Mor, is the possibility & probability of 'perfecting' human life from conception to departure, by using stories that try to 'cover' all situations between 'creation' & 'perfection' ('ending'
: as early as at least 'several thousands of years' we as humans have been trying
to digest all we feel, think, do & don't by parables, similitudes, comparisons,
stories & examples ~ bible stories and their universal interpretation
are about 'living our life at the fullest' even though
we stutter & stumble, flutter
& mutter all the time
~~~~~
29 jan 2013 - bewerkt op 29 jan 2013
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