Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor

Häftad, Engelska, 2024

AvYitzhaq Feder,Israel) Feder, Yitzhaq (University of Haifa

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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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2024-07-11
Mått152 x 229 x 19 mm
Vikt546 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor336
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9781009045650

Tillhör följande kategorier

Religion: allmänt inom Filosofi och religion
Judendom inom Filosofi och religion
Judiska heliga texter inom Filosofi och religion
Biblar inom Filosofi och religion
Kristendom inom Filosofi och religion

Yitzhaq Feder is a lecturer at the University of Haifa. His research integrates textual study with advances in psychological and anthropological research. He has received numerous prizes, including the 2012 SBL David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Innovation in Biblical Studies. His most recent research focuses on biblical and ancient Near Eastern notions of taboo and their implications for understanding the emergence and historical development of morality.

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.

'Overall, this monograph is a significant step forward for the study of priestly ritual and the concepts of purity and pollution. … [It] is a powerful argument against the scholarly creation of abstract symbolic systems, and a testament to the messiness of lived experience the religious and ritual practices that emerge from it. Such a corrective is extremely necessary, and it is one which I enthusiastically welcome.' Liane M. Feldman, Journal of Near Eastern Studies