Religions Reviewed

The substance of Leviticus 11 is an inventory of animals that can result in ‘pollution’ (Heb. אמט tamei), either through consumption or through contact.[1] The animal proscriptions, with their distinctions between ‘pure,’ ‘polluted,’ and ‘hold-detestable,’ provide a model case of systematizing ritual status. Without further explanation, however, it is unclear whether they can be brought into relation with any sort of social status or ontological status. Despite the fact that the text clearly expounds a well-articulated system, the full reasoning behind that system is obscure, both to modern commentators, and to earlier participants in the religious traditions that embrace the Torah as a foundational document.[2]

William Countryman surveys the customary, yet inadequate, explanations offered by scholars: arbitrary distinction, moral allegory, hygiene code, and normative inversion of the cults of rival peoples.[3] While Countryman dismisses allegorical readings, these play a role in the later interpretations offered by both Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Mary Douglas.[4] Contemporary scholars seem unanimous in rejecting the idea of a primitive hygienic rationale as a “deeply inadequate” explanation rooted in modern materialism and alien to the ancient Hebrew worldview.[5] The hypothesis of arbitrary distinction amounts to a simple refusal to deduce an explanation, and while normative inversion is patently part of the picture, it fails to account for all of its details.

            Recent scholarship tends to acknowledge the value of the 1966 monograph by Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, if not in its full conclusions, at least in its methodological approach of applying principles of structuralist anthropology to the question.[6] The anthropological method is appealing precisely because it offers to weave together threads of ritual, social, and ontological ideation. Yet Douglas herself in 1993 wrote, “the various interpretations offered so far are not agreed,” in an article where she came to new conclusions, using tools drawn from rhetorical analysis.[7] The two methodologies of anthropological and rhetorical study alternate and combine in most of the recent attempts to resolve the issue.

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[1] Fox, Five Books of Moses, 497-498 discusses the valence of the term tamei and his reasons for leaving it untranslated. He also points out (p. 558) that Leviticus 11 is not limited to dietary proscriptions.

[2] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, p. 14 (& n. 4) calls the system in Leviticus 11 “reasoned,” but only in the senses of specificity and internal consistency. Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 364-370 discusses the extent to which the rabbinical mishna diverged from the patterns of reasoning in Leviticus. Ibid., “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 21-23 proposes a basis for the Pauline rejection of the Levitical animal proscriptions.

[3] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, p. 24.

[4] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 16-20;
Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” pp. 5, 20-23.

[5] Fox, Five Books of Moses, p. 554.

[6] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, pp. 25-27 approvingly summarizes
Douglas’ earlier thesis. See also Fox, Five Books of Moses, p. 555; Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 358-359.

[7]Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 3.