Moral Impurity and the Temple in Early Christianity in Light of Ancient Greek Practice and Qumranic Ideology

Abstract

The relationship between ritual purity and moral purity is of great importance for understanding the emergence of Christianity within its Jewish matrix. In his recent monograph, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that moral impurity is a phenomenon to be found in various forms in the Hebrew Bible as well as in Jewish writings from the Second Temple period.' Whereas the sources of ritual impurity are either natural phenomena (e.g., childbirth, scale disease, and menstrual and seminal emissions) or certain cultic procedures (e.g., Lev 16:28; Num 19:8), moral impurity results from heinous acts, particularly offenses that pertain to social life such as sexual sins, bloodshed, idolatry, and deceit. Moreover, while ritual impurity may be unintentional, moral pollution is the result of a deliberate act, and thus testifies to the transgressor's own character.2 As a result of moral defilement, the sinner experiences a degradation in status, but does not defile those with whom he comes into contact. The Priestly traditions in the Pentateuch prescribe a complicated process for eliminating the impurity that results from sin: repentance, restitution, and an atoning sacrifice, through which