Purity and Monotheism: Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law (JSOT Supplement Series)

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES

140

Editors David J.A. Clines Philip R. Davies

Editorial Board Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, Tamara C. Eskenazi, J. Cheryl Exum, Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller

JSOT Press Sheffield

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Purity and Monotheism Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law

Walter Houston

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 140

To the memory of Henry Houston 1905-1965 and Joan Houston 1912-1982

Copyright © 1993 Sheffield Academic Press Published by JSOT Press JSOT Press is an imprint of Sheffield Academic Press Ltd 343 Fulwood Road Sheffield S10 3BP England

Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press and Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd Guildford

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Houston, Walter Purity and Monotheism: Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law.—(JSOT Supplement Series, ISSN 0309-0787; No. 140) I. Title II. Series 241.5 ISBN 1-85075-368-7

CONTENTS

Preface Abbreviations A Note on Hebrew

7 9 11

Chapter 1 APPROACHES TO A PROBLEM

13

Chapter 2 THE LAW OF UNCLEAN FLESH

26

Chapter 3 A REVIEW OF EXPLANATIONS

68

Chapter 4 THE CONTEXT SURVEYED

124

Chapter 5 THE CONTEXT INTERPRETED

181

Chapter 6 PURITY AND MONOTHEISM

218

Chapter 7 MONOTHEISM WITHOUT PURITY

259

Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

283 304 311

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PREFACE

The origins of this book go back a number of years. Some of its ideas were developed in a sabbatical term in 1984 and tried out in papers read to the Cambridge Old Testament Seminar and to the Society for Old Testament Study at its summer meeting that year in Birmingham. But the present work is essentially a new one. Much of the work was done on sabbatical leave from Westminster College in the summer of 1989, and it was completed over the following two years. I must record here my gratitude first of all to Westminster College and the United Reformed Church for granting me the two terms of study leave to which I have referred, without which the book would never have been begun, and also for providing assistance in my administrative duties in the college, without which it is doubtful whether it would have been completed. Secondly, I wish to thank the many people who contributed in various ways to the progress of the work. Graham Davies stands out among them by virtue of his constant interest over the whole eight-year period in which I have been working on the subject; he has read every chapter in draft form with the greatest care and made very thorough comments; he has also spontaneously directed my attention to various items of relevant literature. John Rogerson has also read drafts of every chapter and I am much indebted to him not only for his valuable comments, but also for his recommendation of the work to David Clines for inclusion in the JSOT Supplement Series. This has considerably speeded its progress. Parts of the work have been read at various stages also by Roger Tomes, Liora Kolska Horwitz and Philip Jenson, and they have all made helpful suggestions. At a stage in the work when I was uncertain how to proceed, Peter Ackroyd advised me to turn to Gillian Clark at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, and she introduced me to the field of archaeozoology which was at that time completely unknown to me. Without this I could never have written Chapter 4, which is of central

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importance in the work. Many of the practitioners in that field whom I then approached in my ignorance were kind enough to reply to me, and some of them supplied offprints of their own work; I should mention here Simon Davis, Richard Meadow, Giinter Nobis, Robin Thomas and Paula Wapnish; Liora Kolska Horwitz deserves particular mention in that she gave me work which was at that time unpublished, and, as I have mentioned, she was also good enough to read a first draft of what is now Chapter 4. I wish particularly to thank David Clines as a director of Sheffield Academic Press for accepting the work into the JSOT Supplement Series, and for the care with which his staff have processed it for publication. Technical difficulties in the late stages of production unfortionately made the inclusion of a subject index impracticable. Mention of one's spouse is a customary element in the genre 'preface to learned work', but I have more than customary obligations to my wife. She has encouraged me throughout, including some rather barren periods, with her genuine interest, and has also helped me in various practical ways: she typed the earliest version of the work and later generously gave part of a legacy to her to pay for the word-processing equipment on which I have composed the present book, and she has helped to compile the indexes and to check the proofs. The work is dedicated to the memory of my parents, in whose house I first learnt both to love the Bible and to read it critically. They have no other memorial. Walter Houston Westminster College, Cambridge 28 July, 1992

ABBREVIATIONS AASOR

AES AUSS AV BA BARev BASOR BOB BH BHS BKAT Byz. BZ

CB CBQ Chalcol.

CIS CNRS

CTA De Abst. De Spec. Leg. EB(A) EncJud Ep. Arist. EvQ ET

EvT EVV

HAT Hist. Nat.

HR IEJ Int.B

J JAAR

Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Archives Europe'ennes de Sociologie Andrews University Seminary Studies Authorized (King James) Version Biblical Archaeology Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research F. Brown, S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament Biblical Hebrew Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament Byzantine period Biblische Zeitschrift Century Bible Catholic Biblical Quarterly Chalcolithic Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum Centre national pour la recherche scientifique A. Herdner (ed.), Corpus des tablettes en cuntiformes alphabltiques De Abstinentia (Porphyry) De Specialibus Legibus (Philo) Early Bronze (Age) Encyclopaedia Judaica Epistle of (Pseudo-)Aristeas Evangelical Quarterly English translation Evangelische Theologie English versions Handbuch zum Alten Testament Historia Naturalis (Pliny) History of Religions Israel Exploration Journal Intermediate Bronze Yahwistic writing Journal of the American Academy of Religion

10 JArchSci JANESCU JBL JCS JESHO JNES JPSA JQR JSOT KA1 KTU LA LB(A) LCL MB(A) MNI NEB NRSV

OTS Or P PEQ PG PPN Praep. Ev. Proc. Prehist. Soc. RB REB

RivStudFen Rom. RSV RV

SJOT StudOr TDOT UT VT VTSup WBC ZA ZDPV

Purity and Monotheism Journal of Archaeological Science Journal of the Ancient Near East Society of Columbia University Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Journal of Near Eastern Studies Jewish Publication Society of America Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for the Study of the Old Testament H. Donner and W. Rollig, Kanandische und aramdische Inschriften M. Dietrich, O. Loretz and J. Sanmartin (eds.), Die keilalphabetische Texte aus Ugarit Lexikonfiir Agyptologie Late Bronze (Age) Loeb Classical Library Middle Bronze (Age) minimum number of individuals New English Bible New Revised Standard Version Oudtestamentische Studien Orientalia Priestly Code Palestine Exploration Quarterly J. Migne (ed.), Patrologia graeca Pre-Pottery Neolithic Praeparatio Evangelica (Eusebius) Proceedings of the Prehistorical Society Revue Biblique Revised English Bible Rivista di studifenid Roman period Revised Standard Version Revised Version Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studia orientalia G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament C.H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum, Supplements Word Biblical Commentary Zeitschriftfur Assyriologie Zeitsc.hrift des deutschen Palastina-Vereins

A NOTE ON HEBREW

Although this is primarily a work of Old Testament scholarship, I hope that it will be read by anthropologists and archaeologists and others interested in the subject. For their sake, I have not used foreign scripts in the main text, as distinct from the footnotes, except in the table on pp. 45-46. But I have used a technical scholarly system of transliteration for Hebrew and other Semitic languages, and readers unfamiliar with them may need a little help with how words are supposed to be pronounced. The vowels should be pronounced in the 'Continental' way; there is, for example, no difference between a and a. A raised vowel is a light unstressed sound. Most of the consonants are as in English, but the following should be noted: '

' h h q s § S t

a glottal stop similar, but voiced, like the cawing of a crow a throatier version of h like ch in loch a k pronounced as far back in the mouth as possible now usually pronounced ts now the same as s sh an emphatic t

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Chapter 1 APPROACHES TO A PROBLEM

1. The Problem Our theme is no mere siding on the main line of Old Testament research. The dietary laws have taken a central place in the selfunderstanding of Judaism throughout its history. While Jews have expressed their faithfulness to their God by the observance of all the laws, it is these, along with those of circumcision and the Sabbath, that have most conspicuously enabled them to express their identity as Jews over against their neighbours, to resist assimilation, and thereby to be faithful to the God who has called them to be 'his special possession among all the nations that are on the earth'. This power of the dietary laws arises not least from the fact that Jews draw attention to themselves among their neighbours by their observance, often indeed incurring ridicule for it. Central to these dietary laws is the law on forbidden flesh in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. It is specifically this law that is chosen by the author of the code of Leviticus 20 (or the editor of the Holiness Code as a whole) to symbolize the 'separation' of Israel as God's holy people 'from the peoples' (Lev. 20.24). You are to make a clear separation between clean beasts and unclean beasts and between unclean and clean birds. You must not contaminate yourselves (Id' f$aq
A number of the terms and concepts in this short passage will occupy us later; but the leading significance of the law of forbidden flesh for this author is quite clear.

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The same understanding is expressed in a small number of narratives1 in which the motivating theme is the threat of pollution by unclean food in situations of crisis or extremity. For example, there is the story of Eleazar, and that of the seven brothers, in 2 Mace. 6.1831 and 7.1-42. The situation is King Antiochus's desecration of the Temple and his attempt to suppress the traditional observance of Judaism. Eleazar, we are told, had his mouth held open while the officers forced pork into it, but he spat it out, preferring to die rather than disobey the Law of his God; and he did indeed die under fearful torture, and for the same reason did the seven brothers and their mother in ch. 7. The issue is primarily expressed in terms of the requirement to obey God rather than the king; but Eleazar describes the action being urged upon him with a unique word that might be barbarously translated as 'foreignism'—allophulismos (6.24). It is in itself wrong to disobey God, but one of the objects of God's law is to keep his people distinct from all others. The adoption of foreign customs, and in particular foreign diet, frustrates this purpose. This is the precise conception of Leviticus 20. It is not just that being a Jew entails not eating pork, but that eating pork in a certain sense entails ceasing to be a Jew. One can understand, therefore, one important reason for the horror with which Peter in his vision in Acts 10.9-16 greets the command to kill and eat unclean animals (one reason—others may suggest themselves later). This is a sharply contrasting narrative which nevertheless, as Gordon Wenham has pointed out (1981), shows the same understanding of the dietary laws. To eat unclean flesh would be to cross the boundary that separates him from the Gentiles. But that is precisely what God, according to the story, wishes him to do, as he acknowledges in the house of Cornelius (v. 28). Luke's universalist God forces Peter to and across the boundary. 'What God has cleansed, you must not call common [i.e. unclean].' Because he not only wants Peter to enter a Gentile's house, but Gentiles en masse to enter the Church as Gentiles and on equal terms with its Jewish members, he must cleanse what in Leviticus he too had called unclean, for he is demanding the erasure of the boundary which that distinction celebrates and maintains, and which it echoes both structurally and ideologically. Although Peter is not in the same kind of extremity as 1. Besides the stories discussed in the text, see Est. 3.8 (Greek); 14.17; Dan. 1.8; Jdt. 12.1-2, 19.

1. Approaches to a Problem

15

Eleazar, his understanding of himself in relation to his nation and his God is in no slight crisis. Luke here encapsulates in symbolic narrative that process which expresses itself in discursive style in the Pauline letters. It is now widely acknowledged, above all through the work of E.P. Sanders (1977), that the fundamental motivation of Paul's attack on 'the Law' is the conviction that guides his sense of mission: that 'in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek', and therefore the Law, which shapes the identity of the Jew as a member of God's people, can have no place in the salvation of humanity in Christ. In this context the Law means above all the ritual and purity rules, those of forbidden flesh among them, which mark the boundaries of Israel. Even if he himself does not wish the 'strong' in the Roman church to make an issue of it (Rom. 14), it is not surprising that they flaunt the banner of their freedom of diet. Ever since, the opposition of kosher and non-kosher has symbolized the opposition of Church and Synagogue. (This issue is discussed fully below in Chapter 7.) Now, in itself this function of the dietary laws in marking boundaries and protecting holiness could operate with a perfectly arbitrary definition of the permitted and forbidden species. Nothing in the ideological framework of the story of Eleazar suggests any intrinsic reason why it should be pork—rather than, say, beef—that the king's officers vainly force down his throat. But it was of course pork, because it is pork, among other things, which is forbidden in Leviticus. But why is it pork (and the rest) in Leviticus? There have been strong souls who have been perfectly happy that the definition should be arbitrary, and that there should be no answer to that question. But they are rare. For the mass of the devout it is as difficult to suppose that the Most High makes arbitrary decrees as for the scholar to leave such questions unanswered; and through the centuries there have been many attempts both by the devout and by scholars—not of course mutually exclusive groups—to explain the prohibitions of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Before we begin to examine the various explanations that have been offered, we must give ourselves a solid theoretical basis for our examination by analysing what it might mean to 'explain' such a cultural feature as a system of food prohibitions. We must of course take seriously here the work of social anthropologists who have studied the cultures of a wide range of societies, most of which include food

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prohibitions or avoidances. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, in The Savage in Judaism (1990), has argued at length for the validity of a comparative method derived from anthropology as a tool in the elucidation of Israelite religion.1 As he argues, this is a cultural phenomenon that should not be understood in a totally different way from the culture of other societies, including those we term 'primitive', though many people even today try to do so, as we shall see in Chapter 3.1 am not saying that dietary rules in all societies are to be understood in the same way—though some anthropologists do seem to be saying this— but simply that it is likely that at least some societies present at least partial analogies to the Old Testament system. 2. What do we Have to Explain? In the first place, we must understand what it is that we have to explain. The foregoing discussion will, I hope, have already made it clear that an understanding that is perfectly satisfactory as regards the mere fact that a society distinguishes between permitted and forbidden foods may be unable to explain why any particular food is forbidden, or permitted. Hence we need to distinguish in our reflections between the fact that food avoidances exist and the particular avoidances that are practised. Since most societies practise some form of dietary restriction, there are likely to be fairly general reasons for this. One of these is the boundary-marking function that we have already observed in the Jewish case. This certainly applies also to Hindu castes, who not only protect themselves against the contamination of lower castes by elaborate purity rules applied to the preparation and consumption of food (Douglas 1966: 32ff.), but also proclaim the purity of their Hinduism over against outcastes by their care in the selection of foods, for example by refusing all flesh-meat. There are other general explanations available, as we shall see; but they cannot necessarily be expected to explain what it is about pork that excludes it from the Jewish dinner table. Much more specific cultural associations may well be involved. This is not the only necessary distinction in what we are called on to explain. We are confronted in the Old Testament not merely by a 1. I regret that this fascinating and suggestive book came into my hands too late for me to respond adequately to it, but I have been able to refer to it in a number of places.

1. Approaches to a Problem

17

society that as a matter of fact avoids certain foods, as nearly all do, but by a religiously based system of prohibitions, which is not a universal feature, though most world religions have such a system. (Christianity is the notable exception, no doubt because of that aspect of its early history that I have already referred to.) There may in fact be any degree of formality in cultural features of this kind, and any degree of consciousness. Some societies' taboos may be said to be unconscious (cf. Leach 1964: 31), but that does not make them any the less taboos.1 Marshall Sahlins (1976: 170ff.) discusses preferences among Americans for some domestic animals as food rather than others on these lines, quoting Franz Boas: Supposing an individual accustomed to eating dogs should enquire among us for the reason why we do not eat dogs, we could only reply that it is not customary; and he would be justified in saying that dogs are tabooed among us, just as much as we are justified in speaking of taboos among primitive people (Sahlins 1976: 173 n. 5, from Boas 1965: 207).

Leach indeed considers that in all societies some potential food is unconsciously tabooed. So far as animal food is concerned Leviticus 11 is an exception to this rule, if it is a rule: it covers all animals explicitly and without exception. Some societies explicitly prohibit certain foods and expect those who ignore the ban to suffer physical illeffects. Few systematically define all animals as permitted or forbidden and invoke divine authority for the instructions. Now some anthropologists distinguish sharply between the study of behaviour and of 'mental events' (e.g. Harris 1979: 31), an expression that would cover all attitudes, rules, statements, prohibitions or prescriptions about food. The rules of Leviticus 11 would count under this rubric as the object of mental rather than behavioural study, as they are prescriptive rather than descriptive of the behaviour of Jews. The difference is a rather fine one when dealing with a society that defines its behaviour before all else as obedience to divine prescription. However, if we are seeking to understand the scriptural rules in their original social setting, it may be important to make the distinction between the rules themselves, which may be seen as the work of an educated and reflective class of priests, the customs actually existing at the time, and the popular or unconscious attitudes 1. Cf. however Halverson 1976, who argues that this is an illegitimate use of the word 'taboo'.

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on which they may have been based. A further example from biblical narrative may clarify the relevance of this point to the biblical setting. Once again the setting is a time of crisis, a situation of extremity. The prophet Ezekiel is being forced to bear symbolically upon his own person the physical and psychological pain of exile (Ezek. 4), taking short rations of food and water; and he is told to take his food in the form of a barley cake which he must bake using human excrement as the fuel (v. 12). And the Lord adds, 'That is how the Israelites will have to take their food, unclean (tame") among the nations where I am going to drive them'. Ezekiel replies, 'Alas, Lord Yahweh, I have never been denied (metummd'a); carrion, or meat killed by wild beasts, I have never eaten from the time I was a lad until now, andpigguP has never passed my lips'. Both Yahweh and Ezekiel use the root tm', the most widely used technical term in the priestly writings for everything that is ritually defiling; Ezekiel is a priest, and it is as a priest that he protests his scrupulous avoidance of all pollution.2 Yet to all appearance they are not using the word technically. No priestly passage in the Pentateuch attributes ritual defilement to human excrement. It is true that one passage in Deuteronomy, 23.10-15 (Eng. 9-14) comes near to this. The passage is concerned with the purity of the military camp in time of war, treating it effectively in the same way as the Temple, so that a man who has had a nocturnal emission must stay outside the camp the whole day; the word qados ('holy') is used of the camp (v. 15). Rather similarly the men are instructed to go outside the camp to evacuate their bowels, and to cover the excrement behind them. But the passage falls short of attributing technical uncleanness to it; it is simply described as something 'unseemly', 'offensive' in the sight of Yahweh ('erwat ddbar, v. 15). In any case, the fact remains that the seemingly systematic and comprehensive priestly treatment of ritual pollution in the Pentateuch does not mention excrement as a possible source of uncleanness. And none of the three types of unclean meat that Ezekiel protests that he has never allowed to pass his lips are strictly relevant to the present case; all three are flesh, and Ezekiel's emergency rations are strictly vegetarian. Yet the passion of his protest, and the 1. Used in Lev. 7.18 and 19.7 of sacrificial flesh which has been left until the third day. 2. In the Priestly Code (Lev. 11.40 and 17.15) carrion is not forbidden to lay people, provided they purify themselves of the pollution.

1. Approaches to a Problem

19

conviction that the technical terms of unclean flesh are relevant by association or analogy, as well as the Deuteronomic passage, make it clear that there was a strong conviction of the unclean nature of human excrement that for some reason simply failed to become part of the technical priestly system. Here is a taboo that does not appear to arise out of or to be systematized within the sophisticated ritual and theological system of the priestly code. Is there not a strong possibility that the animal taboos that we find systematized in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 existed prior to that systematization in a similar way? But Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are not the product of a primitive society, but of a literate and learned elite. This distinction remains a useful one, though it must be used with care (cf. EilbergSchwartz 1990: Iff.); it does not imply superiority in modes of thought, morals or motives, but rather in the techniques available and the complexity of the intellectual operations that can be performed. Jack Goody in The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Goody 1977) has studied the effect of writing on culture. Making explicit the hierarchies of classification implicit in linguistic usage and in man's perception of the world, and developing these systems into more elaborate, and sometimes more precise and 'accurate' classifications, is certainly an important activity in early literate societies, and one that leads both to the type of scholastic preoccupation with the classification of food, prohibited and allowed, exemplified in Leviticus 11, as well as [sic] to the classification that laid the basis for the development of zoology and botany (p. 103).

C.R. Hallpike's magisterial examination of The Foundations of Primitive Thought (Hallpike 1979) deals in detail (pp. 169-236) with classification in primitive societies. To put it very briefly, this is typically based on associative categories ('complexes'), linked with concrete imagery, or else on an analogical procedure based on prototypes, rather than on criteria that define the logical intension of the class as in the Aristotelian classification typical of 'modem' thought.1 This may help us to distinguish the learned, literate element in the 1. Hallpike has a tendency to contrast 'primitive' thought over-rigidly with the cognitive categories of 'modern' societies, without paying attention to the continuous spectrum which extends between them, but in the present instance he makes it clear that everyday classification in all societies, whether 'primitive' or 'modern', is not the same as 'Aristotelian' classification, and that this in turn is not the model used by the biologist.

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classifications of Leviticus 11 from its customary inheritance, though it cannot of itself show us whether the distinctions between clean and unclean are the creation of the authors or of more ancient origin. Edwin Firmage, in his recent very significant article on the subject of the dietary laws (Firmage 1990), has made the point that, regardless of any possible basis for the distinctions in ancient or popular attitudes, any explanation must begin from the criteria that we find in the text. We must discover whether in fact the present criteria can be explained as indicating a coherent purpose behind the definitions of animal purity. Only having done that is it admissible to speculate about the prehistory of the present law. The text before us must be the starting point for any discussion of the issue (p. 177).

It is not permissible to begin, as scholarship did before Mary Douglas's work (in particular Douglas 1966: 4Iff.), by assuming that the criteria in Leviticus 11 are merely a secondary systematization of a distinction that was already opaque to the priests who drew them up. Even if the priests took over old customs, they could have reinterpreted them and given them new meaning. If we can see sense in their criteria, that is the sense that they have, and the system must be explained, as both Douglas and Firmage attempt to do, on the basis of the values and beliefs of the priestly writers themselves. Whatever version of the prehistory of the dietary law we accept, there remain a number of important questions whose answers must largely come from the present text, the organizing principles of which are precisely those neglected criteria, for which modern scholarship has had no use (Firmage 1990: 178).

With this there can be no quarrel, and one aim of the present work is to answer those questions, and from that source. Certainly, if there were food avoidances in the society in which the present law was developed, they may have been entirely different from those in the present law, or if they were similar they may have been entirely reinterpreted. Is Firmage right, however, in implying that they would in any case be essentially irrelevant to the interpretation of the rules as they now exist? I believe not. Theological and legal systems such as that of the Priestly Code do not emerge out of a void; they must be seen in the context of the social realities of their time; and these realities cannot necessarily be read off from the system itself. In particular, if the system uses animals symbolically, it would seem

1. Approaches to a Problem

21

advisable to inquire what symbolic and material associations animals had in the contemporary world, lest we miss significant connections. 3. Kinds of Explanation In part it is a question of what is to count as explanation. Marvin Harris has promoted the distinction between 'etic' and 'emic' accounts, meaning accounts of the features in question as viewed respectively from the point of view of the observers and of the subjects.1 The test of the adequacy of emic analyses is their ability to generate statements the native accepts as real, meaningful or appropriate... The test of the adequacy of etic accounts is simply their ability to generate scientifically productive theories about the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities (Harris 1979: 32).

This rather crude typology highlights an obvious divergence between those social theories that do and those that do not give a significant place to the intentions and perceptions of the subjects. Thus, among 'etic' accounts, which may adopt any kind of aetiology that the observer regards as relevant, we might include the hygienic theory which was popular at one time as an explanation of the dietary laws (see Chapter 3, §l.a); neither those who drew the laws up nor those who observe them had any such thought in their minds (unless some very devious priestcraft is presupposed). While this theory has lost its appeal in educated circles, functional explanations that purport to show how particular social arrangements serve to support the structure and power-relationships of the society, whether or not that is how they are viewed by the people themselves, have been very significant in social anthropology since the time of Durkheim. But the main 'etic' approaches with which we shall have to reckon in relation to the dietary laws are that of cultural materialism, as seen in Harris's work (Harris 1979 etc.; cf. Chapter 3, §2.c), which regards the material requirements of a people for food and other necessities as prior to, and determinative of, their culture; and historical approaches, which 1. These barbarous expressions are derived from the use of 'phonetic' and 'phonemic' in linguistics, pertaining respectively to the study of the sounds of a language, their production and articulation, without reference to the meaning of the utterances in which they are employed, and the way in which sounds are recognized by the speakers of the language as different and as capable of being opposed to one another to create meaning.

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see a society as invariably being to some extent the prisoner of its past, so that cultural features that at one time were functional or meaningful, or both, may now be mere survivals, or else may have been given new meaning in new circumstances. This was the characteristic approach of the nineteenth century, which so far as Semitic religion is concerned was classically expressed by William Robertson Smith (W.R. Smith 1894). In contrast, anthropologists who aim at accounts of ritual phenomena that Harris would describe as 'emic' characteristically see themselves as interpreters. They are faced with what seems to them to be a system of communication, different from language, yet presumably equally meaningful; the task of the anthropologist as interpreter is to make the meaning that the native takes for granted plain to the stranger. So Clifford Geertz, who entitles his collected essays (Geertz 1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. But there are many ways of going about such a task, as Geertz makes plain. Victor Turner emphasizes the conscious meaning attributed to the symbols by their users, particularly the specialists. The aim in writing about (for example) Ndembu ritual is 'to explore the semantics of ritual symbols...The first step in such a task is to pay close attention to the way the Ndembu explain their own symbols' (Turner 1969: 10). Others use other information about the structures of thought in the society, such as myth and cosmology, to deduce the meaning of the ritual. Structuralists like Leach (Leach 1976) place the accent on the formal structures that they believe the symbols create by their mutual relationships. This is plainly true of Douglas (see below, Chapter 3, §2.d). (It has to be said that many such structuralist accounts cannot been seen as 'emic' in the proper sense: it is unlikely that ancient Israelites would recognize the acounts given by Leach and Aycock [Leach 1983] as representing their own belief or experience.) Others see it as more important to investigate the meanings of the symbols individually, which are seen as 'motivated', to use the technical language: there is a reason for their meaning what they do, unlike linguistic signs, which are quite arbitrary so far as the existing linguistic system is concerned (this is really only true of basic, underived terms like 'dog', not words like 'doghouse'). This is strongly argued by Hallpike in the book already referred to, who points out, among much else, that many symbols are cross-cultural—unkempt hair is a common symbol for wild nature or being outside or on the margins of society (Hallpike 1979: 151-52).

1. Approaches to a Problem

23

Although the 'etic/emic' distinction thus points to a significant empirical divergence between theories, which is useful for this study, the way in which Harris defines it is far from neutral: for it implies no less than that only 'etic' theories are scientifically valid and have explanatory power, while 'emic' accounts are merely descriptive. Similarly exclusive claims are made on the other side by those who believe that ritual and symbolic systems do not need to be explained but only 'understood'. But, as W.G. Runciman argues (Runciman 1983: 183-84), there are no special rules which apply when meaning is brought into a scientific argument; there is no essential difference between a causal explanation and a 'hermeneutic' or 'structuralist' one; meanings and perceptions may figure as scientific explanations as well as more impersonal processes.1 With dietary customs, it would be surprising if material factors such as ecology had nothing to do with them; our use of the material world must be constrained by its possibilities, and tends to be constrained by our methods of production, our class relationships and so forth. But 'the decisive quality of culture' is 'not that this culture must conform to material constraints but that it does so according to a definite symbolic scheme which is never the only one possible' (Sahlins 1976: viii). Thus the meaning that the rules have, consciously or unconsciously, for those who drew them up and those who observe them must be relevant. But it seems equally one-sided to insist that the only significant understanding that can be achieved of a symbolic system is in terms of its conscious meaning to its practitioners, which Firmage appears to come close to asserting. In the present case it seems particularly difficult to arrive at the understanding that we are seeking by this route. The focus of our study is the rules of the Torah, but the Torah itself is remarkably sparing in explanation of its rules of ritual; we shall find ourselves therefore using the accounts given by Jews of the rules that they observe. The difficulty is that these tend to be no less diverse than those given by outsiders, and the privileged status that they ought to have in explanation of the rules therefore seems largely 1. Since Runciman clearly says this, it is strange that Mayes (1989: 124) criticizes him on the grounds that 'the beliefs of individuals are effectively excluded as causative factors in the development of the level of explanation'. Mayes seems to have misunderstood Runciman's insistence on the distinctness of the task of description from that of explanation (see below) as excluding subjective factors from explanation.

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valueless. Is it really true that the rules are opaque even to those who observe them? The truth is rather that in their normal function the rules are by no means opaque, but rather quite explicit; we have already looked at Lev. 20.24-6, though we have not yet exhausted its meaning. But as we have seen, the clarity of function does not prevent the detail of the rules from appearing arbitrary. But this is remarkably similar to the case of language. No one could begin to explain even the function of language in general, let alone the purpose of any particular utterance, without reference to meaning. But there is, as I have noted, an element in language that is arbitrary from the point of view of meaning—and yet not totally inexplicable. There is no other way of explaining why a dog is called 'dog' (or its equivalent in any other language) than by reference to the history of the language. The same may well be true of ritual systems. The question that we, like countless others, have been asking in this chapter is comparable to that kind of question about language. There is no real problem about the significance and function of the rules; they are spelt out very clearly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The question is why they mean what they do, and in particular what is the origin of the significance of the individual units of meaning, the 'words' of the symbolic language; for example, why does 'pig' mean 'unclean'? It seems likely that such questions can only be answered by giving attention to origins as distinct from function. Our study must therefore have a diachronic (and therefore 'etic') aspect; it will investigate the dietary and related ritual customs likely to have been observed by the Israelites and their neighbours during the time in which the priestly torah on the subject was in process of formation. Whether its rules were formed in opposition to current customs, as many believe, or rather following them, or indeed both in different ways, is one of the questions that need to be resolved. Both 'etic' and 'emic' aspects then take their own appropriate place in a full account. Runciman (1983: 15ff.) divides the work of the social scientist into four distinct tasks, four levels of understanding to be achieved. The first is the statement of the facts ('reportage'), which is not proper reportage unless it defines the facts as the agents understood them, but should avoid the implication of any explanatory theory,1 and the 1. Mayes (1989: 123) may here well be right in objecting that there can be no theory-free reportage, since reportage depends on the selection of facts, and the selection will be guided in advance by theoretical considerations such as the values of

1. Approaches to a Problem

25

second is explanation, which should depend on a testable theory subject to the normal requirements of scientific validity. The third type of understanding he calls 'description', using this word in a specialized sense designating an account of things as they are perceived and experienced by the people themselves. It is the answer to the question, 'What did they think they were really doing (or suffering)?', in our case, 'What did they think it meant?' And there is a fourth task: that of evaluation, or saying whether whatever it was was a good or bad thing; on the one hand this may be alleged not to be part of scholarship, but on the other it is constantly indulged in by scholars who are ostensibly describing, explaining or even reporting. Runciman's concern is that the four tasks should be kept distinct, but he is of course also aware that in practice they are constantly running into one another. At least writers should make it possible for their readers to distinguish them. I shall therefore try to sketch the structure of this work in terms of his typology, in the hope that it may be of some help to the reader in assessing the value of the work. The next chapter, Chapter 2, is intended as reportage: I attempt as precise as possible a statement of the rules through a detailed study of the source texts. The next three chapters are devoted to the problem of explanation. Chapter 3 looks at and evaluates some of the more important explanations that have been offered over the centuries, and particularly, in awareness of the ethnographic parallels, in the present century. This will lead to the formation of a hypothesis that will be tested in the following two chapters through an investigation of the evidence for the use of animals for food and sacrifice in the SyriaPalestine area in the last two millennia BC (with some use of literary evidence from later times), and of some of their symbolic associations. In Chapter 6 we return to the texts and engage in the descriptive task of trying to sketch an understanding of their significance in this broader context. The final chapter has an inevitable evaluative aspect. It is an attempt to understand the rejection of the purity law about diet in Christianity, my own faith, closely related as it is to the Old Testament and Judaism.

the reporter and an explanatory framework. But it is at least possible to separate these levels in thought, and that is all that matters here.

Chapter 2 THE LAW OF UNCLEAN FLESH

The acknowledged source of the distinction between clean and unclean species in Judaism is to be found in the partially parallel texts Leviticus 11 and Deut. 14.3-20, whatever background there may possibly be in their environing culture. The object of this chapter is therefore essentially to set out as clearly as possible what these texts say, with due regard to context and to form-critical considerations—that is to say, to social context. As a major instrument to this end I offer my own translations of the texts set out in lines in order to exhibit the structure clearly. Some existing translations of Leviticus 11 are misleading in that they have either misunderstood the structure at one or two points or failed to show it clearly. I shall also briefly offer some considerations that may help us to understand the relation between the two texts, and their origin and growth. I shall leave to a later stage any attempt to assign dates to the material and its development. 1. Leviticus 11 a. Form and Setting The genre and outline structure of this text are relatively easy to define. It is a priestly torah, or to be more precise a group of toroth, formulated in the second person plural because its object is to give guidance to the people on important ritual matters.1 The greater part of it falls naturally into two sections. Verses 2b-23, headed 'These are 1. Elliger (1966: 145-46; cf. also Noth 1962: 76) detects passages (vv. 24b26a, 27-28, 31b-38) written in a different, 'objektiv-neutraler Stil', i.e. in the third person; according to Noth these would be originally for the priests' own guidance. But this can hardly in itself be a sign of diverse origin; it is simply the kind of stylistic adjustment one might expect within a single document when it turns from general prescriptions to particular cases.

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27

the animals you may eat', comprise a section that defines species of animals permitted and prohibited for the table. It is this section alone that has a parallel in Deuteronomy 14. Verses 24-38 are entirely concerned with a subject that is twice touched on incidentally in the previous section: the ritual pollution caused by contact with the dead bodies of unclean animals. Though this is of less direct relevance to our subject, the classifications of animals employed here are of interest in relation to those in the first section,1 and moreover the precise relationship between prohibition for food and ritual uncleanness is an important aspect of the subject. We cannot therefore neglect this second section, though the technical details in vv. 31-38 have no significance for our subject and I have not included them in my translation. The following two verses, 39 and 40, deal briefly with pollution caused by contact with or eating of animals that may be eaten but have not been correctly slaughtered, that have died of themselves. This may be regarded as an appendix to the second section. Verses 41-45 return to the subject of diet, and plug an obvious gap in the first section, as I shall show. They cannot be regarded simply as the continuation of the first section (as Milgrom does [1991: 692]), for there is no obvious reason why vv. 24-40 should then have been inserted where they are; besides, there is no trace of this section in Deuteronomy 14 (cf. Elliger 1966: 147).2 Rather, it serves as a conclusion to the whole chapter, moving from instruction (vv. 41-42) to exhortation (vv. 43-45). This is the one place in the chapter where the style shifts from instruction to sermon style: in v. 43 alone the 1. Mary Douglas badly misinterprets them. See below, § 1 .c.6. 2. Similarly David Wright in a private communication quoted by Milgrom (1991: 698). Milgrom replies to the first point, that vv. 24-38 were placed before vv. 41-42 before the further addition of vv. 39-40 in order to form the section on the teeming things of the ground into one continuous block. But this leaves the placing of vv. 39-40 unexplained in its turn. To the second point, he argues that Deut. 14.2la, 'you shall not eat any carrion', covers the prohibition of creeping things. This involves the absurdity that Deuteronomy recommends Israelites to give aliens dead mice, and worse, to eat. It is far simpler to suppose that the three sections have been added successively, and that the Deuteronomic law parallels vv. 2-23 only. Milgrom asks how one could justify a list of diet rules (w. 2-23) that omits one major class of animals: 'as an independent list, it would have led to the conclusion that all land swarmers are permitted'. My answer (§l.c.5, end) is that they were at first simply assumed to be inedible.

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personal vetitive 'al with the jussive is used rather than the formal prohibitive Id with the imperfect, and in vv. 44-45 alone the divine first person is used and motivation is offered for observing the instructions. Michael Fishbane (1985: 259 and n. 61) notes that in this and many other cases 'where the teaching begins with a divine introit, originally anonymous materials have been reauthorized and personalized'. The whole chapter is introduced by two sentences defining everything that follows as the word of Yahweh given through Moses and Aaron, and concludes with what Fishbane calls a 'subscript', summarizing the instructions that have been given. The chapter is the first of a series (11-15) giving instruction on various types of ritual pollution and how to get rid of it, but in one way it is untypical of the series. The first and concluding sections, rather than taking cases of involuntary or unavoidable pollution and giving instruction on dealing with it, simply permit or prohibit different types of animal for food. Nothing is said about ritual pollution that may be incurred by eating prohibited species, nor about any remedies for this or any sanctions for transgression, though there is no question that in the case of inadvertent transgression the remedy would be a purification offering (Lev. 5.2, 6). The authorship of the chapter can be assumed to be priestly, both because of the general assertion in Lev. 10.10-11 of the responsibility of the priests for distinguishing between clean and unclean and giving instruction on Yahweh's commandments, and because of the specific reference to Aaron in the heading of the chapter. We shall have to consider, obviously in relation to the point in the last paragraph, why diet should be a specifically priestly concern. One may assume that the chapter is the written form of a tradition governing oral deliverances on the subject over a long period; as we go on we shall discuss the growth of the instruction in a more detailed way. b. Translation and Structure I have not aimed at elegance of English style in these translations, but at exhibiting clearly the structure of the passage, both in the large and in small details. The rhetoric of the priestly writers has usually been overlooked, but is unmistakable if simple. Notice, for example, in the first paragraph here, the effect achieved by the inversions in every verse and by the elegant variation in vv. 4, 5 and 6, where the participle, the imperfect tense and the perfect tense of the verb are used

2. The Law of Unclean Flesh

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successively to convey exactly the same idea. I have tried to convey something of the flavour of these variations, obviously without being able to match them grammatically. Translation choices that I comment on below are marked with an asterisk. I have left untranslated most of the names of birds in vv. 1319, all the names of locusts in v. 22, and most of the names of teeming things in vv. 29-30. To have given translations would have given a totally spurious impression of certitude as to the identification of these creatures; the majority of the names only appear here, or at most also in the Deuteronomic parallel, and with most of them it is sheer guesswork what they mean. I do comment on some of the more notable suggestions below. Obviously it is of some importance to try to identify the general type of creature implied in each case, if possible. 1 2

[Introduction] And Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them: Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: I. These are the living creatures* you may eat: A. Of all the beasts* that live on land:* X. Every one that: (a) is hoofed* (a') and makes a cleft in the hooves; (b) chews the cud, among the beasts, you may eat it. Y. However, these you may not eat (a) among those that chew the cud (b) and among those that are hoofed: [a] (i) the camel, because it chews the cud but hoofed it is not: it is unclean to you; [a] (ii) and the hyrax,1 because it chews the cud but hooves it has not: it is unclean to you; [a] (iii) and the hare, because it chews the cud but hooves it does not have: it is unclean to you;

3

4

5

6

1.

Or 'rock-badger' or 'daman' (Hyrax capensis).

30 1

8

9

10

12 13

20 21

23

Purity and Monotheism [b]

and the pig, because it has hooves and makes a cleft in the hoof but the cud it does not chew;

it is unclean to you. Of their flesh you may not eat and their dead bodies you may not touch: they are unclean to you. B. These you may eat of all that is in the water: X. everything that has fins and scales in the water—in the seas or or in the streams— you may eat; Y. but everything that does not have fins or scales in the seas or in the streams among all that teems in the water, and among all the living creatures in the water an abhorrence* are they to you [11] and an abhorrence they shall be to you; of their flesh you may not eat and their dead bodies you shall abhor. Everything that does not have fins or scales in the water is an abhorrence to you. C. And these you shall abhor among winged creatures; they shall not be eaten; they are an abhorrence to you: Y. the neSer, theperes, the 'ozniyyd, [14] the da'a, the 'ayyd with its kinds, [15] every kind of crow, [16] the daughter of ya'and, the tahtnas, the Sahap, the hawk with its kinds, [17] the kos, the Salak, the yanSup, [18] the tinSemet, the qd'at, the rdham, [19] the stork, the >a ndpd with its kinds, the hoopoe and the bat. Y. Every teeming winged creature that goes on all fours is an abhorrence to you; X. However, these you may eat of all teeming winged creatures that go on all fours, that have1* a pair of legs over their feet to hop with on the ground, [22] these you may eat among them: the 'arbe with its kinds, the sol'am with its kinds, the hargol with its kinds the hagab with its kinds. Y. But every other teeming winged creature that has four feet is an abhorrence to you.

1. It does not seem to be grammatically possible to read the Ketib vb in this verse, which must be taken to be a simple mistake for the Qere t>.

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24 II. By these creatures you will be made unclean; everyone who touches their dead bodies will be unclean until the evening, and everyone who picks up the dead body of any of them must wash his clothes, and will be unclean until the evening. (a) All beasts that are hoofed but do not have cloven hooves or do not chew the cud are unclean to you; everyone who touches them will become unclean. (b) Every one that goes on its paws* among creatures that go on all fours is unclean to you: everyone who touches their dead bodies will be unclean until the evening and everyone who picks up their dead bodies must wash his clothes and will be unclean until the evening; they are unclean to you. (c) And these are the unclean ones among all the teeming creatures that teem on the ground: the holed, and the mouse, and the sab with its kinds, [30] and the ''anaqa and the koah,

25 26

27

28

29

and the letd'd, and the hornet, and the tinSemet. [31-38 omitted] 39 Ha. When any of the beasts dies that are permitted to you for food: 40

A. B. C.

anyone who touches its dead body will be unclean until the evening; whoever eats from its dead body must wash his clothes and will be unclean until the evening; anyone who picks up its dead body must wash his clothes and will be unclean until the evening.

41 III. All teeming things that teem on the ground are an abhorrence; they may not be eaten: 42

from everything that goes on its belly and everything that goes on all fours to everything that has many legs: every teeming creature that teems on the ground; you may not eat them, for they are an abhorrence.

32 43

44

45

Purity and Monotheism Do not make yourselves abhorrent with any teeming thing that teems; do not make yourselves unclean with them or become unclean with them. For I am Yahweh your God, and you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, as I am holy, and not make yourselves unclean with any teeming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am Yahweh who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; and you shall be holy, as I am holy.

[Subscript] 46 47

This is the law covering beasts, winged creatures, all living creatures that move, in the water, and all life that teems on the ground, distinguishing between unclean and clean, between animals that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.

c. Comment Naturally I will not comment on everything of interest in the chapter, but only on those points that are of relevance for our discussion in this study. For information on every aspect of this chapter, the interested reader should now consult Milgrom's magisterial and expansive commentary (1991: 643-742). As will be seen, there are many points on which I find myself in disagreement with Milgrom, some of them fundamental. But I have learnt a great deal from him, and I regret that his work appeared too late to influence the basic composition of my own. 1. Verses l-2a. Verses 1, 2a integrate the chapter into the narrative structure of Leviticus. It is the first torah given by Yahweh after the ordination of Aaron as High Priest, and Aaron is associated with Moses in the address for the first time in Leviticus (cf. Exod. 7.8; 9.8; 12.1, 43). This presumably implies that the subject is a proper one for priestly instruction—it has ritual implications.1 This is obvious for the second half of the chapter, where the instructions concern uncleanness 1. Nevertheless, as Roger Tomes has pointed out to me, there are many places introducing ritual instructions which do not mention Aaron, and the possibility that this reflects different strata in P should be borne in mind.

2. The Law of Unclean Flesh

33

that disqualifies persons or things from participation in the cult (cf. 15.31). It is perhaps less obvious for the first half, which is concerned with permitted and prohibited food. However, Israel was by no means unique in the ancient world in associating restrictions on diet specifically with the cult of their God (cf. Chapter 5, §3). 2. Verse 2b. Despite the punctuation of the MT and English versions other than the REB, I have taken the first clause, 'these are the living creatures you shall eat', as the heading of the first half of the chapter rather than linking it closely with 'of all the beasts'. Otherwise the section on diet as a whole is without a heading; and if the half-verse is taken together as the heading of the first sub-section, it is structured differently from the headings in vv. 9, 13 and 21. That is true ajso of the way I have taken it ('these you shall eat' is lacking from the subheading), but in that case the difference can be explained by the close proximity of the main heading. The expression hahayyd, 'the living creatures', is then the general term covering the groups that are mentioned successively in the subsections that follow. Although the subscript, vv. 46-47, apparently takes both main sections of the chapter into account, it does not have any precise correspondence here at the beginning; the second half is headed separately (v. 24). This suggests that the chapter is not through-composed, but consists of two or more separate pieces joined editorially (so Elliger 1966: 148).1 The subsections (A, B and C in my translation) divide the animals between the three spheres of life: land, water and air. But the term used for the land animals raises a difficulty. One would expect it to refer to all land animals, but it would appear that it does not. (The detailed study of the lists of animal groups in Genesis 1, 6-9 by W.M. Clark [1968] is helpful here; cf. also Carroll 1978: 120). The word behemd 'beasts' elsewhere in P never refers to all land animals. Gen. 1.24; 6.7, 20; 7.14, 21, 232 and Lev. 5.2 all distinguish between behemd and rentes 'creeping things '/seres 'teeming things' as I have translated it (alternatively 'swarming things'). In addition, Gen. 1.2425, 7.14, 21 and Lev. 5.2 distinguish between behemd and hayya, presumably domestic and wild beasts. But it is clear that this latter 1. However, I cannot agree with Elliger that vv. 41-44a are an original part of the second half. They return to the subject of diet and must have the chapter as a whole in view. 2. This verse, however, is probably J.

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distinction is not operative here, where hayya is not parallel to fchemd, but is a more inclusive term, as in Gen. 8.17, 19.1 Could it be that the distinction between behemd and seres/remes is also not operative (as Firmage appears to assume)? This is more than doubtful. The distinction is implied in this chapter in vv. 26, 29. There is no passage where behemd plainly refers to all land creatures; the nearest possibility, pointed out to me by Graham Davies, is with the general contrast between 'dddm and behemd in such passages as Exod. 8.13-14; 9.9, 22, 25; 12.12; Ps. 49.13. But it is doubtful whether much can be deduced from this stereotyped wordpair. Besides, vv. 41-42 suggests that its author was conscious that the 'teeming things' of the ground had been omitted from the dietary instructions in vv. 2b-23; and v. 46 explicitly distinguishes them. It is true that I am going to argue that the chapter is not an original unity, so that arguments drawn from sections II and HI and the subscript are somewhat less compelling, as Dr Davies again suggests. However, not only is there no positive evidence that behemd ever refers to all land animals, but the simplest explanation of section III is that it makes good a perceived deficiency in section I, which would most naturally arise from the awkwardness of reading behemd as referring to creeping things as well as the larger animals. Thus the classification of animals implied by the chapter as a whole is not threefold but fourfold, as set out (with a change of order) in the subscript (and cf. Clark 1968: 442): there are (1) behemd 'beasts'; (2) 'dp 'winged creatures'; (3) 'all life that moves in the water' (v. 46: no technical expression); (4) seres hassores 'al-hd'dres ( v . 41) 'teeming things that teem on the earth'—generally spoken of with the qualification 'that teem on the ground/earth' to distinguish them from the seres of the water (v. 10) and among winged creatures (vv. 2123), which are themselves apparently only subsets within the creatures of the water and air respectively.2 It would appear that one of these groups, the teeming things of the land, has simply been passed over in the first part of the chapter. This classification is implied in the texts referred to above (Clark 1968), and also appears in Ezek. 38.20 and in Deut. 4.17-18, even though this occurs in an exposition of the Second Commandment (Deut. 5.8), which has only the threefold division. 1. This rules out the suggestion of Michael P. Carroll (1978: 118) that a fivefold classification is implicit: 'fish, birds, cattle, beasts of the earth and creeping things'. 2. The first is probably not even that, but an alternative expression for all the living creatures of the water, I discuss this below in Chapter 3.

2. The Law of Unclean Flesh

35

Thus with Carroll, rather than speaking of the 'three elements' that determine (for example) Douglas's presentation (1966: 54; see Chapter 3, §2.d.2), I should prefer to think of the four groups of animals as occupying the four levels of a stratified universe set out in Deut. 4.1718: the winged creatures 'that fly in the sky'; the 'beasts on the earth'; the creeping things 'that creep on (or in?) the ground' (bd'adama)\ and the creatures 'in the waters under the earth'. This kind of scheme is found also among other peoples. It is the regular classification adopted in learned texts from Egypt (Hornung 1967: 69-70), whence the Israelite priests could well have learnt it. Kesby (1979: 40-41) describes a classification in three levels (excluding the waters) among the Rangi of Tanzania: 'those of the sky; those of the here, where people are; those more lowly than people'. He argues that this distinction 'occurs in all the major cultural regions of the world, although not necessarily in all known societies'. The Rangi word makoki corresponds to seres/remes; makoki are always small compared with people, and are always low on the ground. What then is the precise distinction among land animals between behema and seres! The term seres certainly includes all reptiles and invertebrates (cf. vv. 30, 42), and in view of the mouse in v. 29 it seems likely to include among mammals rodents and small insectivores, as well as creatures like the weasel, if that is what is meant by holed in v. 29. In fact it means all animals that have short legs, if any, and move close to the ground. This is more or less how Rashi defines the word (on v. 41): 'a thing which is low and has short feet and seems only to progress by a creeping movement'. behema will then include all the larger mammals, from the size of a hyrax (v. 5) (roughly the size of a rabbit) upwards: those defined or named in Lev. 11.3-8 and Deut. 14.4-8 together with the ass and the horse and most carnivores. (Hunn [1979: 106-107; after Harrison 1972] gives a table of all the native mammals of Palestine.1) 3. Verses 3-8. It is already apparent that we are dealing here with the work of a literate, learned elite capable of more than merely associative classification; and this becomes very clear as we read the opening 1. He does not include the hippopotamus, remains of which have been discovered at Tell Qasile on the Philistine coast (Davis 1985; Horwitz and Tchernov 1990), nor the kobus antelope, nor the bubale hartebeest, said by Hope (1991) to be present in the archaeological record.

36

Purity and Monotheism

sentences, which define those of the behema that may be eaten by means of a definition per genus et differentiam. There are three clauses in the differentiation, the second logically subordinate to the first and the third intersecting with them. They must have hooves;1 the hooves must be cloven; and they must chew the cud. Now these characteristics, as Eugene Hunn has shown (1979: 106), define a zoologically recognizable taxon: the sub-order Ruminantia of the order Artiodactyla ('with an even number of toes'; it will be noted that the modern zoologists have used precisely the same criteria to identify the group as the biblical text does). The fit is not perfect, as we shall shortly see in discussing the camel, which in fact (despite v. 4) does have cloven hooves: but the specific exclusion of the camel means that it is in fact precisely the members of this sub-order that are defined as the permitted beasts. Its coherence as a group is demonstrated by the fact that its members share other characteristics as well, as the Talmudists noted (b. Hul. 59a, /. Hul. 3[4].20-21): they lack incisors and canines in the upper 1. For none nonso almost all versions and commentators give 'that cleaves the hoof or words to that effect. But this cannot be right. It makes v. 3 tautologous, and, worse, it makes v. 26 nonsense. The LXX evades the latter consequence by the simple expedient of omitting the negative, and Rashi makes a creditable attempt to distinguish between the meanings of this phrase and the following one: the first means simply 'split' (Targ. Hp-no), and ncns yoti nyotf means 'split from top to bottom' (rtOQ1?! n^jjnbo nV-QQCi): in other words, the latter provision excludes the camel, which does actually have cloven hooves, but the hooves rest on a thick elastic sole, so that the division does not extend all the way down. This interpretation must come to grief on v. 4, which excludes the camel on the ground of the former provision and not the latter (the statement in v. 4 is incorrect whichever interpretation of onsa WK TOTS is adopted); Rashi's interpretation of npoc? may nevertheless be correct (Levine 1989: 66). The correct approach is taken by Ibn Ezra and clearly explained by S.R. Hirsch (1958: 268). The clue is in Ps. 69.32, which is the only place outside our two chapters where ens hiph. appears in the Bible: cr-iooi jnpn ~IB can only mean 'a bull with horns and hooves'. The verb is a denominative hiphil meaning 'having hooves'; whether the internal object is used, as in our passages, or not, as in the Psalm, makes no difference to the meaning. There is no connection with the verb ens in the qal, used mostly of breaking bread to distribute it (contra BDB). As Milgrom (1991: 646) has seen, this interpretation makes far better sense of all the places where this and similar phrases are used. It appears to be adopted by the new translation of the JPSA: 'that has true hoofs' ('true' presumably in an attempt to justify the exclusion of the camel), and by Levine in commenting on it; the REB is regrettably inconsistent, adopting the correct translation in v. 3 : 'any hoofed animal', and in v. 26 'which has hoofs', but in vv. 4-6 going back to 'have cloven hoofs'.

2. The Law of Unclean Flesh

37

jaw, and possess horns or antlers. This group includes all the domestic animals comonly used by the Israelites as food or offered in sacrifice (cf. Chapter 4): cattle, sheep and goats; it must also include all the wild animals listed in Deut. 14.5, though many of these are unidentifiable. According to Hunn all members of the sub-order found in the Middle East are listed there, but that must depend on correct identification (see comment on that verse below). No explicit statement is made that animals possessing none of the required characteristics, or having only undivided hooves (the ass and the horse), are not to be eaten, but obviously it is implied (the Rabbis deduce it a minori ad maius: if the animals in vv. 4-8, which all possess at least one of the characteristics, are unclean, how much more those that possess none); and precisely these are defined as conveying corpse-uncleanness in vv. 26-27. What we find in place of this is a passage (vv. 4-8) that deals with borderline cases that might be considered doubtful because they either chew the cud or have cloven hooves.1 The purpose of the passage is plainly to clarify possible ambiguity in the initial formulation, and we may refer here to Fishbane's category of 'qualifying exegesis' (1985: 252-53), which stops possible loopholes in a rule of law. This does not necessarily mean that the passage is a later expansion; we shall have to consider later whether that is the right conclusion to draw. The ambiguity arises first from the way in which the rule is formulated: it would be easy to read the two qualifications for edibility as alternatives rather than as cumulative: cloven-hoofed or ruminant; this passage makes it clear that both characteristics must be present. But probably this ambiguity would not be regarded as dangerous and calling for clarification unless there were pragmatic reasons also: that these animals were actually eaten by some people (cf. Chapter 4). The clarifying passage deals with four animals said to possess one but not both of the qualifying features. But the statements made about the first three appear to be inaccurate. The camel does have hooves, 1. It might be considered a point against my interpretation of nons no~isa in the preceding note that v. 4 names the second group of doubtful animals as ' t m s a nonsn; if this just means 'hoofed', why are the ass and horse not listed among the individual doubtful animals? However, the LXX here adds KOU ovuxiCovxoov ovoxwmipaq, its equivalent for i>orc ru?otc . This is not necessarily the original text, but it is at least evidence that an early student of the text felt the difficulty and so was reading it in the way that I suggest.

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indeed cloven hooves; but as I have already mentioned, there is a thick sole under the hoof, so that the animal does not actually walk on its hooves; and in addition the hooves are concealed in the thick hair of the foot. To superficial observation, then, it might appear not to be a hoofed animal. But was the observation implied as superficial as all that? We recall that the given characteristics define a taxonomic suborder of mammals; now camels are placed by modem taxonomists in a different sub-order, Tylopoda (Hunn 1979: 107), possessing certain characteristics that distinguish them from Ruminantia; those noted by the Talmudists are the lack of horns and the possession of upper canines (in the adult; b. Hul. 59a). And the Arabian camel is the only member of this sub-order known in Palestine or Mesopotamia. Thus although observation may be inaccurate, or more likely the use of the relevant words slightly different from what we might expect, the camel is correctly seen as a singular creature, to use Hunn's expression (1979: 109), standing apart from the recognized food animals. The truth appears to be that observation is really secondary; it becomes clear that the rule is derived from the characteristics of the recognized food animals, and must be slightly bent to exclude every animal that needs to be excluded. If the intention of the rule were to define a priori which the food animals were, there would have been no objection to including the camel. But the camel (for whatever reason) had to be excluded, just as much as the pig.1 When we come in vv. 5-6 to the hyrax and hare, we are again confronted with what appear to be inaccurate statements, that they chew the cud. It is usually supposed that the rotary movement of their jaws as they chew led to the supposition that they were ruminants (e.g. Dillmann 1880: 486; Porter 1976: 85).2 It is obvious that if the 1. This must throw doubt on Harris's assertion (1986: 79) that the criterion of cloven hooves is added to that of ruminance solely in order to exclude the camel (cf. below, Chapter 3, §2.c.2), especially since it is the first-named of the criteria. Milgrom on the other hand (1991: 646) simply asserts that the text is correct in saying that the Camel is hOOVCd. This allows him to maintain the purely a priori character of the application of the rules (p. 727). This may be regarded as a matter of definition; but it remains improbable that the camel, a well-known domestic beast, was excluded solely because of the application of rules (cf. below, Chapter 5, §l.a). 2. An improbable alternative, as far as the hyrax is concerned, is because 'it has protrusions in its stomach, which suggest that its stomach might have compartments, as is characteristic of the ruminants' (Levine 1989: 66, following Feliks 1971). An

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39

presentation had not been determined by this inaccurate observation these two creatures could not have been listed here, being without either of the required characteristics; the text is of course correct in the statement that they are not hoofed animals. This provokes one to ask whether there may not have been some ulterior motive for specifically mentioning them. Hunn notes that all four of the animals mentioned here are taxonomically singular, the hyrax and hare being the only representatives of their respective orders in the region, and the camel and pig of their sub-orders; they are, further, probably the only herbivores in the Palestinian fauna apart from the familiar ass among beasts here defined as unclean. Most unclean beasts were carnivores: they would form a relatively coherent group, and so, as we have seen, do the clean beasts. The few remaining beasts might have created uncertainty by their singularity (cf. further in Chapter 5). There are no inaccurate statements about the pig, which is indeed, in Mary Douglas's phrase (1975c: 283-84), 'the only non-cud-chewing hoof-cleaver in the whole of creation', or, more prosaically, in the Middle East (Hunn 1979: 107; Douglas of course means in creation as the Israelites knew it; see Chapter 3, §2.d.2). As Milgrom notes (1991: 726), the ancients were unaware of the faint cleft in the hippopotamus's hooves. Each of these creatures is described as 'unclean' (tame'), and the precise meaning of this is spelt out in the two clauses of v. 8a. The first of these is what we expect, since the object of the expansion, vv. 4-8, is to exclude possible ambiguities with respect to the definition in v. 3. But the second comes as a slight surprise at this point, since the main subject of this section is not ritual uncleanness. Its formulation comes as a greater surprise, and caused considerable difficulty to the Rabbinic commentators. The difficulty, and the surprise, is this. Nothing in the second half of the chapter is formulated as a prohibition of touching the dead bodies of the animals in question, and such a ban would be wholly impractical; there are many occasions in the ordinary course of life when it is necessary to touch and indeed to carry the dead bodies of 'unclean' animals, for example to bury a dead donkey, or to remove a dead mouse from the larder. Milgrom (1991: 654) appears not to realize this. It might be said that such occasions are unlikely to occur in the case of hyraxes, hares or pigs, assuming improbable explanation, because it could not be deduced from ordinary external observation.

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that faithful Israelites do not keep these; but the same can hardly be said of camels. What is more, arguing a minori ad maius, the prohibition must apply to all the animals covered by vv. 26-27, which lays it down that the dead bodies of all unclean beasts pollute, not only the four mentioned here; that would include, for example, the ass, the universal beast of burden. So what is meant by the ban on touching the dead bodies of these animals? The solution of Sifra and Rashi is that the prohibition applies only to the time of the festivals, when it was necessary for the ordinary Israelite to enter the sacred courts, and it would be a serious offence to do so in a state of uncleanness (which he would do according to vv. 26-27). The only other possibility, it seems to me, is that the ban is intended as a kind of 'hedging of the law'; in order to remove even the temptation of eating the flesh of these animals, or the possibility of doing so accidentally, it is forbidden even to touch their bodies (so Firmage 1990: 207). But this would seem to create unnecessary practical problems, as we have already seen. It would be easier in the case of v. 11; but it would be unnatural to interpret these two verses in different ways, despite Milgrom (1991: 655). The verse has created confusion among some modern writers who have tended to assume that because this prohibition is applied explicitly among beasts only to the four mentioned here, there must be something peculiarly unclean about them such that unusual restrictions must be applied to them. Certainly this is the way in which Mary Douglas has tended to argue (see below). Rabbinic arguments are not always convincing, or appealing to the modern mind; but in this case they seem eminently sensible. The passage selects for special attention one group among those animals not freed for food according to v. 3—because there may be possible ambiguity about which side of the line they fall on—and removes the ambiguity. It surely stands to reason that what is said about them must apply also to all those not picked out for special comment because there was no ambiguity in their case. 4. Verses 9-12. The sub-section (B) on water creatures is not so complex, though highly redundant in its form in Leviticus. Once again there is a double criterion, the possession of both fins and scales. But it seems that these are seen as going together to form a single criterion. At all events nothing is said of any that possess one but not both of the criteria, though, as the Mishnah notes (Hul. 3.7), there are fish

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with fins that do not have scales, eels for example. The converse is not true, and the Mishnah comments that this makes the requirement for fins technically superfluous; which perhaps confirms that the two requirements effectively form a single rule. Firmage, however (1990: 189-90), attributes the absence of a parallel to vv. 4-8 to a lack of acquaintance with marine life. He notes (190 n. 18, following Salonen 1970: 258-59) that fish was generally marketed in forms that would make it difficult to discover whether it conformed to the rule: before salting, drying or pickling, the fish was scraped or skinned. This raises a question about the application of the rules which is virtually impossible to answer. It is doubtful, however, whether he can be right (p. 200) in assuming that the authors were concerned only to exclude a limited number of species found in inland waters such as eels and catfish. The positive rule is here balanced with its negative correlate (v. 10). Here for the first time we find the word seqes used, which I have translated 'an abhorrence'. It is used in sub-sections B and C against tame' in A (in the qualifying passage only); in section III both are used. Is there any difference in meaning?1 Verse 11 defines it in similar words to v. 8, so it would appear that in the chapter as it stands there is not, indeed the two are quite specifically identified; moreover, in the Deuteronomic parallel to sub-sections B and C, tame' is used; whatever the literary relationship of the two texts, this implies that the editor who effected the relationship saw the words as interchangeable in this context. Their connotations, however, are quite different. The noun seqes is used only with reference to forbidden flesh. The root suggests personal disgust or abhorrence, and in this legal context is appropriately used to enjoin rigorous avoidance. It does not have any technical ritual connotations, but the noun siqqus is frequently used with reference to the paraphernalia of paganism (Deut. 29.16, etc.), and this illustrates the connotation I have just suggested for the root: these are to be objects of abhorrence to Yahweh's people and strictly avoided by them. Although interchanged with tame' in this specific context, it could not have been used in the second section of the chapter, which does not prohibit contact with the animals in question, but details the ritual consequences of such contact, often unavoidable, as I have pointed out.

1. For a detailed study, see Paschen 1970, esp. 27ff., and Milgrom 1991: 656ff.

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The root tm' is far more frequent and has a wider range of application. Obviously in the Old Testament, particularly in the priestly writings where it is most used, its sphere of reference is chiefly the ritual; as regards the adjective this is almost exclusively so; the verb has a wider range. But this is surely the effect of the balance of interest in the extant sources; it should not be assumed as a necessary corollary that in general everyday use the ritual reference was determinative. We find it used in particular in the sexual field, with reference not to the ritually defiling effects of seminal emission and other fluxes (as in Lev. 15), but to moral defilement by forbidden types of sexual contact. This usage occurs not only in the priestly tradition (e.g. in Lev. 18 or Ezek. 18) but outside it, in Gen. 34.5, 13, 271 and in Deut. 24.4. Paschen(1970: 36) notes as something distinctive the relative character of the defilement in the latter case: the divorced and remarried wife is not absolutely defiled but defiled for her previous husband. But this should not be seen as a unique conception; after all, it is found elsewhere, in the restrictions on marriage partners for the priests (Lev. 21.7-9, 13-15); Paschen is quite wrong in seeing this as opposed to the usage in Deuteronomy, for the 'defiled' (halala) prostitute is not a forbidden marriage partner for everyone, but only for the priest. Rather, this usage should be seen as throwing light on the general usage of tame'. Defilement occurs whenever a particular defined sphere is invaded by something that threatens its integrity, whether the sphere is rather narrowly defined as a particular person's sexual relationships, or more broadly as the structure of sexual morality of society as a whole, or, as most frequently, the sphere of the cult and its distinctive holiness. The title and the theme of Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger (1966) are precisely relevant. What is seen as unclean is either actually or symbolically dangerous to the structure and order of society, or a particular aspect of society. The precise danger or dangers represented by forbidden flesh is the object of our investigation. What emerges from this discussion as regards our present passage is this. Where the reference is to the ritual dangers of unclean animals, as with the question of pollution by touching their carcases, then the more natural word to use is tame'. When in v. 11 the sqs root is used 1. Conventional literary criticism asigns these verses to a redactor on the grounds that the usage in question is foreign to J and E (Paschen 1970: 35, referring to Procksch; cf. BDB s.v. RQ<J I). This could only be convincing if the same idea were regularly expressed otherwise elsewhere in J and E.

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in this connection, one may suspect one or both of two things: either (1) the words have been introduced here into a context where they did not originally belong, Deut. 14.10's use of tame' being original; or (2) the ritual reference is an elaboration of an originally simpler context (the Deuteronomic parallel could perhaps be quoted in this connection also); or both (so Elliger). Now as Elliger points out, v. 11 makes the distinct impression of being an insertion: not only is there the awkward repetition of the end of v. 10 at the beginning of the verse, but also the resumptive repetition in v. 12 of the substance of v. 10, which is characteristic of the priestly writings after a digression. It therefore seems very probable that this verse has been added to align this sub-section with the previous one (cf. v. 8), but using the sqs vocabulary that was already found there. The supposition of the later introduction of Sqs would leave unexplained why tame' was left unaltered in vv. 4-8. But if sub-sections B and C had always used sqs, it is hard to understand why vv. 4-8 should use tame', unless because they also are a secondary expansion. And this seems the more likely in that we have already recognized them as a qualifying expansion, whether secondary or not. (We can account for the absence of sqs in Deuteronomy by supposing, along with many scholars, that it is not to be directly derived from Lev. 11.) And it fits with this that it is this expansion that introduces the issue of corpse-pollution into section I— the direct ritual interest and the use of tame' go together.1 5. Verses 13-23. The third sub-section (vv. 13-23) deals first with birds, and then, in vv. 20ff., with flying insects, seres hd'op. The passage on birds is notable in that it fails to offer any criterion of edibility, but merely lists a number of kinds of bird that are not to be eaten. These kinds need not of course be species in the modern biological sense, but species, genera or even higher-order groups that are recognized as one 'kind' by Hebrew observers (cf. Hunn). The implication is that all other kinds may be eaten. Many of these birds are difficult to identify, but there seems to be broad agreement that 1. Milgrom (1991) treats the distinction between tame' and Seqes in a more absolute fashion. When the former is used in vv. 4-7, it 'connotes impurity transmitted by touch and not by ingestion' (p. 654); and the command to 'abhor the dead bodies' of water Seqes in v. 11 does not connote a prohibition of touch (p. 656). The parallelism with v. 8 (where Milgrom supports the idea of an absolute prohibition) makes this doubtful. He also contradicts it himself on p. 297.

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most of them are in some sense carnivorous, whether birds of prey, carrion-eaters or fish-eaters. (The biological understanding of predation is not relevant here; insects and worms don't count.) I have not attempted above in my translation, and do not attempt here, to offer my own identifications of most of the birds, but I do offer a table comparing the translations given by a number of versions, along with the identifications given by the only two scholars, as far as I am aware, who have discussed them in any detail: Dillmann in his commentary (1880: 488-95), and G.R. Driver in his influential paper in PEQ (1955; he himself lists the translations of the LXX and Vulgate [pp. 7-8] and the AV, RV and his own [p. 20]). Those identifications (often imprecise) that can be regarded as reasonably certain within broad limits I have asterisked in the RSV column. Heb.

LXX

1.

eagle 2. 3.

eagle

eagle

gryps

Lammergeier Geier

milvus

vulture

kite

kite

vultur vulture [corvus]

raven

raven

5 6.

7.

Dillmann Adler

Lammergeier? 7 haliaeetus osprey? osprey?

4.

struthio

falcon

Robe

raven Strauss ostrich (swallow? cuckoo?) Move gull

gull?

larus gull? accipiter

hawk, etc.

hawk, etc.

hawk

bubo

Kauz

long-eared owl horned owl

Habicht

screech-owl

Driver griffonvulture or

golden eagle black vulture bearded vulture kite

*raven

saker falcon or buzzard raven or rook

ostrich

eagle owl

nighthawk

short-eared owl

sea gull

long-eared owl

*hawk

kestrel or sparrow

falcon

owl

10.

osprey

Falke

litde owl 9.

*vulture

*kite

ostrich noctua

RSV

*eagle

vulture Weihe kite

ostrich 8.

11.

Vulgate aquila

*owl

hawk tawny owl

2. The Law of Unclean Flesh 12. [seabird] 13. ibis 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

mergulus [diver] ibis ibis

cygnus purple coot or swan miswater hen placed for 16? onocrotalus pelican pelican porphyrio KUKVOq swan sultana hen but see 14 herodio stork? heron charadrios Norfolk plover (presumably or thick-knee? as the Greek) upupa hoopoe hoopoe vespertilio bat bat

45

Sturzpelekan cormorant fisher-owl screech-owl

an owl (Uhul) eagle owl? an owl

ibis

?

pelican

scops-owl

Erdgeier (a vulture) or Starch, stork Reiher heron ?

carrion vulture

osprey

* stork

stork or heron cormorant

Weidehopf hoopoe Fledermaus bat

*hoopoe hoopoe

water hen little owl

heron

*bat

bat

It will be seen that the Vulgate is normally aligned with the LXX, whether because it was following it or because they were both reliant on similar Hebrew traditions. Neither the RSV nor Dillmann diverges very far from this tradition; Driver however does so, chiefly in substituting various species of owls for the water-birds in the middle of the list. He is (naturally) followed by the NEB and REB, and the NRSV has adopted one or two of his identifications. Partly, like Dillmann, he is able to argue that the water-birds are not appropriate identifications for birds that are elsewhere said to inhabit ruins and deserts (this is true of nos. 13 and 15);1 but largely it is because of three very sweeping a priori assumptions that he introduces in the course of his argument: firstly, that 'unclean' birds will in general be raptors; secondly that the birds will be arranged in a logical order, with similar birds next to one another; and thirdly that the birds are arranged in order of size up to no. 15; these are then followed by three water birds. The first 1.

Isa. 34.11; Zeph. 2.14. But see below, Chapter 5, §l.c.

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assumption has some basis in the Mishnaic characterisation of the unclean birds; but it is hard to see how the others could be justified as initial assumptions. The chief objection to his result is that the identifications are too narrow, distinguishing between birds that could well have been known by a general term, and letting some similar birds through the net. This does not mean that the identifications in the LXX tradition are any more secure. Whatever identifications are adopted, there is a certain heterogeneity about the list: although birds of prey predominate, they are not all birds of prey: the hoopoe and the bat are particularly striking by their difference from the majority of the list. We find once again, however, that Talmudic tradition identifies certain criteria for the distinction between birds, even though in this case none are stated in the biblical text. The first, the most obvious, is already stated in Pseudo-Aristeas (Ep. Arist. 146) and is repeated in the Mishnah. Any fowl which seizes prey (dores) is unclean. Any which have an extra claw and a crop, and the skin of the stomach of which can be stripped off is clean. R. Eleazar b. Sadoq says 'Any bird which parts its toes evenly is unclean' (m. Hul. 3.6).

R. Eleazar's criterion could be an elucidation of the mysterious 'extra claw': perching birds with three toes in front and one behind are generally clean, those with two in front and two behind are unclean (b. Hul. 65a). Generally speaking the latter are raptors. An alternative explanation of the 'extra claw' is that it is the spur possessed by many ground-walking birds (Rabinowicz 1971: 32). Pages of discussion are devoted to these criteria in the Gemara (b. Hul. 61a-65a), since they are not precisely in accord with each other. In the course of the discussion it becomes apparent that there are traditions that certain birds are unclean, even though they do not appear in the biblical list, and the criteria need to be accommodated to them rather than the other way round. They even include birds that are clearly not birds of prey and possess at least one of the criteria for cleanness: for example certain kinds of swallow and the starling (62a). In this case it is evident that the criteria, which are only found in postbiblical texts, are derived by reflection on the species that are known to be unclean, not only from the biblical text, but also by tradition. Does the biblical text represent such traditions, without getting as far as deriving the criteria, or is the list governed by an unacknowledged criterion, such as the diet of the birds (so Firmage 1990: 190-91)?

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This is a question of explanation which must be left to a later stage of our discussion. But it should be noted that all the criteria given elsewhere in the text are given positively: they are criteria of cleanness, not of uncleanness; and they are primarily morphological: they are designed to ensure that animals can be recognized as clean or unclean simply by looking at them. Now the clean birds belong to several morphological groups, not to a single one, and when rules are eventually evolved in the Mishnah, even the Talmud is hard put to justify them. They found it difficult to evolve a criterion, I would suggest, because it was hard to see what criterion could cover chickens, geese and ducks, as well as pigeons and partridges (all eaten in pre-exilic Jerusalem; cf. Chapter 4, §2.b.5), and at the same time exclude the unclean birds mentioned in vv. 13ff. If the fact that most of the unclean birds are raptors is generalized into the assumption that they all are, as is so frequently done, almost tacitly (e.g. Firmage 1990: 190), the question is made immensely more difficult to answer, for what was to prevent the authors adopting a simple observational criterion such as is reported from Harran (Chapter 4, §3.b.3): 'all birds that do not have talons'? The fact is that they do not, and we must conclude from this that the unclean birds, like the clean, are not all of one morphological type. If criteria had been given, they would have had to be of a form or complexity quite different from what is found elsewhere in the text. Moreover, there is evidence that the list has been expanded at a late stage in its history. This is to be found in the confused state of the Septuagint tradition, which has been studied by R.K. Yerkes (192324). In the LXX versions of the list of birds, only nos. 1-5, 7-9 and 20 are in the same order in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy and in all textual traditions. By the first hands of the Vatican and Alexandrian MSS (B and A), the raven is omitted in both books; but it appears in the so-called Lucianic MSS. The remaining ten birds appear in an entirely different order in the two books in all MSS, and there are further minor variations between the MSS, and between the LXX and the Vulgate, which on the whole follows the LXX in order as well as in identification. The order in Leviticus appears to be that of the Hebrew, so far as it possible to tell from such fairly secure identifications as nos. 11, 17 and 19. Yerkes's conclusion from these facts, which seems hard to dispute, is that the birds whose order is uncertain are later additions to the list. At first, ten birds (nos. 10-19) were added in

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haphazard fashion, and the textual tradition represented by the LXX of Deuteronomy has left them in this state. Later the list was rearranged, probably with some attempt at logical classification, and this state is represented by the LXX of Leviticus. Presumably the revising process took longer to reach Deuteronomy than Leviticus. Last of all the raven and all its kind were added, at first at the end of the list, squeezed in before the bat as in the 'Lucianic' MSS of Deuteronomy, and finally at no. 6, where we find it in the Hebrew and in the 'Lucianic' MSS of LXX Leviticus.1 That this position was thought more appropriate suggests that Driver may be correct in suggesting that size is an influence in the ordering of the birds. The bat may not have been part of the original list; its unusual character would perhaps have led to its being placed at the end whenever it came in. If Driver's identifications are correct, the original list would have consisted entirely of large or very large birds of prey, and it has then been expanded to its present heterogeneous state. Numerical symmetry also seems to have played a part. There are twenty birds in the present list; probably eight in the original one; four unclean beasts in vv. 4-8; four clean insects in v. 22; and eight unclean teeming things in vv. 29-30. Thus all the lists in the chapter are divisible by four. If Yerkes's account of the history of the bird list is correct, there would have been a time when it contained only nineteen names; and this is the case still in Deut. LXX B, A. But in Lev. LXX B there are in fact twenty names, because the little owl appears between nos. 16 and 17 as well as at no. 8. It looks as though there was a belief that there ought to be a multiple of four places in the list, even if there were too few names to fill them. The section on the insects has a simple and elegant structure: a comprehensive announcement that they are sqs (v. 20), followed by a qualifying clause listing four types that may be eaten (vv. 21-22), after which the original comprehensive statement is resumed (v. 23). In Deuteronomy only the comprehensive statement appears, leading to the only direct clash between the two books on this subject. It is apparent that the qualifying clause is a secondary expansion. For what purpose? Even Milgrom (1990: 189; 1991: 666) and Firmage (1990: 192), who generally insist that the logic of the classification is prior to the identification of species, can only account for this exception by the 1. Elliger (1966: 144) notes 'das singulare ^ in 15' as a possible sign of the secondary addition of the raven. He does not even take note of the complexity of the LXX evidence.

2. The Law of Unclean Flesh

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fact that locusts were commonly eaten, and consequently could not be declared unclean. In the next chapter we shall be looking at Mary Douglas's view that this is, on the contrary, an especially good example of classificatory logic. That locusts formed a well-marked taxonomic group made it easy to provide both a criterion (v. 21) and a list of (four!) specific kinds; again further criteria are offered in the Mishnah (Hul. 3.7). But note that the criteria are not sufficient in themselves; R. Jose had to add to them, 'and the name of which is locust' (ibid.)', that is (t. Hul.3[4].25), they should be distinguished from crickets, which have the same features. Tradition takes precedence over the logic of the classification. That concludes the first section of the chapter in Leviticus, the only part of it that is parallelled in Deuteronomy 14. While it clearly aims at being a comprehensive statement of animals that may and may not be eaten, we have already seen that one whole class of animals is omitted: the seres of the ground. It would seem that they were simply assumed to be inedible (Dillmann 1880: 500; Elliger 1966: 152), 'unconsciously tabooed', to use Leach's term (1964: 31). But they did not remain so, for the final form of the chapter explicitly prohibits them. We shall have to inquire later whether there are reasons for this other than sheer love of system. But first we have section II, dealing with the ritual pollution caused by the carcases of unclean animals. 6. Verses 24-40. We can fortunately deal with this section much more briefly, since much of it is not of direct relevance to our theme. It only deals with land animals.1 The eventualities in mind are probably only such regular domestic problems as the death of the old donkey, or the removal of dead dogs from the yard or dead mice from the storeroom. Three groups of land animals are recognized: first, hoofed beasts; only those that either do not have cloven hooves (horses and 1. Milgrom (1991:657ff.) argues that the reason why creatures of the water and the air do not contaminate by touch is that both groups emerge from the water in the account of creation in Gen. 1, and that sources of water, according to v. 36, cannot be contaminated. The logic is strained, and in any case, as I have shown (Chapter 1, §2), it cannot be assumed that because a category is not treated systematically as a source of uncleanness it is never understood to be one. The expression 'You shall abhor their dead bodies' in v. 11, though it does not use the technical vocabulary of contact pollution, suggests that it would have been easy to develop the idea in connection with water creatures. The limitation to land animals may be purely practical.

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donkeys) or do not chew the cud (pigs) need be mentioned here, since the others are clean. Secondly, those that go on their paws ('al kappayw) among creatures (hahayyd)that go on all fours. The variation here between hahayyd and behemd appears to be merely stylistic: the groups are identified by the qualifying clauses, and we are dealing throughout with behema as conceived in vv. 3-8.1 Milgrom (1990: 184; 1991: 726) correctly notes that 'al kappayw cannot mean, as Porter (1976: 90) and Wenham (1979: 177) assert, following Douglas (1966: 56), that they use their hands for walking on, even if that made any sense in relation to four-footed animals. (Douglas, mentioning the hand-like foot of the lizard at this point, appears to have confused this group with the quite separate one introduced in v. 29.) kap regel means the sole of the (human) foot; therefore kap cannot mean 'hand' in opposition to 'foot'; yad would be required for that meaning, and Wenham in fact gives yad as the word used here. Rather, kap must mean here the flat of the foot, that is (ignoring homology), a paw. In other words, it simply distinguishes all quadrupeds without hooves from those with hooves (at least the larger ones; the smaller ones follow in v. 29). The third group is 'the teeming creatures that teem on the ground'. Rather than declaring all these unclean, the text selects eight salient kinds—once again we find a multiple of four—and declares them capable of conveying uncleanness when dead not only to persons, as 1. It is unsatisfactory to take rm as indicating here a separate classification from nnro (for example wild animals as against domestic or small animals against large: Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 256 n.9); for the groups are defined by the qualifying phrases, and certain animals are then not covered. Firmage asserts (1990: 205) that w. 24ff. does not cover the four creatures of vv. 4-7, and deduces that w. 24-31 was added in order to 'anticipate a possible misunderstanding in the earlier text... that from v. 8 one could perhaps have concluded that only contact with the carcasses of the four animals specified in vv. 4-7 conveyed impurity'. But this evidently assumes that the phrases 'that do not have cloven hooves' and 'that do not chew the cud' are cumulative, so that v. 26 refers only to equids. It is surely easier to take them, with most, as alternatives, so that pigs are included, for in reference to equids, 'that do not chew the cud' is redundant. The three other creatures of vv. 4-6 are of course covered in v. 27, since they are stated in the earlier passage not to have hooves, and the only alternative is paws. Thus the identification of beasts conveying impurity here is the same as that of those forbidden as food in vv. 2-8. (So Milgrom 1991: 668). Failure to perceive the main division of the chapter by subject at v. 24 has led to much confusion, of which these views are examples.

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do the two previous groups, but also to objects, and especially to containers that might be used for foodstuffs. The logic of the passage suggests that we are dealing here with creatures that tend to infest the house or storeroom, and almost certainly with larger ones.1 But once again they are very uncertain of identification, except for the mouse ('akbdr). Most moderns tend to find that the majority of them are types of lizard (e.g. RSV, REB, Wenham 1979: 163), following a tendency already visible in the LXX, where four of them are lizards. Dillmann in 1880 (p. 502) had already expressed some scepticism about so many of them being lizards, and I tend to share this. But the truth is that we do not really know and cannot now find out. What can safely be asserted, and is sufficient for our purpose, is that both reptiles and small mammals are included. This indicates the upper size limits of the whole class of teeming things of the ground, which of course goes down to include all creeping insects, spiders, worms and other invertebrates (cf. v. 42). We are not concerned with the details of ritual pollution in this passage, but two general points should be made. First, it is only dead bodies that pollute. Although this is obvious from the text (as well as from the common-sense consideration that if the touch of live unclean animals polluted, it would be defiling for example to ride an ass or a camel), some writers still seem to be under the impression that 'the Jews' believed that to brush against a pig, for example, was to become defiled.2 Secondly, we are dealing with a purely ritual interest, which must not be confused with the much more significant issue for daily life of diet. Douglas is misled by a note of Danby's into supposing that frogs were 'clean' in the same sense as locusts (Douglas 1966: 56). They are of course forbidden for food by vv. 41-42, and are clean only in the ritual sense. We may suspect that this law was of practical 1. Hirsch (1958:283-84) cites b. Hul. 128b to show that they are all vertebrates —the Talmudic passage speaks of their bones. But this is hardly conclusive; it does not explicitly say this of all eight. Sanders (1990: passim) is of course quite incorrect in referring to dietary pollution conveyed under this law as 'fly-impurity'. Flies, which were not 'swarming things that swarm on the ground' but swarming things of the air, could not convey ritual impurity. They are of course forbidden as food under vv. 20, 23 (hence no doubt Matt. 23.24), but that is a different issue. 2. Perhaps mere carelessness has led Douglas (1975b: 266) to write 'Any living being [my italics] which falls outside this classification is not to be touched or eaten', though Firmage (1990: 180) considers that this would arise from the logic of her position.

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effect in daily life only for the priests and for those groups in Second Temple Judaism who adopted ritual purity as a mark of communal identification: the haberim and the Qumran sectaries. It is no accident that this part of the Leviticus text is not found in Deuteronomy, which is torah for the man in the street (and the woman; cf. Weinfeld 1972: 291-92). The basis of the torah on this subject is a combination of the law of forbidden flesh with the law of corpse pollution (Num. 19). Verses 39-40 concern beasts that are clean so far as their species is concerned, but have not been slaughtered but have died naturally and are unclean for that reason. They appear to have been added here for the sake of completeness in the law about ritual pollution arising from carcases, since unlike everything else in the chapter they are not concerned with the distinction between clean and unclean animals. According to v. 39, the same degree of pollution is incurred by the handling of such carcases as by those of unclean beasts, while v. 40 allows for their use as food, but only at the cost again of ritual impurity. This latter rule is met with again at Lev. 17.15-16, in a chapter (generally assigned to the Holiness Code) that deals with the whole subject of the slaughter of animals for food, and to which we shall need to return. It is evident that the dead bodies of beasts are generally seen to be defiling; this can only be avoided in the case of animals clean for food, and then only by slaughtering them in the correct style, ensuring the discharge of the blood (17.10-14). But Milgrom points out (1991: 681-82) that the carcases of clean animals do not defile by touch in P generally; this is a late harmonization. Is there any inherent connection between the two distinct subjects of the chapter, or have they merely been placed together for convenience?1 Firmage (1990: 183-84) sharply distinguishes the dietary law from the system of impurity proper, and identifies as many as six points of fundamental difference between them. The first is that whereas notions of contact impurity are 'part of Israel's pagan legacy, and...are referred to in historical texts' (e.g. 2 Sam. 11.4; 2 Kgs 5; 7.3ff.; 1 Sam. 20.26; 21.5), there is no evidence for the existence of 1. It will be noted that vv. 39 and 40b virtually render vv. 24-28 superfluous; if the dead bodies of all animals pollute, unless correctly slaughtered for food, which unclean animals cannot be, there is nothing distinctive to be said about unclean animals in this connection and hence no connection between the subjects of diet and contact pollution. But it seems likely that vv. 39-40 is secondary in relation to w. 24ff., adding a reference to a subject dealt with at greater length in ch. 17.

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any dietary taboos, 'with the possible exception of the pig', before the publication of the present law. We shall deal with this argument later (Chapter 3, §2.e.2). Briefly summarized, the others are as follows. As regards the source of impurity, in the impurity system proper (Lev. 12-15; Num. 19), the source is always human, and contingent rather than inherent; in the dietary law it is non-human and inherent in the animal. As regards the effect, the pollutions dealt with in the following chapters and in the second half of this one are not prohibited, being in most cases either inescapable (childbirth, leprosy) or the result of necessary or socially required action (corpse pollution); consequently, means of purification are provided for them; dietary pollution, on the other hand, is prohibited and not purifiable. As regards the extent of the law, the purity system proper applies to the ger, the stranger in Israel, as well as to native Israelites, because the danger guarded against is the pollution of the sanctuary (here Firmage follows Milgrom [1976, etc.]), but the dietary law applies only to Israel because it is a way of holiness (vv. 44-45). Broadly speaking, these points can be accepted, but it should be noted that the distinction is not as precise as Firmage claims (see now Wright 1991: 165ff.). For example, the subject of Lev. 11.40a, the pollution incurred from eating from the carcases of clean animals that have not been slaughtered is a purifiable pollution which in Leviticus 17 applies to both Israelites and gerim; but in Exod. 22.30 (Eng. 31) and Deut. 14.21 it is a prohibition and does not apply to gerim. Again, intercourse with a menstruant is treated as a temporary pollution in Lev. 15.24, but is strictly forbidden in Lev. 18.19 and 20.18. Moreover, it is far from clear that all the laws of purifiable impurity apply to the ger; he is not referred to in Leviticus 11-15, and 15.31 explicitly says, 'you shall warn the Israelites against their uncleanness, that they may not die in their uncleanness, by defiling my dwelling-place which is among them'. Indeed, the mere existence of the law of Lev. 11.24-28 suggests that there was no Berlin Wall between the two systems; the fact that certain animals were forbidden food makes them appropriate subjects of a law about corpse pollution. Verses 8b and lib are even stronger evidence of the inherent connection there was felt to be between the two ideas. It may reasonably be said, however, that the prohibitive laws are typical of the Holiness Code and Deuteronomy, and those about purifiable uncleanness of P, and that this means that sometimes the same topic may be treated in different ways in the different strata.

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1. Verses 41-45. Verses 41-42 begin to tie together the two halves of the chapter; for they plug the gap that we have noticed in the first half by forbidding as food all the teeming things of the ground, which have been mentioned in this chapter for the first time in connection with the latter theme of ritual pollution. The shift in terminology back from tame to sqs (cf. vv. 10-23) is striking; but vv. 43ff. use both roots, and cannot be detached from vv. 41-42, being in effect a minisermon on that text. Unlike vv. 29-30, the teeming things are here dealt with en bloc', v. 41 simply says 'all', and v. 42aa expands this by using a type of classification similar to those used earlier in the chapter, based on how the animal 'goes'—on its belly, on four legs or on many. However, the classification is of no practical significance; all alike are abhorrent and forbidden; v. 42a0b resumes the general statement of v. 41. These verses promote the rejection of the teeming things of the ground from unconscious or at least implicit status to explicit prohibition. In a later chapter (6, §2.d) we shall have to inquire what made this necessary. The chapter moves on without a break to its homiletic finale. One sign that the prohibition of the 'teeming things' has real practices in view is the fact that the homiletic conclusion is based on it. It is one thing to say as a matter of form 'you shall not eat them'; it is another to say 'Do not defile yourselves by them...for I am your God'. The conclusion is brief, and its structure simple: twice repeated (cf. Elliger), the sequence 'Do not defile [etc.] yourselves...! am Yahweh your God...you shall be holy...I am holy'. The four times repeated switch of subject from 'you' to T underlines that the conduct of Israel must be rooted in their status as the people of Yahweh, and in his authority as their God, which itself is based on his deliverance of them from Egypt. The single theological idea that determines the presentation here is that of holiness, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy', and the assumption is that the eating of unclean things is incompatible with holiness. The structure of the idea of holiness is this: it is a quality that in its absolute degree is possessed by the deity, and relatively may and must be shared in by all that is dedicated to him. What would be incompatible with God's holiness will threaten the holiness of anything dedicated to him. It is an idea that is at home first of all in the ritual sphere. The priests must take care that the holy vessels do not become defiled, for example by unclean teeming things, and they must take the same care

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for themselves, since they are continually in God's service. But here, and in the Holiness Code, the idea has moved out of the strictly ritual sphere. The original reason why diet was a concern of the priests may have been (cf. Chapter 5, §3, Chapter 6, §2.a.l) that the purity of the congregation at the festivals had to be preserved, and, as we have seen, there are still some traces of that concern in the chapter. But abstinence from unclean flesh is for Israel, according to these verses, not a temporary requirement for a particular festival, but a lifelong demand. Yahweh demands continual sanctification to himself, not of course in the same degree as those who are dedicated to his cultic service, but essentially of the same kind. Hence the distinction of kinds, whatever its origin, is in Leviticus a mark of the dedication of Israel to Yahweh as their sole God. Though this chapter has found a place in the collection on purities because of its second half, its first half, with the conclusion to the whole, would belong more appropriately in the Holiness Code, which is a collection of smaller codes rather than a through-composed unity. The conclusion may be regarded as the work of the Holiness school (cf. Milgrom 1991: 692), but Milgrom only includes vv. 43-45. And of course the conclusion finds a close parallel in a passage in the Holiness Code, the passage in ch. 20 that we looked at briefly in the last chapter. But unlike that one, this passage does not use the idea of 'separation', despite the ease with which it could be suggested by the subject-matter. But both passages use the idea of holiness. Obviously, there is a close connection between the two ideas: what is holy needs to be separated from what is not and particularly from what is unclean, and the act of sanctification is in itself an act of separation, mental if not physical. But, theologically, separation exists for the sake of holiness; holiness is the prior demand, certainly in the Holiness Code. Socially it could be that a sense of national distinction is served by the distinction of foods, and that this is then crystallised in the sense of holiness.1 But in H (unlike Deuteronomy) there is no such sense of Israel's holiness as a fact rather than a demand. Here the demand that Israel should dedicate themselves to Yahweh as their one God comes before everything else.

1.

However, my conclusion (Chapter 6, §2.d) will be against this.

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8. Verses 46-47. The subscript (vv. 46-47), redactionally summarizing the contents of the chapter as part of the larger collection, requires little comment. In the light of what I have just been saying, it is interesting that the verb lehabdil, to separate, does occur here. The 'separation' or distinction that is to be made is described in two ways. 'Between unclean and clean' is clearly the more comprehensive expression, which covers all the sections of the chapter. The word tahor, 'clean', occurs here and in v. 36, but not in the first part of the chapter, whereas it appears twice in Deuteronomy 14. This seems to be the result simply of the predominantly negative style of expression in Leviticus 11, rather than of deliberate avoidance of the word. 2. Deuteronomy 14.3-21 a. Form and Setting The Deuteronomic passage consists of what is clearly a borrowed priestly torah (vv. 4-20), very similar in structure and expression and almost identical in contents to Lev. 11.2b-23, but introduced by a general exhortation of distinctively Deuteronomic expression, and followed by two instructions that are again clearly Deuteronomic: the first is different from the priestly law on the same subject in Lev. 11.40 and 17.15, and the second is not found at all in P. It stands in a context that is concerned with the need for Israel, as the holy people of Yahweh, to keep itself from pagan or degrading practices. The declaration 'you are a people holy to Yahweh your God' frames the passage in vv. 2 and 21, and that this is a unique status is underlined in v. 2: 'Yahweh has chosen you to be his special possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth'. Thus the theological framework is analogous to that of Leviticus 11, but marked by the characteristically different use made of the idea of holiness in Deuteronomy. For the Deuteronomists, Israel is the holy people of Yahweh, a status that carries obligations with it rather than an ideal to be striven for. This will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 6. That it should have been thought appropriate to borrow a priestly torah on this particular point is without parallel in Deuteronomy, but not quite without analogy; for at 24.8, on the subject of 'leprosy', the instruction is given 'to be very careful to do all that the Levitical priests shall direct you'. Only there the Levitical rules are not quoted; presumably if they had been they would have been similar to Leviticus

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13-14. Unlike them, the observance of the rule of diet lay within the responsibility of the laity. Now it is customary among modern commentators on Deuteronomy (e.g. Mayes 1979: 237) to assert that 14.420 is part of a later ('deuteronomistic') layer of the book, as demonstrated for example by its formulation in the second person plural. This seems beside the point, when not only that but every other criterion of style shows that we are dealing with a priestly borrowing. The question is whether it was borrowed by the author of v. 3 in the composition of his work or added at a later stage. I do not believe, despite the confidence of such scholars as Horst (1930: 61ff.), Merendino (1969: 83ff.) and Mayes, that this question can be answered with any assurance. But one might ask oneself whether it is likely that the meaning of 'anything abominable' in v. 3 could have been adequately spelt out in the two rules of v. 21. There is no difference in principle between this taking over of a priestly torah and the use of material related to the Covenant Code elsewhere in the book, indeed in v. 21 here. b. Translation and Structure 3

You [sg.1] shall not eat any abominable thing.

4

A. These are the beasts that you [pi., and so throughout 4-20] may eat: X. ox, sheep, goat; [5] (fallow) deer, gazelle, roe deer, 'aqqo, dtSon, f'o and zemer, and every beast that: (a) has a hoof (a') and has the hoof cloven in two; (b) chews the cud, among the beasts, you may eat it. Y. However, these you may not eat (a) among those that chew the cud (b) and among those that have cloven hooves:2

6

7

1. All the ancient versions read the plural; but this must be assimilation to the following passage (as in the first verb of v. 21 even in the MT). 2. The Samaritan text omits nyiotfn; it is not in Leviticus and could be a gloss, but it probably makes sense.

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8

they are unclean to you; [b]

the camel, the hare and the hyrax, because they chew1 the cud but hooves they have not; and the pig, because it is hooved but does not the cud;2

it is unclean to you. Of their flesh you may not eat and their dead bodies you may not touch. 9

B. These you may eat of all that is in the water: X. all that has fins and scales you may eat; 10 Y. but all that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is unclean to you.

11C. 12

19 20

X. Every clean bird you may eat. Y. But these you may not eat of them: the neSer, theperes, the 'ozniyyd, [13] the da'a, 3 the 'ayyd4 with its kinds, [14] every kind of crow, [15] the daughter of ya'and, the tahmas, the Sahap, the hawk with its kinds, [16] the kos, the yanSup, the tinSemet, [17] the qa'at the rahamd, the Salak, [18] the hastdd, the 'anapd with its kinds, the hoopoe and the bat. Y. And all teeming winged creatures are unclean to you: they may not be eaten; X. Every clean winged creature you may eat.

21 You [singular,5 and so throughout the verse] shall not eat any carrion; you may give it to the alien who is in your gates, or sell it to a foreigner; but you are a people holy to Yahweh your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk. 1. The sg. n^DD is clearly an error, possibly resulting from the shortening of a text similar to Leviticus. 2. The MT n-u xVi is clearly defective. It should be supplemented from the Samaritan text and the LXX. 3. MT n«nm is an obvious error for mnm, which appears in a few MSS. 4. MT mm should be deleted. It brings the number of birds up to 21, and is probably an attempt to correct nK~ini. With these two corrections, the list of birds becomes identical with that in Leviticus, with the exception of the different placing of the^ ia. 5. MT and versions plural; but the rest of the verse has the singular, and it looks as though the plural is an assimilation to the foregoing text.

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c. Comment 1.Verse 3. The Deuteronomic writer in the name of Moses instructs his readers to eat 'no abomination'—to'ebd, a common word in Deuteronomy, but in the priestly writings confined to a sexual reference in Leviticus 18 (also 20.13). It must not be confused with Seqes, one of the leitmotifs of Leviticus 11 (also translated 'abomination' in, e.g., the RSV), though its meaning is similar. What exactly is implied by it here? It is often assumed (e.g. by Mayes 1979: 239) that it has a cultic reference: 'it is on the basis of their acceptability to the worship of Yahweh that the animals are distinguished'. The grounds for this are that elsewhere in the book the word refers to objects and practices associated with paganism: 7.26; 13.15; 17.4; 18.9, 12; 20.18 (in all these cases, as here, in the absolute, without yhwh). But the conclusion does not necessarily follow from this evidence. In itself to'eba means no more than 'that which disgusts one' (cf., e.g., Prov. 8.7; 24.9; 29.27). A noun following indicates the person who is disgusted—for example in Gen. 43.32 and Exod. 8.26 the Egyptians; and frequently in Deuteronomy and Proverbs Yahweh—of what is morally (Deut. 25.16) or cultically (7.25) displeasing. Where there is no such noun it is incautious to assume that 'Yahweh' is nevertheless implied. True, the customs of the Canaanites are so described in most of the above texts, and magical practices in 18.9, 12. Does it not then in every case refer to objects and practices specifically obnoxious to Yahweh, that is, to monolatrous Yahwism? Yes, but care is needed in asking just why they are obnoxious. It is by no means always simply because they are idolatrous or involve the worship of other gods. We know little about magical practices, but this is not necessarily true of them. What about the Canaanite practices? It is true that they are characterized as idolatrous and therefore abominable in 7.25-26, but in at least one other place it is clear that their abominable character is being argued for on other grounds, as in 12.31, where the burning of their children is the rhetorical climax: morally abominable and suffusing the Canaanite cult, idolatry and all, with its abomination. That, however, would imply that such cults should be disgusting to Israel as much as to Yahweh. And that the word refers elsewhere to customs unacceptable to the worship of Yahweh does not make that part of its sense. That is to confuse sense and reference (cf. Chapter 6, §2.b). A conclusion entirely in accord with Deuteronomy's concern for the integrity of Israel as the exclusive possession of Yahweh, to be

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preserved from all taint, is that to'eba here means that which is disgusting in itself, as a matter of ordinary understanding; this is Moshe Weinfeld's interpretation: 'that category of things which the delicate find odious or abhorrent' (Weinfeld 1972: 226). Israel's holiness, their dedication to Yahweh, demands abstinence from disgusting things, things that self-respecting people do not eat. However, the definition of these things cannot necessarily be taken for granted, and so first the priestly torah on the forbidden kinds is inserted, whether by the author or another, and then the rule on carrion in v. 21a, derived from something like the Covenant Code law in Exod. 22.30 (Eng. 31), but differing from the priestly rule in Lev. 11.39-40; 17.15-16. 2. Verses 4-20. The law of clean and unclean kinds presented here clearly has a literary relationship to that in Lev. 11.2b-23. But it differs in several respects. It is more concise, without the repetitiveness of the Leviticus version. Each of the three sections is constructed in the same way, beginning with a statement of what is permitted (X), and proceeding to what is forbidden (Y); whereas in Leviticus the third section begins with what is forbidden. Of course, since there are no criteria for cleanness in birds, the opening statement of the third section (v. 11) is vacuous, and it could have been constructed by the Deuteronomic editor (so Mayes); it uses the term sippor, 'birds', which does not appear in Leviticus 11. But it is resumed in v. 20, after the reference to the insects, with the general and priestly expression 'dp 'flying things'; and since resumptive repetition is a feature of priestly style, it is perhaps more probable that both the initial statement and its repetition are the work of the original priestly writer. However, Merendino (1969: 92-93) notes that as against Leviticus 11 negative declarations are at a minimum and the positive aspect emphasized, and Firmage observes (1990: 208), 'the degree to which it goes out of its way to make the law easily applicable'. These points may well be thought to suggest that the priestly text has been subject to distinctively Deuteronomic editing. Another general difference is the lack of the term seqes and its cognates; tame' is used throughout. However, the topic of ritual pollution is almost absent from the text, though not quite (see v. 8), and in general tame' has here the sense 'forbidden for food'. Either the vocabulary has been assimilated throughout to that of vv. 7-8, or from the first the torah existed in two recensions using Sqs and tm'

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respectively; I have above (§l.c.4) dismissed Elliger's belief that the editor of the Leviticus text has introduced sqs where tm' stood before. The first of the two alternatives is perhaps more probable, implying that for this editor the term tame' did not involve the notion of communicable impurity: 'it is rather a term of opprobrium' (Firmage 1990: 208), not dissimilar in meaning from to'eba (similarly Milgrom 1991:700). The first section has a list of permitted beasts preceding the general statement of criteria for cleanness, which is formulated in almost the same terms as in Leviticus. This lists the obvious domestic kinds, and follows with seven wild animals. According to Hunn (1979: 106), who is dependent on S.R. Driver (1902: 159-60) for the identifications, 'these ten folk species constitute an exclusive and exhaustive listing of the species of the artiodactyl sub-order Ruminantia known from the home range of the Hebrews'. Driver's identifications are: hart (is this the red deer, the fallow deer or both?), gazelle, roebuck, wild goat (ibex), addax, antelope (oryx), mountain-sheep. Hunn lists as the wild members of the sub-order in the relevant region: red deer, roe deer, fallow deer, the antelope Addax nasomaculatus, ibex, three species of gazelles, oryx and mouflon (wild sheep).1 Presumably, therefore, he assumes that 'hart' can cover both red and fallow deer, and that 'gazelle' covers all three species. And he is probably right that all these wild species are covered. But as far as the last four names in the Hebrew are concerned there is no way of knowing which is which: the versions, ancient and modern, are at variance, and Driver's evidence is insufficient. However, there is no question that the first name, 'ayyal, means a deer; the only question is whether it covers one species, and if so which one, or more than one; sebi certainly means 'gazelle', and the evidence quoted by Driver that the roe deer is called yahmur in modern Palestinian Arabic is reasonably decisive for the third name. There is little doubt that 'ayyal means the fallow deer; it is much the commonest word for a deer in biblical Hebrew, it is the first wild animal in this list, and it appears alongside sebi alone in 12.15 as types of wild game; now in the archaeological record (see Chapter 4, §2.b), much the commonest wild animals found used for

1. According to Hope (1991), the red deer and addax were not found in Palestine in biblical times; but the kobus antelope and bubale hartebeest were. He identifies yahmfir as the bubale hartebeest and diSon as the kobus.

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food are gazelle and fallow deer (the Dama species), which therefore seem likely to be represented by these first two names of wild kinds. But of course it could include also the rarer red deer if it was known. The other main difference from the Leviticus version is the failure to mention the locusts as permitted teeming things of the air.1 It is in any case clear that they are inserted as an afterthought in the Leviticus version, so that in this respect the version here may simply represent the older form of the law. It is not probable that locusts were commonly eaten in Jerusalem; it may have been pressure from the provinces that compelled their insertion. Moran has argued (1966; followed by Mayes 1979: 238) that the list of birds in Deuteronomy originally consisted of the ten that are mentioned in the Hebrew without the object marker; later it was expanded directly from Leviticus, where the object marker is used throughout, and the other ten added, each of them complete with 'et. It is an ingenious argument, but its conclusion does not seem compatible with that of Yerkes which I accepted above, and which is dependent on evidence that I cannot explain in any other way, whereas the random scattering of the object marker here may simply be due to loose style (so Elliger 1966: 145). 3. Verse 21. In v. 21 a we should note the changes made in the earlier law, and the difference from the priestly rule. The Deuteronomic law concerns nebeld, strictly an animal that has died of itself, whereas the earlier law concerns an animal that has been mauled by a wild beast. It seems likely that the change is simply intended to make the law more comprehensive: nebeld would include frepd. It is only in Lev. 17.15 that the two terms are placed side by side. The more striking change is that which replaces 'the dogs' by the ger and the foreigner. I comment below (Chapter 5, §l.b) on the structure of meaning that associates dogs with unclean flesh; that Deuteronomy should thus align the alien and the foreigner with dogs is understandable in terms of its ideology, if rather uncomplimentary to the ger, who is commended throughout the book as an object of charity. The motivation of the change is surely the rational ethical spirit of Deuteronomy—to throw away meat that could at least be eaten would be wasteful, and it would be an act 1. Milgrom (1991: 665, 692) argues that v. 20 allows for the existence of clean winged insects, despite the clear exclusion of any such thing by v. 19. This is unintelligible.

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of charity to give it to someone not committed to Israel's religiously motivated self-respect. The difference from the priestly rule is extremely instructive on the difference between the priestly and Deuteronomic ideologies. The priestly authors see the eating of meat not properly slaughtered as of significance only in relation to their major concern—ritual purity—and therefore permit it provided that steps are taken to restore such purity (emphasized in Lev. 17.16; the law applies to both native and alien perhaps because of the threat to the purity of the land, the focus of interest in the following chapter). People who needed to preserve their ritual purity continuously would avoid such meat as a matter of course, as Ezekiel, we recall, told the Lord that he did. But the Deuteronomists, who are not generally interested in ritual purity for the sake of the cult or the land,1 nor in any special ritual position for the priests, are interested in the holiness of the people; that must be preserved by the avoidance of such doubtful sources of nourishment, but since the gerim (resident aliens) and foreigners are not part of the holy people, there is no objection to their eating it; indeed it would count as an act of charity to a ger to offer such meat without charge. I have decided not to comment on v. 21b, which offers another most complex field of investigation and would take us too far from our main theme; it has in any case been the subject of a recent monograph by Othmar Keel (1980), and an article by E.A. Knauf (1988). (But see Chapter 5, §2.c.) 3. Redactional History a. The Relationship between the Levitical and Deuteronomic Texts The literary relationship between Leviticus 11.2b-23 and Deuteronomy 14.4-20 has been variously estimated. Rendtorff for example holds that the Deuteronomic text has been derived from that in Leviticus, in its present form (1954: 45 n. 34), and Firmage regards this as not unlikely (1990: 208). Eilberg-Schwartz, on the other hand (1986-87: 360-61; 1990: 219-20; followed by Milgrom 1991: 698ff.), argues that in the latter something like the former has been reworked to bring it into closer conformity with the classifications in Genesis 1. But it is too obviously improbable that one of these texts has been derived from the other in substantially its present form—that, for example, the per1.

Deut. 24.4 may be an exception.

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mission to eat locusts has been deliberately omitted in Deuteronomy, or the concise but clear passage on the unclean beasts there expanded in Leviticus with stately repetition but without the addition of any substance whatsoever. Most critics therefore conclude that both texts have been independently derived from an earlier form. It should be added, however, that as priestly torah was originally given orally, it could have been written down in a number of different forms closely related to each other; there may not have been any one Vorlage. Merendino (1969: 92-93) considers that the Vorlage was not itself a literary unity, but that the two editors took what material suited their purpose from a variety available. This surely underestimates the degree of correspondence in order and subject matter between the two texts. However, it is worthwhile estimating, in relation to each of the differences between the two texts listed above, whether the formulation in Leviticus or Deuteronomy is likely to be more original. As I have just suggested, the concision of the Deuteronomic form is rather more likely to be the result of the editing of something like Leviticus 11 with its characteristically priestly fulness of expression, than that the redundancies of Leviticus should be the result of deliberate expansion of the more concise form. Above, I noted an error in the text of Deut. 14.7 which could be due to compression. Likewise the consistency of construction in Deuteronomy, with the use of the positive statement in v. 11, looks like a development from the raw, but logical, inconsistency found in Leviticus. And I have already argued (above, §l.c.4) for the originality of seqes in Leviticus; however, a recension with tame' could have existed alongside it. Finally, the list of clean beasts seems likely to be a development from the simple statement of the criteria as in Leviticus. It is hard to think of convincing reasons for its omission. That given by Elliger, that the author of Leviticus 11 would have noticed the partial contradiction between the list of a mere ten names and the general formulation, is not even based on fact, if Hunn's argument is accepted, and if not, is much more likely to have led to the list's expansion than its omission. Eilberg-Schwartz's suggestion (1990: 256 n. 9), that the list was omitted because it confused domestic and wild animals contrary to the model of Genesis 1, is especially unconvincing, since nothing else in the chapter distinguishes them. On the other hand, as I have already observed, the permission of the locusts bears all the hallmarks of a qualifying expansion. And of

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course, the law in Deuteronomy owes nothing to the full form of Leviticus 11 as we now have it, and significantly not to the prohibition of the teeming things of the ground in vv. 41-42. In this respect the law remains in its earlier uncomprehensive state, and it would not be too rash to conclude that the Deuteronomic form of the text is earlier than the final redaction of Leviticus 11, with which that prohibition is closely associated. I conclude that we have in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 two distinct developments of a set of toroth approximately corresponding to what we now find in Lev. 11.2b-14, 16a, 20. b. The Growth of the Text As we have gone through the texts, we have noted those elements that are likely to be secondary developments: the passage on unclean beasts possessing one of the criteria of cleanness; the twelve new unclean birds; the permission for the eating of locusts; the addition (after the section on ritual pollution) of the passage formally prohibiting the consumption of any 'teeming things that teem on the ground'. Along with this in Leviticus came the theological and homiletic motivation of the law in line with priestly theology. On the other hand, in Deuteronomy the theological motivation was given to it with its incorporation into the Deuteronomic context with its 'holy people' motif. The basic form of the torah would simply have given the criteria for beasts and for water animals, listing eight unclean birds, all without motivation. Clearly the two texts diverged after the first of these expansions had occurred, but the addition of the extra birds was done in both. 4. Conclusion The initial question of explanation raised by these texts is simply expressed by Milgrom (1990: 184): 'Which came first, the taboos or the criteria?' Is it the object of the texts to discover convenient ways of identifying animals believed on quite other grounds to be unclean, as has generally been believed (cf. Firmage 1990: 197ff.), or are animals made unclean by criteria arrived at a priori, as Douglas argues, and as Milgrom and Firmage also argue while rejecting her account of the origin of the criteria? These are not in fact mutually exclusive alternatives, as in effect Milgrom and Firmage acknowledge by setting

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the pig apart as an already existing taboo. Criteria that had been developed in reference to a small group of animals could then have been applied to all animals. A thorough answer to this question must await the next chapter, but our examination of the texts has enabled us to make some initial observations. Most obviously, the section on the birds offers no criteria at all, and here it is a matter of simple reportage that the 'taboos' precede the criteria that are found in postbiblical texts. Of course, one may say, as Firmage does, that the prohibitions in the text are derived from unstated criteria, but that must be argued on the evidence. Secondly, we have discovered a number of points where individual prohibitions or concessions make a bad fit with the stated criteria—for example, the inaccurate statements about the hyrax, hare and camel, and the fact that there are more insects that conform to the criterion in Lev. 11.21 than are actually permitted. In the cases of the camel and the locusts, at least, it seems safe to conclude that the criterion has been respectively bent and constructed to fit them. On the other hand, it seems fairly plain that the double criterion for beasts has been derived from the characteristics of the common food animals, and is therefore itself the source of the comprehensive prohibition of all others, even if some restrictions existed already; moreover, the equally sweeping prohibitions of all water creatures without fins and scales, and of all the creeping things of the ground, must be derived from the general formulations of the text, even if it was not in fact customary to eat any such creatures. It seems that two different cultural currents merge in our texts: (1) a formal, organizing thrust, whether expressed in classification and systematization and the development of the criteria, or in theology and exhortation, and (2) common dietary customs that at several points appear to be independent of the formal aspect. The system is imperfect, as with the camel, or absent, as in the case of the birds, because even if it can itself create custom, it is often only in a position to shape it. The theology on the other hand appears to take for granted a division in the cosmos between the clean and the unclean, and uses it to model the oppositions that define its own world, above all that between the holy people and the nations. It is clear that a job of explanation remains to be done, both in respect of the general criteria and in respect of the custom and practice and possible individual taboos that may have determined the criteria and affected their operation.

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After attempting this explanatory task, I shall eventually return to the descriptive work of showing how these diverse formative currents, in their cultural setting, come together to create the texts that now lie before us.

Chapter 3 A REVIEW OF EXPLANATIONS The theories that have been offered to explain the forbidden animals are many and various. Chan (1985) offers a brief survey and evaluation, as do Kornfeld (1965) and Levine (1989: 243-48). In the first part of the chapter I deal with the main kinds of theory that have been widespread both among earlier interpreters and today, classifying them into four main types. In the second part I deal in greater detail with the proposals of a number of individual thinkers of recent times. The theories in §1 are developed with reference to the biblical (and other Jewish) prohibitions alone. Most of them are in essence very ancient, arising from the desire for intellectual explanation of the divine commands among Jewish and Christian thinkers. Since they display no awareness that other peoples have dietary restrictions, or at least no reflection on what this might mean for the interpretation of the biblical ones, they necessarily depend on a priori ideas of the principle that might be involved. Most of the ideas in §2, on the other hand, do not arise from reflection on the biblical restrictions alone; each represents a general understanding of human culture based on the study of societies either throughout the world or especially in Israel's neighbourhood in space and time, usually including comparison with other systems of dietary restriction. The first two writers reviewed, Robertson Smith and FJ. Simoons, do not in fact give any detailed explanation of the Old Testament prohibitions, but their work suggests at least partial explanations that may be of importance. The last, Firmage, does not use a comparative method, but is placed at that point as offering the most significant response to Douglas among Old Testament scholars.

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1. Traditional Theories Four entirely different principles are invoked in these long-held and widespread theories, though sometimes more than one of them are combined in one explanation: the moral-symbolic, the cultic, the aesthetic and the hygienic. The hygienic may be dealt with first and laid to rest, since unlike the others its basis is strictly materialist. It may be considered a typical product of a certain phase of modern thought, and is probably most commonly to be met with among lay people who have thought about the topic, as well as having the support of so distinguished a scholar as Albright (1968: 154-55). Yet in other forms it is as old as Maimonides and Nahmanides, though they did not rely upon it exclusively. a. Hygienic Theories Maimonides maintains that the food which is forbidden by the Law is unwholesome. There is nothing among the forbidden kinds of food whose injurious character is doubted, except pork and fat. But also in these cases the doubt is not justified. For pork contains more moisture than necessary [for human food], and too much of superfluous matter.. .The fat of the intestines makes us full, interrupts our digestion, and produces cold and thick blood (Guide for the Perplexed, 3.48 [p. 370]).

It is true that that the main reason he alleges for the forbidding of pork is slightly different (see below, §l.b). But similarly, and with more explicit reliance on medieval medical theory, Nahmanides tells us that fish without fins and scales 'always dwell in the lower turbid waters...they are creatures of cold fluid, which cleaves to them and is therefore more easily able to cause death', that the blood of birds of prey 'is dark and thick, which gives rise to that bitter [fluid in the body] which is mostly black and tends to make the heart cruel', and that the unfit animals 'harm the procreative organs, so that the seed which gathers from their moisture is cold and extra-moist and will not beget at all, or not in the best and proper way' (Leviticus, on Chapter 11 [pp.136, 140-41]). Just as Nahmanides relies on the theory of the humours, so modern theorists have relied on microbiology, and particularly on the discovery, made in the mid-nineteenth century (Simoons 1961: 39), that pigs frequently harbour in their muscles the cysts of the organism

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Trichinella spiralis, which may, if not killed by thorough cooking, invade human muscle and cause the frequently fatal disease trichinosis. This fact of course only relates to swine's flesh and not to the many other forbidden species, a fact that does not seem to deter those who advance it as an explanation of the prohibition. A Viennese doctor named Macht, however, was more ambitious, and tested the flesh of a wide range of animals mentioned in the two relevant texts for a certain kind of toxicity measured by the reaction of plants to an extract of the muscle. He reported that the 'clean' animals were all less phytotoxic than the 'unclean', yet admits himself that no decisive conclusion could be derived from this result in relation to human consumption (Macht 1953). The obvious reply to this kind of theory is that the ancient Israelites could not possibly have known of the microbiological dangers of undercooked pork, seeing that even modem medicine took some time to become convinced of them (Simoons, 1961: 39), let alone of the more hypothetical qualities alleged by Macht. There are two categories of people whom this refutation would not necessarily convince: the biblical fundamentalist, for whom the true author of Scripture is God, who is omniscient, and the Harrisian cultural materialist (though Harris himself rejects the theory), who sees human societies as acquiring adaptive behaviour by an unconscious process similar (it seems) to Darwinian natural selection. Would it have been possible for people to have arrived at the conclusion of the undesirability of particular meats by observation of the physical effects? Certainly it is possible, and it might be argued, as Roger Tomes has pointed out to me, that the rule of Lev. 19.5-8 arises from just such an observation. However, on the one hand, as Simoons (and Harris) point out, all food animals, including those accounted clean in the Bible, have their parasites, some of which are dangerous to human consumers. Anthrax is a more dangerous disease than trichinosis. And on the other hand, all diseases of this kind, whether from pork or any other meat, can be avoided by thorough cooking.1 Hence the idea carries no explanatory power, and ought to be laid to rest.

1. Spongiform encephalopathy is said to be an exception, but it is not yet even clear whether it is in normal circumstances transmissible to human beings.

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b. Aesthetic Theories 'The principal reason', according to Maimonides, why the Law forbids swine's flesh is to be found in the circumstance that its habits and food are very dirty and loathsome... If it were allowed to eat swine's flesh, the streets and houses would be more dirty than any cesspool, as may be seen at present in the country of the Franks (Guide for the Perplexed, 3.48 [p. 370])

(i.e. in Christian Europe). This is not a hygienic argument, as it might be from the pen of a modem writer: it is supported by the principle that 'the Law enjoins the removal of the sight of loathsome objects'. Certainly modern writers, including critical ones, have also suggested that the aesthetically unclean habits of such animals as the pig, the dog or the mouse may have been a factor in their prohibition, though I know of none who has used it as the main explanation. Where this is supported by an understanding that symbolic significance is seen in such habits (as in Goodman [1986: 50]), we should not speak of an aesthetic theory as such. Nevertheless, even in such cases, one should heed the observation of Chan (1985: 98), who speaks as an East Asian surveying a largely Western literature, that the modern Western conception of aesthetic cannot be generalized to all cultures for all ages. What is loathsome for the modern European can be a thing of beauty in other cultures.

However, it is possible to guard against such cultural subjectivity. We are not altogether without evidence for what ancient Israelites found repulsive, as my discussion of Ezekiel 4 above (Chapter 1, §2) should suggest; and as I suggested in Chapter 1, §3, the aesthetic attitudes of a mediaeval Jew are not irrelevant to the interpretation of the law that he observed. But such evidence is quite inadequate to suggest why Jews would not eat the flesh of the donkeys who worked for them every day, or why they found the eating of molluscs repulsive. It cannot support a comprehensive theory on its own, though it may be legitimately used as one element in such a theory. But even if we assert, for example, that Israelites found pigs repulsive because they ate excrement, which is itself repulsive, we are bound to invite the question, 'why so?' It is notorious that goats will eat anything, including carrion and excrement; yet this feature fails to result in their prohibition along with pigs. One might put it that so far from pigs being unclean because they eat excrement, they eat excrement because they are unclean. The variation of aesthetic responses from

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culture to culture, to which Chan draws our attention, demands explanation in terms of more fundamental features of each individual culture. Hence we are inevitably driven towards theories of a more critical character. c. Cultic Theories Among modern Old Testament scholars it is most common to find theories that see the forbidden animals to be in some way opposed to the requirements of the cult of Yahweh, either because they were important in pagan, particularly Canaanite, cults (so, e.g., Noth), or because they were associated with the sphere of death (so, e.g., Kornfeld 1965; 1983: 44). But these too have their antecedents in more ancient scholarship. Origen, for example, asserts that Moses 'declared all those animals to be unclean that were considered by the Egyptians and others to be oracular (mantikd), and in general those that were not so to be clean', with the object of excluding from Israel's use those animals associated with demons (Contra Celswn 4.93 [PG, XI, 1171]). The inadequacy of theories of this type is easily demonstrated, though Kornfeld's approach is rather better supported than Noth's. Indeed, Kornfeld himself (1965:135-36; 1983: 44) most effectively demolishes Noth's. Although the associations of the pig (see Chapter 4, §3.d), the hare (see Oesterley 1904) or the camel may give some colour to Noth's theory, it is precisely the clean animals that are most frequently sacred to strange gods—the cow to Hathor, the ram to Amon, the bull to Baal, and even the fish to Atargatis (perhaps originally to Asherah [Oden 1977: 55ff., 88ff.]); Kornfeld could have added the dove to Astarte (Philo in Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 8.14.64). So far as sacrificial animals are concerned, as has frequently been pointed out (Albright 1968: 154; Douglas 1966: 48-49; Wenham 1979: 167), and as I shall discuss in detail in Chapter 4, the normal practice of all peoples in the area was the same as the Israelites': the common sacrificial animals were cattle, sheep and goats. No basis exists here for the assertion that the animals prohibited were those associated with the idolatrous rites of the heathen; and, once again, even though the associations of a limited number of the unclean species may be of significance, it is impossible to make the theory stretch to cover the dozens of forbidden beasts or the twenty forbidden birds, or all the teeming things. However, this is not quite all that could be said. Roland de Vaux, in an important article on 'The Sacrifice of Pigs in Palestine and in the

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Ancient Near East' (1972; cf. Stendebach 1974), has shown that though the pig was not used in normal everyday sacrifices among the peoples of the region, nor normally eaten,1 it was used in certain mystical, apotropaic or annual rites, such as those referred to in Isaiah 65-66. (I go into this in greater detail in Chapter 4, §3.d). Therefore, he concludes, though it was not the use of the animal in Canaanite rites as such that determined its character as unclean, its use in a type of rite particularly repugnant to Yahwism may have done so. Obviously this observation on a single species is still open to the objection that it is unable to explain the system of prohibitions as a whole. But in my mind it gave rise to the reflection that was the original nucleus of this study: was it the pig's use in mystic rites that made it unclean, or was it rather used in mystic rites because (to 'Canaanites' as well as 'Israelites'2) it was unclean? A similar reflection is aroused by Ezekiel's vision of the 'room of pictures' (Ezek. 8.7-13). Is this simultaneous worship of a whole mass of animals3 apparently described collectively as 'abominable' (seqes, v. 10) really a living traditional cult taken over by the 'elders of the house of Israel', a cult whose existence justified the prohibition as unclean of the animals involved? or is Ezekiel rather portraying indulgence in the forbidden for its own sake?4 or, perhaps better, the deliberate exaggeration of some probably Egyptian cult,5 or conflation of several such, in which the deity was represented by an animal? The first alternative seems to me to be improbable—there are no known parallels; to accept the second or third implies, I think, that the use of the term seqes is independent of the existence of such a cult. I have said that the view that the unclean animals are associated with the realm of death can be given rather greater support than the view that they are associated with pagan cults. However, to make it sufficiently extensive, Kornfeld is compelled to adopt a very broad definition 1. This latter judgment must be qualified in the light of further archaeological evidence; see Chapter 4, §2.b.2. 2. Inverted commas have been used because the assumption of an ethnic distinction is not always unproblematic (see further at §2.e.3). 3. tan nnna man (see Zimmerli 1979: 219) is not represented in the LXX text, and is probably a gloss (so Zimmerli). But since pptf invariably refers to animals, there can be no doubt that that is what is intended. 4. Zimmerli (1979: 241) considers that the images may not have been intended originally as objects of worship. If this is true, it would conform with this alternative. 5. Schroer (1987: 7 Iff.) advances several points in support of the view that an Egyptian origin is intended.

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of what may associate an animal with the realm of death: predatory habits; living underground (which makes it 'chthonic'); living in desolate places or ruins, or in the wilderness; or mythical association with demons. By such tactical definitions, it proves possible in the end to drag in most of the unclean animals by hook or by crook. But what is the value of the exercise if every extension of the principle is accomplished at the cost of its dilution? The 'sphere of death' has become a hold-all into which any species whatever, if necessary, can be stuffed. This is not to deny that features such as predation or underground life may be factors in the perception of creatures as unclean; but it is unconvincing to make them aspects of a single all-embracing principle. Nor do I wish to deny, turning from individual interpretations to the principle in general, that cultic considerations must play a significant part in the interpretation of the system. But as these attempts illustrate, to seize on a single narrow point not explicit in the text and try to balance the whole system on it is bound to fail. Any successful interpretation must be based on a much broader range of considerations and must be far more closely tied to the text. d. Moral-Symbolic Theories It would naturally be expected, and is in fact the case, that the most widespread type of theory among practising Jewish interpreters (but not only them) is that which reveals the underlying meaning of the ritual commands as ethical. For the Law is 'holy and just and good'. It was given by God whose fundamental nature is moral, and even if it sometimes conceals its moral meaning from the idle inquirer, it is to be taken for granted that the ultimate significance of every command is moral. Every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts serves to inculcate some truth, to remove some erroneous opinion, to establish proper relations in society, to diminish evil, to train in good manners, or to warn against bad habits (Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 3.31 [p. 322]).

Or, as L.E. Goodman expresses it in our own day: Since these laws are addressed to Israelites, I take it as given that their general intension [sic] is the articulation of a cultural ethos, that they are educational in Plato's sense, of seeking to promote a specific type of human character through establishment of a certain tone or quality in human behavior and relations (1986: 17).

In the case of the dietary laws, it would be expected that such an

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intention could be achieved in detail only through their associations and implications—through a process of symbolization, in other words; that is why I have termed this category of explanations the 'moralsymbolic'. However, it is possible to assert a direct, non-symbolic moral intention in the dietary laws taken in general. Maimonides does this: The object of all these laws is to restrain the growth of desire, the indulgence in seeking that which is pleasant, and the disposition to consider the appetite for eating and drinking as the end [of humanity's existence] (Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 3.35 [p. 330]).

But as we have seen, Maimonides does not attempt to demonstrate a specifically moral intention in every one of the dietary precepts. In his Code (Mishneh Torah) he classifies the dietary precepts along with those of forbidden sexual unions in Book 5, Qedusa or 'Holiness', because 'in these two regards God sanctified us and separated us from the nations';1 and Maimonides' conception of holiness is essentially ethical: 'restraint, withdrawal, separation, moderation in action, thought and feeling' (Twersky 1980: 287). Philo, whose view of the general purpose of the dietary laws is very similar (Spec. Leg. 4.95ff.), of course does so, by various and by no means always allegorical methods. Pork and scaleless water-creatures he alleges to be the most delicious of all flesh meats—Moses forbad these in order to restrain gluttony (Spec. Leg. 4.100-101). Wild beasts that eat human flesh are forbidden because the indulgence of the passion of vengeance may turn human beings themselves into beasts; and by extension all other carnivores are also forbidden (Spec. Leg. 4.103-104). It is only after these points have been established that he goes on to allegorize the criteria for cleanness, always in a moral sense. Modern exponents of this approach add little that is radically new to it. S.R. Hirsch's commentary on Leviticus (1954 [original 1867-78]), however, is notable for his insistence on the concrete reality of the turn 'a caused by the ingestion of unclean food (in contrast, he treats contact uncleanness as purely symbolic). Yet its significance is purely moral. The fundamental condition of becoming holy 'is the necessity for keeping our material body in that state of receptive purity which 1. The connection of these two themes goes back to the Holiness Code itself (Lev. 20.24ff.), though not necessarily with quite the same emphasis; cf. Chapter 6, §2.d.

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makes it the ready instrument by which we can carry out the dictates of the higher and nobler part of our being' (p. 306). In explaining why it is just the food permitted by the Law that secures this, he takes advantage of the double sense of behema: 'beasts' in general, or 'domestic beasts'. A food animal that is suitable to secure holiness 'must have the nature of a behemd' (p. 268), i.e. it must be one which yields to man; whereas eating anything that is described as seqes, a word that only otherwise occurs in reference to idolatry, 'must be in sharpest contrary opposition to that condition of spiritual mentality which should form the fundamental character of our being' (p. 276). Milgrom (1963; 1990; 1991: 704-42) and Goodman (1986) stand very much in the tradition of Philo and Maimonides with their conviction that the purpose of the dietary laws in general is to discipline the appetite and to prevent human beings becoming dehumanized by the violence involved in the killing of meat. Both draw attention to the connection set up between forbidden food, illicit sex and apostasy in Leviticus 20 and Ep. Arist. 151-52 (specifically Milgrom [1990: 18283; 1991: 725]; on this important Jewish theme see further Chapter 6, §2.d; Chapter 7, §2). As for the particular prohibitions, Milgrom considers (1990: 189; with Firmage) that they arise in part out of the use of the recognized domestic food animals as the model of cleanness, and he also emphasizes their general effect of vastly reducing the number of species allowed for food. The object of this, as of the prohibition of blood, is to inculcate reverence for life. And this is the ethical meaning to be found in the demand for holiness that is explicitly offered as the reason for the rules in Lev. 11.44-45 and 20.24-6. Holiness in the Old Testament means imitatio del (p. 188) and therefore implies a moral demand; reverence for life is the specific demand of this law of holiness. Goodman, on the other hand, finds moral danger in the character and associations of the forbidden species as seen in the Bible itself (many of them predators or scavengers), a danger of 'emotive participation in the violence or verminous pestilence of the victim through its violation and gustatory enjoyment', involving a perversion of natural repulsion into appetite, which pagan religions 'may elevate to the status of an encounter with deity' (p. 51). There is, I believe, good reason to accept that in their present context in the Torah there is indeed a moral purpose in the dietary laws. In Deuteronomy we have seen the key role played by the expression

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to'ebd and its essentially ethical meaning: 'what self-respecting people do not touch'. In P there is weightier evidence, to which Milgrom draws attention: 'the biblical assumption that man was originally a vegetarian' (1967: 289; cf. Gen. 1.29-30; 9.3, and further Chapter 6, §2.e). Between the Utopian vegetarianism of the original creation intention (there is nothing to suggest that the command was actually obeyed) and the unrestrained violence of the Flood period, the restricted diet laid down for Israel in the Torah can be seen as a mediating line accepting the human craving for flesh but restraining it sufficiently to enable God to dwell in the midst of his people. If it is legitimate to interpret the laws in this context, the motive of holiness for Israel that is so much stressed in both documents can be given the moral aspect that it possesses so frequently elsewhere. The people dedicated to Yahweh must be a people whose appetite is disciplined and whose violence tamed, so that they are fit for the tabernacling of Yahweh's glory (or his name) among them. But what these interpreters have entirely failed to show in any convincing way is that this moral purpose is directly visible in the particularities of the law of unclean flesh. Both Firmage (1990: 195 n. 24) and Wright (1990) point out the obvious weaknesses of Milgrom's proposal: (1) that the mere restriction of species without any restriction on the quantity eaten does not clearly teach restraint;1 and (2) that the designation of the forbidden species as 'unclean', 'abhorrent', 'abominable' is not the most obvious way of teaching reverence for life. Firmage suggests that if Milgrom were right, one would have expected the forbidden creatures rather to have been designated as holy, i.e. reserved for God.2 In fact, it is clear that holiness is the character expected of Israel in its obedience to this law, and it is achieved by not ingesting what is unclean. The structure of the law is all against Milgrom's theory. As for the detail of the prohibitions, the derivation from the characteristics of the recognized food animals is 1. It is clearly not enough to reply, as Milgrom does (1991: 735), that the average Israelite could not afford to eat meat often; for in that case the average Israelite did not need the lesson taught by the law, but the rich did! 2. The question is sharpened by the discussion in Milgrom's commentary on Leviticus, in which he offers the view (1991: 733) that in general the unclean represents the forces of death as against the forces of life represented by the holy. This idea is placed alongside that of reverence for life without any apparent consciousness of the incongruity.

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not a complete explanation, for it does not explain why precisely these characteristics should have been chosen. I shall be dealing with this proposal, which is also Firmage's, in more detail in §2.e. Goodman comes nearer to explaining the details, yet he can impart only a spurious impression of conviction to his account by studiously ignoring the herbivorous innocence of the hyrax, hare and camel, and the notorious omnivorousness of the 'clean' goat. Moreover, there is a large element of the cultural subjectivity warned against by Chan in his assumption of a natural repulsion for scavengers, slime or creeping things. If there is, as I have suggested, a moral purpose in the texts, it must be one that is drawn out of the individual prohibitions rather than being their source, and we must look elsewhere for their explanation. 2. Comparative Theories The majority of social anthropologists in recent years have tended to aim at offering emic accounts of cultural features, in particular explaining a feature like dietary restrictions as a symbolic system, or rather as a particular expression of the symbolic system formed by the entire culture of a people. A symbolic system consists... of rules of behaviour, actions and expectations which constitute society itself. The rules which generate and sustain society allow meanings to be realised which otherwise would be undefined and ungraspable (so Mary Douglas [1973b: 138]).

While this kind of understanding, in which the observer seeks for the systematic expression of meaning in a culture and all its features, is widespread, it is Douglas especially who is associated with its application to the dietary laws of the Old Testament. But as John Rogerson has pointed out (1986: 90ff.), the dominance of the emic approach is of fairly recent origin. A scholar like Robertson Smith, in the late nineteenth century, took as his aim, almost without argument, to explain the religion of Israel historically, as a development from an earlier and more primitive set of practices and beliefs. In such an explanation the beliefs of the Israelites themselves could play but a small part, for in religion practice was prior to belief: myths grew up to explain rites, were subject to frequent change, and could scarcely be said to embody meaning; rites were more stable, and persisted long after their original basis, or meaning, had vanished into the mists of time (W.R. Smith 1894: 16ff.). And of

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course this primarily historical understanding of the task of cultural explanation was shared by nineteenth-century scholarship in general. In the terms of the jargon, it is certainly an 'etic' understanding: it aims to produce 'scientifically productive theories' about the development of culture, not accounts that natives might recognize as expressing the meaning of their beliefs and rites. More recently, as Rogerson again points out, strong minority voices have been heard within the community of anthropological scholarship urging a return to a supposedly more objective understanding of culture on the basis of its material infrastructure: that is to say, its modes of production and reproduction. Some of these voices are of course Marxist; others, among whom Marvin Harris is clearly the leader, label themselves 'cultural materialists'. To explain: Harris acknowledges a debt to Marxism in that he finds that the material means of subsistence are the foundation upon which state institutions, the legal concepts, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have evolved, and in the light of which these things must therefore be explained instead of vice versa... (Engels, quoted by Harris 1979: 41-42).

Nonetheless, on the epistemological side he rejects Marxist dialectics as too subjective, in favour of Hume's empiricism. A more concrete distinction between them is that Harris attributes motivating power solely to the ecological and demographic aspects of human society, whereas Marxists treat society as an economic system, in which production and social relationships are inseparably bound together. By materialists, whether Marxist or Harrisian, the dominant schools in Anglo-Saxon and French anthropology are condemned as 'idealist', blowing up a balloon of ideas which are pretended to control the material arrangements of society from which in reality they emerged as relatively unimportant by-products.1 I do not believe it necessary to take sides in this dispute. I have already suggested that historical, material and symbolic considerations must all be taken into account, and I should like to add here that the contribution of cultural geography, as exemplified by Frederick Simoons (1961), should not be ignored. 'Idealist' or 'structuralist' anthropology tends to view each culture as a self-contained symbolic 1. For a discussion of the dispute (in relation to Marxist rather than cultural materialism), see Sahlins 1976.

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system, drawing external analogies with similar systems; the materialist points to its connection with the material infrastructure of society; the historian attempts to explain its features as the development of an earlier state of affairs; but the cultural geographer shows how cultures in geographical contiguity tend to adopt similar features. a. Robertson Smith It is no doubt scarcely possible in these days to take seriously as a contribution to religious history Smith's basic thesis, that the sacrificial and dietary usages of Semitic culture originated in a totemistic system in which god, victim and worshippers belonged together as fellowmembers of a clan. It depends more upon audacious speculation than upon solid evidence. Smith makes no direct and coherent statement in The Religion of the Semites on how the food restrictions of Israelite culture emerged, but from his scattered observations on the subject (cf. 1894: 153, 289-96, 446-49, and other places) it is clear that he believed that in origin there was no distinction between clean and unclean animals. All alike were subject to stringent taboos; to kill and eat them was an act fraught with danger, which could only be evaded in the religious act of sacrifice, when they and the worshippers were consecrated to the god whose family they were. It is still the case in the rule of Lev. 17.3-4 that slaughter of domestic animals is not permitted apart from sacrifice; and the fact that examples of the sacrifice of ordinarily unclean animals can be found in Semitic paganism (pp. 290-94) shows that they too were sacred to their own respective deities. But just as the holy and the unclean, both originating in the fear of demonic powers, become distinguished as the influence respectively of friendly gods and unknown hostile powers (p. 154), so in Israelite monotheism (one must assume) the unclean animals became absolutely prohibited because they are associated with strange gods. Apart from its shaky foundation, there are loose ends in this account that are surely fatal to it. Most obviously, Smith must (with good reason, be it said—see my next chapter) assume that the distinction of clean (i.e. ordinarily sacrificed and eaten) and unclean (extraordinarily sacrificed and eaten) animals was the same among Semitic pagans as in Israel; but what basis for this distinction existed in that religious system remains unclear. Even more seriously, the assertion of the original identity of the holy and the unclean, as Douglas points out (1966: 7ff.), overlooks their fundamentally different social meaning.

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Nevertheless, there are great virtues in Smith's approach which we should be foolish to abandon simply because synchronic approaches happen to be more fashionable. Chief among these is the use of every scrap of evidence to build up a picture of the world out of which, he believed, the religion of Israel grew. True, much of the evidence that he used was comparative evidence that was not truly comparable; and he was doubtless mistaken in his belief that ancient Arab paganism gave an accurate impression of the primitive religion of Israel's ancestors. But it behoves us, I believe, not to reject his entire method, but to see if we can do better with our better sources of evidence for the history of Israel's culture, perhaps avoiding his mistakes. Also, some of his actual results were surely correct, for example, that the connection between the table and the altar was closer in early Israel than in post-Deuteronomic times. Just how close—for example, whether secular slaughter existed at all, and whether game as well as domestic animals were sacrificed—is a matter for further discussion (see Chapter 4, §§3.b, 3.c; and Chapter 6, §l.d). But it is unlikely that we can solve our problem without reference to the law and custom of sacrifice. b. FJ. Simoons Simoons's book, Eat not This Flesh: Food Avoidances in the Old World (1961), is unique; no other, so far as I know, has its object of surveying food avoidances, and nothing but food avoidances, over a large area of the world in the past and the present. It has certain selfimposed limitations: the title indicates that it omits the Americas; it is organized according to particular animals rather than according to cultures or geographical areas, and it deals only with the commoner domestic species, so that hunter-gatherer peoples escape its net altogether, and the often very elaborate restrictions on game by settled peoples are also not dealt with. But within these limitations it is highly informative; and Simoons aims not only to collect information but also to attempt to explain the phenomena he discovers. The limitation to domestic animals means that only four of the 'unclean' animals of our texts are dealt with: the pig, dog, horse and camel (there is no chapter on the ass, perhaps because it is almost universally avoided as food). The pig is the most important of these, of course. Simoons sets out the evidence which I shall give in a more upto-date form in my next chapter to show that pigs, both wild and domestic, were common food animals in the Middle East in the

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Neolithic, but decline in importance fairly rapidly thereafter, until in late antiquity we find the explicit avoidance of pork very widespread; thereafter the prohibition is adopted by Islam and spread to the entire region, apart from the Christians and Druzes, who seem to eat pork deliberately in order to signal their difference from Islam. But the notable difference between this region on the one hand, and Europe and East Asia and Melanesia on the other, where the keeping and eating of pigs is almost universal, long antedates the rise of Islam, and is not confined to particular peoples such as the Jews. Simoons suggests that the origin of the prejudice against pig meat may have lain with the pastoral peoples of the semi-arid areas, who were not only widespread but politically influential. The pig is not suited to the pastoral way of life; it requires shade and moisture, and is not easy to drive over long distances; further, pastoralists frequently despise settled peoples. They could have 'developed contempt for the pig as an animal alien to their way of life and symbolic of the despised sedentary folk' (1961: 41). This is actually the case with the Mongols, who identify the pig with the Chinese. Where pastoralists gained power over settled peoples, this sort of prejudice would gradually have spread to the latter, probably 'some time after 1400 BC, at a time associated with a notable rise in the strength of the pastoral groups living on the fringes of the great civilizations' (p. 42). By contrast, in the areas where no prejudice against pork-eating exists, pastoralists have had little influence. Simoons also invokes the pastoralists to explain the equally widespread avoidance of dog meat; their 'strong functional intimacy' with dogs would have led them to avoid using them as food, just as people who use the ass as a pack and draught animal rarely eat its flesh. However, the literature generally views the dog in a very negative light (see Chapter 5, §l.b), which scarcely seems compatible with a sense of intimacy. The camel is a different problem again. At the present day the avoidance of camel flesh is a badge of non-Muslim identity throughout the Middle East; not only Jews, but Christians, Parsees, Mandaeans and Nosairis all avoid it. Simoons sees clearly, however, that the avoidance is older than Islam, but has no suggestion to make as to its origin. He says nothing about the horse relevant to Judaism, but there is no problem here; few private persons owned horses in ancient Israel, and the question of eating their flesh could scarcely have arisen.

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There is some plausibility in Simoons's case about the pig; but he makes the fundamental error of identifying pastoralism with nomadism. It is now well recognized that no hard and fast line can be drawn between nomad pastoralists and settled agriculturalists; pastoralism is engaged in by many settled farmers either exclusively or in addition to other activities, as one of the best means of exploiting the resources of a relatively arid terrain, and there are also semi-nomads who spend part of the year following their flocks and part in agriculture. In fact, his case would probably be strengthened by recognizing this. A high proportion of the population of the ancient Near East was engaged in a type of husbandry that would leave little room for pigs, on land that was arid and unforested and so not very suitable for them in any case. If there were those among them who positively despised the pig as typical of farming peoples in forest areas, the prejudice could easily have spread. (I should not, by the way, leave the impression that I think the wooded and unwooded areas of the Near East are entirely dispensations of nature; the relation between deforestation and the decline of the pig will be occupying us in our next section.) One thing Simoons has made abundantly clear, whether his explanation be accepted or not, is the pronounced regional character of food avoidances, even before the rise of the great world religions, which has emphasized this still further. It is not reasonable in the light of his evidence to attempt to explain such things solely by looking at a culture such as Israel's in isolation, and making purely comparative links with other cultures. It may be true, as Douglas maintains, that only the patterning of Israel's own culture will explain the whole system of Israel's food avoidances, that it explains nothing to appeal to external influences which Israel may arbitrarily accept or react against. But when we are speaking of general regional tendencies, we are not really dealing with external influences, and such regional tendencies are among the raw materials of the ultimately distinctive pattern of culture that we find in the Old Testament. This does not mean that the comparative method (in the narrow sense) is to be avoided. Eilberg-Schwartz (1990: 4ff.) has rightly insisted on its importance, and I shall be using it in Chapter 5. But it needs to be complemented by regional studies. c. Marvin Harris 1. Cultural Materialism. Harris, besides his passionate advocacy of a particular type of anthropological theory, has always had an interest

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in dietary customs, which he has discussed in his lively and frequently satirical style, and with a rich vein of indignant and compassionate humanity, in a whole series of highly readable publications. These include Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches and Cannibals and Kings (1978); but his later book, Good to Eat (1986) is, obviously, devoted entirely to the subject, and goes some way to answering his critics, though one has to turn to his more theoretical Cultural Materialism (1979) for detailed arguments against Douglas and other symbolists. The subject is of course ideally suited as a battleground between their respective approaches: The theory that foods are selected primarily because they are good to think rather than because they are good to eat... mocks the hungry living and dead by transforming the struggle for subsistence into a game of mental imagery. The idea that cooking is primarily a language is food for thought only among those who have never had to worry about having enough to eat (Harris 1979: 189).1

For Harris, then, the selection and rejection of foods are aspects strictly of the struggle for subsistence; religious prohibitions are simply an effective means of enforcement of that which is dictated by economic necessity, and the variations between different societies primarily reflect differences in their ecological settings, and especially the balance of costs and benefits in the provision of animal protein. So the Aztec elite sacrificed and ate their prisoners of war because the lack of other suitable animal protein outweighed the advantages of stopping a practice widespread among tribal peoples (1986: 232-33). Cattle are sacred in India because in the overpopulated, intensively farmed Ganges valley, subject to severe droughts very often, they are essential as draught animals to the maintenance of agriculture and too costly in resources to use as meat: To this day, monsoon farmers who yield to temptation and slaughter their cattle seal their doom. They can never plow again even when the rains fall' (1978: 147). In India the draught animal must also act as a scavenger, but in China, with much more grazing land, the draught animals could be put to graze while families kept pigs fed on refuse to use as meat (1978: 150-51). 1. Regrettably, one has to add that Harris's writing is distinguished also by frequent carelessness: in Good to Eat we have to endure the 'Garadine' swine, a Middle Eastern Bronze Age beginning in 2000 BC, and the assertion that the Lord of the ancient Israelites forbade his people 'even to touch a pig alive or dead' (followed by the quotation of Lev. 11.1, 24!) (Harris 1986: 67).

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2. Cultural Materialism and Leviticus. What then of Israel? For many purposes Harris treats it as simply part of the wider region of the Near East.1 But he begins in Good to Eat with the text of Leviticus 11, and notes that it says nothing of dirt, hygiene or the eating of excrement, but rather requires that the animal that is 'good to eat' must have cloven hooves and chew the cud. He argues, against Mary Douglas and others, that this formula is 'the outcome of the way the Israelites used domestic animals', and not the converse. Leaving the requirement of cloven hooves aside for the moment, he has no difficulty in showing (pp. 72ff.) that ruminants are precisely those animals that are most suited to the production of meat (and milk) in the conditions generally prevailing in the Near East. They can digest grass and other plant foods that cannot be absorbed directly by human beings because of their high content of cellulose, and convert them into meat, and hence make it possible to use the vast areas of grasslands that would otherwise be of very little use. Thus the Israelites raised cattle, sheep and goats, and did not raise pigs. But this is not only because pigs, like human beings, cannot efficiently digest cellulose, and are therefore in direct competition with them for food, but also because they are illsuited to the climate and ecology of the Near East. The pig is naturally a creature of forests and riverbanks; in order to maintain its body temperature in a hot climate it requires shade and moisture, because it cannot sweat; and it lives naturally on roots and tubers and fruits. But in early Israel (as over a longer timespan in the Near East as a whole), its natural woodland habitat was rapidly cut down and replaced by dry farmland. Pig-raising could only be achieved at the cost of grain to supplement the pig's feed, making it a direct competitor of human beings, and of the provision of artificial shade and moisture (if indeed the latter could be provided at all in summer in places where the only source of water was rain-filled cisterns—a point not touched on by Harris).2 It could still be raised as a meat source by an enterprising individual, but only at high cost to the 1. He rather misstates the position in Egypt and Mesopotamia, asserting the development of taboos on the eating of pork in the course of time: 1978:135ff.; 1986: 83-84. For this there is no clear evidence before late antiquity. But see further Chapter 4, §3.b.4, Chapter 5, §l.b. 2. But see Finkelstein 1988, whose survey of sites in the hill-country of Ephraim includes in each case the distance of the nearest water source; few are at any great distance.

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community. As Carleton S. Coon put it, who anticipated Harris's argument by some twenty years: Any man who [keeps pigs] now will be making a show of his wealth; he will be disturbing the equilibrium of the group among whom he lives and preventing an equable distribution of foodstuffs. The pig must go. It went (Coon 1951: 346).

Even if it is true, as Harris acknowledges, that some marginal areas remained where the raising of swine continued to have low costs, that would not in his opinion contradict the ecological basis of the taboo. If there had not been some minimum possibility of raising pigs, there would have been no reason to taboo the practice... religions gain strength when they help people make decisions which are in accord with pre-existing useful practices, but which are not so completely self-evident as to preclude doubts or temptations (Harris 1986: 77).

Earlier (1978: 131ff., with a reference to Ross 1976) he had enunciated the general principle that supernatural sanctions are most likely to be invoked against the consumption of a particular species where the ratio of benefits to costs in raising it has deteriorated over time for the community as a whole, while it may still remain a tempting resource for the individual. This would be true in a high degree of the pig, if his account is correct. The question remains, however, why Leviticus should specify cloven hooves as well as chewing the cud as criteria of edibility. Harris explains this (1986: 79ff.) as aimed at the camel; like others he regards the mention of the hare and hyrax as the result of inadequate zoological knowledge. Had the Levites possessed a better knowledge of zoology, they could have used the criterion of cud-chewing alone and simply added the proviso 'except for the camel'... But given their shaky knowledge of zoology, the codifiers could not be sure that the camel was the only undesirable species which was a cud-chewer. So they added the criterion of the split hooves (p. 79).

But why was the camel undesirable? Harris has no difficulty in showing that it is a poor resource for regular meat-raising, with its slow reproductive cycle, and that, as an essentially desert-adapted animal, it could never have provided a significant amount of meat or milk for an Israelite farming community. And in Cannibals and Kings he had pointed out that horses, donkeys and camels were kept for transport and traction, and 'could not have supplied significant amounts

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of animal protein without interfering with their primary function'. They were too valuable to be eaten (1978: 135). But if that is so, it is hard to see what kind of a temptation the regular eating of camel-meat (or donkey-meat) offered. Its irregular use, as is perforce practised by Beduin communities, at least as a way of dealing with old and sick animals, can hardly be seen as any kind of economic or ecological danger. Harris's arguments do not reveal why it was unsound from a cost-benefit point of view for camel-owners to eat their unfit animals or at least put their meat on the market (cf. Wapnish 1984). Similar problems attend Harris's discussion of the remaining prohibitions. In Cannibals and Kings he had attempted to explain the entire range of prohibitions in cost-benefit terms, and signally failed— not that any of the forbidden species are better bargains than the ruminants, but it is unclear what temptations they offered that made it necessary to taboo them. In the later work he wisely refrains from this attempt, and is ready to regard the 'flamboyant lists of interdicted species' as the result of 'abstract theological principles'. Specifically, the taxonomic principle that excludes carnivores 'has been somewhat overextended' (1986: 82); with remarkable intuition (cf. Chapter 2, §l.c.5), he speculates that this list [of unclean birds] was primarily the result of a priestly attempt to enlarge on a smaller set of prohibited flying creatures... as a validation of the codifiers' claim to special knowledge of the natural and supernatural worlds (p. 82).

He is here content to argue that none of the restrictions were ecologically or nutritionally unsound: none deprived the people of a good source of meat available at reasonable cost compared with their normal stock. With this we may agree. But it should be observed that he has thereby failed to explain the origin of the restrictions on creatures of the water and the air in the terms of his theory. 3. The Problem of the Pig. But has he in fact succeeded in doing so even in the paradigm case of the pig? 'The pig must go' after the clearance of the forests. The forests went; so did the pig. There may be a connection between those two facts (but see Chapter 4, §2.b.2). But did that connection go in the direction required by Harris's theory? Did the pig go because the forests had been swept away, or were the forests cleared because there were no longer any pigs to go

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in them? This is the question raised by Simoons (1961: 40) in relation to Coon's opinion quoted above. It is given point by a reference to Xavier de Flannel's Le monde islamique (1957: 62). De Planhol notes that in Albania, where Christian and Muslim communities occupy small stretches of territory adjacent to each other, the Christian areas are better wooded than the Muslim ones. The Christians of course graze their pigs in the woods, whereas among the Muslims the ban on pork has meant that the woods have been cleared to provide pasture for sheep and goats. Is it not likely that much the same could have happened throughout the region, often as a result of the dominance of Islam, but in some areas before that? Now Harris is quite ready to acknowledge this, but gives it an interpretation of his own (1986: 86). Religiously sanctioned foodways that have become established as the mark of conversion and as a measure of piety can also exert a force of their own back upon the ecological and economic conditions which gave rise to them... By giving the goat free reign [sic; to strip trees], Islam to some degree spread the conditions of its own success.

But he denies that this is an argument against the ecological origin of the pig taboo. After all, a preference for cattle, sheep and goats and the rejection of pigs in the Middle East long antedated the birth of Islam. This preference was based on the cost/benefit advantages of ruminants over other domestic animals as sources of milk, meat, traction, and other services and products in hot, arid climates.

But this is a brazen evasion of the point. That is, at the time of the taboo's first emergence, to what extent may we speak of the environment as a whole, not merely the climate, as arid enough in every area covered by it to make it economic common sense to abandon the production of pigs? The irrelevance of the climate by itself may be measured by the fact that wild pigs abound today in the marshes of the Tigris-Euphrates delta (Young 1989: 126ff.). Admittedly areas such as the Judaean and Samarian highlands, where surface water is often hard to find, might still be unsuitable for the raising of pigs, even without the deforestation (cf. Chapter 4, §2.b.2). But this is scarcely true of the entire region. Paul Diener and Eugene Robkin (1978: 497ff.)! subject Harris's thesis to severe criticism on 1.

Diener and Robkin's own theory is considered in Chapter 4, §4.a.

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the grounds, among others, that he has generalized from the problems of particular areas to a sweeping judgment on an entire region of the world, within which there are many areas quite suitable for the pig, such as the Jordan valley and the coastal plain of Palestine. According to Harris, however (1986:84), population pressure exposed pig-keepers to hostility even in the Nile valley for their diversion of badly needed food, and this accounts for the abomination of the pig in Egypt recorded by Herodotus (2.47) and, according to Harris, in 'tomb paintings and inscriptions'. However, it seems likely that he has misinterpreted these (since he gives no references, it is difficult to tell), since native Egyptian sources record only a rejection of the pig for sacrifice, not for food (see LA, s.v. Schwein, and Chapter 4, §3.b.4 and Chapter 5, §l.b). As for pigs needing to be fed grain, and so consuming resources that would be more efficiently used directly, Harris seems to contradict himself. He himself points out that the Chinese are able to raise four times as many pigs as the Americans without a problem of resource allocation, because, unlike the American pigs which are fed on corn and soya, the pigs in China are fed on household and farm refuse: 'ground and fermented rice hulls, sweet potato and soya bean vines, water hyacinths and so forth' (Harris 1978: 150, quoting Sprague 1975). He had earlier (pp. 131-32; cf. 1986: 73) asserted that 'hogs cannot metabolize husks, stalks or fibrous leaves' and consequently cannot produce meat efficiently if fed on this kind of diet. Harris never clears up this contradiction. It can probably be resolved by recognizing that pigs will not grow as fast on this diet as on grain, but will perform a useful function as scavengers for people who are ready to wait for their roast pork. (In pre-Communist China, the rural population only gained 2.3 per cent of their calories from animal products, despite the large number of pigs [Harris 1978: 151].) Hence there seems no reason, even after deforestation, why pigs could not have been kept in many parts of the ancient Near East, as they certainly were in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and even in some parts of Palestine (readers of the New Testament will recall the Gadarene swine, Mk 5.11), feeding on waste products, as in China, without encroaching on the direct human food supply. Two pieces of evidence immediately available to me suggest that this was the normal practice. One is again from the New Testament: 'the husks (ta keratia, i.e. carob pods) that the swine did eat' (Lk. 15.16), which the Prodigal Son would have gladly eaten because there was a famine: they were

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not normal human fare. The other, remarkably similar, is thousands of years older and more precisely located, and is quoted by Harris (1986: 84, from Darby et al. 1977: 185) to try to prove the opposite. It is an Egyptian text from the Old Kingdom: 'food is robbed from the mouth of the swine, without it being said as before "this is better for thee than for me", for men are so hungry'. This certainly 'clearly shows how during hard times humans and swine competed for subsistence', but it is obviously illegitimate to go on to use another text 'boasting of a king's power over the lands', which speaks of swine being fed on wheat, to prove that it is grain that is in question in the Old Kingdom text. Quite the contrary: 'this is better for thee (the pig) than for me', that is, it is the left-overs. The natural way to take the two texts together is to suppose that pigs were normally fed on refuse, but that a rich and powerful owner might well use grain to fatten them. 4. General Critique. Roger Keesing, in his textbook on cultural anthropology (1981: 143ff.), subjects cultural materialism and related theories to a searching critical review that exposes both their technical weaknesses and their theoretical failures, and this are to some extent parallelled by further arguments against Harris's general method in Diener and Robkin's article (1978: 499ff.), after Hempel 1959. The technical basis of Harris's arguments is actually quite flimsy, despite the parade of scientific accuracy. He relies upon general understandings of ancient ecosystems that would need to be accurately quantified to be useful; yet even contemporary fieldworkers who have grounded theories upon ecological analysis carried out in detail by themselves have turned out to be grossly in error (Keesing 1981: 155). What chance has Harris or anyone else at this distance in time of knowing enough about the complexities of the Palestinian ecosystem 2500 or 3000 years ago to tell whether or not pig-keeping was ecologically adaptive? Further, central to Harris's arguments is the idea that animal protein is essential to the healthy maintenance of human societies, and that the search for it will determine much of their behaviour. Keesing argues, against this, that provided there is a sufficient range of vegetable proteins in the diet, and that energy needs are fully met, human beings can be perfectly healthy on a purely vegetable diet (for example, maize and beans in Mexico); and at least among some populations that have adapted to a low protein diet, the total protein requirement is less than has generally been thought (Keesing 1981: 160-61).

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Harris replies at some length in the opening chapter of Good to Eat: although it is possible to find sufficient of the right combination of amino-acids by combining cereal and leguminous foods, people on such a diet have a very narrow margin of safety for such crises as illness and pregnancy, in which higher amounts of protein are required, since the bare minimum requires the stomach to be used to its full capacity; animal foods are also a much better source of vitamins A, B and E, and the only source of Bi2 (p. 35). But while this point is well taken, Harris evades the point that this argument applies to animal food in general and not specifically to meat. Yet he entitles the chapter 'Meat Hunger'. Of course, most people like eating meat, and, as we see today, are quite willing to degrade whole ecosystems to get it. It is arguable that this preference is to be explained in biological and not in purely cultural terms; but it is not clear that Harris has made this case out. The theoretical mistake of cultural materialism is to assume that the system of production that we actually find operating in a particular ecological setting functions adequately in that setting, so that the question that needs to be asked is how its cultural features adapt it to the setting. This is not necessarily so (Diener and Robkin 1978: 499; Keesing 1981:156ff.). Many systems operate inadequately and inefficiently and have deleterious effects. Many customs are maladaptive rather than adaptive. Many societies are in decline, or in a process of expansion quite unsustainable except at the expense of their neighbours (Keesing 1981: 156, 162-63). Indeed, it is a central feature of Harris's own general historical argument that continuous intensification of production leads again and again in history to crises that can only be resolved by the adoption of new systems of production. Consequently there does not seem to be any general social mechanism that adapts systems of production adequately to ecological settings. And so there is no reason to suppose, if a particular social trait happens to be adaptive, or is thought to be adaptive, that it is there for that reason. Harris does indeed recognize that social traits exist for other than material reasons. Although he believes that religious ideas arise from 'the cost/benefits of ecological processes', he does not deny that religious ideas in their turn may affect customs and even systems of production—so Jews and Muslims living in very different ecological settings from the Middle East continue to observe the taboos developed in the latter setting (1978: 137). But he refuses to believe that they

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would continue to do so if it led to a sharp increase in subsistence costs: 'no purely religious urge can run counter to fundamental ecological and economic resistance for a long period of time' (p. 137). I doubt whether history bears him out. Harris in fact devotes very little attention to attempting to explain the mechanism by which an ecological need becomes a religious prescription. The best effort he makes is in discussing the Indian beef taboo: it was, he says, the cumulative result of the individual decisions of millions and millions of individual farmers, some of whom were better able than others to resist the temptation of slaughtering their livestock because they strongly believed that the life of a cow or an ox was a holy thing. Those who held such beliefs were much more likely to hold onto their farms, and to pass them on to their children, than those who believed differently (1978: 147).

This explicitly characterizes the process in quasi-Darwinian terms as one of natural selection. But even Darwin's theory of natural selection needed to be paired with Mendel's theory of genetics before it could be fully convincing. Harris's theory may in certain cases explain the success and survival of particular customs, but scarcely how they came to be accepted in the first place. And as Keesing points out (1981: 163ff.), the survival of even severely maladaptive customs shows that there is no natural selection operating within cultures to weed them out. Natural selection does not automatically eliminate customs that have harmful consequences: human beings must change them. And since people most often do not consciously perceive directly the ecological consequences of their customs, the process of their consciously changing the customs into more adaptive ones is haphazard at best (p. 165).

The truth is that Harris's invocation of ecology and demography as universal explanatory mechanisms is reductionist in the extreme, simplifying the complexities of human culture and selling short its creativity. Human societies are constrained by ecology and demography, which set limits to what is possible and create problems that societies must solve. 'But these negative constraints never create solutions, never produce cultural forms. A protein shortage and population explosion in the Valley of Mexico did not and could not create a religious system in which the gods demanded human sacrifice' (Keesing 1981: 166). Nor could the constraints on food production in the semiarid zones of the Near East create a religious system in which the

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majority of animal species were forbidden to be eaten. It is human beings who create such systems, and they do so because they perceive their environment in terms quite other than ecological. Only 'emic' accounts, if those terms are to be used, can explain them. I repeat my quotation from Sahlins (1977: viii): the decisive quality of culture—as giving each mode of life the properties that characterize it—[is] not that this culture must conform to material constraints but that it does so according to a definite symbolic scheme which is never the only one possible.

It is important, however, as Keesing reminds us (1981: 169ff.), that such symbolic schemes are not spun out of thin air. They are related to the concrete social systems of people, they express the meanings, values and ends that they find important; they may serve the interests of dominant groups or reflect the tensions and conflicts within the system. Nevertheless, although Harris's account is ultimately inadequate, we should consider ourselves indebted to him—and to Gottwald and Rogerson, who have drawn attention to his importance for Old Testament studies—for reminding us that ancient Israel lived within a particular ecosystem and had to maintain a population within its constraints with technology that we should regard as primitive; and that these are the first facts that we should consider in analysing any feature of Israelite society, whatever religious significance might be attached to it. d. Mary Douglas 1. Symbols and Structures. Mary Douglas represents that majority school of modern anthropologists so despised by Harris for their idealism in regarding animals as good to think rather than good to eat. But she certainly does not regard the symbolic systems of human cultures as existing in their own right as creations of the human mind. This essential point distinguishes her approach from that of the French structuralists led by Levi-Strauss, even though it can itself with reason be called structuralist. Her interest throughout her career has been in working out the relationships between symbolic systems and social structures, and her now classic Purity and Danger (1966) in general tackled precisely the question of how 'pollution' ideas serve definable social ends in specific societies with particular structures, tensions and conflicts. Unfortunately, the essay on 'The Abominations of Leviticus'

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in that book, which has by now acquired wide renown among Old Testament scholars as well as anthropologists, was inadequate in that regard; it expounded the animal classifications in Leviticus 11 as the expression of an abstract conception of holiness, with some slight relation to the Israelites' (supposed) mode of production, but none at all to their social structure. But she was well aware of this inadequacy, and sought to remedy it later in two important essays (1975b, 1975c) after giving further attention to it in her book Natural Symbols (1973a), first published in 1970. The account that I now give of her theory is based on all four of these sources. Unlike most other explanations, it has from the first been designed to account for the whole of the system, rather than starting from, say, the pig taboo, and then being extended ad hoc. It is also based firmly upon the text (even though she makes many mistakes in her interpretation of it; cf. Milgrom 1990: 177-78, 184), and aims at explaining primarily the writers' understanding of clean and unclean food. Mary Douglas's starting point is her conception of pollution ideas as a means of dealing with the anomalies and ambiguities that arise whenever human beings seek to impose order on the world, to classify, to demarcate. However, where such patterns arise purely through intellectual playfulness, they do not have the profound effects on social order exhibited by ideas of pollution. Where patterns of order applied to the cosmos or to the human body are of importance to society, they reflect the patterns that govern their social life and religion. True, the weight that is placed upon such patterns varies greatly from one society to another. This should be plain to us, living as we do in a society where pollution ideas are of small public account, and the significance attached to them varies from individual to individual or family to family, according, commonly, to religious affiliation. In Natural Symbols (1973a) Douglas attempts a typology of small-scale societies, first according to the extent to which they impose upon the body and the cosmos classifications derived from social experience, a category she terms 'grid', and secondly according to the strength of community pressure upon the individual, which she calls 'group'. She identifies a group of societies, exemplified by the Tallensi of Ghana (pp. 86ff.), which she tags as 'high classification'; they are characterized not only by 'strong grid'—the high degree and consistent pattern of order that they see and impose in every realm of experience—but also by 'strong group'—there is no one, not even the highest, who is exempt from the

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pressure to conform to the elaborate pattern of social order.1 'The public system of rights and duties equips each man with a full identity, prescribing for him what and when he eats, how he grooms his hair, how he is buried or bom' (1973a: 86-87) Characteristically these two traits go together. Ritual affords a means of expressing and imposing on all the members of the society a narrowly defined understanding of the universe that reinforces the narrow definitions of their social world. 'Any...system which is sufficiently secure and insulated from criticism will tend to think in the same way.' Now, being a careful scholar, Douglas uses as test cases in Natural Symbols only full accounts by reliable fieldworkers of contemporary tribal societies. But she cannot leave the Israelites—or their animal classifications—alone, and her observations on these (pp. 60ff., 113) show that for her ancient Israel shares many of the features of a high classification society, particularly in the Second Temple period. It would be impossible for the leaders of an occupied but still resisting nation to adopt an effervescent form of religion. To expect them to stop preaching a stern sexual morality, vigilant control of bodily boundaries, and a corresponding religious cult would be asking them to give up the political struggle (p. 113).

In this case, the narrow definition of the body social and physical expresses a society's resistance to assimilation rather than security from encroachment. Thus in such societies the human body serves as a model of the body social, and what is true of the body may also be true of the external world, and in particular the animate part of it, with which humanity is constantly in relationship and which is particularly susceptible to classification. The classification of the animal world may provide a grid that can clarify and confirm, in the purportedly objective world accessible to the senses, the relationships of the social world, which give rise to the hidden assumptions that govern the members' way of seeing everything. To study the system of food avoidance of any culture is to be introduced to these assumptions, which are necessary, especially in a situation like that of Second Temple Israel, for the preservation and strengthening of the social order. Conversely, of course, any information we have about their social structure and world-defining assump1. Cf., however, the criticism of Wuthnow et al. (1984: 124), who suggest that group and grid are antithetical rather than reinforcing one another.

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tions may help to elucidate the animal classification system. Here and in many other ways Douglas shows herself a disciple of Durkheim, with his doctrine that religion and ritual represent society, and specifically that the primary categories are social categories: 'the first classes of things were classes of men, into which things were integrated... Moieties were the first general clans, the first species' (Durkheim and Mauss 1963: 82-83). 2. The Abominations of Leviticus. In beginning her study of "The Abominations of Leviticus' (1966: 41ff.), Douglas found highly significant the insistence, mainly in the Holiness Code, on physical as well as moral perfection in definitions of holiness. To be holy is to be whole, to be one; holiness is unity, integrity, perfection of the individual and of the kind. The dietary rules merely develop the metaphor of holiness on the same lines (p. 54). The underlying principle of cleanness in animals is that they should conform fully to their class. Those species are unclean which are imperfect members of their class, or whose class itself confounds the general scheme of the world (p. 55).

This is worked out through each of the three elements, the land, the water and the air, according to which the animals are categorized, as Douglas sees it, both in the creation story of Genesis 1 and in Leviticus 11. For each sphere a model is proposed that expresses the mode of life (more precisely, the mode of locomotion) proper to that sphere. Thus, land dwellers have four legs and walk or hop; within this large group those only may be eaten that conform to the model of Israel's own domestic animals by cleaving the hoof and chewing the cud. The domestic stock are clean ex hypothesi, and are fit for the altar and recipients with their masters of the blessings of the covenant (1966: 54), while other similar animals conforming to the same model are acceptable for the table, though not for the altar, where only domestic animals may be sacrificed. Animals that do not possess the appropriate criteria are not acceptable either for the table or the altar. But particular attention is paid to three sets of creatures that Douglas describes as 'abominable' (1975b: 265), under the impression that this word expresses more than the simple lack of the criteria necessary for edibility. These are (a) the borderline creatures of Lev. 11.4-8, which possess one but not both of the criteria for edibility, and hence in a distinctive way threaten the security of the boundaries; and two

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groups that fail to show even the basic characteristics of land dwellers, which 'have four legs and walk or hop': (b) those that appear to use their hands for walking (Lev. 11.27 and 29-31—we have already noted the error here); and (c) swarming and crawling animals (seres), which are found in all three spheres and hence belong to none, but threaten the security of the boundaries between them. These creatures are abominable because of the threat that they all offer to the security of the classsifications. Similarly in the water, the possession of fins and scales is the essential mark of the proper and therefore edible denizen. The creatures of the air are a rather different case, since the text offers no criteria. However, among the flying creatures as a whole, the basic requirement is two legs and wings as birds have, and most insects are excluded: they belong to the 'abominable' swarming animals which cross the boundaries between the spheres. The locusts form an exception which Douglas considers an important confirmation of her rule: if they have a pair of jumping legs they are clean; that is, their mode of motion approximates to that of birds (1966:56). To explain the unclean birds she adopts from the Mishnah the widely accepted view (cf. above) that they are birds of prey or carrion eaters, and argues (1975b: 270) that, by the analogy between the body and the temple, the eating of undrained meat unfits them for being eaten, just as it unfits men for entry to the sanctuary. There is a series of Venn diagrams in 1975b: 264-66 which elucidates Douglas's analysis of the classsification of the creatures of each of the three spheres. In each of them she distinguishes very sharply between those creatures that simply fail to meet the criteria for edibility for that sphere, represented by an outer concentric circle round the circle representing the edible animals, and the 'abominable' creatures that either fail to possess the basic qualifications of dwellers in that sphere or threaten its inner or outer boundary; these are represented by separate, non-concentric circles. It is very hard to see any basis for this distinction in the biblical text; but I give this point detailed discussion below. At all events, she asserts that the system as a whole rejects creatures which are anomalous, whether in living between two spheres, or having defining features of members of another sphere, or lacking defining features... anomalous animals are unfit for altar and table (1975b: 226).

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She finds this to be a distinctive feature of the Mosaic system by comparison with the dietary systems of some other peoples; for example, the Lele of Zaire (the people among whom Douglas did her fieldwork) make the pangolin, which they regard as extremely anomalous, 'a creature that has scales like a fish but lives in a tree', the object of a special cult, certainly restricted for eating, but a supreme source of blessing for his initiates when sacrificed and eaten in his cult. The reason for this profound difference, she argues, is to be found in the respective social and religious systems. In Israel there is an exact correspondence between the classification of the animal world and the structure of the social world. The sharp boundary drawn between edible and inedible kinds corresponds to the sharp boundary demanded between the covenant people and all others (cf. Lev. 20.24ff.), while the boundary between animals fit for sacrifice and blemished or game animals fit only for the table corresponds to that between Israelites unfit at any given moment to enter the temple by reason of uncleanness or deformity and those sanctified for sacrifice. The same system of concentric boundaries, the outermost always given the greatest stress, is to be found in space, in the temple and its divisions, to which again the human body forms an analogy, and in the holy Land. In a whole series of symbolic structures the same pattern appears. Each structure is interchangeable with any other and all enforce the same message: 'the value of purity and the rejection of impurity' (1975b: 269), above all the purity of the holy people and the rejection of all threats to its integrity. For further discussion of this concentric structure, see Chapter 6, §2.a.6. We could compare Haran's interpretation of the temple system (Haran 1978: 158ff., 205ff.); it is indeed a prominent feature of priestly thought. But is it a characteristic of Israelite social structure apart from the priestly idealizations? Of such threats to the integrity of the holy people one of the most frequently faced and feared was that of intermarriage. The stranger was rejected, and the most dangerous stranger was he who like the pig in the animal world had most but not all of the requirements for membership—such as the Samaritan. The classification that counts abominable the beasts that either chew the cud or cleave the hoof but not both is isomorphic with the other classification of Israelites that does not object to intermarriage with female captives of far distant foes (Deuteronomy, 20.14-18) but worries about the prospect of intermarriage with half-blooded Israelites (1975c: 305).

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Indeed this was true not only at the level of the nation but also (1975c: 309), at that of the lineage: marriage within the lineage (ideally to the father's brother's daughter, as in many Arab communities today; see e.g. Granqvist 1931-35: I, 63ff.; cf. Lemche 1985: 224) was the preference, as practised by the patriarchs,1 as recommended by Tobit to his son (Tob. 4.12), and as required in the case of the high priest (Lev. 21.14),2 and of heiresses (Num. 36).3 It is at this level, that of the fundamental social structures, that Douglas finds it most illuminating to contrast the Israelite system, in which the anomalous creature is utterly rejected, with others where it is treated with varying degrees of interest and respect. Among the Lele, animals that appear to cross the boundaries of their proper spheres are all regarded favourably, though restricted for eating (1975c: 301-302), and the supreme anomaly, the pangolin, is granted the status of an honorary chief, which creates some embarrassment for those required to kill and eat him in the cult (1975a: 43). This reflects precisely their system of exogamous matrilineal clans, which 1. This seems to me to be correct. Abraham tells his servant to find a wife for Isaac from 'my country and my kindred' (Gen. 24.4); and he finds him 'Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother' (v. 15). When later Isaac's son marries his mother's brother's daughters it has to be borne in mind that Laban is, therefore, a member of Isaac's patrilineage, so that Jacob is still marrying within the patrilineage. Donaldson's attempt (1981), supported by Oden (1983, and 1987: 122) to show that the three marriages of the patriarchs represent a progress towards the ideal exemplified by Jacob's marriage with his mother's brother's daughters, is fatally flawed by overlooking this, as well as by assuming that cross-cousin marriage is the ideal. This is the elementary error of supposing that a widespread practice is a universal one. 2. rnun (plural); not 'from his people' (RSV), but 'from his father's kin' (REB). 3. It should be noted, however, that when Douglas (1975c: 316 n. 6) quotes this chapter as if it generally required marriage within the tribe, she is relying (indirectly) on the Vulgate text of vv. 7b-10a, which differs markedly from the MT, to this effect: Let all men marry wives from their own tribe and lineage; and let all wives take husbands from the same tribe, so that inheritances may remain with families, and tribes may not become mixed up with each other, but so remain as they have been divided by the Lord.

The differences from the MT are more than textual; here we have a different recension, one which would appear to be evidence of a stronger line taken in some quarters in favour of endogamy than that seen in the MT. However, I can throw no light on its origin.

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require the stranger as a son-in-law and expect great things from him, for the stranger is essential to the propagation of the clan. In each case, the attitude taken up towards anomalous beings in the cosmos is the concrete expression of the value placed in the social world on the outsider: the strange individual, the strange clan, the strange nation, or, in the case of Israel, the strange god. A people who have nothing to lose by exchange and everything to gain will be predisposed towards the hybrid being, wearing the conflicting signs, man/god or man/beast. A people whose experience of foreigners is disastrous will cherish perfect categories, reject exchange and refuse doctrines of mediation (1975c: 307).

This leads to a theological conclusion (1975c: 309-10): If you were God, could you devise a better plan? If you wanted to choose a people for yourself, reveal to them a monotheistic vision and give to them a concept of holiness which they will know in their very bones, what would you do? Promise their descendants a fertile land and beset it with enemy empires. By itself that would be almost enough. A politically escalating chain would insure the increasing hostility of their neighbours. Their mistrust of outsiders would ever be validated more completely. Faithful to your sanctuary and your law, it would be self-evident to them that no image of an animal, even a calf, even a golden one, could portray their god.

(It is remarkable that the totally different issue of the aniconic cult is raised at this point; since a calf was a clean animal the connection is precarious.) 3. Critique. Mary Douglas's approach to the problem has found remarkably wide and even uncritical acceptance among biblical scholars in the English-speaking world and even beyond: see for example Porter's (1976) and Wenham's (1979) commentaries on Leviticus, and Budd 1989: 282ff. Note especially Budd's concluding comment: 'Her basic point about the fundamental importance of physical anomaly remains firm' (1989: 290). Belo (1981), Malina (1981) and Countryman (1989) rely heavily on her approach to ideas of purity in general. Rogerson gave her theory of the unclean animals a cautious welcome in 1978: 112-13, only to hail Harris's explanation as superior in 1985: 97-98 and 1989: 33. It will already be clear that I cannot agree with him in this latter judgment. Anyone who reads further in the present work will see that I find Mary Douglas's understanding of the

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relationship of ritual and symbol to the structure and ethos of the societies that use them immensely fruitful and rewarding in all kinds of applications. Many of the insights that I have briefly mentioned here will be taken up again at later points. But at this point we have to deal with a specific and detailed application of her general theory, and here the uncritical acclaim she has received from many seems ill-judged to me. On the strictly exegetical issues, a comparison with Chapter 2 above will show that she is vulnerable on a number of counts. Milgrom (1990: 177-78, 184) gives a detailed list of her errors; see also Carroll (1978) and Firmage (1990: 178-82). But at least it is possible to discuss her work as a serious contribution to the exegesis of the chapter. And this is what I intend to do first. It is only possible to assess a theory that claims to be based strictly on the text by comparison with the text. There are also broader issues on which her fellow anthropologists have taken her to task. i. Anomaly and Abomination. It will be plain that Douglas's explanation starts out from the assumption that the classifications in Leviticus and the criteria on which it is based are the primary datum. This position is at times somewhat modified, as we shall see, but it generally holds good that the pivotal concept in her discussions is that of anomaly. Any classification system is bound to give rise to anomalies, since it implies the imposition of an artificial scheme produced by the human mind upon the diversity of nature. And, according to Douglas, it is the anomalies that arise from the classifications of Leviticus 11, the animals that will not properly fit into them, or those that lie athwart the boundaries, that are marked down as abominable and hence come to express the antithesis of holiness, the disapproved marriage, the strange nation and the strange god. So although the opposition of clean and unclean expresses a social and theological meaning, it would appear that there is not necessarily any inherent connection between the meaning and its expression; the latter is in principle a pure sign in the Saussurian sense. It will already be apparent from the discussions in Chapter 2 that I do not think it plausible to regard the classification system that we find in Leviticus 11 as the primary and irreducible datum. The criteria of cleanness that are offered there are best understood as derived from observation of those species that are generally acknowledged to be edible. But before returning to this more general point, we should

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look more closely at Douglas's concept of anomaly as it applies in practice to the Old Testament material. Regrettably, as her thought has developed it has become less faithful as an interpretation of the text. This is apparent in her comments on the pig. In Purity and Danger she says correctly of Lev. 11.4-8 and Deut. 14.7-8 that they serve merely to remove any doubt about the classification of those animals to which only one of the criteria of cleanness applies. 'The legal mind has seen fit to give a ruling on some borderline cases' (1966: 54). This is consistent with the general view of the system given in that chapter: a model for each sphere of life is set up, and what does not conform to it is unnatural, out of its proper sphere, or destructive of the proper boundaries. There is no difference in this respect between one unclean animal and another, and there is no suggestion that the pig is in any special category. But in her later essay 'Self-Evidence' (1975c [a lecture originally given in 1972]), we find a quite different view. The most important point to clarify is the status of the pig as monster in the ancient Israelite classification system... By itself, seen from the viewpoint of another pattern of classification, having some but not all of the criteria of the class of edible animals would not make them automatically unclean, revolting, abominable. But this classification system throughout, in all its application, picks on the borderline instance and tags it abominable.. .The pig... is the only non-cud-chewing hoof-cleaver in the whole of creation, a monster with no other judgment possible of its improper, law-defying existence than outright abomination (pp. 283-84).

Here the anomalous creature is no longer any that fails to meet the criteria for its class, but the special isolable example, 'abominable' in Douglas's special sense, that threatens the sacred boundary. The position of the pig in the Israelite system is made to parallel that of the pangolin among the Lele, the cassowary among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands, or the otter among Thai peasants: all are anomalous in the sense of being sui generis, isolated within the respective taxonomic systems. One reason for this change of position was that critics of Purity and Danger (e.g. Buhner 1967) had drawn attention to the prominent position of the pig as the representative of every uncleanness in Jewish thinking. In Natural Symbols (1973: 60ff.; first edition 1970) Douglas had accepted that 'this one animal' is 'singled out to be the chief representative and vanguard of all other abominations', but she accounted

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for this as the effect of the persecution of Antiochus, who had forced this particular symbol into prominence. Because of the heroic martyrdoms over the issue of the avoidance of pork, it 'became a specially powerful symbol of allegiance for the Jewish people... whereas this symbol in origin owed its meaning only to its place in a total pattern of symbols, for which it came to stand' (1973: 63). But in her two later essays, 'Deciphering a Meal' (1975b, first published in 1972) and 'Self-Evidence', she suggests that even in that original pattern of symbols the pig may have had a special status. It carried the odium of multiple pollution. First, it pollutes because it defies the classification of ungulates. Second, it pollutes because it eats carrion [and hence falls foul of the blood-defilement rule like the birds of prey]. Third, it pollutes because it is reared as food by non-Israelites... An Israelite who betrothed a foreigner might have been liable to be offered a feast of pork (1975b: 272).

But in origin the unique odium attached to this animal must be traceable to its unique position in the taxonomic system. It is monstrous and therefore abominable in the same way as the swarming things: that it represents a danger to the the categories. Douglas's general theory of anomaly has been subjected to searching examination by Dan Sperber (1975), who points out that Taxonomic identification is logically prior to any decision on 'normality', and therefore such a decision cannot put the identification into question... if the ostrich is to be an abnormal bird, it first of all has to be a bird (p. 29). *

If it is decided not to be a bird, it is something else. It may be a peculiar or remarkable bird, and thereby be 'good to think' symbolically, but it cannot defy the classification, because the classifier must and can decide whether it is a bird or not. Nor is it clear, more specifically, that her idea of the anomalous arises out of the biblical text. Is it true that the classification system in Leviticus 11 'throughout...picks on the borderline instance and tags it abominable?' Is there really in any case a special category of abominable animals distinct from the ordinarily unclean? Does the pig (or any of the other borderline animals) have a special status, distinct from all other unclean animals? The only section of the passage that obviously deals with borderline cases is 1. 'Le jugement de normalite a 1 'identification taxinomique [sic] pour pre-condition logique et il ne peut done pas la remettre en cause.. .Pour que 1'autruche soit un oiseau anormal, il faut d'abord qu'elle soit un oiseau.'

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Lev. 11.4-8/Deut. 14.7-8. Yet this is not the only group that Douglas sees tagged as threatening the taxonomic boundaries. But it is easy to show that the others are illusory, the product of faulty exegesis. The first is the animals that are supposed according to her interpretation of Lev. 11.27 (1966: 55-56; 1975b: 265) to walk unnaturally on hands instead of feet. Her false reading here is compounded by confusion with the lizards in vv. 29-30, though this is an entirely separate section. For the correct interpretation of these passages, see Chapter 2, §l.c.6, and cf. Carroll 1978: 119-20 and Milgrom 1990: 184. The second, and much more important, group are the teeming things. These are apparently mentioned as a subset of the denizens of each of the three realms (Lev. 11.10, 20ff., 29ff., 41ff.), and it is a vital part of Douglas's case that like the other categories the word defines the creatures by their typical movement, 'teeming, trailing, creeping, crawling or swarming', which is 'not a mode of propulsion proper to any particular element', and thereby 'cuts across the basic classification. Swarming things are neither fish, flesh nor fowl...there is no order in them' (1966: 56, and cf. the diagrams in 1975b: 264-65). Three objections may be raised here (cf. Firmage 1990: 179ff.): first, that the word Seres does not define a group according to its 'mode of propulsion'; secondly, that no equation is made between seres in different spheres; and thirdly, that in any case some seres are clean. First, if we may make an initial etymological observation, the verb Saras does not refer to movement of any kind; it means to 'swarm, teem', that is, to appear in large numbers in a particular space or medium. In Gen. 9.7 and Exod. 1.7 the subject is human, and elsewhere (e.g. Gen. 1.20; see below) the subject is the medium. If the noun is to be understood in line with the verb, the most natural reference is to animals that appear in swarms, containing large numbers of small creatures. However, this is not entirely satisfactory for the actual usage, where it is used in certain passages of P with seemingly an identical sense to that of rentes in other parts (e.g. Gen. 1.25-26), and the corresponding verb ramas does mean to creep or crawl. And of course if the customary identification of the named species in Lev. 11.29-30 is correct, not all of these could be seen as swarming creatures, but all in some sense crawl. But this will not do to establish the sense everywhere. In v. 10 the total body of water creatures is defined as 'all seres of the water and all living creatures (nepe$ hayya) that are in the water'. The structure

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of the sentence implies that some members of this body, whether they are to be defined as seres or as nepes hayyd, are clean, having fins and scales. But of course if they have fins they cannot be crawlers but must be swimmers. The nepes of the water, then, must include some fish, which swim and are clean. In its etymological sense it would be the natural word to use of shoals of small fish. This conclusion is confirmed by a glance at Gen. 1.20-21. Although Genesis 1 uses remes of land creatures, nepes is used here of water creatures: And God said: 'Let the water teem ytii^sA with Seres nepeS hayyd...' And God created the great sea-monsters and all the nepeS hayyd that move haromeSet with which the water teemed (sa^su).

Here both terms are clearly used of all water creatures indifferently (apart from the great sea-monsters, which may be mythical), and what is more, reversing the tendency to use Seres in the sense of rentes for land creatures, the verb ramas is used of all water creatures whether they crawl or swim. One must conclude that in Lev. 11.10 no serious distinction is intended between seres and nepes hayyd; the whole phrase quoted above is a hendiadys: all water creatures are seres, swarming in the way they do, and all of course are living creatures. (So more briefly Firmage 1990: 179-80). If we then turn to the flying creatures, among which by contrast it is clear that seres ha'dp (vv. 20-21, 23) is used to define a subset, it seems that some of this subset jump rather than crawling when they are on the ground, and are clean. It is no answer to say that they possess characteristics that distinguish them from seres, since the text (v. 21) explicitly places them in that class, seres ha'dp, it is clear, simply means small flying creatures; it has no reference to their mode of progression on the ground. It is not convincing to suggest that there is anything in common between the modes of movement of a worm, a crab, a minnow, a butterfly and a mouse. The conclusion must be that while in reference to creatures confined to the ground seres takes the place of remes and so has some connotation of movement, it does not in general define a group by their 'mode of propulsion'. Indeed it does not seem to refer to any single definable group at all. It is a word used with various senses as qualified with reference to the element the creatures inhabit. The seres HaSsoreset 'alha'ares, 'the teemers that teem on the ground', are a class of animals entirely distinct from other land animals, frhemd, and are (belatedly) declared unclean en bloc (vv. 4Iff.; see

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Chapter 2, l.c.2). With reference to water creatures, seres is simply a term for them all, viewed as a group, and it has no implications for their ritual status. It is only among the flying creatures that seres defines a subset of the class as a whole, but it is not a subset that can be declared unclean as a whole (in Leviticus); it includes a further subset that are edible. There is not the smallest basis for holding that the word identifies a group of creatures that by their mode of movement cross the boundaries between the elements and are therefore unclean. Mary Douglas might still be able to defend her theory about teeming things with reference independently to the flying insects and the teemers of the ground, as groups that fail to conform to the proper model for their sphere, but scarcely as groups threatening the categories by crossing the boundaries between classes. But so far as the ground creatures are concerned, I have already shown (Chapter 2, § l.c.2) that seres / rentes is an entirely distinct group from behema or beasts, inhabiting a distinct sphere of life. No more general term exists that might be translated 'land animals', covering both these groups and no others, and the structure of Leviticus 11 taken as a whole clearly implies a fourfold rather than a threefold division. So it is impossible to consider the seres of the ground as anomalous or non-conforming land animals. There is no type with regard to which they might be anomalous, no higher order model to which they might conform. Thus other supposed borderline or cross-border groups vanish, and we are left only with the four beasts of Lev. 11.4-8. It is therefore not the case that the system 'throughout, in all its application' tags the borderline creatures as abominable. Certainly the four beasts are unclean. But are they especially unclean? Are they more unclean than the dog, or the ass? Is there a special category of 'abominable' animals which are unclean in a higher degree than normal? The answer to all these questions, at least so far as the text of Leviticus (and Deuteronomy) is concerned, is no, with one minor exception not relevant to Douglas's case. Here I need only recall what emerged from our investigations in Chapter 2. Lev. 11.4-8 is an exegetical supplement clarifying the import of the text for possibly ambiguous cases. It would be impossible for it to introduce a principle applying distinctively to the cases with which it deals, and it does not do so. The only doubt attaches to the command 'you shall not touch their dead bodies', and here Rashi's explanation appears satisfactory. Douglas's understanding of the term

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'abominable' as expressing something more than simple unfitness for eating corresponds to nothing in the text. 'Abomination' is used by the RSV and some other English versions to render Seqes in Leviticus 11, and to'eba in Deut. 14.3. The latter applies to everything forbidden for food. The former is used in the same sense as tame' when the latter is used of prohibition for food in Lev. 11.4-8 and in Deuteronomy 14. Moreover it is not used of all the groups that Douglas identifies as abominable, certainly not of the four beasts in Lev. 11.4-8. The one exception I spoke of is that the eight teeming creatures of vv. 29ff. convey uncleanness, uniquely, not only to persons, but also to things. But if this gives them a higher degree of uncleanness, then it is a technical ritual matter, it is expressed with tame', and it applies only to these eight, not to the whole class of swarming animals. ii. Classification and Cleanness. If Douglas's concept of anomaly as that which threatens or crosses boundaries is rejected, we are still left with her general claim that classification is the foundation of the distinction between clean and unclean: that 'the underlying principle of cleanness in animals is that they should conform fully to their class' (1966: 55). To test this assertion, we have to ask where the model of conformity for each class comes from; for many of Douglas's critics have not hesitated to assert that she is propounding a tautology: consider Bulmer, Carroll, and, most trenchantly, Harris. It would seem equally fair, on the limited evidence available, to argue that the pig was accorded anomalous taxonomic status because it was unclean as to argue that it was unclean because of its anomalous taxonomic status (Bulmer 1967: 21). Why are flying insects unclean? Because flying insects have four legs and flying creatures should appropriately have only two legs. Why should flying creatures appropriately have only two legs? Because all other types of flying creatures are defined as unclean in Leviticus! (Carroll 1978: 120). The pig is anomalous because it is anomalous in a taxonomic and ideological system in which it is anomalous. What we want to know is why the taxonomic system is set up in such a way as to render the pig anomalous, since there obviously is no universal reason why pigs are not good to think as well as to eat (Harris 1979: 192).

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Firmage is more constructive: But the problem is how one is to determine significant anomaly. Which anomalies signify defect, and which do not? We still lack an explanation why precisely those morphological variations singled out by the dietary law were perceived as defects (1990: 182).

Bulmer and Harris are of course addressing the concept of anomaly that we have dismissed on strictly exegetical grounds; but their strictures apply in principle to any form of the structuralist contention that the classification system is the/on^ et origo of the dietary prohibitions. Douglas begins her explanation thus: To grasp this scheme we need to go back to Genesis and the creation. Here a three-fold classification unfolds, divided between the earth, the waters and the firmament. Leviticus takes up this scheme and allots to each element its proper kind of animal life. In the firmament two-legged fowls fly with wings. In the water scaly fish swim with fins. On the earth four-legged animals hop, jump or walk (Douglas 1966: 55)

Carroll (1978: 118-19) has no difficulty in showing that Douglas's conceptions of the categories in Genesis are very much wide of the mark. In the first place there appear to be five categories of animals in Genesis 1, the land animals being divided into cattle, wild animals and creeping things; and, as we have seen, there are without doubt four, not three, in Leviticus 11. In the second place the three groups mentioned by Douglas are too narrowly defined. The category of 'dp, flying things, is seen in Lev. 11.20ff. to include insects as well as birds; the term 'birds' (sippor) does not appear in Genesis 1 at all. Carroll is wrong (1978: 118-19) in allowing Douglas the appropriateness of the fish category, on the grounds of its use in Gen. 1.26, 28, for, as we have seen, when the creation of the water creatures is described in vv. 20-21, the word 'fish' (dag[a\) is not used (nor are scales, fins or swimming mentioned at all). And while the restriction of land animals to quadrupeds is correct for the group called behemd in Leviticus 11, the possession of four legs is virtually irrelevant to the determination of cleanness, as of course Douglas herself realizes. If the attempt to derive the categories in Leviticus 11 from Genesis is a failure, does the text of Leviticus 11 itself give any grounds for supposing that the classification in itself gives rise to the distinction of clean and unclean? It will be convenient to take the four main groups of animals in reverse order to their appearance in the text of Leviticus. To take the

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seres of the ground first: this group is unclean as a whole. Although it is classified according to number of legs in v. 42, this only serves to emphasize the rejection of the class as a whole; it does not matter how many legs they have, all are equally unclean and forbidden for eating. However, there are the eight species of vv. 29ff. that are not only forbidden for food but also convey uncleanness when dead both to persons and to utensils and food. But since these species are not defined but named, there can be no question of their special uncleanness arising from the classification system. And no reason can be assigned arising out of the classification as such why this one alone of the four major classes into which all animals fall should be unclean as a whole. Among the creatures of the air, the birds take first place. Once again, since the unclean species are named and not defined, there can be no question of their uncleanness being a product of the classification. What one finds in the Talmud is the search, not entirely successful, for appropriate criteria with which to make sense of these apparently random prohibitions. One can there observe the classification arising out of the prohibitions in precisely the opposite process to that demanded by the theory. This does not of course mean that the prohibitions are actually random. Douglas is undoubtedly correct in assuming that the great majority of the unclean birds are predators. But if this is the reason why they are seen as unclean, it is because each species individually has been observed and seen to be unacceptable, not because of a logical effect of their classification. The general prohibition of flying insects is explained by Douglas by appeal to the fact that they are anomalous with respect to the category of birds—flying creatures should have two legs. But of course, as we have already observed, there is no basis for this assertion other than the statement in the text that flying insects are unclean, which is precisely what we are trying to explain. Nor is the permission of locusts the clear example of the consistency of the rules that Douglas thought it, for, as we have seen, the rabbinic view was that the definition in the text was insufficient; it had to be expanded by adding 'and the name of which is locust'. Even in the biblical text the addition of the specific names of four types of locust tells against the view that the possession of rear jumping legs was decisive in itself. As for the water creatures, it cannot be shown that there is any inherent reason why the group defined by the possession of scales and fins is clean and all others unclean; it is the same problem as with the

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insects. Certainly there is no reason why it should be said that scaly fish are the only 'proper' denizens of the water, other than that all others are defined as unclean. We come now to the beasts. Now, while it is unquestionable that all proper beasts have four legs, the fact is irrelevant to the issue of cleanness, and Douglas's raising the point (again in 1975b: 265) only serves to draw attention to the inappropriateness of her idea of a model of perfection for each class. However, when we tackle the question of the real criteria of cleanness for beasts, we at last find our feet touching bottom. We have seen that these define a natural group. But this time there is a positive reason in the field of classification why this group, and it alone, should be defined as clean, for all the domestic animals kept for food (rather than for draught or transport) by Israelites1 belong to this group. Cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing ungulates are the model of the proper kind of food for a pastoralist. If they must eat wild game, they can eat wild game that shares these distinctive characters and is therefore of the same general species (Douglas 1966: 54).

Of all Douglas's assertions about what is 'proper', this is one that gives real information, in that it correctly and non-tautologically generates the rule in the text. The rule clearly must be derived from the domestic food animals in actual practice kept by Israelites as a pastoral people. The classification of this group of animals, which are acceptable both for food and for sacrifice, is extended into the sphere of wild animals at a lower level of significance, making them clean for food though not acceptable for sacrifice. To use a concept beloved of the social anthropologist, deer and gazelle and ibex are 'classificatory' cattle, not indeed in all respects, since they are not acceptable on the altar, but in respect of the table. This is a better way of looking at the matter than to regard the domestic animals, acceptable for sacrifice, as a mere subset of the ruminants regarded as a higher order category, as in Douglas 1975b: 265. (For the whole issue, cf. further Chapter 5, §2.c.) It should be added that this is no way derogatory to the 'propriety' or 'perfection' of all other beasts. It is not said that ruminants are the only perfect beasts, only that they are, among beasts, the only acceptable food for Israelites. The importance of this is that we at last have a point of contact with 1.

With only inconsiderable exceptions; see Chapter 4, §2.

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the more materially based approaches that we discussed earlier in the chapter, a route of escape from the tautological circle denounced by Harris in the direction of his own concerns. If it is not true that the distinctions among animals arise out of the characteristics of the classification system in itself, then if they are to be understood as a symbolic system at all, it must arise out of the associations of the animals, and these will be determined, as Douglas rightly saw in the passage just quoted, largely by the specific economic relations of the people to them. iii. Other Criticisms. Sir Edmund Leach (1983: 20-21) has criticized Douglas for speaking of the largely agricultural and urban Israelites as if they were an essentially pastoral people like the Nuer. It is of course true that most Israelites were farmers rather than, or as well as, pastoralists, though, as we have noted (§2.b), there was no sharp line of division between the two, and it may also be true that the pastoral origins of Israel are, as Leach asserts, largely mythical. Many Old Testament scholars today would agree with him. But in considering the dietary rules of Israelites as a symbolic system, the existence of this myth, if it is one, cannot be ignored, especially since the rules and the myths are found in the same document, the Pentateuch, and are in this respect consistent with each other. Self-evidently the rules are not such as one would expect to find among woodland pig-farmers or camel-reliant Beduin; they are such as one might expect among such a people as is portrayed in the Pentateuch, especially in Genesis, whose main wealth is in the form of herds and flocks, though they also practise agriculture. But even these legends cannot have arisen out of nothing. If it was important to certain circles in (say) sixth-century Israel to represent their ancestors as pastoralists, it is likely that the pastoral life and economy were of importance, religiously and politically, at the time or in the recent past. Moreover, we shall find (Chapter 4, §§2.b.l, 4.b) some evidence to support the suggestion of Simoons (above, §2.b) that pastoralists, or people with a pastoral tradition, had had considerable weight in the economy and politics of the area for some centuries. Thus it seems to me that there is no strong reason to fault Douglas on this point, though the social character of ancient Israel, there is good reason to suppose, was more complex and pluralist than she suggests. Rogerson (1989b: 25) makes this point in direct reference

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to her theories (and see e.g. Lang 1983; Lemche 1988). Over against the stream of tradition that celebrated Israel's pastoral ancestry and may have sought to express the social character of the nation and its own theological convictions in a pastorally based system of food restrictions, there was certainly another, much more agrarian in its tradition, and drawn towards the agrarian gods, the Baals. Is it not such a tradition that is represented in Hosea as saying, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink' (Hos. 2.5 RSV [Heb. 2.7])? To what extent this opposition of traditions was marked by opposition of dietary customs requires further investigation, which I intend to give it in Chapter 5. The point links up with another of Leach's criticisms of Douglas. He accuses her of failing to take account of ritual attitudes towards animals in the culture of the peoples of the whole region, peoples with whom the Israelites were 'at all times very much mixed up' (Leach 1983: 20-21). I have already touched on this in my discussion of Simoons. However, a discussion of this very important point is best left until after we have examined the views of Firmage, who is vulnerable to the same criticism. Marshall Sahlins accuses Douglas of not allowing cultural symbols to have any meaning of their own, but simply making them empty markers of structure motivated solely by social relationships, these being privileged over any other subject about which human beings might wish to express themselves. Meaning is... sacrificed for social marking. And the cultural codes of persons and objects, like the correspondences between them, are consumed in abstract implications of inclusion and exclusion. For in the total theoretical project, the symbol is no more than a sign: not generative of significance by virtue of its place in a system of symbols but empirically motivated by existing social realities—which themselves, like the 'human interests' presumed to constitute them, are allowed to escape any meaningful explication (Sahlins 1976: 118).

She is not interested, as pointers to cultural meaning, in any features of her anomalous animals other than whether they are regarded 'benevolently, malevolently, or with ambivalence, since this can be likened to the relations between groups' (1976: 119). And even the social relationships she adduces are lumped together in generalizations, without regard for important differences in marriage rules, for example, supposed to be of the same general type.

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These strictures are to some extent deserved, but not entirely fair. Douglas does sometimes attach significance to the characteristics of the animals as conveying meaning; the unclean birds (Douglas 1975b: 270) are a case in point. Also, it is a misunderstanding of her approach to see animals as simply representing social relationships; rather, the symbolic system encodes both animals and relationships, along with many other cultural categories, in an all-encompassing structure of replicating patterns, no one of which should be conceived as having priority over the others. When all is said and done, there can be no doubt of the immense debt owed by biblical scholars, and I would hope eventually by ordinary readers of the Bible, to Mary Douglas. The amount of space I have had to give to the consideration of her work is sufficient evidence of the seriousness of her contribution to the understanding of these chapters, and of course her wider work on purity and pollution is of great and probably more enduring value in the study of this whole theme in the Pentateuch. She has compelled those of us who might have been inclined to dismiss it as an embarrassing survival of primitive superstition to look for meaning and coherence in it. It is true that so far as the law of forbidden flesh is concerned her own reading of its coherence and meaning has proved largely a failure. She has sought in it a kind of coherence that has proved exegetically unsustainable, and unfortunately her understanding of its meaning is too closely tied to this to survive on its own. It is not possible to ask whether her concept of anomaly accurately reflects the realities of Israelite society if this concept does not correspond to a reality in the text. But Douglas's is not the only attempt, though it is by far the most important, to interpret the dietary rules as a symbolic system. Jean Soler (1979; cf. the criticism in Alter 1979) outlines an account making a similar understanding of the contrast of clean and unclean animals, relying on the rejection of anomaly, part of a broader symbolic system in which the eating of flesh as such by humanity contrasts with God's reservation of the blood for himself. Michael Carroll has sketched an attempt at interpreting the forbidden species in terms of the supposedly universal distinction (borrowed from Levi-Strauss) between nature and culture; they are those that blur this essential boundary and so can be seen as anomalous in that sense (Carroll 1978: 121-23). The swarming things, considered as vermin, 'are animals

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(nature) that invade the world of men (culture), by contaminating their food and infesting their dwellings'. Most of the other unclean species can be seen as carnivorous in some sense or other, and this transgresses a rule established in Genesis, whereby both humans and animals were originally intended to be vegetarian (Gen. 1.29-30), and this restriction was lifted after the Rood only for human beings (Gen. 9.3), so that any animal that eats flesh is seen to be trespassing upon a privilege reserved for humankind. '"Meat-eating" is appropriately associated only with men (and thus culture) and is not associated with animals (nature)' (122). Though Carroll escapes Sahlins's criticism of Douglas that she uses the categorization of the animal world in a purely abstract way to point to social relationships, his own interpretation is no more satisfactory. It can only be carried through by a series of tours de force: thus, for example, the flying insects most often mentioned in the Old Testament, apart from locusts and grasshoppers, are stingers and biters, and so can be seen as carnivores; sharks lack scales, so that if carnivores were to be excluded among fish, scales would have to be specified; and so on. A more recent and far more significant attempt to interpret the priestly law of unclean flesh as a self-contained symbolic system, with a limited degree of motivation, more than in Douglas but less than in Carroll, is represented by the article by Edwin Firmage in VTSup, 41 (Firmage 1990). e. Edwin Firmage 1. Exposition. Firmage (1990) begins from the failure of Douglas's theory of anomaly, but follows her in strongly insisting that the priestly system is self-consistent and that it can and must be explained solely in its own terms. Even if there were pre-existing taboos, they need not have been taken over by the priestly legislators (p. 178). In fact, he does not entirely succeed in excluding any explanation by way of pre-existing customs. Firmage works exclusively from Leviticus 11, and all verse references will be to this chapter (he regards Deut. 14 as derived directly from Lev. 11.1-23 [p. 208]). His starting point (p. 183) is the uniqueness of the dietary law among the laws of impurity as a law of prohibition (cf. Chapter 2, §l.c.6). Unlike all other impurities, it is a sin in itself for Israelites to defile themselves with unclean food. And the

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reason for this (here Firmage is close to Milgrom) is Israel's call to holiness, conceived as an imitatio dei. This is explicit in the redactional conclusion vv. 41-45, but implicit throughout. A parallel is drawn between the diet of humankind and the diet of God. In a footnote (p. 186 n. 11) Firmage refers to the ancient terms sulhan yhwh (the table of the LORD) and lehem >eldhim (the bread of God), and to Haran's characterisation (1985: 205ff.) of the ritual acts performed inside the temple as the provision of the needs of a deity conceived anthropomorphically. It was necessary that the diet of Israel should be clean, just as that of the deity was. Now the domestic flocks and herds of cattle, sheep and goats (and among birds doves or pigeons) had from time immemorial provided both the bulk of the human meat diet and virtually all sacrifices to deities.1 The cleanness of animals would be determined by their resemblance to a model provided by these recognized sacrificial species. 'The handful of species fit for God's altartable, universally accepted as such from the beginning, provided the required definition of cleanness for the rest of the animal world' (p. 186). However, since the same degree of holiness was not demanded of Israel as of what was offered to God, other species could be eaten. The question was which. In most cases there would be no difficulty; lions, wolves and bears would be obviously unlike the sacrificial animals, but to ensure there could never be any doubt a set of simple criteria was provided for land animals2 enabling the lay person to make a firm distinction in every case. 'They are those features which the priests judged to be both comprehensive and easily applicable' (p. 186). Firmage describes the 'temple paradigm' as 'the mainspring of the dietary law' (p. 187). But how does this explanation fare in regard to the creatures of water and air? Firmage is clearly in some difficulty with the water creatures, for there is no paradigm derivable from sacrificial species: none such appeared upon the altar. He suggests that 'certain species were excluded because in lacking fins and scales they were thought to resemble land species that were prohibited by the criteria of v. 3' (p. 189); for example, eels were compared with snakes (a very widespread idea [p. 200])—Firmage does not recognize the distinction 1. Firmage refers specifically to the evidence from Ugarit (cf. Chapter 4,§3.b.2). My far more extensive survey will confirm this picture, though it requires a modification particularly in regard to pigs. 2. Firmage fails to recognize the distinction between bPhemQ. and Seres.

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between beasts and swarming things. This may seem rather inadequate in view of the vast variety of marine life excluded by the criteria, but he adds two further points in an appendix: (1) that the priests were probably only concerned with animals commonly encountered by Israelites, which meant principally freshwater species such as eels and catfish (but do catfish resemble snakes?), and (2) that crustaceans, which are frequently compared to locusts in the onomastica of Akkadian and Arabic, could have been linked to the Seres of the land (p. 202). He also points out that very little knowledge of fish and other water life is displayed in the Bible, and that fish were largely marketed by nonIsraelites (Job 40.30; Neh. 13.16) and in forms that would make morphological investigation difficult. Firmage explains the lack of criteria for birds on the following lines (190-91). Assuming that the general opinion that the unclean birds are predators is correct, the selection must have been deliberately made on the basis of diet and behaviour; this would be the feature that would most clearly distinguish birds on the basis of a paradigm provided by the dove. But although it would be generally known that vultures, eagles and owls ate carrion and carried off small live animals, the diet of less well-known birds would not be a matter of common knowledge. It was therefore better to provide a list, and not add criteria that would only create confusion. This was practicable because of the relatively small number of unclean species. Firmage argues (202-203) that the number of species either named or suggested by the four occurrences of 'after its kind' (leminehu, etc.) is approximately what one would expect for a list of predatory birds in Israel's immediate environment. He has not apparently noticed the numerical symmetry of the lists in this chapter, nor is he aware of the growth of the text (Chapter 2, §l.c.5), nor does he even refer to the anomalous position of the bat, an insectivore like many clean birds. Flying insects, viewed as a subset of the 'dp, the flying creatures, obviously do not conform to the temple paradigm provided by the dove. Why then is an exception made in the case of locusts? It can hardly be as Douglas suggests, because they jump, as land animals should, because they are classed as air creatures (p. 192). Nor can this criterion be connected with any temple paradigm. In this case Firmage is forced, as we have seen, to concede that the criteria are probably secondary (in the logical, not the literary sense), providing a means of identification of the species allowed and not a reason for allowing

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them (p. 192). The reason is likely to be simply, as I have suggested, that they were a popular food, and indeed a necessary one when they were themselves devouring all the crops (p. 192 n. 22). If this is one point where the provisions of the text can only be explained by existing custom, even by Firmage, another, surprisingly enough, is the criterion of chewing the cud and the prohibition of the pig. Firmage argues that since the pig is the only animal excluded by this criterion that would not also have been excluded by that of cloven hooves, the criterion must have been added for the specific purpose of excluding the pig. Hence it is very probable that alone among the prohibited animals of Lev. xi, the pig was already an unfavored species, for reasons that likely had nothing to do with the motivation of our present dietary law. This is the only demonstrable instance in the dietary law where the priests would seem to have accepted an ancient tabu (193-94 [so also Milgrom 1990: 189]).

2. Critique. There is a substantial plausibility in Firmage's theory, at any rate as regards the beasts. I had myself, long before the appearance of his essay, come to the conclusion that the definition of beasts here as edible was governed by their cultic acceptability, and not the other way round, though my own position is supported (see Chapter 4, §3) by concrete evidence of cultic and dietary practice over a broad geographical and temporal range. Indeed as regards the beasts Firmage has the edge over Mary Douglas, who defines the permitted beasts as those kept for food by a pastoral people. They are so, but since the law is a religious law promulgated by a literate class of priests in an urban community, it is more plausible and relevant to derive it from religious practice, while recognizing that there is likely to be a connection between the two facts. The great strength of the theory is that it makes a clear link between the framework of the code, with its emphasis on holiness, and its content. But it has clear weaknesses in relation to the other classes of animals. Firmage's account of the water-creatures section fails to carry conviction. Though his account of the birds is more plausible, the three points overlooked by him that I mentioned above seriously damage his case, especially the history of the text, which shows that originally it was mainly the better-known birds that were listed, precisely the ones that would not need to have been, according to his argument, if the supposed dietary criterion had been stated. Yet it is equally damaging that the raven was the very last bird to be added to the list, though its

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diet must have been as well known as that of any of them. Moreover, it does not seem that the supposed difficulty of being certain about birds' diet is a sufficient reason for omitting a general criterion. The case of the locusts may be compared, where a criterion is stated, despite the fact that it could not be accurately applied, and had to be supplemented by a list. If there is a general rationality in the list, it is hard to see why the consciously rational authors should not put it on display. As regards the pig, the logic is faulty. As we have noted (Chapter 2, §l.c.3), there are not two but three criteria for the beasts in Lev. 11.3, though the second is subordinate to the first;1 and there are only two more beasts known to Israel excluded by the criterion of cloven hooves (and also by that of cud-chewing) that would not have been excluded by the requirement of hooves: the ass and the horse. It would therefore be just as reasonable to argue that these were subject to ancient taboos, and that therefore the pig is not the only 'already unfavored species'. The only other common domestic animals are the camel and the dog, and these are supposedly excluded by the first criterion, the requirement of hooves; but we have already seen the problematic position of the camel in this regard, which suggests that it too was rejected for reasons other than the stated criteria. One must assume that the criteria were arrived at from observation of wellknown and particularly domestic animals; and they cannot simply have been derived positively from the known sacrificial animals, for then there would have been no clear indication which of their many common features should be selected, but also by comparison with known non-sacrificial animals, such as the dog, ass and pig; these three common domestic animals are excluded successively by the three criteria. But the other part of Firmage's conclusion, that the exclusion of the pig was for reasons that 'had nothing to do with the motivation of our present dietary law', is equally dubious. After all, the fact that it was thought necessary to exclude the pig indicates, in Firmage's view of the law, only that the pig was not a sacrificial animal (which we knew already), and therefore any set of criteria derived from the sacrificial animals must not be allowed to include it. It does not show that the pig was not eaten. That might be so, but it could be shown to be so only by direct evidence. True, since the pig, unlike the ass and the camel, is

1.

Firmage appears to accept this translation, at least for v. 26 (p. 205).

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bred solely in order to be eaten, one would expect it to be sacrificed if it were eaten; Firmage reasonably suggests (p. 199) that the repertory of sacrificial animals consists of those upon whose fertility the community depended. One would expect it, which only goes to show the danger of a priori argument. As I shall show in the next chapter (Chapter 4, §3.b), pigs in the ancient Near East were not normally sacrificed even where they were eaten. The position of the other unclean domestic animals is more straightforward, being generally neither eaten nor sacrificed, but the evidence is overwhelming that the custom of not eating them long preceded any possible date for the present law. Firmage's argument thus loses much of its explanatory power. A more general problem of the theory is that he bases it upon the idea of imitatio dei, and that this involves a thoroughly anthropomorphic conception of God and the cult offered to him. But despite their use of antiquated phraseology which implies such a conception, the priestly writers have surely left such ideas far behind. No block of material in the Old Testament has a more sophisticated theology and a more transcendent idea of the divine being, or displays more reserve towards divine immanence and anthropomorphic conceptions. It therefore seems very doubtful that they could have developed a conception in which the food of the deity was compared to human food. No doubt the core of the chapter is more ancient than the mainstream of P; but in Firmage's account it is closely connected with the theology of the Holiness Code, and is therefore not very ancient (though Firmage himself does not offer any date). This problem might be avoided by arguing that it is not so much a direct comparison between divine and human diets that is the motivation as the indirect effect of the sacrificial rules in defining meat as clean and unclean. But this simply raises the most basic question of all. Why, after all, should diet be a field for the exercise of holiness? What is it about the discrimination of animals for the altar that should render them fit or unfit for human consumption? The authors of Leviticus 11 are unlikely to have come to such an idea unless there had always been a close connection between table and altar, and, as I have already remarked, we still need some precise idea of the nature of this connection before the emergence of this law. If pigs or camels or hares or foxes are not to be eaten, and it is because they or animals like them are not sacrificed, why are they not sacrificed? In most cases (not in that of the pig, a problem in itself) it is because they are not

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eaten. But what is the explanation of that? Firmage's explanation takes us some of the way along the road, but in the end we simply find ourselves faced with the same problem one stage further back. It has become clear that we need a more comprehensive idea of the context in which the priestly rules were developed, that is, how they took up current practice and modified and interpreted it. 3. Fir mage, Douglas and Cultural Pluralism. This is then the appropriate point at which to return to Leach's second criticism of Douglas, which also applies to Firmage: that she fails to take account of ritual attitudes towards animals in the culture of the whole region. Douglas, of course, had her answer ready before the criticism was made. In commenting on theories that make the ritual prohibitions of the Torah a fence against foreign influence, she says with a side-glance at the Myth and Ritual school, who see Israel's ritual as an example of a pattern widespread in the ancient Near East, It is no explanation to represent Israel as a sponge at one moment and as a repellent the next, without explaining why it soaked up this foreign element but repelled that one. What is the value of saying that seething kids in milk and copulating with cows are forbidden in Leviticus because they are the fertility rites of foreign neighbours, since Israel took over other foreign rites?... The Israelites absorbed freely from their neighbours, but not quite freely. Some elements of foreign culture were incompatible with the principles of patterning on which they were constructing their universe; others were compatible (1966: 49).

All that really matters for the interpreter is the 'principles of patterning' of the given cultural universe; the rituals of the neighbours can tell her nothing, since only the pattern determines whether a given feature is accepted or rejected. This approach may do very well for the Bongo-Bongo (though recent anthropology has begun to take seriously the extent to which tribal societies are influenced by state societies in their neighbourhood), and it may do very well for Israel as imagined by biblicistic scholars swallowing whole the Bible's own account of their origin; but hardly for the complex plural society that many scholars have begun to accept as the historical reality. It is not possible any longer to speak of 'Canaanite' culture as something foreign to Israel. On the one hand, Israel only slowly developed into a distinct society able to pick and choose from the culture of its neighbours. For much of its history in

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the biblical period, it is more accurate to see Israel as simply a part of a wider area, including the cities of Syria, Phoenicia and Philistia and the developing tribal societies of Transjordan, sharing very similar cultural norms as well as having some distinctive patterns. (See for a useful summary Nicholson 1986b, and now from a different point of view M.S. Smith 1990, as well as the more polemical Lang 1983 and Lemche 1988.) On the other hand, the religious and cultural tradition that is most distinctive of the Israelite-Jewish heritage as we know it from the Bible is often in intimate and mutually enriching conflict, within the same society, with others that we know as pagan or Canaanite. One may sympathize with the irritation expressed by Douglas with the seemingly mutually contradictory arguments about Israel's relationship with Canaanite and foreign culture; but they are explained once one realizes that 'Israel' means quite different things in the two approaches. For the Myth and Ritual school, the Israelite cult means the royal cult of Jerusalem that supported the central institutions of a state that disappeared in 587 BC, supposed to be partially reconstructible from fragments of evidence in the Psalms and elsewhere, as well as by comparison with the cults of similar neighbouring states. But the argument that the rules of the Torah react against pagan cults concerns the faith and practice of those in Israel whose devotion centred not on the state and its institutions but on the covenant between Yahweh and his people, and in their present form these rules come from a time after the fall of the state. There is no single 'pattern' that explains the variety of responses (so Rogerson 1989b: 25). Conceivably the original core of Israel, the tribal society developing in the highlands of Ephraim and Manasseh in the early Iron Age, was a simple homogeneous society to which the arguments quoted above would be applicable; and of course we must take into account the possibility that the essentials of the dietary code go back to it. But the creator of the code that we have is a consciously intellectual priesthood operating in a society divided by class, ethnic origin and religious conviction. Here is the real justification of Douglas's and Firmage's position. For to all appearance the priestly system is a self-contained and self-consistent system, and has been effectively described as such in studies such as Haran 1985 or Gorman 1990. So Douglas supports her case that the code's own internal consistency is sufficient to explain it (1975c: 308): 'We are asked to believe that the people of Israel have

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been saddled with an irrational, undecipherable set of food-rules imposed on them by the most rigorously logical law-givers imaginable'. But it grossly overestimates the power and intellectual independence of the priesthood to suppose that they could 'impose' laws in food, of all things, without any reference to current custom. What they could do would be to support one tradition in their society against others. In a society marked by such cultural conflict two things are likely to be true. On the one hand, the adversaries share more cultural assumptions than they themselves realize, and it is not possible a priori to decide which parts of the 'patterning' represent the common heritage and which are distinctive. On the other, a process takes place that Douglas herself has recognized. In the passage about the Antiochian persecution from which I have already quoted, she remarks: If two symbolic systems are confronted, they begin to form, even by their opposition, a single whole. In this totality each half may be represented to the other by a single element which is made to jump out of context to perform this role (Douglas 1973a: 63).

By extension, if two symbolic systems develop in confrontation, one may expect them to form a whole that derives its logic from a shared symbolism with particular elements in opposition to each other. For an instructive example of this the immortal lines of the Didache may serve: 'Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do you fast on Wednesdays and Fridays' (Did. 8.1). While fasting on Fridays may be said to derive from the 'pattern' of Christian culture, fasting on two days a week is as surely, if implicitly, owed to the influence of the Pharisaic adversaries as the choice of the days is to opposition to them. Whether a similar (if not similarly trivial) opposition within a shared system developed between 'Canaanite' paganism and Yahwism in the field of dietary observance is one thing we shall have try to establish. 3. Conclusion From this survey of significant work on the dietary code several points of importance emerge. Although no one theory has proved completely satisfactory, all have suggested aspects that need to be taken into account. No full explanation is possible that does not take account of both the material and the social contexts of the code. The limits of variation in diet are set by the ecological substrate of

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Israelite society, even if Harris can hardly be correct in claiming that ecological constraints are transformed into religious taboos. The practice of the surrounding peoples and of Israel's own ancestors, if we can discover them, must not be ignored, especially if it turns out that in some, or indeed most, respects they are closely similar to that laid upon Israel in the code. It is true that the code as we have it is a symbolic system that created and creates meaning, ethical and aesthetic as well as theological, for those who observe it. The question remains how its elements originally acquired the meaning that they have. Douglas's abstract structural approach fails to convince because of its lack of real basis in the text, as well as the general fact that symbols in symbolic systems tend to be individually motivated (Hallpike 1979: 151-52); but her insistence that the code as it stands must be taken seriously and meaning sought in it marks a turning point in the discussion. Firmage's proposal carries forward this insight and is itself rather better grounded: it succeeds in showing that the distinction between clean and unclean animals need not be understood as arbitrary but can be justified by a paradigm drawn from ritual practice. The hypothesis that will be tested in the following pages attempts to take all these points into account. It will be shown that the dietary repertoire suggested by the code is general among Israel, its immediate neighbours and predecessors in the land, except that in some places there is some limited use of the pig; moreover, as regards sacrifice at official sanctuaries, the correspondence is even closer: nowhere are pigs sacrificed. My hypothesis is that the systematic classification of animals as clean and unclean for food developed at the sanctuaries (Jerusalem is not the only example) as a measure to ensure the purity of the worshippers, and was therefore naturally based on those animals that were acceptable for sacrifice. The deeper roots of the distinction will be seen to lie in the common custom of an economy with strong pastoral aspects, where pigs played a subordinate role, and where mammalian game was mainly confined to deer and gazelle; in these circumstances the associations and perceived characteristics of animals could have served, as some modern parallels show, as a means for the encoding of social dichotomies. Only at the stage of the development of monolatrous Yahwism as exemplified in our present texts was the distinction absolutized into a demand for total abstinence from 'unclean' food as a mark of dedication. Purity became the guardian of monotheism.

Chapter 4 THE CONTEXT SURVEYED In this chapter I shall survey the evidence for the way in which animals were used, chiefly for food and sacrifice, in the Levantine region in a period of three or four millennia including that in which the Old Testament was formed. In the second part of the chapter, after an introductory consideration of methods, I set out what we know from direct evidence about the use of animals for food, and test the limits of a purely material explanation of the facts in terms of environmental factors. In the third part I look at the evidence for cultural factors governing the use of animals, focusing principally but not exclusively on those concerned with the prescription and restriction of species for sacrifice; and part four tests certain partial explanations—mainly concerned with the pig—for the facts in the two previous parts. The following chapter attempts a full explanation in 'emic' terms through the associations of animals in the Old Testament and other contemporary literature and through ethnographic parallels. 1. Methods What kinds of evidence are available to us for the use of animals in an ancient culture? Two kinds, broadly conceived: written and material evidence. I choose these terms (rather than 'literary' and 'archaeological') advisedly, in order to make the clearest possible distinction in the way the different kinds of evidence operate. 'Written' evidence includes not only the literary works that have come down to us from antiquity by continuous transmission, but the tablets, inscriptions and so forth that have been unearthed in recent times by the archaeologist's spade. Evidence of this kind might be compared to the human witness standing in court to be examined by counsel, while by 'material' evidence I mean what the lawyer understands by circumstantial

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evidence: bones, shells and other remnants of meals and sacrifices discovered in the course of excavation. At one time little systematic attention was paid to remains of this kind: they were referrred to in excavation reports if the excavator thought they were interesting for some special reason, otherwise they were thrown onto the spoil heap. The modern school of archaeology allows nothing that is discovered to go unrecorded or to fail to yield whatever it has to yield of information about the lives or activities of the inhabitants of the site; and over the last thirty or forty years a flourishing specialism of archaeozoology (or osteoarchaeology) has developed based upon the analysis of faunal remains from scientifically conducted excavations. (For textbooks of the methodology of this science, see Chaplin 1971, Hesse and Wapnish 1985; for critical reflections on these methods, see Urpmann 1973.) Each of these kinds of evidence has, along with its strengths, its own severe limitations. The written evidence falls into two main kinds: societies' witness to themselves, such as the Old Testament or the Ugaritic texts, and the witness of outsiders, such as Lucian's De Dea Syria.1 The first kind has the weakness that, in general, people do not comment on what seems to them self-evident; thus although the Bible refers to unclean food in a number of places, only the two short passages we are dealing with explain what animals were considered unclean, and the Ugaritic texts, a more fragmentary corpus, apparently make no explicit reference to what animals the people of Ugarit refused to eat. It would be surprising if there were none, and indeed it is possible to cross-examine the texts to discover their indirect witness on this question. The second kind has the opposite defect that globetrotters and armchair ethnographers tend to comment only on what seems to them to be surprising or quaint, on what they think will interest their readers, or on what interests them for reasons of their own (like Porphyry with his aim of commending vegetarianism); and they very easily misunderstand alien customs. Greek writers will comment if a people refuse pork, but not usually if they abstain from horsemeat, for example. Thus this kind of evidence suffers from a selectivity that is 1. It may seem odd to describe Lucian (assuming he really wrote this work) as an 'outsider' to Hierapolis, originating as he did from Samosata, only about 100 miles away as the crow flies. But the work reads, and is deliberately written to read, like an ethnographic tract: the Herodotean style is intended to reinforce this impression. If Lucian was not an outsider, his readers certainly were.

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difficult to control and that is compounded by the accidents of preservation. Further, much of it is later than we would like: Lucian (if authentic [cf. Oden 1977: Iff.]) in the second century AD, Porphyry in the third, and a number of other classical writers of the Roman period. One particularly interesting account, and the only one that can be set beside De Dea Syria as an attempt to describe a complete religious system, is very much later; this is the account by the tenthcentury Arab encyclopedist al-Nadim in his Fihrist of the pagans of Harran who called themselves Sabi'ah. How much does this matter? How much are customs likely to have changed in a thousand years or so? The answer seems to be that they could have changed quite a lot, especially in a period marked by massive foreign influence; and if our evidence is of a number of varying local customs, there is no way of effectively allowing for this change. But if it shows a broad similarity over a wide area, and one that could not be traceable to Hellenistic influence, then there may be some safety in concluding that we are looking at a deeply rooted and therefore ancient set of customs. The evidence, in other words, must recommend itself. The material or archaeozoological evidence has the immense advantage that it is steadily growing, and increasing in range as excavations of smaller and less prominent sites are undertaken, so that it is no longer confined to large urban centres. But even today many excavations fail to produce any adequate record or analysis of faunal remains, despite their importance for understanding the subsistence of the inhabitants (cf. Hiibner 1989:225-26). It is now possible to give a reasonably full general picture of animal use in antiquity in the region with which we are concerned, but finer detail often eludes us as long as the recording of the evidence remains so patchy. It may be that the conclusions I intend to draw will be criticized on the grounds that fuller evidence is still required. But not being an archaeozoologist, I cannot go out and get the evidence myself. I rely on the experts, and must make do with what they provide; I am grateful to some of them for guiding me to the appropriate sources and even generously presenting me with work unpublished at the present time. It would have been better had I been able to refer to a work written by an expert giving such a general survey, but as far as I have been able to determine no such work exists. I have no alternative but to make the attempt to draw my inexpert conclusions from what is available to me. As further evidence accumulates, no doubt these conclusions will be refined

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and corrected; and may I hope that the work I would have welcomed will be written? This evidence does not speak for itself; it requires interpretation, and a perusal of the literature will show how manifold are the pitfalls that beset this process. Carefully interpreted, it can yield an amazing amount of information about a community's mode of subsistence and methods of animal husbandry, and in certain situations also about their religion. But it is subject to certain unavoidable distortions and uncertainties. Practitioners do not agree on the best way of recording results in order to calculate the proportions of the various species in the diet. The three main methods that are in use are (1) a count of the number of fragments identifiable as belonging to particular species, (2) the calculation of the respective total weights of such fragments, and (3) the calculation of the minimum number of animals represented by the fragments (generally referred to as MNI). All three have their drawbacks (Chaplin 1971: 64ff.; Hesse 1971). The results that I quote are all given of necessity according to the number of fragments (expressed as a percentage of the total number of identified fragments), since this is the only information given by all the studies cited, whatever other means of presentation may be adopted by some of them. But it should not be assumed that the figures are directly comparable from site to site. Indeed, Chaplin (1971: 67) considers that results calculated on this basis are completely useless for comparative purposes, since butchering methods, which generally result in the bones of larger animals being cut into more pieces than the corresponding bones of smaller ones, differ in ways that cannot be known or allowed for. He favours, for this reason, the MNI method. However, as I shall show, within very broad statistical limits the method of counting fragments does yield differences between sites in different areas, differences which, taken overall, correspond as one might expect to environmental factors. This suggests that the differences cannot be large enough to make the comparison as useless as Chaplin believes. It is in any case hard to see that the MNI method is any less subject to uncertainties that vitiate comparability. However, for our purposes the precise figures are not important; it is the general picture that counts, and I do not believe this is fundamentally flawed. There are other problems. Since a particular series of excavations generally only uncovers a small part of any settlement, its evidence may be badly skewed by differential use or preservation of material at

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different places in the settlement, though statistically this weakness may be overcome by grouping the results from many different sites to give a picture of animal use over a region or period, as I attempt to do. Further, though it is generally possible to show the kinds of large animals that were used for food, the bones of fish and fowl are relatively seldom recorded in any number, and even more rarely identified as to species. (There are, however, beginning to be a number of impressive exceptions to this rule.)1 Observation at the village of Hesban in Jordan in the course of the excavation of the nearby tell of Heshbon showed that the dogs, when offered chicken bones, 'would consume every one of them completely' (LaBianca 1978: 239); this seems likely to have been a common fate of remains of fowl, while fishbones are rarely recorded unless the earth is sieved, an extremely time-consuming process which excavators are often unwilling to undertake. Again, while with careful interpretation we may gain an impression of the relative balance of the usual domestic animals in the people's diet, we cannot tell how important meat in general was in it, since even if we can estimate the population of the site we generally have no idea what factor to apply to convert the recovered remains into a figure for the number of animals originally slaughtered over the relevant period (Urpmann 1973: 318ff.; but see Rosen 1986). And most important for our purpose, although we may cautiously posit that the inhabitants of a site at a given period did not eat certain animals, or only ate negligible quantities of them, the material evidence in itself cannot tell us why; was it only because the environment was unsuitable? or was it because they deliberately avoided them? and if so, why? Conversely, the kind of written evidence I shall cite does not tell us what people actually ate, only what restrictions they set, or claimed to set, on their diet. It is therefore rather difficult to compare or integrate the two kinds of evidence, yet it must be attempted. We have to impose some geographical limit on the testimony, and it is clear that the further we go from the Land of Israel, the less likely the evidence is to be relevant (hence I have reservations about the very wide net thrown by de Vaux in his article on the sacrifice of pigs [1972], which brings in Greece, Babylonia and Egypt). In so far as we can describe the people of Israel as sharing in a common culture with their neighbours, we may draw the bounds of that culture differently 1. See above all Boessneck and von den Driesch 1981, or on a smaller scale Horwitz and Tchernov 1989.

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as we look at different manifestations. Certain aspects of the high culture of the elite, such as the royal ritual and ideology, or the wisdom literature, were of course common to the whole Near East. But when we look at more popular culture, and certainly at something as basic to everyday life as diet, then we need to draw the boundaries more tightly. There seems to be sufficient in common between the cultures and religion of the various peoples speaking Canaanite and Aramaic dialects in Palestine, Phoenicia (with its colonies in Cyprus and the Western Mediterranean), Syria and Northern Mesopotamia to take that as our normal boundary, yet striking parallels from Egypt or Akkadian culture should not be ignored. As for a limit in time, that is more difficult. I have discussed the problem raised by literary evidence from a time substantially later than the time of the Bible. Equally, it will probably be thought that the archaeological evidence from the Early Bronze Age that I quote below is not likely to be of great relevance. Certainly it is not by itself, but it is sufficiently of a piece with that from the Middle Bronze Age to be worth quoting alongside it. I have not gone further back, except by way of putting things in an environmental context. 2. Diet: The Material Evidence a. Introduction The picture I shall draw in this section is drawn entirely from the material evidence. This needs to be evaluated in the light of a general understanding of the environmental conditions in Palestine, whence most of our evidence comes. (I have included material from Syria and Jordan where it is available, but the land of Israel has been far more intensively excavated, for religious and political reasons.) Rainfall increases generally from south to north, and from the Jordan valley rapidly westwards to the hill country of Judah, Ephraim and Manasseh, and eastwards to the Transjordanian highlands; beyond the spine of the western hill-country it falls off more gradually to the coast. Thus the total annual rainfall at Beersheba is 8.9 in, and at Jericho 6.4 in, whereas at Jerusalem (east of the area of heaviest precipitation) it is 23.5 in; at Natanya on the coast north of Tel-Aviv it is 18.4 in, and at Safad in Upper Galilee it is 29.1 in (May 1984: 51). The hill-country and the northern coastal plain are capable of supporting forest, and would have done so in prehistoric times (cf. Rowton 1967, Gophna,

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Lipschitz and Lev-Yadun 1986-87); but the southern Negev and the Arabah, and the Jordan valley as far north as the Jabbok, are desert, except for oases (Gophna et al. 1986-87: 50). Cereals can be grown throughout most of the country, but obviously there is a wide swathe of territory in the south, and on the slopes descending to the Jordan and the Dead Sea, where the only practical use of the land is for the pasturage of sheep and goats. The limits set by these constraints must be borne in mind as we study the archaeological record. It is generally agreed that animals were domesticated earlier in the Near East than anywhere else in the world, perhaps as early as 8000 BC for sheep and goats (Glutton-Brock 1981: 59-60; Cauvin 1978: 78-79), 7000 BC for pigs (Glutton-Brock 1981: 72; cf. idem 1979; Reed 1969: 371), and 6400 BC for cattle (Glutton-Brock 1981: 66). Some would regard these dates as too early for genuine full domestication by perhaps a thousand years (cf. Ducos and Helmer 1981), but there would be no dispute that by 5000 BC all four species were fully domesticated in the Near East. These results are derived from the examination of remains of these species from such early sites as Jarmo, Catal Hiiyiik or Jericho. Slight differences can be detected between wild and domestic animals after only a few generations, especially a reduction in size. But the progress of domestication at Jericho (and elsewhere in Palestine; cf. Davis 1982: 13-14) is marked especially by a sharp change in the source of flesh-meat. In the PrePottery Neolithic A (roughly the eighth millennium) the greater part of the faunal remains are derived from gazelles (over 50 per cent) and foxes; sheep and goats are negligible. Clearly these early villagers were still above all hunters. Neither gazelle nor fox has ever been, or ever could be, domesticated, because of their territorial behaviour (Glutton-Brock 1981; cf. Garrard 1984). In PPNB (the seventh millennium) gazelles provide about 15 per cent and foxes less than 10 per cent of the remains. Sheep and goats, which show signs of domestication, rise to 55 per cent, with cattle at 13 per cent. Pigs, which are still wild, are at 17 per cent (chart in Clutton-Brock 1981: 60, and 1979: 155 [table]). There is a lack of animal remains from the Pottery Neolithic at Jericho, but by the Bronze Age the four main domestic food animals are well established as almost the sole source of meat, apart from a small quantity of gazelle (Clutton-Brock 1979: 155). The gap can be filled in from other sites (cf. Ducos 1969), but different sites differ widely. Animals are kept at all sites in the Pottery

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Neolithic, but proportions of the different species differ widely (p. 267). It is worth noting, however, that there is no site at which the pig is the leading food animal, and at many (e.g. Beisamun, where unusually a quarter of the remains are of pigs [p. 267]), there is still no sign that these are domesticated (p. 270). Our more detailed attention must be given to the Bronze and Iron Ages. In order to give a full picture of the material evidence in a compendious form I have tabulated the information on some 40 sites in Table B at the end of this chapter (pp. 178-80). This is not a selection, but includes every site for which I have useful information. They are mainly in Palestine, though there are a clutch in the Euphrates Valley in Syria, with one just over the border in Turkey, and a couple in Jordan. The table is arranged for convenience of reference in alphabetical order according to the name of the site. The name is usually that used by my authority, or if not, that by which the site is commonly known. The next three columns enable the table to be used for analysis of the results on various lines. The area where the site is located is given according to the following code: cp ev g he jo jv n nfh nv sh

coastal plain Euphrates valley Galilee hill country Jordan (highlands) Jordan valley Negev (except for Timna, this means the Negev in ancient usage, i.e. the Beersheba area) northern foothills northern valleys Shephelah

The period is given following the source and according to the standard abbreviations used by Palestinian archaeologists. However, there are traps for the unwary, for the terminology is not used in exactly the same way by different archaeologists, for example American archaeologists end Iron I at c. 900 BC and Israelis at c. 1000 BC; more important, the same period is referred to by different authorities as EBIV, Intermediate Bronze and MBI; and this divergent terminology may appear in studies written by the same author, since the faunal analyst normally simply follows the terminology of the excavator.1 1.

As a guide for the uninitiated it may be useful to append here a table of the

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Under 'type' I have indicated whether the site, or that part of it from which the sample was taken, was domestic (dom), tombs (tomb), or a temple or other cultic structure (cult). The figures indicate the percentage of the total number of identifiable fragments assigned to the species in question. I have already spoken of the problems besetting every method of setting out and comparing results. It may be of interest to have a table comparing numbers of fragments with weight of bone for several species; this may give some indication of the balance of the species in the diet suggested by various ratios of fragments. In particular, obviously, beef will be of greater importance than suggested simply by the number of fragments, since the bones are heavier and carry a greater weight of meat. The table that I give here (Table A, p. 178) is derived from figures given by Buitenhuis for Hayaz Hoyiik (1985: 70); however, I have calculated the percentages over the identified portion of the remains rather than the total as he does. These figures refer to domestic animals only, plus deer, therefore they are slightly different from those in the main table, which include wild boar in the percentages for pigs. The discrepancies between the two levels indicate the degree of variability to be expected statistically in small samples; the pig fragments that happened to be preserved from the EB level were on average larger than those from the Chalcolithic, but this does not mean that pigs had grown 50 per cent bigger! In this, as in the main table, percentages are only given to two significant figures. In Table B I have only given figures for the major animals—the domestic food animals invariably, and deer and gazelles only if the proportion exceeded 3 per cent. There were very few places where hunting of mammals contributed anything significant to the diet. main archaeological periods of Palestine, abbreviated from A. Mazar 1990: 30, with the caution that absolute chronology is constantly subject to amendment: Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Prc-Poucry Neolithic B Pottery Neolithic Chalcolithic Early Bronze I-HI Early Bronze FV/Middle Bronze I Middle Bronze H Late Bronze Iron I Iron II After S86 BC historical terms such as

c. 8500-7500 BC c. 7500-6000 BC c. 6000-4300 BC c. 4300-3300 BC c. 3300-2300 BC c. 2300-2000 BC c. 2000-1550 BC c. 1550-1200 BC c. 1200-1000 BC c. 1000- 586 BC 'Persian period' are employed.

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Almost always there is also a wide variety of other 'unclean' wild animals, but always in very small quantity, far too small to base any serious argument on, in view of the propensity of archaeological samples for contamination by various means. Most sites also yielded remains of equids—presumably usually asses—and dogs, sometimes in surprising quantity. I have occasionally mentioned this for some special reason in the last column, since there is hardly ever any question of these animals having been eaten. Where it was specifically stated that no remains of a particular species were identified, I have inserted a dash '—'. Where remains were present but the quantity was not specified, I have put 'X'. In a few cases where the source was not directly available to me, this sign does not necessarily mean that the original source did not give quantities. b. Discussion 1. Cattle, Sheep and Goats. In interpreting these results, geography and ecology are the first factors that we must consider. The most obvious feature in the results taken as a whole is the dominance of sheep and goats almost everywhere, not necessarily in the proportions of the diet, but always in numbers. Everywhere there were large numbers of people engaged in pastoralism. This may mean either that many members of the settled community were so engaged, or that they were in close commercial contact with nomad stockbreeders. At different times and places these two types of relationship will have had different degrees of importance (cf. Wapnish and Hesse 1988: 83). But if we then look at those sites in the driest locations, those marginal for agriculture unassisted by irrigation, we find that they almost invariably have still higher proportions of sheep and goats, with cattle generally well under 20 per cent. These include the sites in the Negev, and the nearby and almost equally dry Tell es-Sharia, Tell Jemmeh and 'Araq el-Emir, and the sites in the mid-Euphrates Valley, where the rainfall is also low, and Jericho, where there is little rainfall, though proper use of the spring water makes agriculture possible. Of these, only Tel Masos and MB Jericho have more than 20 per cent of cattle. Other sites where the proportion of cattle in the remains falls below 20 per cent include most of the cultic and funerary sites, which require separate discussion, the Ophel, which is exceptional in any case, and Tell Qiri and Tell Qasile. These exceptions may not be easy to explain, but in general the key

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to these facts has been given by Baruch Rosen (1986), who points out in a most illuminating study of the bases of subsistence at Izbet Sartah that the number of cattle kept at any settlement depends in general on the extent to which it relies on agriculture for its subsistence and therefore requires oxen for draught; Izbet Sartah's 34 per cent indicates a community based solidly on agriculture, as the number of grain silos also shows, but wherever the proportion of cattle exceeds something like 20 per cent, subject to the problems of bias in the results, it is likely that the community taken as a whole is supported primarily by agriculture. But records from different periods of Palestine's history—Assyrian tribute lists, Turkish tax rolls and British censuses—uniformly reveal a ratio of sheep and goats to cattle for the country as a whole far higher than this, about 9:1 (Baruch Rosen 1986: 60-67). This shows the great importance that pastoralism and pastoralists have had in the economy of the country at all times, for the proportion of cattle in their flocks and herds tends not to exceed 5 per cent. It will be obvious that the corresponding ratio over the sites listed in the table taken together is much lower than 9:1. But this is to be expected; for archaeologists have tended to home in on substantial sites, while communities of pastoralists tend to live in small settlements, or indeed, especially in this region, to be nomadic, and thus to leave virtually no domestic remains detectable by present methods. The sites we have identified as marginal for agriculture, however, clearly relied very heavily on pastoralism. At Tel Masos and MB Jericho, where agriculture flourished, irrigation must have been used, but in the midEuphrates valley in early times, unlike lower Mesopotamia, or the same area today, the flood-plain had not been utilized by clearing and irrigation, and one must suppose that at Jericho in the Early Bronze period limited use was being made of these techniques. One must also suppose that at Tell Qiri and Tell Qasile, where there is no such problem for agriculture, there was nevertheless an exceptionally wide hinterland exploited by pastoralists. There is however probably some direct evidence in Table B of the presence and activity of pastoral nomads, since although they have no permanent settlements they do worship at permanent cult sites, and their wanderings must come to an end in the grave. Finkelstein (1988: 343ff.; cf. 1985: 164) points to these two types of remains as likely to have been used by nomad pastoralists: isolated sanctuaries, either away

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from any settlement or outside the walls of important centres; and cemeteries not apparently associated with any settlement. The first group includes the LB cult place at Shiloh and the Fosse Temple at Lachish. As Finkelstein points out (1988: 344 and 1985: 164), it is the analysis of the faunal remains at Shiloh that suggests its use by pastoral people: the proportion of cattle in the remains is very low and well on a par with such steppe settlements as Arad and Tell es-Sharia, and it contrasts sharply with the figures in the following period at Shiloh when it lay at the centre of a developing network of agricultural settlements. Unfortunately Olga Tufnell's report on the remains found in the Fosse Temple does not give quantities. Neither there nor at Shiloh were there any pig remains to speak of, nor apparently at Lachish; regrettably Hellwing and Sadeh give no figures for the minor categories at Shiloh. Among isolated cemeteries we may mention from our table Jebel Qa'aqir, a group of sixteen tombs west of Hebron, nine of them containing animal bones, every one of which came from a sheep or goat. The tombs do not seem to be associated with any settlement, and one might well expect to find nomadic pastoralists in that area, especially in EB IV/MB I. The story of Abraham's negotiations with Ephron suggests, however, that often nomads found their last resting place within the territory of the settled people with whom they were in contact. Perhaps this may explain the results from the tombs at Jericho and in the Refa'im valley, where the grave-offerings are likewise overwhelmingly caprovine, apart from the frequent offerings of donkeys in the Jericho tombs, the only other animal associated with pastoral nomads at this period. On the Jericho tombs Nobis suggests (1968: 417) that part of the population of Jericho itself could have led a seminomadic life to secure sufficient pasture for their flocks. 2. Pigs. In general, where the proportion of cattle is low, one may expect the proportion of pigs to be still lower. This is not because the raising of pigs has any close relation to crop-farming as it has in the modern world (as we have seen, pigs in traditional peasant societies may be pastured in woods or kept in the settlement and fed on waste), but for two other reasons: because ample surface water is an essential, and because pigs cannot be part of the mixed holdings of a pastoral family, since they cannot be herded in the same way and do not thrive on grass. Nomadic pastoralists cannot keep pigs at all, though a settled

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family reliant on flocks for its livelihood might keep a few pigs at home provided they could supply them with sufficient water. This expectation is borne out by the above figures: among those sites where cattle remains fall below 20 per cent, most, even excluding the temples and tombs, have less than 2 per cent of pig bones and only three have more than 6 per cent: EB Hayaz Hoyiik, MB Tell Jemmeh, and most remarkably the Refa'im valley in the so-called EB IV, where only 3 per cent of bones were of cattle, yet 15 per cent were of pigs. It is really the low proportion of cattle here that is surprising, since the community certainly practised agriculture successfully in the following MB II period (Horwitz 1989b: 49). Do we then find that at the sites we can regard as primarily agricultural, those where the proportion of cattle exceeds 20 per cent, pigs are raised in greater numbers? At some, yes, but by no means at all. Out of the 17 domestic sites or strata where cattle exceed 20 per cent there are only three (EB En Shadud, Iron I Tel Miqne, and EB-MB Tell el-Hayyat) where pig exceeds 10 per cent, and only a further four where it exceeds 6 per cent. At the majority, therefore, it is in the same range as in the strongly pastoral settlements, and there is a notable group where the porportion of pig bone is less than one per cent: Ashdod, Izbet Sartah, Tel Masos and Tel Michal. Iron Age Lachish, which is only partly cultic, could well be added to this group, and the urban community on the Ophel, where probably nobody produced their own food and so the low proportion of cattle has nothing to do with local conditions. These sites all have one thing in common: they belong to the Iron Age. Even if we go up to the verge of the 6 per cent mark, we bring in only one Bronze Age site: EB Tel Dalit;1 and LB Lachish (according to Drori) stands at 6 per cent. On the other hand, there are only two Iron Age sites where the use of pig is above this level, Ekron being one and Pella (at 15 per cent) the other. The Bronze Age therefore fulfils our expectation, if generally on a rather modest scale, while the Iron Age for the most part notably frustrates it.2 1. In Hell wing and Gophna's statistically illegitimate 1984 study of two sites combined, most of the EB material comes from Tel Dalit, and all the MB material from Aphek. 2. Averages are probably not of much value in this discussion, but for what it is worth the average of the percentage of pig-bones in all the Bronze Age sites in the table is 7.6, and in all the Iron Age ones 3.9, or about half. Without Ekron and Pella the Iron Age average falls to 1.5.

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Ulrich Hiibner (1989) has argued that the archaeological evidence shows the keeping and eating of pigs to have gone on, admittedly on a fairly small scale, without a break from the Bronze Age into Iron Age Israel, thus that the prohibition of swine's flesh in Leviticus and Deuteronomy was not the reflection of ancient custom, but an innovation. However, his citation of the evidence is by no means as systematic or comprehensive as in our table. It can be seen from our figures that pig production and consumption, already quite low, suffered a marked downturn at the beginning of the Iron Age, and remained high (or got higher) only in a few places that are certainly not Israelite. At no identifiably Israelite site is the proportion of pig remains higher than 2 per cent (Kinneret and Tell Qiri). It is not enough simply to quote instances of a given type of find occurring; for genuine understanding one must be able to answer the questions: 'in what quantity?' and 'with what associations?' The associations I will come to later; the quantities are enough to make it clear that pigkeeping did not in any significant sense 'obviously proceed without a break' (Hiibner 1989: 227). However, not all the sites where pig remains are scanty are Israelite, however precisely one wishes to define a word that it is difficult to link in a simple way with particular archaeological remains. Certainly Ashdod is not.1 We ought to allow for the possibility of accounting for this pattern in purely environmental terms. John Rogerson has suggested to me possible ways of doing this. The most obvious factor to be invoked is the availability of water. All animals require water to drink, but pigs also need to bathe in it in warm weather, since, as we have seen, they have no physiological means of maintaining their body temperature. Hence agriculture could be successfully carried on in many places where it would be difficult to keep pigs. In a general sense the modest values for pig remains are explained by the general lack of adequate water supplies in most parts of the country, and we might expect a reasonably high frequency of pig bones only where water was easily available in quantity throughout the year. This might include parts of the coastal plain between the second and third kurkar ridges, where

1. Ahlstrom (1984a) and Finkelstein (1988: 45) in their sharply different ways unite in denying that Tel Masos was an Israelite settlement, though in doing so they go against the view of the excavators (Fritz and Kempinski 1983; cf. Dever 1990: 93).

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marshy areas can be found even now (Rogerson 1989a: 76, 80). It would also of course include the Jezreel valley and the Jordan valley close to the river; but certainly not the hill country, where the rock is predominantly limestone which almost immediately absorbs the winter rains, and where spring water and rainwater conserved in cisterns would be difficult to apply to pig-keeping, being too valuable for other purposes; this would also apply in a place like Tel Masos. Since the hill country became a zone of heavy settlement in the Iron Age, and the balance of population in the country swung towards the highlands, this might account for the fall in pig frequencies then. It does not however account for the figures that we find in Table B, for this includes relatively few domestic sites in the hill-country. True, most of those that there are have, as expected, few or no pigs, though the Refa'im Valley in the Bronze Age is, as we have noted, an exception; and the only places where we find the pig a major food animal in quantities similar to those of sheep, goats and cattle are Tell el-Hayyat, in the Jordan valley, and En Shadud, in the Jezreel valley. But we should note at the same time that these findings date back to the Early Bronze Age and to some extent the Middle Bronze; at no later time anywhere do we find a figure above 18 per cent for pig remains. The higher values appear at first sight to be found in the expected areas: Ma'abarat on the coast; Pella immediately above the Jordan valley, near enough, perhaps, for it to have pig farms serving it in the valley and using river water; Ekron and Tell Jemmeh on the coastal plain. But doubt must creep in when we look more closely at the position of these two sites. Ekron is nearly in the foothills, a good twelve miles from the coast, and Tell Jemmeh is virtually in the Negev. Moreover, the hypothesis does not work conversely; it does not help us to understand the low pig frequencies found in some places where water would probably have been easily available: Ashdod, Tell Qasile and Tel Michal on the coast, Jericho in the Jordan valley (in the EB) and Dan near its source. It cannot therefore account for the decline of pig use in the Iron Age. We may then ask, mindful of Harris's attention to the woodland habitat usually required for the free-range keeping of pigs, whether the low use of pigs and especially the decline in pig-keeping in the Iron Age are to be associated with the deforestation of the land, which would be an inevitable accompaniment both of (1) the demand for fuel for the smelting of metals since the beginning of the Bronze Age, and

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of (2) the heavy exploitation of the land for grazing as well as for agriculture. In fact it is very doubtful whether this process had proceeded either so far or so fast by the beginning of the Iron Age as to make pig-keeping impossible or even anti-social in the sense understood by Harris. Rogerson in his Atlas of the Bible gives detailed attention to the question of deforestation, and indicates on his maps the likely extent of forest around 1200 BC, always very much greater than today (Rogerson 1989a: 60, 62-63 and passim). The question has also beeen discussed by Rowton (1967) over the broad scene of Western Asia as a whole, and by Gophna et al. (1986-87) on the small scale of a regional survey. 'Man's impact on the arboreal vegetation in the Central Coastal Plain was not extensive', conclude Gophna and his colleagues (1986-87: 81); 'For the severe degradation of the forest in this area, we should look to later periods [than the Middle Bronze Age]'. And these later periods should certainly not include the Late Bronze Age, when there was a sharp decline in the settled population in Palestine (Finkelstein 1988: 340). Finkelstein argues (1988: 342-43) that much of the former settled population will have become nomadic rather than simply disappearing; but Rowton shows that it is not nomads so much as the resettlement of nomads that furthers the degradation of forest (1967: 275-76). Should we then look to the extensive settlement that took place in the Iron Age, especially in the previously wooded hill country, as achieving the deforestation we are looking for? Certainly the Iron Age resumed the process of degradation, but hardly so fast as to be a convincing explanation of the decline of the pig. The fall in the proportions of pig remains takes place at the beginning of the Iron Age, rather than during it, as shown by an exclusively Iron I site such as Izbet Sartah. And Finkelstein shows that in the country of Ephraim settlement was slowest on the western slopes of the hill country, where the thickest woodland survived (1988: 187-88). The truth of the matter is that, as I have already pointed out, woodland is not necessary for pig-keeping; pigs can be kept at home and fed on waste, as in modern China. I have already suggested that this was the normal way in which they were kept in the ancient Near East (Chapter 3, §2.c.3). The practice of fattening them on grain must have been exceptional, given the normal conditions of scarcity, and the highland forests in any case usually lacked suitable water supplies. Deforestation, then, may be entirely irrelevant to the question, or rather, it may be the result rather than the cause of the decline of the

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pig, as I have already suggested (Chapter 3, §2.c.3). In that case both the decline of the forests and the decline of the pig may be due to the settlement, or resettlement, of people traditionally reliant upon sheep and goats and their political dominance in the subsequent period—the theory of Simoons (Chapter 3, §2.b), combined with that of Finkelstein (1988: 336-51) about the emergence of Israel. But I defer consideration of this hypothesis until later in this chapter (§4.b). 3. Other Domestic Animals. The other common domestic animals were the donkey and the dog. As I have already observed, these turn up in nearly every dig; the dog is perhaps the earliest domesticated animal of all (Clutton-Brock 1981), while the donkey appears regularly from the beginning of the Bronze Age onwards. Normally they appear in relatively small numbers which are much subject to statistical variation: the 25 per cent of donkeys at En Shadud is presumably a statistical fluke. No evidence that I am aware of suggests that either of them was ever eaten in the period with which we are concerned, except in emergency (cf. 2 Kgs 6.25). Some early peoples hunted the onager or wild ass (Equus hemionus) for meat, but there is little evidence of this in Bronze and Iron Age Palestine, and the domestic donkey is a different matter altogether. One further domestic animal remains to be discussed: the camel. There has been a great deal of controversy over the date at which it was introduced as a domestic animal in the Near East, but the archaeological evidence is beginning to settle it. At the sites listed in the table, which are broadly representative of the settled areas of Palestine during the Bronze Age and Iron I and II (i.e. down to about 500 BC), the camel can practically be ignored. It is only in Hellenistic and Roman times that it begins to turn up with any frequency (Wapnish 1984: 171). The camels of 'Izbet Sartah, mentioned in the table, are a pretty little problem. They are obviously wildly out of context at an Early Iron Age agricultural village in the foothills of Ephraim. They had apparently not been slaughtered, but their bodies had been stuffed into two disused grain silos of the second of the site's three levels of occupation. They could easily belong to a later period (Hellwing and Adjeman 1986: 146). More relevantly, we find camel bones in some quantity in Israelite territory first at the desert fortresses and way stations of the Negeb in

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the tenth century (Hakker-Orion 1984): Har Saad, Kadesh Barnea and Aroer. The frequent reference to them in the patriarchal narratives (especially Gen. 24) suggests that by the time of the final redaction of the latter, at latest, it was natural to assume that pastoralists would use them—and more than pastoralists, if we are to believe one of the Assyrian reliefs in the British Museum which portrays a family setting into exile from Lachish with a camel to carry their water (R.D. Barnett [1985] has drawn attention to this). They had been domesticated first, unquestionably, in Arabia (Compagnoni and Tosi 1978) and it continued to be primarily the Arab tribes who used them (Hakker-Orion 1984), giving themselves immensely greater freedom to traverse relatively waterless and thinly grassed regions, though true Beduin reliant on the camel seem only to have emerged about 2000 years ago. Their use was above all for transport and commerce; their slaughter for meat can only be a sideline, because of their slow rate of reproduction (Kohler 1984; Wapnish 1984: 175). Nevertheless, Paula Wapnish reports on the discovery of a centre of camel eating at Tell Jemmeh, 10 km south of Gaza, and therefore in the area where camel trains would be used and pastoralists using camels will have been present. Although camel bones are present in small numbers from the fourteenth century onwards, they appear frequently only from the seventh century to the third (1984: 172-73); historically this seems to have been a time when the Babylonian and Persian empires were attempting to control the incense trade carried on by the Arabs, which will have led to a large increase in the use of camel caravans (1984: 179). Wapnish's careful discussion of the age balance of the camels slaughtered leads to the conclusion that they are likely to have been unwanted stock from trading caravans, sold to the townspeople by the traders (1984:175-78). Now if there was one such centre where camel meat was eaten on the desert trade routes, there will have been others, and of course the traders themselves, and still more camel-using pastoralists, are likely to have used their stock for meat on occasion, as today. The combined evidence of Tell Jemmeh and the modern Beduin shows that the factors that restrained peasant populations from using their donkeys for meat (below, §3.c; Chapter 5, §l.a) do not seem to have applied to camels. But the people who ate camel meat lived outside the main areas of settlement in the land of Israel, and ethnically would in the main have been non-Israelites. It should also be noted that the custom

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of eating camel meat will only have come to the attention of Israelites generally about the time of the exile, when the caravan trade was increasing, and Arab tribes were pressing into Edom and the southern parts of Judah. 4. Wild Mammals. We now need to turn our attention to the use made of wild animals. As will be seen from the table, it is rare for hunting of large animals to contribute very much to the diet; most of the assemblages of which this is true come from the Early Bronze period, though the remarkable quantity of fallow-deer remains found at Mt Ebal is worth noting; it proves that large areas of forest still existed in this part of the hill-country in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries (Horwitz 1986-87: 182). For the most part, however, it is clear that the assiduous hunting of the gazelle in earlier times had too severely depleted its numbers for it to remain a significant source of food, and the fallow deer had been reduced by the clearance of forest as well as by over-hunting. No wild mammals other than the various species of gazelle and deer, and wild boar, which is frequently indistinguishable from domestic pig, contribute anything significant to the diet at the great majority of sites. There is surprisingly little evidence at any period later than the Neolithic of the eating of wild beasts that did not closely resemble the domestic stock, despite the great depletion of the stock of wild ruminants by the Early or at least the Middle Bronze Age; there is very little evidence of the eating of hares, to take the obvious example, anywhere near the biblical period. Indeed according to Db'ller (1917: 189) they were still avoided in Syria at the beginning of the present century. There are perhaps one or two exceptions. At Ashdod, for example, the remains of quite a number of medium-sized animals such as hare and porcupine were found, amounting to as much as 5 per cent of the whole assemblage, and it is possible that some of these were eaten. However, my earlier caution about the contamination of samples should be borne in mind. At Ebal 4 per cent of the identifiable sample consisted of bones of small animals and birds, many of them 'unclean': a polecat, a lizard, 'a reptile, probably snake', hare, mole rat, a bird of prey, a small carnivore, tortoise, and hedgehog. But all the mammals except the polecat are pronounced 'of recent origin and probably intrusive' (Horwitz 1986-87: 176). There is therefore next to no reputable evidence that the people of the Levant were in the habit of

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hunting and eating wild species called unclean in the Old Testament, with the important exception of the wild boar. What Boessneck and von den Driesch say about Heshbon (1978: 285) could be said with variations about every site: 'Only gazelles and partridges were hunted on a scale worthy of mention, though during the earlier periods fallow deer may also have been hunted to some extent'. 5. Birds. The reference to partridges reminds us that, as I have already observed, a great deal of evidence for the consumption of fowl has been lost even at sites where careful study of the mammalian remains has been undertaken. However, there is sufficient evidence to make it clear that one widely canvassed idea is false—the idea, I mean, that the domestic fowl was not introduced to the Near East until comparatively late times. At Tell Sweyhat it was there in the Early Bronze age, before 2000 BC; at Lachish remains were found deriving from Level V or VI in the Late Bronze (Ussishkin 1978: 88-89); and at Jerusalem there are several Iron Age (monarchical period) remains (Horwitz and Tchernov 1989). Domestic birds also included geese and ducks (ibid.); whether particular examples of pigeons are domestic birds or not is a difficult question to decide, even in the case of living birds; certainly pigeons formed part of the ancient diet; and the bird-trapper's art, so frequently referred to in the literature of the Old Testament, seems to have been largely directed towards partridges (Horwitz and Tchernov 1989, and Boessneck and von den Driesch 1978: 285). Once again, we can find very little evidence of the eating of unclean species in Israel's immediate environment. 6. Water Creatures. The case is rather different, but even more obscure, when it comes to fish. As I have already observed, fishbones are infrequently preserved from excavations. They are however sufficiently often reported to make one confident that the widely reported Syrian and Palestinian abstinence from fish is either no early development or remained confined to certain groups. One recent excavation where it was obviously important to study the marine remains as far as possible was that at Tel Kinrot (Tell el-'Oreme), Kinneret, on the shore of the sea of Galilee. The report (Fritz forthcoming) is not yet published, but Hiibner treats us to the titbit of information from it that the bones of catfish, a scaleless fish, were 'relatively numerous' (1989: 228) among the faunal remains of Iron II. He does not tell us what

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'relatively' means: it is all very well to draw attention to the perishability and easily overlooked character of fishbones, but since this applies to all fishbones, a relevant and useful comparison could have been made between quantities of bones of 'clean' and 'unclean' fish. Catfish were also found in the MB tombs at Sasa (Horwitz 1987), not very far away and no doubt from the same source. Molluscs are a different matter: their shells are durable and hard to overlook, and are found in nearly all excavations. However, it is not always easy to say whether they had been eaten on site; they were popular for decoration, and the great majority of Palestinian sites are too far from any likely source to make it probable that they had been brought to the site alive. In most places they occur in ones and twos; only if there are substantial dumps of local species does it become probable that they were eaten by the local inhabitants. This is the case at Bronze Age Jericho, where we find over 300 shells of a local water-snail, Melanopsis praecorsa buccinoidea Oliv. (Nobis 1968: 420-21). Hellwing (1988-89) says of Bronze Age Tel Kinrot that 'it is difficult to assess at this stage the economic significance of the [much smaller] mollusk shell concentrations at the excavation site'. In the nature of things the eating of molluscs would be very much a local peculiarity, except for land-snails, and of that there is little evidence that I know of after the Neolithic (it is attested for that era at Jericho [Hellwing 1988-89]). 7. Summary. To summarize the evidence for people's dietary preference over such a large space and time is very difficult. There are, however, a remarkable number of constants. Almost everywhere sheep and goats provide a high proportion of the meat eaten, attesting the importance of pastoralism (whether nomadic or not) in the economy and society of the region; beef is of correspondingly less importance, and pork usually less important still, often much less so than environmental considerations alone would lead one to expect. Where, exceptionally, we find substantial numbers of pig remains in communities that were largely pastoral, we must suppose that they had access to good water supplies and fed the pigs in the settlement on waste. But much more commonly we found that pigs were eaten in relatively small quantity even where environmental conditions would have been favourable, and whereas this is often true in the Bronze Age, it is very marked and virtually normal in the Iron Age; we often find very low

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or negligible pig frequencies in the Iron Age, but nothing quite as low in the Bronze Age. We did not find any consistently predictive environmental or technical explanation for this. On this point it is clearly necessary to appeal to cultural factors, something that in any case is necessary to account for the failure to utilize the flesh of the universal scavenger, or the principal beast of burden. 3. Evidence of Cultural Factors a. 'Clean and Unclean' Animals in Israel (Non-Priestly Sources) The principal Old Testament sources for the dietary restrictions found in Israel, so far as the distinction of kinds is concerned, are our texts Leviticus 11 and Deut. 14.3-20. Outside these contexts, references to a distinction between clean and unclean animals are surprisingly sparse. The most obvious is in the story of the Flood, in those passages that are generally referred to as the J version. In Gen. 7.2-3 Yahweh instructs Noah to bring into the ark 'of each clean beast(behema) seven pairs, and of beasts that are not clean one pair; and also of the birds of the air seven pairs...' 1 The difference in the numbers is clearly explained by the sacrifice that Noah will offer after the Flood (8.20): 'And Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird and offered whole-offerings on the altar'. It is not clear whether Noah and his family are also expected to use the clean animals for food in this version; in P their food is clearly to be vegetarian (6.21—a distinct command from that concerning the animals, as in 1.29-30; cf. Chapter 6, §2.e). Probably they are, as one extra male would suffice for the sacrifice. Westermann says very generally that the higher number of clean animals 'indicates their greater significance for humans' (1984: 427). It is very doubtful whether this gives sufficient weight to the particularities of the story. The question arises whether Gen. 7.3 really does not envisage the existence of unclean birds (it does not say 'of all the birds'); if so it would be in conflict with 8.20 as well as with Leviticus 11. Westermann (1984: 428) regards 7.3a as a later elaboration, arising from the 1. There is no certainty that this is the correct translation (it is effectively that of RSV and REB and most EVV; the AV is ambiguous); although it seems most likely, it involves an inconsistency, since D^IO a'Kf (probably the correct reading: cf. the Ancient Versions) is taken to mean 'two of each' and motf runtf 'seven pairs of each'. It might well mean seven individuals (cf. the JB).

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misunderstanding of behemd in v. 2, which he considers to be in this place a comprehensive term referring to all land animals, including birds; the elaboration ignores the distinction important to J between clean and unclean. If so, it must come from a redactor who was not only indifferent to the distinction, but also lacking in literary perception. Moreover, there is no other case known to me, and certainly Westermann cites none, in which behema includes birds. It would surely be better to suppose that either the author or the supplementer considered all birds to be clean, and in the former case that it is 8.20 that has been supplemented. The priestly tradition regards the distinction between clean and unclean animals, like other ritual institutions, as having been given only at Sinai and only to Israel, being exclusive to Israel and indeed distinctive of it (Lev. 20.24ff.). Westermann notes the existence of two traditions of interpretation, one that sees J as reading back into primaeval time the distinction as it existed in Israel (presumed to be that in Lev. 11); the first is represented by Cassuto and Dillmann, to whom Wenham should now be added; and the second regards J as deducing the antiquity of such institutions from their prevalence in his own time (Gunkel, Skinner and Westermann himself). In either case it is clear that a distinction of the same kind as is given to Israel in Leviticus 11 is taken for granted. The definitions assumed are not necessarily exactly the same as those specified in Leviticus 11 and other priestly passages. Quite apart from the question about the birds, there is nothing to indicate that Noah only sacrifices domestic animals; indeed the implication is that the sacrifice includes wild clean animals as well.1 In truth, this passage does not tell us a great deal—perhaps only that the distinction of clean and unclean in Israel was not dependent solely on priestly teaching. Other passages assuming the possibility of unclean food are even less informative. Judg. 13.7 implies that the distinction would be of particular importance to a person associated with the cult or under a religious vow; because her child is to be a lifelong nazir, Samson's mother is neither to drink alcohol nor to eat koltum'a, 'anything unclean'. This may point to the original area within which the distinction was significant as regards diet. Hos. 9.3, 'they shall eat unclean food in Assyria', perhaps betrays a different assumption from the J narrative of the flood. Different peoples have 1. Thus his sacrificial practice would be similar to that at Mt Ebal (Horwitz 1986-87: see below, §3.b.l)

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different dietary customs, and someone living abroad may be compelled to eat things that are unclean according to Israelite understanding.1 It cannot be assumed from this that Hosea already understands things according to the formula of Lev. 20.24ff., that the dietary rules have the function of marking Israel out as distinct from all other peoples. In any case, neither of these passages necessarily refers to distinction of species at all. But it is a reasonable, if not a necessary deduction from the three passages taken together that the distinction of clean and unclean flesh is one with a wide base in Israelite society, not a priestly peculiarity. It is therefore somewhat surprising that Firmage (1990: 183) reinforces his methodological objections to going outside Leviticus 11 with a round historical assertion that with the possible exception of the pig, there is no evidence prior to the appearance of the present dietary law [Firmage gives no indication when he thinks that was] that the Israelites regarded any of the animals prohibited by Leviticus 11 as unclean. Therefore, while Israel's dietary tabus often overlap with those of contemporary cultures, one cannot assume that its aversion to these animals originated from the same long-standing, popular source.

Be it said first that the 'possible exception' is a very substantial one, since the pig is the only creature commonly eaten in the ancient Near East that is declared unclean in Leviticus. But has Firmage simply overlooked Gen. 7.2, or does he not see it as 'evidence'? True, the unclean beasts alluded to in Gen. 7.2 are not named, and consequently it is technically correct that there is no evidence that any particular animal prohibited in Leviticus 11 is seen as unclean in Gen. 7.2. True also, the distinction in Genesis 7 may have nothing to do with food and be related only to sacrifice; but as we have seen this is rather doubtful. And true again, the Levitical law may have changed or reinterpreted (and certainly may have extended) food avoidances already existing in its culture. But since there is no evidence worth speaking of from any period of Israel's history for the consumption of any of the land animals mentioned as unclean in Leviticus 11 other than the pig, it is straining the argument to claim that it is probable, or even plausible, that Gen. 7.2 has an entirely different list in mind. 1. The usual interpretation of the commentators, however, is that the uncleanness of the food arises from the uncleanness of the foreign land 'which belongs to foreign gods, not to Yahweh (Am. 7:17)' (Wolff 1974: 155).

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It is not as if Firmage's position could be supported by questioning the orthodoxy on the relative dates of J and P, for he emphasizes the character of the dietary law as a rule of holiness unique to Israel; it would be odd for any subsequent writer to make it Noachic. b. The Selection of Animals for Sacrifice I have organized this sub-section according to the type of evidence used. Both material and written evidence from within and without Israel tends to confirm the impression gained from the Flood story and other texts, that a common distinction between animals acceptable and unacceptable in cultic situations was widespread and generally understood. 1. Material Evidence. At most of the sites from which we have material, the analyses have not been comprehensive. We can say that cattle and sheep and/or goats were sacrificed, and pigs probably were not, but no more. At many of them, the proportion of cattle appears to be lower than one would expect for the area where they are set. The following consideration could account for this. Among sheep and goats only a small number of male animals as they reach maturity need to be kept for breeding; the rest are available for food or sacrifice (or both). Among cattle the primary use of male animals is for draught, so that fewer young animals would be available for food or sacrifice. But animals required for labour are generally castrated, which would not prevent them from being slaughtered for food at the end of their useful lives, but would prevent them from being sacrificed. In the biblical prescriptions only intact and perfect animals could be offered in sacrifice (Lev. 1.3, etc.), and it does not seem too incautious a supposition that this would be true fairly generally. Also, the bias noted by Chaplin, whereby butchered beef results in a larger number of bone fragments than butchered mutton, may not be operative to the same extent at cultic sites, where some animals will have formed holocausts and others will have been food for large gatherings. The one site where a comprehensive analysis has been undertaken is Mt Ebal (Horwitz 1986-87). Some doubt has been cast on the identification of this site (by Zertal, first in 1985) as an altar and temenos (cf. Finkelstein 1988: 85). But Zertal has now (1986-87 [actually published 1989]) comprehensively answered his critics. We need not follow the arguments on either side, except to discuss the evidence of

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the faunal remains. Horwitz notes the absence of species that are normally found at domestic sites: equids, pigs, gazelles and dogs; and that 'the comparative data on burnt bones suggests a slightly higher (though not significant [sic])frequency at Ebal than that expected from a bone sample of this size' (1986-87: 181). But though the higher frequency of burnt bones may be statistically insignificant, it cannot be insignificant that they include fallow deer antlers (ibid.), since no one would leave the antlers on while cooking roast venison; the only possible explanation is that the deer had been burnt as whole offerings. It is true, as Horwitz notes, that the Mosaic prescriptions do not allow for the sacrifice of wild animals. There is no explicit prohibition, but we may compare the sacrificial prescriptions, Leviticus 1-7, which only mention cattle, sheep, goats and doves; Lev. 17.13, which presumes that an animal caught by a hunter will not be presented in sacrifice; and Deut. 12.15, 22, which assume that gazelle and deer will be eaten 'by the clean and the unclean'. This is true, but the evidence of the bones is incontrovertible. Whatever may have been the case at Jerusalem, at Ebal, deer (but not gazelle) were sacrificed! The animals sacrificed there were goats, sheep, cattle and fallow deer, in that order of frequency (though there is not sufficient difference in numbers between the identifiable remains of sheep and goats to be able to say for certain which were more frequent). Remains of partridge and rock dove were also found, but Horwitz does not suggest there is any evidence that they were sacrificed. The most significant fact to be gleaned from the results taken together is the exclusion of the pig from the altar. It is clear from Table B that not one of the cultic sites where we have some analysis of the faunal material offers any evidence for the sacrifice of pigs. In this respect there is no difference between Bronze Age sites (Lachish VI, Lachish Fosse Temple, Nahariyah, Shiloh) and Iron Age ones (Ebal, Lachish, Shiloh); between sanctuaries possibly used by nomads (Fosse Temple, LB Shiloh: above, §2.b.l) and ones used by settled people; between presumptively 'Canaanite' sanctuaries (Lachish VI, Nahariyah) and presumptively Israelite ones (Ebal, Iron Age Lachish, Iron Age Shiloh); between metropolitan sites (Lachish) and country ones (Ebal) (cf. below, §4.a). This is one of the facts overlooked by Hiibner in his 1989 article—it is a question of the associations of the material. If pigs were not sacrificed even by people who raised them, if in limited numbers, that is clear prima facie evidence that they were conceived

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to be what we may call 'unclean', even if that has not quite the same meaning as in Leviticus 11. It might be argued that the accidents of selection have given us evidence mainly from sites where people worshipped who did not in any case raise or eat pigs, and so were not likely to sacrifice them. Among Bronze Age sites, this would apply to the Shiloh sanctuary and the Fosse Temple at Lachish. The suggestion could conceivably be true also of Nahariyah, a sanctuary within the Phoenician orbit (according to the excavator, Dothan 1956), if the probable fact that pigs were not kept at Ugarit, or later in Phoenicia (§3.c) could suggest a longstanding avoidance of pig-meat on that coast. But it is at least untrue of the temple in Lachish level VI at the end of the Late Bronze, given the contemporary evidence from domestic sites in the same town. Thus there is strong confirmation from archaeological evidence, most of which was unknown to de Vaux at the time he wrote his article on the sacrifice of pigs in 1958 (1972: 255-56), that his conclusion to the rarity of this custom was correct. It can also be confirmed from the written evidence, much of which was known to him. 2. Internal Written Evidence. There are two main sources of internal written evidence, apart from the Old Testament, whose evidence I have just summarized: the Ugaritic liturgical texts, which include many lists of prescribed sacrifices and sacrificial calendars (all available texts are edited by Paolo Xella [1981], and they are analysed by Jean-Michel de Tarragon [1980]; pp. 32-39 deal with our subject, but are dependent on Levine 1963); and the so-called Marseilles tariff (CIS, I, 165; edited with commentary KAI 69), which lays down the fees chargeable at the temple of Baal-Saphon for different types of sacrifice with different animals; it was discovered in the harbour at Marseilles, but the likelihood is that it originates from Carthage (KAI, p. 83); certainly the language is Punic, and the vocabulary and ideas can be parallelled in other Punic and Phoenician inscriptions; its date is the end of the third century BC (KAI, p. 83), more than a thousand years later than the Ugaritic texts. The most frequent terms for animals used in the Ugaritic liturgical texts have been elucidated by Baruch Levine (1963). In these specialized documents terms that are used broadly in literary and other texts take on a very precise meaning, and others that do not occur elsewhere at all are brought in: s means a sheep or goat of the male sex;

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dqt, literally a small animal, a female sheep or goat; 'alp a bull; gdlt, literally a large animal, a heifer or cow; s'in small cattle collectively. The remainder have been dealt with by de Tarragon (1980: 32-33): 'imr a lamb, 'srm birds (not specified); ynt a dove (generally specified as ynt qrt a town pigeon). The frequency with which the different species and sexes are mentioned in the text (not of course the same thing as the frequency with which they were sacrificed, but indicative) is entirely in line with expectation: s 87 times, dqt 23 times, 'alp 20 times, gdlt 42 times, ynt qrt 1 times (1963: 34). The ratio of sheep and goats to cattle is 110: 62 or 64:36; lower than the observed ratio at other cultic sites, but it must be remembered that these texts are for a royal, public ritual; the same fact will explain the relatively low frequency with which the inexpensive sacrifice of a pigeon is prescribed: in the Old Testament this is for the poor (Lev. 5.7, etc.). That the majority of specifications of a sheep or goat call for a male animal, while the situation is reversed for cattle, offers a degree of confirmation for my hypothesis about the proportions of the species above. These are the animals commonly sacrificed. But once the sacrifice of a goose ('uz) is prescribed to the gods of the underworld ('Urn 'ars: KTU 1.106: 30, Xella 1981: 82-83); and two texts speak of the sacrifice of an ass (V): KTU 1.40: 26, 34, 43 (Xella 1981: 257ff.), where probably the ritual calls for the sacrifice of three sheep/goats and three asses (de Tarragon 1980: 36), and KTU 1.119: 16 (1980: 25ff.). All three examples are unusual in some way, the first in that the ritual is addressed to the chthonian deities; the second in that the text is not a ritual prescription but a liturgical text for what is clearly an unusual rite of expiation (discussion in de Tarragon 1980: 92ff.), in which the victims are offered to the whole assembly of the gods; the third, which is the prescription for one particular day of the year, in that of the whole series of prescriptions for particular days (of course we do not have them anything like complete) this is the only occasion on which an ass is offered—to Baal according to Xella's reconstructed text; but the tablet breaks at this point, and the text is quite uncertain. De Tarragon comments (1980: 37-38): The list of animals offered to the divinities makes absolutely no distinction between clean animals and unclean ones. The distinction which was to exist in precise fashion in the Palestinian Iron Age is not found at the end of the Middle Bronze Age on the coast of Syria.

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This could, I think, have been expressed more cautiously. The ritual texts make no such distinction explicit, true; but neither do the prescriptive ritual texts of the Old Testament. The texts do call very occasionally for the sacrifice of an animal (the ass) that is unclean in the Old Testament system, again true; but this is no evidence that the Ugaritic priests made no comparable distinction. Positive evidence, though circumstantial, that they did is the entire absence of any mention of the pig as a sacrificial animal from the texts available to us (84 of them in Xella). We have, it is true, no warrant to say categorically that a pig (or any other animal) would be unacceptable in sacrifice; but the repertory of animals actually prescribed is limited to sheep/ goats, cattle and birds, with the very occasional exception of an ass. It is possible that geese could only be sacrificed to the infernal powers, and if so this would also suggest some kind of discrimination between animals (cf. below, §3.d). But this is hypothetical. The repertory is similar to the Old Testament in that it includes only domestic animals, and that the bird normally offered in sacrifice is the domestic pigeon. (Of course, when we find in a mythological text [UT 62] talk of the sacrifice of harts, ibexes and [possibly] roebuck [70 of each!], this is not to be confused with practice in the real world.) We may add here that at Ugarit, if not elsewhere in the Bronze Age, the pig seems to have been avoided also as food. In all the Ugaritic texts there is no reference to pigs as an article of diet, indeed no real reference to pigs at all. h(ri)zr appears as an obscure term for some kind of trade (UT 1024: rev. 4; 1091: 6) and as the title of certain servitors of Baal in the myth (67.V: 9), otherwise only as a personal name.1 Arguments from silence are notoriously risky, but to me it seems provisionally possible to conclude that at least the city population did not normally eat pork. The Marseilles tariff has caused rather more difficulty in the identification of the names of animals. The following terms are used for them: 'lp, a bull, which is assessed at the highest value of ten shekels; '#/, a (male) calf; and at the same value (five shekels, half that of a bull) 'v/, which I discuss below; then at a considerably lower value (one shekel and two zr) ybl, which is likewise discussed below,

1. It is surprising that Hiibner (1989: 235 n. 55) should cite three Ugaritic texts as evidence for the keeping and consumption of pigs at Ugarit. One of these is the Baal text, and in the others it is a question of a personal name.

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and 'z, a goat; then three terms all at the lowest value, one-quarter of a shekel less: emr, a lamb; gd', a kid; and the unique srb 'yl\ finally two terms for birds: spr 'gnn and ss. The argument turns on whether 'yl is to be vocalized (for convenience using the Masoretic Hebrew vocalization) 'ayil, a ram, or 'ayyal, a hart. Dormer and Rollig (£47) go for the former alternative, and Dussaud (1921) and Fevrier (195859) for the latter. Surely it is the French scholars who are correct. Consider the consequences of Donner and Rollig's decision. If 'yl is a ram, then what is ybll They say rightly that it must indicate another kind of sheep, but having nothing more appropriate to suggest, conjecturally translate 'Hammel', which means a castrated ram. This is improbable for the reason I mentioned above (§3.b.l). Further, srb 'yl clearly has to have something to do with 'yl, and they duly translate it 'young ram' ('Jungwidder'). But what is the difference between a young ram and a lamb? This tariff clearly does not recognize the offering of female animals, and this accords with the statement of Porphyry (De Abst. 2.11) that the Phoenicians did not sacrifice or eat females. Moreover, why should the text use four different terms for sheep when two each are enough for cattle and goats? Such an accumulation of improbabilities ought to lead us to adopt the alternative suggestion, which makes clear and logical sense, even in the absence of the evidence from Mt Ebal that demonstrates that the sacrifice of deer was practised among West Semitic peoples, 'yl then means a (fallow deer) hart, ybl a ram, and srb 'yl a young hart; there are two terms for each species, one for the adult and one for the young, and the values make reasonable sense: a hart is valued equally with a calf—they are about the same size—a ram with a buck, and a lamb, kid and fawn equally. The terms for birds offer further difficulties: to translate them, as is often done, as referring to domestic and wild birds respectively, is conjectural, but plausible. The repertory of species here is identical to that found at Ebal, give or take a bird or two, though there is no reason to suppose that sacrifice at Ebal was restricted to male animals. No species is mentioned that is unclean in the Old Testament. It is true that the text has reference to the cult of one god only. But we may generalize the information by reference to the external written evidence, which gives a remarkably similar picture, with some variations.

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3. External Written Evidence. Our latest evidence is also the most impressive. According to al-Nadim, quoting al-Kindi (Fihrist, ix.1.57; Dodge 1970: 748), the 'Sabians', the pagans of Harran, sacrificed the males of cattle, sheep and goats and other four-legged beasts which do not have teeth in both of the two jaws, with the exception of the camel. They [also sacrificed] birds which do not have talons, with the exception of the pigeon...

They restricted the eating of flesh to the same species; the camel, pig, dog and ass are specifically mentioned as avoided, but also the pigeon. 'With the exception of the pigeon', not only is this precisely the same set of dietary restrictions as are observed by the Jews, but they are defined by the same criteria as are used in the Talmud (above, Chapter 2). Inevitably this must arouse suspicion. Had these Mesopotamians, idolaters though they were, been influenced in some way by Judaism? They had indeed made a remarkably successful attempt to survive as pagans under Muslim rule by taking on the superficial features of a 'people of the book', adopting, it would appear, in AD 833,1 the name of a Gnostic sect of southern Mesopotamia mentioned in the Qur'an (cf. Chwolsohn 1856: II, 2ff.). Did they perhaps adopt along with the name some of the ritual prescriptions of the sect, which could have been derived from Judaism? This cannot be excluded. But considering the centrality of the dietary rule to their daily life as well as their religion, it seems unlikely that it could have been a superficial addition to their way of life. At most, the defining criteria used could have been borrowings, or they could have been derived by the Muslim observers, or else could be a feature of learned Mesopotamian classification adopted from that environment by both the Babylonian Talmud and the Haranians. The Sabian religion, confined in al-Nadim's time to Harran, was at one time more widespread; J.B. Segal (1953) reports the presence of many shrines dedicated to the Sabian astral deities in the vicinity of Edessa, and dating from about the second or third century AD, before the Christianization of that city. It seems likely, therefore, that we have to reckon with an Aramaean culture in Northern Mesopotamia in late antiquity that restricted animal food on much the same lines as the Old Testament, except that it added the pigeon to the list of forbidden 1. A new study of the religion of Harran, Green 1992, has appeared too late to take account of it.

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creatures. In this, as we shall see, it was not unique. Lucian's evidence tends to extend the range of our evidence for this system in both space (to the right bank of the Euphrates) and time (to the second century). His subject in De Dea Syria is the cult of Atargatis at Hierapolis. Here, he tells us (ch. 54), 'they consider pigs polluted (enageas) and neither sacrifice nor eat them. But others regard them not as polluted, but as holy.' This clearly does not mean that some avoided pigs and others ate them, but that all avoided them, but differed in how they explained it. To some, pigs could be like pigeons (cf. below, §3.c, and Chapter 5, §3). 4. Conclusions. Thus we find a core of practice very similar among all the peoples of Syria and Canaan: everywhere the principal sacrificial animals are the sheep, the goat and the ox; everywhere the dog and the pig are excluded. But there are fuzzy edges which enable the different traditions to express their individuality, including or excluding asses, deer or pigeons. Generally speaking, of course, the species sacrificed correspond with those that are eaten, but the people of Ugarit occasionally sacrificed asses although they probably did not eat them; at most sanctuaries wild animals were not sacrificed, although deer and gazelles were hunted and eaten on a modest scale; and at Jerusalem—if we may take the Levitical rules as representing the tradition of that sanctuary—although most birds could be eaten, only pigeons or doves were prescribed for sacrifice. This last point should not be taken as simply reflecting the general impermissibility of wild animals for sacrifice, for we have been able to establish that a number of other domestic birds, including chickens, were kept at least as far back as the time of the monarchy. One might expect that metropolitan sanctuaries like those of Jerusalem and Ugarit would be unlikely to allow wild animals, whether beast or bird, to be offered, while the offering of fallow deer at Mt Ebal reflects the fact that this altar (there is no temple) served a rural and partly nomadic population organized only on a tribal level. However, the evidence of the Marseilles tariff, if it does come from Carthage, appears to contradict or at least qualify this idea. As regards the pig, the priests of the Syria-Palestine area were in agreement with their counterparts in southern Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Babylonia there was no hesitation about eating pigs as there was further west (Saggs 1988: 166-67). Assertions to the contrary are

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sometimes made, but these seem to depend on references to restrictions in connection with particular cults. There are 24 words in Akkadian for pigs in different varieties and connections (Salonen 1974: 8), a sure sign of a culture that raised and made use of them in large numbers. But the pig was not a sacrificial animal, except for certain apotropaic rites directed at demons (Blome 1934: 121; cf. Frank 1908: 56-60, 73-91; Myhrman 1902). In Egypt the position is complex (see LA, V, s.v. Schwein, Seth, Speisege- und Verbote). Swine were certainly raised in Egypt from the earliest times to the latest, and at various periods formed part of the royal and temple possessions (LA, V, s.v. Schwein [W. Helck]). They were used in agriculture for treading in seed. But their cultic role was extremely limited, though it seems that they were offered in sacrifice in certain festivals in Lower Egypt (cf. Herodotus 2.47, Plutarch De hide et Ostride 8). For further discussion, see Chapters, §l.b. c. Dietary Restrictions In the reports from Harran and Hierapolis, as apparently at Ugarit and in the biblical rules, the rule for sacrifice is closely paralleled in the restrictions on diet: if pigs were not sacrificed, they were not eaten either, and the Sabians would eat only those animals that were also clean for sacrifice. A similar restriction of diet, though without specific reference to the cult, is reported by Porphyry for 'Egyptian priests': 'they abstained from all fish and such quadrupeds as have single hooves or several toes (poluskhide), or do not have horns; and all flesh-eating birds' (De Abst. 4.7). What priests precisely he is talking about is not clear; food avoidances in Egypt itself varied so much that the report is unlikely to refer to all Egyptian priests, and there is a distinct possibility that he is speaking of a group of Semitic origin. It will be noted that the rules for quadrupeds define the same taxon as Lev. 11.3 or the Sabian rule, but in a different way again. The item additional to the Levitical rule here is fish, and here again we frequently meet with the same avoidance elsewhere in the region. These are the only accounts that have survived of complete systems of food avoidance in the region, or near it. But reports of avoidance of many of the individual species or groups of animals whose avoidance is implied in these systems are common, and the pig is naturally the most frequently mentioned. Greek writers often refer to the Jewish prohibition of pork, and the Phoenicians are also mentioned as

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abstainers from pork, though without the mention of any cultic setting (Porphyry De Abst. 1.14;1 Herodian 1.6.22; both third century AD). De Vaux's assertion (1972: 266) that 'abstinence from the meat of the pig was a widespread custom known...among all the Semitic peoples, with the exception of the Babylonians' is a bold deduction from perilously slim evidence, though he is by no means alone in making it. What I have just quoted is almost all the evidence there is. De Vaux's related conclusion that the sacrifice of pigs was everywhere rare is, as we have seen, much better supported, and it does seem possible to assert that wherever cultic practice had a significant influence on diet, pig meat was avoided. There will usually be a high degree of connection between dietary and sacrificial practice, between altar and table. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, most sacrifices are eaten, and most people are likely to assume that their gods have the same dietary preferences as they have themselves. Secondly, and conversely, most people in the ancient world were poor, and did not eat meat regularly; when they did, it would normally be on a special occasion, which would tend to be a cultic one. The implication of Deut. 12.15-16, 20-25 is that the normal practice, even among the well-off, was not to slaughter domestic animals without cultic consecration. This would tend to imply that animals could not be eaten that were unacceptable to those gods to whom sacrifice was offered. It has generally been assumed that those animals will be sacrificed that are significant in the diet; but it is beginning to become clear from our investigations that the contrary influence asserted for Israel by Firmage is true for a much wider area, at least as far as the pig is concerned. And since there is no significant evidence of the eating of other 'unclean' animals, it would follow that wherever the cultic norms of the official sanctuaries were influential enough, the dietary repertoire was confined to the 'clean'. This does not necessarily mean that where pigs were eaten profane slaughter must have been practised. Ulrich Hiibner (1989: 228, 234 n. 44), it is true, argues that the archaeological evidence, which shows 1. involves an inconsistency, since D^IO a'Kf (probably the correct reading: cf. the (De Abst. 1.14); I am uncertain of the precise force of the aorist tense here, perhaps gnomic. This explanation, that the pig used not to exist in that part of the world, is of course not true, yet Porphyry goes on to suggest that the pig is not offered in sacrifice in Cyprus or Phoenicia or in Egypt for the same reason, ignoring the well-known comments about swine in Egypt in Herodotus (2.47).

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masses of animal remains in secular contexts, tells against the assumption that has reigned since Robertson Smith that profane slaughter was a latecomer to the scene. The Deuteronomic permission for secular slaughter was an assimilation of theory to the reality, which was that large parts of the population had long since been practising profane slaughter in everday life.

This may indeed be true to some extent, but the evidence Hiibner relies on does not prove his case, for neither temple nor altar is required for the invocation of a deity. The issue as regards Israel will be discussed further below (Chapter 5, §l.a; Chapter 6, §l.d). All that needs to be said here is that if deities were invoked when pigs were slaughtered they are likely to have been other than the official gods of the public cult. We shall consider some direct evidence for this possibility at §3.d. The other domestic animals, as we have seen, were not normally eaten anywhere. The donkey was bred for transport and labour generally, and when it was old and worn out, its flesh cannot have been appealing, even if the scruples expressed by Porphyry (see Chapter 5, §l.a) failed to restrain one. The dog was subject to more variation in function than the donkey. Dogs probably acted as scavengers everywhere and at all times, but what else did they do? They were useful to the hunter and the shepherd, less so to the farmer. The Old Testament refers once to sheepdogs (Job 30.1), and once to watchdogs (Isa. 56.10). Dogs as pets do not figure in the Hebrew books of the Old Testament; but in the book of Tobit (5.16), Tobias has a faithful dog who accompanies him to Media. There is evidence from some places in the region of the treatment of dogs as family members, when skeletons of dogs are found in articulation, suggesting deliberate burial (e.g. at Jericho from PPNA to MB, Glutton-Brock 1979: 137-38; at Ashdod in the Persian period, Dothan and Porath 1982: 42). It is perhaps significant that, so far as I am aware, no such finds have been made in Iron Age Israel. Certainly the attitudes expressed towards dogs in the Old Testament are almost uniformly negative (Chapter 5, §l.b). Juliet Clutton-Brock comments thus on the relative absence of canine remains from Bronze Age Jericho: It does not mean that the people did not keep dogs at this period, only that they did not eat them. It is very probable that the carcasses of dogs were disposed of in some separate place, perhaps outside the city walls, and they may already have been considered as 'unclean' animals (1979: 141).

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The Ophel is another site where no dog bones were found (Horwitz and Tchernov 1989), and the same conclusion should no doubt be drawn. Perhaps one should add the clarification that it does not follow, where remains of dogs are found, that there they were eaten. As I have already said, there is no evidence for this in the period with which we are concerned. One should also add that there is no way of attaching precise meaning to the term 'unclean' in relation to a culture that is unable to speak to us with its own voice. All we can say for certain is that people in general did not eat dogs, but that we may draw a distinction between the people of Neolithic Jericho and Persian period Ashdod, who buried their dogs within the walls, and those of Bronze Age Jericho and Iron Age Jerusalem, who may have thrown their dogs outside the walls without ceremony, but may on the other hand have sometimes buried them like their own dead outside the walls. The point will be discussed further in the next chapter (§l.b).! Little can be added to this from written sources. Hellenistic writers generally say nothing about Semites eating dogs,2 but there is a curious report in Justinus's second century AD epitome of Pompeius Trogus's history (composed around the turn of the eras), that in the early fifth century Darius sent a message to the Carthaginians calling on them to stop practising human sacrifice and eating dog-meat (canina vesci), and to start cremating their dead; these demands the Carthaginians obeyed eagerly ('cupide paruere') (Justinus 19.1.10). There can hardly be much historical value in this; but just as it is true that the Carthaginians practised human sacrifice and buried their dead, it may also be true that they ate dog meat. This might have been part of a special rite (Movers 1841: I, 404; Doller 1917: 191), but it seems more likely to be connected with the fact that dog-eating is widespread

1. The recent discovery at Ashkelon of a dog cemetery containing more than 700 skeletons casts new light on the issue. The excavator, L.E. Stager, suggests that they may have been sacred animals in the cult of the Phoenician god of healing, Resheph Mukol (Stager 1991). This would mean their function was similar to that of the pigeons and fish I discuss next. 2. Which may be less significant than it seems: dog-eating, despite Porphyry's confident assertion to the contrary (De Abst. 1.14), was at one time not unknown among the Greeks (Simoons 1961: 101-102; Bouffartigue and Patillon 1977: 93, who quote Hippocrates: Regimen 2.46 [an incorrect reference]; Sextus Empiricus: Hypotyposes 3.225; Pliny: Hist. Nat. 29.14).

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among the Berbers to this day (Simoons 1961: 102; de Planhol 1957: 62-63); thus it should probably be put to the account of the native element in the population rather than the Phoenician. I have already referred to the taboos on fish and pigeons found at Harran and Hierapolis and among Porphyry's Egyptian priests. They are in fact much more widespread than this, being frequently mentioned by Greek writers in connection with the cults of the major Syrian-Canaanite goddesses in the later period. The evidence is as follows. Lucian tells us that fish were sacred to Atargatis (De Dea Syria 45), and several authorities say that most Syrians would not eat them; indeed as early as 400 BC Xenophon discovers that the Syrians regard fish as gods (Anabasis 1.4.9; cf. Porphyry: De Abst. 4.15; Artemidorus: Oneirocr. 1.8 [second century AD]; Diodorus Siculus 2.4.3 [first century BC]; Hyginus: Fabulae 197 [c. AD 10]). Atargartis, as Oden has shown (1977: 55ff.), was an amalgam of the three principal Canaanite female deities, Asherah, Astarte and Anat, and of these Asherah was associated with the sea (88ff.; 'Atrt-ym in the Ugaritic texts); so it seems probable that the fish taboo was associated with her before she was merged with the other two (99-100). However, it is not attested in the Ugaritic texts, an important source for the early cult of Asherah; indeed there is a fishing scene in the Baal myth (CTA 4.2.29ff.; Gibson 1978: 57). Somehow Asherah has become transformed from a patroness of fishing into a goddess in whose honour one abstains from fish. Doves, on the other hand, were sacred to Astarte (Philo apud Eusebius: Praep. Ev. 8.14.64) before Atargatis (Lucian De Dea Syria 54; cf. Oden 1977:102), and according to several writers were avoided by Syrians and Palestinians generally (Sextus Empiricus: Hypotyposes 3.223 [second century AD]; Hyginus: Fabulae 197 [c. AD 10]). Once again there is no sign of this taboo in the Ugaritic texts, where pigeons, as we have seen, are frequently prescribed for sacrifice, as in Leviticus: e.g. KTU 1.119.10 (Xella 1981: 25). Owing to the loss of bird and fish remains it is difficult to confirm or refine this information by means of material evidence. But we can consider its significance on its own. It would seem that these prohibitions were fairly widespread, and are likely to have emerged already by the fifth century BC; but they had not existed, at least at Ugarit, at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. Thus their development seems likely to have been virtually contemporary with the formation of the

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Levitical dietary code. I shall attempt to evaluate the significance of this at a later stage (see Chapter 5, §3 and Chapter 6, §2.a.3). d. Exceptional Cases: The Sacrifice of Pigs 1. Outside the Bible. The rules I have established in §b above govern, so far as we can see, the normal cults of public sanctuaries throughout the West Semitic cultural area. What then of the exceptions to the general rule that pigs are not sacrificed, detailed by de Vaux in the article to which I have already referred (1972; cf. von Rohr Sauer 1968 and Stendebach 1974)? His conclusion is that 'the custom was... restricted to certain pults or to lesser forms of religion such as magic and exorcisms. The pig was a demoniacal animal' (p. 265); it was therefore appropriately offered to demons or deities of the underworld. His article arose out of his own discovery at Tell el-Farah (North) of a subterranean chamber of MB date, containing a bench along one wall and a large half-buried jar in one corner; little else apart from some pig bones, and in the jar the bones of a pig embryo (detailed description and drawings in de Vaux 1957: 559ff.). He argued that this chamber could only be interpreted as a sanctuary of some kind, and the bones as the remains of offerings. He also seized on certain slight indications on the contemporary surface (p. 564) as a sign that the chamber had originally been connected with a sanctuary above ground, and he compared the so-called cella discovered underneath the late MB temple at Alalakhby Woolley (Woolley 1955: 66ff.). He goes on in both articles to point out that the only other discovery of pig bones in a cultic situation in Palestine, at Gezer, was also in a subterranean situation (Macalister 1912: 378-79); he points to certain iconographic evidence from excavations in Palestine; then he draws in a chain of examples from literary sources of the offering of pigs in countries round a wide arc of the Eastern Mediterranean: Babylonia, Greece, Egypt; only Palestine-Syria itself offering no evidence worth speaking of, other than Isa. 65.4-5; 66.3, 17, which are far more difficult to interpret than one might suppose from reading de Vaux. Methodologically this approach seems very dubious. Only what might reasonably be connected with Canaanite or Syrian peoples should be considered relevant to establish an otherwise dubious thesis. This point also vitiates Milgrom's briefer survey (1991: 650ff.), with its heavy reliance on Hittite evidence. That leaves us with the bones from Gezer and Tell el-Farah, some

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obscure information from Cyprus and about the Sabians, and the Isaiah passages. There are problems of interpretation with all of these pieces of evidence. The archaeological evidence is solid enough if it has been interpreted correctly; but in both cases we rely on the inevitably subjective opinion of the excavator, for neither locus obviously proclaims itself as cultic: neither contains an altar, an impossibility underground in any case; so the interpretation of the bones as the remains of sacrifices creates an obvious difficulty. Even if they are correctly interpreted as cultic, there is no direct evidence about the object of the cult, nor is de Vaux's understanding of the meaning of the underground location the only possible one. However, as I have no alternative to offer, it seems reasonable to accept this interpretation provisionally, and to regard these sites as possible evidence of a subterranean cult offering slaughtered pigs to the gods of the dead, or to the dead themselves. Of course, this would be accepted more easily if it could be supported by other evidence. There was always heavy Phoenician influence in Cyprus; we have already seen Porphyry's testimony that the Cypriots did not sacrifice pigs. But the Byzantine writer Joannes Lydus (John of Lydia) asserts that on one day every year, April 2, wild boars were sacrificed to Aphrodite (De Mensibus 4.65). John preserved tradition about the Roman festival calendar, along with information like this from elsewhere. Obviously it is very difficult to say how far back his information goes; his dating of a Cypriot festival by the Roman calendar scarcely inspires confidence. Another rather interesting passage is quoted by Athenaeus (Deipnosophistae 3.95f-96a) from the fourthcentury BC comic dramatist Antiphanes, to the effect that in Cyprus pigs were sacred to Aphrodite, and (presumably only at certain times) the people prevented them from eating dung and made the cattle eat it instead. If this piece of third-hand evidence is reliable, we might interpret it on the lines that the pig, normally an unclean animal, became regarded as clean for the purposes of the cult, and that this involves a clean animal in taking up the role of the bearer of pollution, symbolized by the exchange of diets. A rite possibly involving a similar symbolism appears to have been celebrated once a year by the Sabians at Harran: from the 4th to the 10th of the month Kanun al-Awwal (Chislev) a dome stood in the sanctuary of Baltha, that is the planet Venus, and 'in front of this dome they slaughter sacrificial beasts chosen from as many kinds of

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animals as possible, four-footed beasts and birds' (al-Nadim, Fihrist 9.5.9 [p. 762]). An alternative translation (Chwolsohn 1856) refers to the quantity rather than the range of kinds. Even on Dodge's translation it cannot be certain that the writer is saying that the normal restrictions on animals acceptable for sacrifice are lifted. The rite quoted as Sabian by de Vaux (1972: 260-61; cf. Smith 1894: 290), in which on one day a year a pig was sacrificed and eaten, belongs to the group called Rufusiyun (Fihrist 9.7 [p. 768]), and Chwolsohn (ad loc.} rightly points out that this is unlikely to be a group at Harran; 'Sabian' came to be used by Arab writers as a general term for pagan. But though we cannot locate them, they are no doubt West Semitic, for the implication is that otherwise they did not eat or sacrifice pigs. The evidence so far cited does not seem to be a very sound framework within which to interpret the Isaiah passages that themselves offer so many difficulties. We have excluded much of de Vaux's evidence on geographical grounds, and the iconographic examples he quotes from Palestine (cf. also von Rohr Sauer 1968; Brentjes 1962; Hiibner 1989) do nothing to show that pigs were sacrificed. It is not legitimate to conclude from the representation of an animal in a supposedly cultic context that it must be a sacred animal or likely to have been sacrificed. But there is a broader framework that may help to bolster these weak indications by making it in general more likely that West Semites did on occasion sacrifice animals normally unacceptable (cf. W.R. Smith 1894: 290-94). We have already seen that at Ugarit the royal rituals required the offering of an ass, not as part of the ordinary cult, but once a year, and also for an extraordinary ritual, which lacks a rubric owing to the fragmentary state of the tablet, but which cannot have been held frequently. Also at Ugarit a goose, not ordinarily called for, was sacrificed, again once a year, to the infernal powers. But it is especially significant that human sacrifice was practised among these peoples, the best evidence being (archaeological) from Carthage and its colonies, and (literary) from the Old Testament. George Heider (1985; cf. now also Day 1989) gives detailed examination to all the evidence, and concludes that 'Molech' was an underworld deity, and that the traditional interpretation of the Old Testament passages speaking of the 'passing of children through the fire to Molech' as of human sacrifice is correct; it would be better to translate 'offer by fire'. The latter of these conclusions seems safe enough; the former may be rather

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shakier: it is rejected most recently by M.S. Smith (1990: 136). At Carthage and at other places in the West the calcined bones of children have been found buried in jars in special cemeteries, called 'tophets' by the excavators after the Hebrew term. In apparent association with these interments are stelae, in later centuries usually inscribed and recording vows to Baal Hammon and to Tanit, the principal city gods, usually identified with El and Asherah (Warmington 1960: 129), and not regarded as chthonic deities. It is these inscriptions that use the word mlk, which, as Eissfeldt has shown (1935) and Heider admits, is an expression for a type of sacrifice, and not the name of a god. There can be no reasonable doubt that the children had been sacrificed by fire, and this can be linked with the classical reports of child sacrifice at Carthage (e.g. Diodorus 20.14.4-7: to 'Kronos') (Stager 1982, Heider 1985: 196ff.). Now this cult is neither to extraordinary deities nor is it an annual event; though the classical sources speak of mass sacrifices at times of crisis, the archaeological evidence is quite clearly of a cult kept going entirely by private vows, presumably by the parents of the children. It is thus not a public cult in the sense of one funded by the state or celebrated by its officers; thus we can speak of a private practice of human sacrifice at Carthage. Recently, however, evidence has turned up that may link a cult of this kind with the cult of the dead, and also, perhaps, with the sacrifice of pigs. At Pozo Moro in southeast Spain, within the area of Punic influence, a tower has been discovered which was plainly used as a crematorium; and on the sides of the tower there were reliefs, one of which depicts a two-headed monster sitting on a throne in front of a table receiving a child in a bowl in his right hand, while a person over the table from him prepares to slaughter a second child. What is particularly significant for our purpose is that the monster's left hand is laid on a pig lying on its back on the table (Heider 1985: 189ff.; Almagro-Gordea 1980). Charles Kennedy (unpublished, quoted by Heider, 1985: 190) interprets the monster as Death, especially as the other reliefs connect the tower with the cult of the dead. The relief might have been considered as the depiction merely of some myth if it were not on the side of a building plainly used for the burning of human bodies, and if the style of the reliefs did not lead us plainly to a culture where the sacrifice of children was customary.1 The pig seems 1. Shelby Brown (1991: 70-72) is more cautious, commenting that the meaning of this one out of many mythological scenes 'cannot yet be known'.

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to suggest that pigs as well as children were offered, though the animal bones found in the tophets alongside the human ones (normally in separate jars and evidently as substitutes for children) appear usually to be of lambs or goats with the occasional bird (Stager 1982: 7; cf. Fedele 1979: 84 [Tharros in Sardinia]). It will be recalled, however, that the bones of a pig embryo found at Tell el-Farah were in a half-buried jar, a situation that offers something of a parallel. It is clear that we can say that in cults on extraordinary occasions, to extraordinary deities, or outside the public cult, extraordinary victims may be offered. It is more difficult to show, if we leave out of consideration the biblical evidence and confine ourselves to the Canaanite-Aramaic world, that the pig was distinctively the representative of the infernal world, and used specifically in sacrifices to its powers. It remains to be seen whether that is a natural interpretation that can be laid upon the biblical texts. 2. The Isaiah Texts. Discussion of the Isaianic texts that appear to refer to the sacrifice or cultic consumption of pigs and other unclean animals (Isa. 65.3-5; 66.3; 66.17) is bedevilled by disagreement about the date and provenance of these passages and of Trito-Isaiah' generally, and recently even about their meaning. Although Hiibner (1989: 229) has laid stress on the supposed late date of these passages1 as indicating their dependence on the law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the evidence we have accumulated should make clear the irrelevance of the premise to the conclusion. While the Pentateuchal laws may have reached their final form relatively late in the postexilic period, pork was unclean, in the sense of being unacceptable for cultic use, long before then and probably even before the priestly law was formulated at all. Hence although the author, and the practitioners of the practices condemned, if they are a reality, may be thinking of the priestly law, that does not disqualify the passages as supporting evidence for attitudes and practices of earlier times, especially if it is possible to trace in them the outlines of a coherent practice that is more than simply defiance thumbed at the priestly law or a satirical inversion of it. More problematic for us is the case mounted by Paul Hanson (1979: 1. Vermeylen 1978: 500-501: fourth century; Steck 1985: 76-77: third century; cf. earlier Volz 1932: 200, 280-81; against, most recently, e.g. Hanson 1979: 32208; Achtemeier 1982:16: late fifth century.

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146-47,179-80, 197ff.) that all the apparent attacks on pagan practices in Trito-Isaiah are intended ironically as satirical attacks on the obsessively orthodox priestly establishment, and are not meant to be taken any more literally than the charge in 59.5-6 that they hatch adders' eggs and spin spider's webs, or the indictment in 57.5-8 that they sacrifice their children or build a harlot's bed on a hilltop (p. 147).

Hanson's reading is a persuasive one, but, as Theodore Lewis notes (1989: 160), it does not necessarily put the passages out of court as evidence for the real existence of the practices listed (such as the sacrifice of children!). The issue is this. If the passages are nothing more than rhetorical accumulations of imagined activities designed to make the most repulsive impression possible, then of course they are no evidence for the reality of the activities. But if they are references, however satirically intended, to cults that really existed in the cultural environment, then of course they are such evidence. If it is possible to show that the latter is the case, then we need not embark on the difficult task of deciding whether Hanson's reading is in general correct— difficult because the presence of irony, almost by definition, is undetectable by literary means; a knowledge of the situation is required, and this is just what we do not have a priori. How are we to choose between the alternatives? My suggestion is that we should examine 65.3-5 and 66.17 in particular to see whether they may be seen as coherent allusions to one particular cult. It is unlikely that we could include 66.3 here, since it seems to be a rather systematic recitation of unacceptable offerings. But 65.3 and 66.17 both speak of cultic activities in 'the gardens', hagganndr, the proposed emendation to haggaggot, 'the roofs' is made less probable by the double attestation. Where and what were these gardens? They might be interpreted with reference to 1.29 (Whybray 1975: 269; Achtemeier 1982: 124 [but hardly as 'high places']), but another interpretation lies to hand in the phrase in 65.4 'sitting in (or among) the graves'. Gardens were sometimes used for burials (2 Kgs 21.18; Jn 19.41), so that it seems at least possible that conversely sometimes cemeteries may be referred to as 'gardens'. The following phrase ubannesurim ydlinu has occasioned difficulty by its vagueness: the usual translation is 'they spend the night in secret places', and it has been held to refer to the practice of incubation at sanctuaries to obtain a dream or vision (as Solomon does in 1 Kgs 3)—note the LXX

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addition of dia enupnia 'through dreams'; but 'secret' is not a very accurate translation of a word that should mean 'guarded', and it is not at all clear what the latter would mean. But LXX has 'in the caves', and Dahood (1960: 408-409) has proposed to read ben sunm 'within the rocks (or mountains)', that is, in caves, on this basis.1 Caves, natural and artificial, were of course also frequently used for burials. There seems then at least some possibility that these two passages are a consistent description of a cult of the dead, and that the consumption of pig's flesh, and in 66.17 of the flesh of other unclean animals, is connected with this. I am confirmed in this view by Lewis's convincing presentation of the case that a cult of the dead existed in ancient Israel (Lewis 1989: 99ff.; cf. also Heider 1985: 389-90; M.S. Smith 1990: 126ff.). Lewis gives consideration to Isa. 65.4 (158-60), but first and at especial length to Isa. 56.9-57.13 (143-58). He sees references to the cult of the dead and to necromancy throughout this passage, for example in 57.6, where he follows Irwin (1967) in connecting the puzzling MT hlqy nhl with the Ugaritic hlq 'perish' (cf. Dahood 1965: 35, 73, 99, 207), so that the sentence reads 'among the departed of the wady2 is your portion'. The significance of this from our point of view is that the previous verse refers to the sacrifice of children, and uses the phrase 'under the clefts of the crags',3 which is a close parallel to Dahood's emendation in 65.4. In other words, the acceptance of such an interpretation of the passage increases the coherence of the evidence. Yet when Lewis comes to 65.4 he says merely (1989: 159) that 'the narrator...mixes the metaphor of defilement through death with that of defilement through the violation of dietary practices', and that, while a diet might have been expected that fitted better with the death imagery (i.e. excrement and urine as in 2 Kgs 18.27 [Xella 1980]), 'it seems that our author preferred swine flesh to describe defiling food (cf. Isaiah 66.3, 17)' (n. 108). He has evidently not considered the possibility canvassed here, that the eating of swine flesh 1. This reading is not really dependent on a dubious restoration by Avigad (1955: 163-66) of an inscription from the Kidron valley (cf. Ussishkin 1969), but will stand on its own merits. Lewis (1989: 160) rejects it in the light of Isa. 45.1819, where he finds a parallel in inon. I do not find this convincing. 2. Kennedy (1989) goes further by translating *7m as 'grave' (cf. Job 21.33, 28.4).

3. inon*7m

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was an actual part of the ritual referred to. The fact that it is twice referred to in this connection increases this possibility, and so does the other evidence reviewed above, fragmentary as it is. The evidence for the use of other unclean animals than the pig in the cult of the dead is certainly more fragmentary still. The mouse is mentioned in Isa. 66.17, along with a vague reference to 'the seqes' for which the Syriac text reads 'the Seres'. Kennedy (1989: 50) refers to the discovery of two camels in partial articulation in a tomb of the late fourth to early third century at Tell Mikhmoret (North), and suggests that this may be the earliest evidence for the beduin dahiyyeh sacrifice on the anniversary of death.1 As far as I have been able to discover, we have no evidence of any similar custom involving the dog (but compare Isa. 66.3 for what it is worth). My tentative conclusion is that although the evidence is scattered and difficult to interpret there is some indication that in SyriaPalestine, as well as in neighbouring countries, the pig, and possibly other animals, while not normally used in the public cults, was employed as a victim, and eaten, in obscure and perhaps often secret cults offered to the dead or the deities of the underworld, or both— sometimes perhaps also to goddesses of fertility. At Ugarit in the public cult this seems to have been true of the goose, whereas there the ass was employed in certain unusual sacrifices, but not otherwise. It does seem to be possible, however, that the pig in particular, if not also other 'unclean' animals, was the focus of degrading associations that made it unacceptable for the normal public cult of city and tribal gods, and for eating by self-respecting bourgeois (see immediately below), but appropriate for the worship of powers who had themselves to bear the odium of being the enemies of the human race. 4. The Pig: Some Interpretations a. Politics and the Pig The virtual absence of the pig from remains associated with public cult places is quite plain in the material set out in Table B. But the same virtually total absence of pig remains is shared by some large or important urban centres: monarchic Jerusalem (the Ophel), Iron II Lachish, which was a regional centre of government under the 1. But the report to which he refers (Paley and Porath 1983) makes no mention of camels and dates the tombs a century earlier.

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monarchy (in both these places no identifiable pig remains appeared whatsoever) and Ashdod, where the very small quantity of pig bones is attributed to wild pig by Haas. Ashdod was by far the largest of the Philistine cities, and one of the largest cities in Palestine (A. Mazar 1990: 308). We also surmised (above, §3.b.2) that pork was not eaten at Ugarit, and it may well be that the abstinence from pork by the Phoenicians is to be categorized in the same way, since the ethnic term 'Phoenicians' refers usually to the people of a small number of urban commercial centres on the Levantine coast. The extremely high proportion of beef in the diet at Lachish is notable. The best explanation is probably that the area excavated ('the Sanctuary and the Residency') contained the homes of the dominant elite in the city, and they would naturally have had the most expensive and prestigious diet. In spite of this they had no pork, a clear sign that pork was the very opposite of prestigious. In contrast, the people who lived on the Ophel in Jerusalem in the later monarchy had as little beef as the average steppe-dweller, and a good deal of fowl in their diet. Is this the sign of a lower-class residential area? Yet these people also ate no pork. These two sites are among the very few that could be described as urban in the modern sense of the word; that is, that their inhabitants depended for their living not on primary production but on industry or services. Their diet was governed not by the constraints of the productive system in which they were involved but by choice and their purse. The Lachish elite, whose purse was long, chose not to eat pork; the Jerusalem artisans must either have refused to eat it or found it unavailable. In either case one may deduce that there was no demand for it, and very likely the habits of the poor were, as so often happens, determined by the habits of the rich with their greater power to determine the operation of the laws of supply and demand. These places are Jewish, but the phenomenon is equally striking at Ugarit, in Phoenicia at a later time, and at Ashdod. In all these cases we are dealing with metropolitan centres where cultural factors may have had a greater power to determine practice; and apparently, despite the distance in time and space, and despite ethnic differences, similar attitudes existed. It may well be that the meat that was available at these places came generally from the city temple. On the other hand, at more rural sites suitable for the keeping of pigs, we generally find at least some, though quantities in the Iron Age are, as we have noted, often very small. Of course we should add that there

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are in the Bronze Age several urban sites and still in the Iron Age a few where there are reasonable quantities of pig remains. In an unpublished study of Middle Bronze Age sites referred to by Horwitz (1989b: 50), Hesse et al (1986)1 have attempted to argue that the smaller and more rural a site is, and hence the more independence it is likely to have of the economic power of the large urban centres, the higher the frequency of pig remains it will have. This is a prediction derived from Diener and Robkin's theory that the prohibition of pork was a means of political and economic control. This theory is developed in reference to the Islamic prohibition of pork, but if there is anything in it it will apply also to the earlier period. Essentially it is a political explanation: the prohibition is explained as part of the processes of appropriation by which local communities are linked to the metropolis (Diener and Robkin 1978: 501). In the right conditions the keeping of pigs is a very effective means of exploiting local resources, which might otherwise have been available for the centre. One of the goals of early Islamic political policy was the destruction of local autonomy and the appropriation of local surpluses (Diener and Robkin 1978: 503) to maintain the loyalty of the regime's urban and nomadic supporters. 'In such a context, farmers who fed their grain to the pigs rather than delivering up badly needed surpluses to the fledgling state, were indeed engaging in defiling behaviour'. The eating of pork was therefore forbidden so that agricultural surpluses could be appropriated by the state. Diener and Robkin note that in remote rural areas in the Islamic world even today (for example in the Atlas mountains— Coon 1951) pigs may be kept secretly, while of course the rule is kept strictly in urban areas. Hesse et al. generalize this into the hypothesis that frequencies of pig remains will be related to the ranking of the community on an urban-rural scale, assuming that the centre's control over rural communities that were economically largely independent would have been loose. As we have seen there is some evidence to support this hypothesis. Horwitz (1989b: 50) notes that the degree of control would depend on the strength of market relationships. It has to be said, and was, by Raphael Patai in the same issue of Current Anthropology in which Diener and Robkin's article appeared, that their theory ignores the most basic fact about the process of appropriation: that tax and tithe are the first call on peasant incomes; 1.

I have unfortunately not seen this paper.

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the tax-collector is not interested in the way the peasants use the crops that he leaves them with, so long as he gets his cut, which is based on total crop yields, or some more arbitrary measure. The village did not have the choice of diminishing the amount it paid to those in authority; had the villager wanted to feed grain to his animals, he would have to take it from the small heap left to him and not from the big one which went to the city (Patai 1978: 520).

Christians were allowed to continue to raise pigs, and paid higher taxes!—conclusive disproof of the theory in itself. A prohibition of pork would not therefore serve the purpose Diener and Robkin have in mind; indeed, the effect of such a process of appropriation in itself on the use of pork would be the precise opposite of that postulated by Hesse et al.\ the village would be deprived of the surplus from which it might raise pigs, and the city would be enabled to use it for that purpose among others. The observed facts must be explained differently; but of course in the nature of the case the explanation must have a political aspect. Horwitz remarks that 'regardless of the...origin of this food taboo...the enforcement of this prohibition could have offered a means of political and economic control over the population' (1989b: 50). More accurately, its enforcement would demonstrate such control. Hence, supposing it was related to the beliefs or interests of political and religious elites in some way—as is certainly suggested by the absence of pigs from the remains of sacrifices at temples presumably controlled by such elites—if they attempted to enforce it, their attempt would have most success in the city and least in the remote villages; and this is suggested by our figures, and may be what Hesse et al. demonstrate. Horwitz herself speculatively relates the decline in pig frequency in the Refa'im valley from EB IV to MB II to the rise of a market enabling urban consumers to influence rural production. This observation does not therefore in itself explain the attitudes towards the pig that we find in the evidence, but it places them in an important social context. And its place in this context may be of significance for other aspects of the complex of attitudes that we find both in the Old Testament and outside it. The priestly system of dietary prohibitions is not unique; it is one example of a set of very similar systems of restrictions that we can associate with city-based elites throughout the area, especially in the first millennia BC and AD, and perhaps also earlier. And we might well speculate that some

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aspects of those restrictions were reinforced by urban contempt for the village. b. Pastoralists and the Pig These considerations do not explain why the beginning of the Iron Age marks a serious decline in the use of the pig, and why attitudes condemning it as unclean are most conspicuous in the Iron Age and subsequently. So far from being a time of greater urbanization and political control, the early Iron Age is a time of the decline or destruction of many urban centres, of the dispersal of settlements and of the extension of tribal rather than urban control over many parts of the country. Only with the foundation of the Israelite monarchy in Iron II does the urban control of the country begin slowly to advance from its state in the Late Bronze Age. Here we take up again the suggestion, arising from a combination of Simoons and Finkelstein, that the decline of the pig at this point may have been caused by the resettlement and increase in political power of formerly nomadic groups. We touch here on the most contentious issue in the study of Israelite history today. Besides Finkelstein 1988, which I am here referring to, we may compare among others Gottwald 1979, Lemche 1985, Callaway 1985, Coote and Whitelam 1987, London 1989.1 Most of these views give some prominence to the rapid spread of settlements in the hill country in the early Iron Age, though Finkelstein's is by far the most thorough study of them. And if we had the relevant studies, there would be no surprise for any of these views if the highland settlements mostly lacked pigs, as Izbet Sartah does, for as we have already seen water problems make the area generally unsuitable for the keeping of pigs. What needs explaining is the sharp fall in pig production nearly everywhere in the country from this time on. Whereas some other recent views of the origin of Israel have peasant populations moving from the lowlands to the highlands and becoming 'retribalized', Finkelstein believes (1988: 338) that 'most of the people who settled in the hill country in the Iron I period came from a background of pastoralism, and not directly [Finkelstein's italics] from the urban Canaanite polity of the Late Bronze period'. And by pastoralism Finkelstein means in this connection pastoral nomadism: the 1. There is a useful collection of articles surveying the present state of the question in SJOT 1991, 2.1-116.

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way of life of people spending at least part of their lives on the move with their flocks. In his view such people formed a very large part of the population throughout the Late Bronze Age, following a severe contraction of the urban system at the end of the Middle Bronze (p. 340). He shows that the process of settlement was slow, beginning with the eastern slope of the central hill-country, which was the easiest part for mixed cereal growing and pastoralism, and proceeding westward and into Galilee and Judah over the next two hundred years. The creation of a monarchy based on the hill-country settlements would, in Finkelstein's view, have led to the political power of people who had a not very distant nomadic past, and the political conditions must have led to their infiltration into the lowlands. These people would have lost any skill in or desire for pig-breeding that their ancestors may have had, and it is not improbable that they would also have had attitudes of contempt for the pig (cf. Simoons 1961: 41; above, Chapter 3, §2.b), though this is not absolutely necessary to explain the results. If so, their attitudes, as the Israelite monarchy became consolidated and began to rely on older-established urban elites, would have smoothly fitted in with the latter's cultic and civic rejection of the pig. It seems likely also that the settlement of nomadic people was not a once-for-all event in Israel, but that there was a continuous flow of people reinforcing such attitudes at the centre. Jehu's alliance with Jonadab ben Rechab (2Kgs 10.15-16; cf. Jer. 35.6-10) is only the most remarkable example of a trend that is likely to have existed throughout the nation's history in the land.1 It also suggests that it was among the pastoral nomads that the strongest support for the exclusive cult of Yahweh often lay, and the coincident strength of these attitudes must be a key to the history that we shall have to try to tell. It is also likely to be important that geography made Judah far more dominated by nomadic, or lately nomadic elements than Israel proper (Thompson 1992). It is of course in Judah that the dietary law took its present form. It is not possible here to discuss the evidence for Finkelstein's view and its rivals in general. All that I can do is to suggest the bearing that the evidence of animal use may have on the discussion. There are two main elements to Finkelstein's theory: the predominance of pastoral 1. Frick (1971), however (followed by Gottwald 1979: 294, etc.), argues that the Rechabites are likely to have been travelling metal-workers like the Kenites rather than pastoralists.

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nomads in the Late Bronze Age, and the source of the agrarian settlers of the Iron I period in indigenous pastoralists rather than either outsiders or peasants escaping from or rebelling against the Canaanite city-state system. The first element is easier to discuss. As I have mentioned (§2.b.l), Finkelstein (1988: 343-44; cf. 1985: 164) points to isolated sanctuaries and cemeteries, common in the LBA, and also in EB IV/MB I, but not according to him at periods 'characterized by urban activity' (1988: 344), as evidence of the existence of a large population of (nomadic) pastoralists in those periods; and this evidence derives some of its conviction from faunal remains. The virtual lack of pig remains at Shiloh does not prove it, as must now be clear, but the very low proportion of cattle remains is strong evidence for it. It is not of course possible to demonstrate directly the background of a community from its faunal remains, since they bear directly only on their use of animals once they had reached the site. But that may nevertheless be influenced by their background, which would be one factor, alongside the environmental constraints, in the formation of the characteristic elements in their culture. No one result by itself may be said to conflict with any of the rival views to Finkelstein's, but the balance of the Iron Age results in general may surely be regarded as surprising if a view like Gottwald's were correct. He explicitly rejects the view that pastoral nomadism was a dominant element in early Israel; it was simply a 'subsidiary sub-specialization within the dominant economic mode of production, namely, intensive agriculture' (1979: 460), and was involved in the same way in opposition to domination by the city. But if we are correct in seeing contempt for the pig as being characteristic of the city over against the village, we should certainly not on that hypothesis expect pig use to decline after the victory of the peasants in their supposed revolt against the cities. Coote and Whitelam's view might, however, be reconciled somewhat better with the results, since they allow for the participation of pastoral nomads as such in the creation of new settlements (1987: 12728), and do not think in terms of a direct revolt against the cities. I am far from accepting the naive view of pastoralism, amply disproved in recent studies, as one undifferentiated form of life that can be set over against settled agriculture as simply opposed. The close interaction between them—the mutual dependence of pastoralists and farmers, and the spectrum of possibilities in pastoralism from its practice as an important adjunct to farming (very important in the hill-

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country; see Hopkins 1985: 246ff.) through seasonal transhumance by specialists from a settled community to full nomadism—is now well recognized (cf. Gottwald 1979: 435ff.; Lemche 1985: 84ff.). Their close interdependence within one community may be demonstrated by some of the results in our table, especially in some Middle Bronze Age communities such as Tell Jemmeh or the Refa'im valley, which combine high values for sheep and goats with moderately high ones for pigs. But it is just this kind of situation that could have led to the selection of the pig as a focus of contempt by pastoralists involved with settled communities yet anxious not to be identified with them. I discuss some parallel examples in the next chapter of the selection of animals as identifying marks within dichotomized communities. The decline of settlement in the LBA, followed by a revival led by many of the people who had withdrawn into nomadism, repeated a process that, it is generally recognized, had occurred, perhaps in a more severe form, eight hundred years earlier in EB IV/MB I. It is possible that that episode also had resulted in the coming to power of people inheriting the pastoralist attitude towards the pig, and this may explain why the city elites already held attitudes that chimed in with the views of more recently settled people. The example of Egypt (Chapter 5, §l.b) may be an analogy or a connected development. Naturally the nomads in process of settlement in the early Iron Age will not have been the only element in the population, and this may account for the fact that the Iron Age evidence is not uniform; most places had a few pigs, and some have modest numbers. The most important incoming element in the population was the Philistines. But the results from their settlements are divergent and impossible to interpret consistently. At Ashdod and Tell Qasile (a new settlement) there are virtually no pig remains. But at Tel Miqne (Ekron) their incidence actually rises with the beginning of the Iron Age, along with those of cattle. As Hesse points out (1986: 23), this points to 'an intensification and centralization of the animal production effort'. What social or political developments lie behind this process we are unable to say; but clearly it is an entirely different sort of development from the establishment of generally small new agricultural settlements, which was going on in the hill country at the same time, though one effect that it has in common with that is the intensification of agricultural production.

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c. Conclusions The evidence taken as a whole rules out Hiibner's conclusion (1989: 229) that the Jewish conception of the pig as unclean originated relatively late, in the outlook of exilic and postexilic times. On the contrary, it seems in various forms to have been universal in the whole broader ancient Near Eastern cultural area. It does seem to have become more strongly expressed as time went on, but certainly not only among Jews. There may be a concurrence of ecological and cultural factors in it. The environmental conditions meant that wherever the pig was found it was a consumer of human wastes. Evidence we shall be looking at in the next chapter suggests that this would mean it would be likely to be abominated by those who could afford to express delicacy, and that it would always be excluded from the table of the gods, which represented the dignity of society and state. We can, on the other hand, distinguish between Egypt and Babylonia, where the pig was widely used as food although excluded from the altar, and Syria and Palestine, where it was a less common article of diet, declining still further as time went on and becoming formally abominated as food among many peoples, especially in religious connections. There are obvious underlying environmental factors here; there was no problem about water in the flood plains of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, whereas in the intervening area only certain restricted zones were suitable. But this, though it is probably a necessary condition, does not sufficiently explain why pig meat should have fallen under a general ban among Jews, Phoenicians and others. Rather, the animal seems to have become the symbolic focus of social tensions between shepherd and peasant and city and village, and was rejected as food wherever priestly elites were strong enough to bring a cultic community under the rule of the altar. This was true in a pre-eminent degree of the postexilic Jewish community, but not of them alone. 5. General Conclusions As I have taken care to emphasize, the fundamental constraints on the diet of human communities derive from their natural environment and the equipment available to them for exploiting it. This is as true of the ancient Levant as of any other region and period; hence the dominance of the flocks in their economy, at least in numbers, and the correspondingly lesser place taken by the herd; and hence the relatively small place taken by pigs in the diet in most places during the Bronze

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and Iron Ages. The conditions that would enable the keeping of pigs on a large scale were generally absent. But this did not prohibit the keeping of pigs altogether, as the remains show. Nor can it account for the other restrictions on diet that both written and material evidence attest. Cultural factors enter here, and their significance is shown most obviously by the restrictions on the use of particular species as sacrificial victims, again attested by both kinds of evidence. Throughout the period sacrifice in the regular public cult is virtually confined, among mammals, to ruminants, mainly, of course, the three normal domestic species used for food. Pigs are not merely rare in this character but entirely excluded, except in obscure rites associated with the cult of the dead. Animals commonly kept for other purposes than food are virtually never eaten and are sacrificed very rarely. This avoidance of the donkey and the dog is widespread far beyond our region, and is easily explicable. Other restrictions, and particularly that of the pig, have a more complex background. Finally we have to say that the evidence is insufficient to say very much about wild beasts and birds, except to observe (1) that they formed in most places a very small proportion of the diet, (2) that where they appear it is overwhelmingly the 'clean' gazelle and fallow deer that figure, with wild boar in some places, and (3) that there is direct evidence in late times that at least in some places the same rule that we find in the Old Testament was applied: that of only eating ruminants among mammals (that is, animals following the model of sacrificial animals). The position is, then, that the biblical system of rules arose in a setting that was eminently compatible with it: it required no sharp changes in habitual dietary and cultic practices general in the land and its environs at least since the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. This is especially true of the accepted dietary and sacrificial customs in Israel—in evidence from the beginning of the nation's existence, or at least settlement, in the land, established by its nomadic forebears and encouraged by its priests in line with very ancient practice in the Near East—can be shown to correspond closely to the rules formulated, presumably at a relatively late stage, in the Old Testament. However, we have not yet come to understand these customs or rules from the inside, as it were, in terms of the associations evoked in the members of Israelite society by the animals in question and their relation to society itself. This is what we shall attempt to do in the next chapter.

Table A Sheep/Goats

Cattle

Pigs

50

24 6.3 440 12

49 13 595 17

226 70 923 50

28 9.2 458 25

29 7.4 264

0.33

14

0.44

280 74

Chalcolithic: number (percentage) weight (gm) (percentage)

1800

Early Bronze: number (percentage) weight (gm) (percentage)

Deer (Total)

10 2.5 528 15 1 8

Table B: Proportions of major animal remains at Palestinian and Syrian sites, Bronze and Iron Ages (percentages of total number of identified fragments) Site Arad Araq el-Emir Ashdod Beersheba Ebal Ein-Habsor EnShadud HayazHOyiik 'Izbet Saitah Jebel Qa'aqir

Source Lemau 1978 Toplyn 1983 Haas 1971 Hellwing 1984 Horwitz 1986-87 Gophna 19722 Horwitz 1985 Buitenhuis 1985 Hellwing et al. 1986 Horwitz 1987

1. No equids or dogs. 2. Apttd Hakker-Orion 197S.

Area

n jo cp n he n nv ev nfh he

Period

Type

EB

dom dom dom dom

Iron I—Rom. Iron Iron Iron I

EB EBI EB Irani IntB

cult

dom dom dom dom tomb

Sheep/Goats

87 76 49 83 65 66 29 70 53 100

Cattle

7.4

9 37 13 21

Pigs

Others

__

6 0.3(wild) large rodents 5 0.5 __

fallow deer 101

__

__

22 8.2 34

24 10 0.4

gazelles 33 equids 25

__

__

camels 8

Site Jericho

Source Clutton-Brock 19791

Period

Type

jv

Area

EB MB

dom

Jericho tombs Jerusalem Ophel Lachish Lachish LachishVI Lachish, Fosse temple Ma'abarat Megiddo Nahariyah Pella Refa'im valley

Grosvenor et al. 1965 Horwitz et al, 1989 Drori 19792 Lernau 19753 Drori 19764 Tufnell 1940 Hakker-Orion 1975 Bate 1938 Ducos 1968 McNicoll 19826 Horwitz 1989a/b

jv he sh sh sh sh cp nv cp jv he

EB—MB Iron II

tomb

LB Iron

LB MB—LB Bronze Chalcol.—LB

MB5

Iron EBIV MB II

dom dom dom/cult cult cult

dom tomb cult

dom dom tomb

dom Horwitz 1987 Hellwing et al. 1985

g he

Hakker-Orion 1975 Taanach Tel Aphek and Tel Dalit Hellwing et al. 1984

nv nfh

Sasa Shiloh

Tel Dan Area B Tel Gat

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Wapnish et al. 1977 Ducos 1968

jv sh

MB II

LB Iron I Bronze

EB MB Iron

EBH

tomb cult cult

dom dom dom dom dom

Sheep/Goats

76 63 91 87 62 48 74 X X X 88 X

81 90 65 79 92 75 X 64 49 58 51

Cattle

12 23 1 5 21 47 11 X

Pigs

1.8 7.7 0.5 __

6

Others gazelles 5.5 equids 7.5 birds 7 dogs 9

__ __ __

birds and fish

many

X 12 X 3.1 __ 18.5

8 6.6 23 X 21 33 35 20

X negl.

horse, dog no deer or gazelle

15 15 __

8.3 11 few few few 1.8 7.7 1.5 9

equids 10 equids 7.5 catfish 2

gazelle 5.3 gazelle 5.6 deer 3 gazelle 8 antelope 4.5

Results for the Iron Age have not been entered because the remains are very few. Apud Tchemov and Drori 1983. Lemau's results for LB have not been entered because they were based on a small sample of 53 and seem to have been superseded by Drori's more credible figures. Apud Hellwing and Adjeman 1986. Ducos gives the date as 15th century, but the excavation report (Dothan 1956) shows that this is a mistake: the sanctuary had been abandoned by the end of the 16th century. Apud Hflbner 1989: 234 n. 43.

Table B (continued) Site Tel Kinrot

Source Hellwing 1988-89 ZieglerefcA1

g

Tel Masos Tel Michal Tel Miqne-Ekron

Tchemo'v etal. 1983 Hellwing and Feig2 Hesse 1986

n cp cp

Tel Nagila Tell el-Hayyat

Ducos 1%S Metzger 1984

n jv

Tell es-Sharia TeUHadidi

sh Davis 1982 ClasonandBuitenhuis 1978 ev

Tell Hesban

LaBianca 1973; Boessneck etal. 1978; Weiler 19813 Wapnish and Hesse 1988 Davis 1985 Davis 1982 Buitenhuis 1983 Rothenberg 19724

Tell Jemmeh Tell Qasile Tell Qiri ha-Zorea Tell Sweyhat Timna

1. 2. 3. 4.

(Forthcoming.) Apud Htibner 1989: 234 n.43. Apud Hellwing and Adjeman 19J6. Apud HUbner 1989: 234 n. 43. /Iporf Hakker-Orion 1975.

Area

jo cp cp nv ev n

Period

Type

EB LB

dom dom dom dom dom dom

Sheep/Goats

Cattle

41

26 29 X 23 30 21 37 29 X 25

dom

95 61

3 17

dom

71

EB

dom dom dom dom

Bronze

industrial

77 84 86 68 90

Iron II Irani Iron! Bronze Irani Iron II

MB EBMB LB

dom dom

Bronze -Rom. IronlByz.

MB Iron I Iron

55 61 X 66 59 71 45 61 X no sheep

Pigs

7.6 1.7 2 0.2 0.7 8 18 10

Others molluscs 8.7 molluscs 1.9 catfish

wild animals not included in calculation

__

31 negl.

4.5

equids 10 (Chicken [Bronze])

X

4

Chicken (c. 7th-6th cent. BC)

10 14 11 8.9

12 1.6 2

__

0.37 __

fish/waterbirds, very few ostrich eggs

Chapter 5 THE CONTEXT INTERPRETED In this chapter we are still concerned with the broader cultural context within which the priestly definitions took shape. But if the last chapter was an 'etic' investigation, attempting to determine objectively the dietary preferences and other cultural uses of animals of the people of ancient Canaan and Syria, we turn here to try to understand, if possible, the subjective attitudes of the people towards animals as possible items of diet for human beings or gods: an 'emic' study. Attitudes of this kind may be illuminated by the network of associations built up round animals in a particular culture. Illumination, however, does not necessarily amount to explanation. We need to beware of the danger of circular argument, in which the rejection of a species for food is 'explained' by the attitudes towards it in the culture—attitudes that of course include the dietary rejection itself. While cultural materialists such as Harris escape from the circle by excluding any consideration of subjective attitudes at all from the discussion, structuralists like Douglas attempt to do so by looking not at the attitudes to individual species in isolation, but at the pattern that they make as a whole, as a way of looking at the world, linking them with the way in which other aspects of life are viewed. In this chapter we shall try to form a picture of the associations of animals among the peoples of the area that will enable such a pattern to be developed. It would of course be vain to pretend that we could examine the evidence in a totally unprejudiced way and then produce from it a pattern, especially since an obvious pattern already exists in the priestly torah on the subject. I should say, then, that I shall be looking particularly for the evidence that Israelite or indeed West Semitic society in general was tending towards the kind of binary opposition that we find in that torah. The field anthropologist questions the people to elicit their attitudes, and certainly does not depend on personal impressions of the characters

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or functions of the animals in question, which are influenced by the associations of the researcher's own culture. Thus the fact that we 'know' that pigs are dirty is of no relevance to discovering the reasons for the pig taboos in Canaanite-Israelite culture. What we 'know' is dependent on the way in which pigs are kept in our society, which accounts for, or may in part be accounted for by, the way in which we view them. But, of course, we are in no position to question informants in an ancient society. We can only rely on what happens to have been transmitted to us: literary works, overwhelmingly those of the Old Testament, with all the traps that they conceal for the interpreter, with a few scraps of epigraphy. There are many ways in which this material may be misleading. The Bible does not represent the culture of the area as a whole, but only one tradition within it. We cannot be sure that it represents popular attitudes with any accuracy. It is a literary corpus, created by an elite, not a repository of the attitudes of the people. But it is virtually all that we have. However, there are some field studies and essays in the anthropological literature that may suggest analogies to help us to understand the possible cultural context of the Levitical rules, and these we shall look at in the second part of this chapter. In the third part I try to sketch a brief history of the way in which the patterns of meaning elucidated in the first two parts may have been used. 1. The Associations of Animals in the Old Testament and its World We have already seen that Gen. 7.2 suggests that the distinction between clean and unclean animals was an inherited feature of the culture of the people of Israel, and the unusual position of the pig that we have documented in the last chapter tends to confirm this. In order to open up something of the background of this, we need to look at texts that mention particular animals. This could be a vast and largely unrewarding survey, but I would suggest various ways in which it might be curtailed. It does not seem necessary to search for examples of the mention of every individual species, both because rules and customs tend to be applied to wide groups of creatures and because there could be no question in practice of the use of most species for food, and it is natural to concentrate on those most in contact with human life. Although it may be said (e.g. Levine 1989: 247) that disproportionate attention tends to be given to the pig, which has no

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183

special position in the Bible, in fact it is quite natural to concentrate on it, because it is the only commonly eaten species that is declared unclean. And as we have seen, this was already so in early times, not first in the Hellenistic period. Leach (1964: 31) suggests that in all societies edible substances might be divided into three categories: 1. 2.

3.

Edible substances that are recognized as food and consumed as part of the normal diet. Edible substances that are recognized as possible food, but are prohibited or else allowed to be eaten only under special (ritual) conditions; [which are] consciously tabooed. Edible substances that by culture and language are not recognized as food at all; [which are] unconsciously tabooed.

Thus the Old Testament prohibition of pork is an explicit, conscious taboo, but the English objection to eating dogs 'depends on the category assumption: "dog is not food"'. This, Leach asserts, depends on verbal categories: eating man is disgusting and 'there are contexts in colloquial English in which man and dog may be thought of as beings of the same kind (1964: 32)'. Now it is clear that this categorization, even if adequate for attitudes in our culture (for a severe critique of Leach's article, see Halverson 1976), cannot be applied to the rules of Leviticus 11, for these rules have the specific object, at least in their final form, of defining every member of the animal kingdom as either fit or unfit for food: everything that is not defined as fit for food is ipso facto unclean. It may well, however, be argued that the omission in an earlier form, and in Deuteronomy 14, of the seres of the ground, is traceable precisely to the category assumption 'swarming things are not food', even in the sense in which pig is: nobody (before the crisis reflected in Isa. 66) eats them. This in itself is an important result. But it also demonstrates that we do not need specific attitudes to particular animals to account for the fact that they are not treated as food. What I will be able to show in this chapter is, on the one hand, that similar attitudes of contempt tend to embrace carnivorous animals and birds, dogs and pigs, and on the other that the domestic animals of the Israelites have a special position that makes them in a certain sense members of the community.

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Purity and Monotheism

a. Domestic Animals as Members of the Community This point is one that Mary Douglas makes in her earliest treatment of the subject (1966: 54): To some extent men covenanted with their cattle in the same way as God covenanted with them. Men respected the first born of their cattle, obliged them to keep the Sabbath... The difference between cattle and the wild beasts is that the wild beasts have no covenant to protect them.

The analogy between human beings and beasts is developed in some detail by Wenham (1981; cf. Levine 1989: 245-46; Milgrom 1990: 179-80; Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 122-23). He cites the Sabbath law in the decalogue (Exod. 20.10; Deut. 5.14) and the law requiring the dedication of the first-born, both of human mothers and of beasts (Exod. 13.2; 22.28-29 [Eng. 29-30]; 34.19). But in the latter connection he shows that the analogy is quite extensive: Exod. 13.13 and Num. 8.16-17 call for the redemption of non-sacrificial animals and of human infants (but there is clearly a difference: it is permitted to refuse to redeem the first-born of an ass, and break its neck instead, but not so with your own child); and the period allowed between birth and offering is the same as that between birth and circumcision for a human male child, in each case eight days inclusive: Exod. 22.29 (Eng. 30) and Lev. 22.27; Gen. 17.12 and Lev. 12.3. Another analogy may be drawn between the requirement for physical perfection in sacrificial victims (Lev. 1.3; 22.17-25, etc.; Deut. 17.1) and in priests (Lev. 21.16-23).1 And finally in the blessings and curses that are attached to the proclamation of the Law, the animals of the Israelites are included (Deut. 28.4, 18, 50-57; Lev. 26.22). Levine (1989: 245) also draws attention to the law of the goring ox (Exod. 21.29-32), which requires the ox not simply to be destroyed as a danger, but to be stoned like a human criminal, and its flesh left uneaten. Wenham does not argue like Douglas and Levine that the animals are in some sense 'within the covenant', part of the community, but simply that a practical analogy is drawn between human beings and animals, which indeed may cover wild animals also, as in the analogous commands given to human beings and animals in Gen. 1.29, 30; and Levine (1989: 246) notes that even wild animals may be held 1. Milgrom (1990:181) draws attention to the close correspondence between the lists of disqualifying blemishes in priests and sacrificial animals in Lev. 21.18-20 and 22.22-24: there are twelve items in each.

5. The Context Interpreted

185

responsible for their actions. He refers to the priestly introduction to the Flood story, which states that 'all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth' (6.12), and to the conclusion, which hands over the animals into the power of humanity and requires that anyone, whether human or animal, who kills a human being will have to answer for it to God (9.5). But it is notable that most of the cases cited by Wenham do refer to domestic animals, and the law of the first-bom in particular is very striking for the similar way in which it treats human and animal. Moreover, it is easy to substantiate Douglas's assertion that human beings felt an obligation to protect their animals, even if it is hardly accurate to refer to this as a covenant. The repeated use of the metaphor of the shepherd both for the king and governing officials (e.g. Ezek. 34) and for God (e.g. Ps. 23) strongly suggests this. If the use of a metaphor shows us something of the way in which its vehicle is viewed, we shall have no difficulty in concluding that it was a moral obligation for a shepherd to protect his sheep, and of course to protect them in the first place from wild animals (1 Sam. 17.34-35; Isa. 31.4; Ezek. 34.5, 8; etc.). It is also clear that the metaphor involves human beings in thinking of themselves as sheep, and so identifying themselves in a sense with their own animals (e.g. Ps. 95.7; Isa. 40.11). We thus gain a picture of a broad human and animal community set over against the creatures of the wild, specifically the large and dangerous carnivores. Characteristically, and obviously, domestic animals, particularly sheep, are docile—'like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before her shearers is dumb...' (Isa. 53.7)—and wild animals are out of the control of human beings; that is what makes them wild; one might think of the brilliantly portrayed gallery of animals of the wild offered by Yahweh to Job in his answer from the whirlwind (Job 38.39-39.30), the repeated point of which is that Job cannot control them. Admittedly they include the warhorse, which is domesticated and which one might presume to be under the control of its rider, but it is not so portrayed. Characteristically also they serve as metaphors for the enemies of human society (cf. §l.c below).1 1. Eilberg-Schwartz (1990: 120-21) draws attention to a very much wider range of animal (and vegetable) metaphor for human relations and activities, not all of them directly relevant here, but suggestive. He puts it (p. 125) that the animals that serve as metaphors for Israelite society are seen as clean, while the predators that symbolize the enemies of Israel are unclean. But while this is true, the national aspect is not essential to the metaphor.

186

Purity and Monotheism

So far this picture is imprecise. There are distinctions to be made within the body of domestic animals, even as they are all bound within the same community. Some of them are providers of nourishment, milk and meat. Others, principally the ass, are solely labourers. It is hardly necessary to offer substantiation of so obvious a fact; but it is worth referring to Porphyry's comment, 'we do not slaughter asses or elephants or any of those animals that share our labours but do not enjoy their benefits'.1 This was the wisdom of a humane (and vegetarian) philosopher, but one who was born in Tyre and likely to have been as familiar with the Semitic cultural world as with the Greek; it probably reflects a more inarticulate general opinion among ancient people, Greek or Oriental. At all events the ass invariably appears in the Old Testament as a beast of burden, sharing its master's toil and also his rest (Exod. 20.10). It appears as food only in a situation of desperate famine (2 Kgs 6.25). Eilberg-Schwartz (1990: 126-27) compares the relation of the ass to the flocks and herds to that of the ger, the alien, in Israelite human society, who usually works as a labourer, and shares in many, but not all, of their privileges and restrictions. In view of my definition below (§l.b) of the other unclean domestic animals as 'ambiguous', this idea could be helpful. It seems most natural to include the camel under the same rubric. We have noted that it is of limited importance in the cultivated land during the biblical period, but where it was used it was clearly a beast of burden existing alongside other domestic animals that continued to be the only source of meat. It was not, as it is among the Beduin, the main domestic animal that provides both transport and nourishment. It was probably not until about two thousand years ago that such true Beduin began to emerge, and it is almost certain that such camel-using communities as the Midianites (Judg. 6.5) with whom the Israelites came into contact did not use the camel in that way, but probably only for transport (the same verse refers in a more general way to 'their livestock' [miqnehem}). However, as we have seen, camel meat was eaten in the vicinity of Israel's territory, probably by caravan traders and an urban community to whom they sold the meat of their surplus animals. It seems likely that we have a commercial community here in which restraints characteristic of peasant communities are less significant. If camel-eating became at all well known to Israelites in the later 1.

De Abst. 2.25:

5. The Context Interpreted

187

biblical period, it would be as the custom of ethnic groups to their south with whom they had long-standing enmities, and who were rapidly taking over parts of their land,1 and this could have reinforced the general objection to the use of the flesh of an animal whose function in the human community was as a labourer. If we turn to those animals whose function in the community was to provide nourishment for the human members, it is not surprising in view of the degree of identification between the human and animal sides of the community that the traditional rule was that they could only be eaten under the restraints of the ritual context. This is the rule among many peoples, for example the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1956), and the Kachin (Leach 1964: 56), and it is clearly implied as the existing custom by Deut. 12.15, 20ff., which attempts to abolish it (cf. Chapter 4, §3.c). The simple dedication of the meal to a deity requires no sanctuary or priest (Kaufmann 1961: 180-81). In the Israelite conception it appears to consist essentially in the pouring out of the blood to the deity. That is all that Saul considers necessary to regularize the slaughter in 1 Sam. 14.32-34; and in the two treatments of the issue in the legal literature, Deuteronomy 12 and Leviticus 17, the question of the blood is central (Lev. 17.10-11; Deut. 12.16, 23-25). When the slaughter is secularized in Deuteronomy, though the blood must not be eaten, it is to be poured on the ground 'like water', which probably means that it is not to form the object of a ritual (cf. Weinfeld 1972: 214, who notes [214 n. 2; Kaufmann 1961: 181] that the sin of Saul's soldiers is precisely to slaughter the animals 'on the ground' as required in Deut. 12.16). The popular custom should not be identified with the rule propounded in Lev. 17.3-4, which demands the offering of the beast at a particular sanctuary2 (cf. Levine 1989: 112-13, who however is surely wrong in finding implicit permission for secular slaughter here). For this priestly writer slaughter without presenting the beast at Yahweh's sanctuary is murder (v. 4), and the blood 1. Knauf (1988:168) explains in this way the Deuteronomic interpretation of the 'kid in mother's milk' prohibition as a general dietary prohibition rather than a festal regulation, which he believes it was originally; it was and is still the pastoralist communities of the southern desert fringe who relish meat cooked in milk as a delicacy (1988: 164-65). 2. Originally perhaps at a plurality of Yahweh sanctuaries (S.R. Driver 1902: 138). Failure to make these distinctions vitiates McConville's attempt (1984: 42ff.) to prove the antiquity of profane slaughter as conceived in Deuteronomy.

188

Purity and Monotheism

thrown on the altar serves to atone (v. 11)—very possibly for the very act of slaughter of a community member, the victim itself, though this is unclear and disputed. Although this priestly theory is scarcely likely to represent popular understanding, it may well articulate a widespread sense that the ritual act tends to compensate for and bring within an ordered system the potentially disruptive cutting off of the life of a being that has shared the life of the community. Even in rabbinic Judaism, which accepts the Deuteronomic permission for profane slaughter, a distinction remains between the eating of domestic beasts and of game: in the former case the abdominal fat is prohibited in accord with Lev. 7.23-25 (m. Hul. 8.6). The wording of v. 25, which originated in the setting where no domestic animal was eaten without sacrifice, continues to remind the slaughterer and eater of the special position of domestic animals, as those animals by which God's blessing is transmitted to the community of Israel. As we have seen, domestic birds were kept. Among these the dove has a special position—I think we can reasonably assume that doves were kept as domestic birds, especially since otherwise they would be the only wild victim permitted in the sacrificial codes of Ugarit and Leviticus; the Marseilles tariff, which seems to permit wild birds, also permits deer (Chapter 4, §3.b.2). Although we know from the archaeological record that chickens were kept (Chapter 4, §2.b.5), they are not mentioned once in the Old Testament, and geese and ducks are no better off (unless the obscure barburim of 1 Kgs 5.3 [Eng. 4.23; most English versions 'fowl'] are one of these three species). But the dove is an image of gentleness—indeed imbecility—and love, Hos. 7.11; 11.11; Ps. 74.19; Song 2.14; 5.2; etc. Probably because of this it is the symbol of the goddess of love, Astarte, in Phoenicia and Syria, and becomes at some period prohibited as food to her devotees (Chapter 4, §3.c). b. Ambiguous Animals We turn from the blessed to the reprobate. At all periods human settlements in the Middle East, as in many other parts of the world, have harboured dogs. But their relationship to the human community is much more unclear and ambiguous than that of other animals. Although dogs were kept as pets (Chapter 4, §§2.b.3, 3.c), even if Tobias's dog is the only example in a Jewish context, in general the tone of biblical references to them is decidedly negative. This despite

5. The Context Interpreted

189

the fact that they had their uses for rounding up sheep and as guards (Job 30.1; Isa. 56.10-11). Yet even these two references to the honourable functions of dogs use them as contemptuous figures for people whom the speaker despises, and there is much more of the same kind —cf. 1 Sam. 17.43; 24.15 (Eng. 14); 2 Sam. 3.8; 9.8, 16.9; 2 Kgs 8.13; Ps. 59.7, 15 (Eng. 6, 14); Prov. 26.11; Eccl. 9.4; Matt. 7.6; Mk 7.27 (Matt. 15.26); Phil. 3.2; 2 Pet. 2.22. And there is similar material in non-biblical texts from the region: e.g. in the Lachish letters, where the writer regularly refers to himself by the stereotyped phrase 'your servant a dog' (Torczyner 1938: 2.3-4, 5.3-4, 6.3); in the Amarna tablets, 1.84 (Knudtzon 1915), the writer's enemy is described as a dog (1. 8, cf. 1. 17). Generally in these passages 'dog' is simply a term of vague abuse (or ironical self-deprecation) for someone who is beneath contempt; in the Marcan passage it refers specifically to the Gentiles. However, in Deut. 23.19 (Eng. 18) (to which Rev. 22.15 probably refers), we have a very specific idiom in which the term 'dog' apparently refers to a male prostitute.1 This may account for the fact that in the other biblical passages, despite its frequency, the word is never used directly as a metaphor for a human being. Homosexuality is of course very strongly reprobated in the biblical tradition (cf. Houston 1991); see Lev. 18.22; 20.13, where the act of intercourse between males is described as td'ebd, 'abomination'; it is the only individual offence in those sexual codes to be described with that word, which is otherwise rare in the Holiness Code. It implies, as we have noted, that which every right-thinking person rejects with disgust. The use of the abusive term may imply a very specific obscene reference to the act of anal intercourse, but there is also a more general reason why someone who offers himself for this act that violates the structure and norms of society in so flagrant a way should be described as a dog, and it also accounts for the general abusive use of the word. For the function of the dog to which most frequent reference is made is that of a scavenger. The dogs are those who will eat what human beings refuse to eat, meat that is itself unclean or disgusting (Exod. 22.30 [Eng. 31]). They appear constantly in the prophetic curses in Kings as eating the dead bodies of slaughtered royalty, along with the 'birds of the air' (1 Kgs 14.11; 16.4; 21.19, 23, 24; 22.38; 1. Stager (1991), however, following Peckham 1968, interprets it literally, of dogs taking part in healing rites.

190

Purity and Monotheism

2 Kgs 9.10, 36). There are closely parallel expressions in the Assyrian vassal treaties, as Weinfeld has shown (1972: 131-32; see below). Now, though human corpses were (one hopes) not everyday fare for the dogs of Israel, their position as scavengers that get rid of unclean and uneatable refuse is quite clear. And it puts them into an ideologically ambiguous position. For the eating of bloody corpses is an act that essentially belongs to wild animals (such as the 'birds of the air' and the lions and bears fended off by the shepherd), just as the food itself belongs outside the boundaries of the human community. Human beings are not permitted to eat blood; their animals are herbivorous (supposedly—the habits of goats are overlooked; remember that we are dealing with attitudes, not with facts). Dogs thus, ideally, put themselves outside the community with the wild animals. But they are not outside the community, they have to be in the camp or settlement to do their scavenging, and they are tolerated precisely because they do it and so relieve human beings of the unpleasant task of disposing of their waste. Human beings need dogs, and yet they despise them for doing what they need them for—precisely the position of prostitutes (of either sex)! Dogs are anomalous animals, in Douglas's phrase, but because of their functions, not because of their classification. Now for the pig. It is clear from our previous investigation that its position also is anomalous: a domestic animal bred for the table, that yet cannot appear on the table of the gods (except perhaps for the denizens of Sheol), and that appears to be rejected as food by the urban elites, as well as, less surprisingly, by people with a pastoral background. A full explanation would need to take account of the whole complex picture that we were enabled to draw in the last chapter. It will be convenient to begin just where we left off in considering the dog. For where dogs appear as scavengers, or in contemptuous references to men, swine frequently appear also. This emerges from Weinfeld's discussion (1972: 129ff.), which I referred to above. The reader of the gospels will immediately recall Matt. 7.6. The Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon contain the expressions, 'May dogs and swine eat your flesh' (1. 451), and 'May dogs and swine drag your corpses to and fro in the squares of Ashur; may the earth not receive them' (11. 483-84) (Wiseman 1958 as in Weinfeld 1972: 131). Ashurbanipal asserts that he fed the corpses of rebels to 'dogs, swine, jackals, eagles (or vultures), the birds of heaven and the fish of the deep' (Streck 1916: II, 38, iv: 74-76, in Weinfeld 1972: 132). More remarkably, the

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LXX text of 1 Kgs 21.19; 22.38 (3 Reigns 20.19; 22.38) mentions pigs, which are absent from the MT: 'In every place where the pigs and the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, there the dogs will lick your blood, and the prostitutes will wash in your blood'; 'And the pigs and the dogs licked up the blood, and the prostitutes washed in the blood'. Weinfeld suggests (p. 132 n. 5) that the pigs may be original to the text and have been censored from the MT in order to avoid the implication that pigs could be found in an Israelite town.1 (Not that, if it were the original text, it would necessarily imply that; for Weinfeld argues that we are dealing with a stereotyped form of expression that owes its origin to the international treaty tradition.) The ranging of pigs with dogs in the Assyrian texts is the more surprising in that in the Sumero-Akkadian cultural area pork was, as we have seen, far more freely eaten than further west. And in both cultural areas it seems that pigs have a reputation shared with dogs for living as scavengers and polluting themselves with unclean food. As we have seen, it is likely to have objectively been the case that pigs in the Near East, as in China, lived primarily in or near the settlement on waste food. But they would have been useful as scavengers in the same way as dogs. It may therefore be that pigs fell into the same ideological trap—valuable for a purpose that in itself undermined their value. This obviously would not have disqualified them as food in the eyes of the local people who bred them for that purpose, but it might make a difference to the way in which more delicately brought up people viewed them—urban elites including priests. It would certainly be impossible for them to offer animals raised on unclean or questionable material in sacrifice, since their food might make the animals ritually unfit themselves. The only reference to pigs in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament in any other connection than their unfitness for food is Prov. 11.22: 'As a gold ring in a pig's snout, so is a beautiful woman without discretion'. Perhaps the reference is not quite as contemptuous as those using the dog, but nearly so. Even in a society that had no objection to eating pig meat, as in Mesopotamia, pigs were bound to have a lowly position, and this 1. He further suggests that the reference to the prostitutes in the MT of 1 Kgs 22.38 may be a corruption, intentional or unintentional, of one to pigs: rvurm from D'lTni. There is the same combination of feeding dogs and bathing pigs in 2 Pet. 2.22. The LXX has then preserved a conflation of the two readings which has afterwards been copied in 3 Reigns 20.19.

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seems to be broadly true also in Egypt (Chapter 4, §3.b.4). Since Egypt was entirely devoid of woodland, pigs must have been fed either on grain (an expensive business, but feasible for the wealthiest; cf. above, Chapter 3, §2.c.3) or, as elsewhere, on waste. Helck comments (LA, V, 5.v. Schwein): 'to judge from its place in lists, the pig was the least esteemed of domestic animals'. This may be the reason for its general rejection as a sacrificial animal. Griffiths, however, has a different explanation: There was perhaps a subconscious ambivalence in the attitude to the pig: on the one hand it was, unlike the rare prizes of the desert hunt, long domesticated and ever within reach—a case of familiarity breeding contempt; on the other hand it was extremely useful and willingly excluded from the menu of the gods (Griffiths 1960: 33).

The uncleanness of swine and swineherds reported by Herodotus (2.47) is, however, rather difficult to fit in with our knowledge from native sources. It may be a late development, and if so seems to be of a piece with developments in Israel and Syria.1 On the other hand, there is an elaborate explanation connecting it with the myth of Seth, who turned into a black pig to damage Horus's eye (see LA, V, s.v. Seth). It is suggested that the original worshippers of Seth, who were pig-raisers, were the native inhabitants of Egypt conquered and suppressed by the Horus people, who were, it is supposed, pastoralists in origin (cf. Emery 1961: 95-96). These demonized Seth, mythologized their conquest of his people in the story of Horus and Seth, and despised his animal, the pig. The difficulty with this explanation is that the supposed consequences, the demonization of Seth and the impurity of the pig, are not evidenced for some two to three thousand years after their supposed cause, the conquest of the Horus people. It is quite correct of te Velde (1967) to query the political interpretation of the Seth myth, and though Griffiths espouses it, he considers the association of the pig with Seth to be a later development. Whether it is correct to see in the development of contemptuous attitudes towards the pig in Egypt the result of the influx of pastorally-based people, or something purely indigenous, in either case we have perhaps a useful analogy to what happened in Israel, perhaps something more in view of the dominance of Egyptians in Canaan for 1. Darby et al. (1977: 198-99) suggest that it is a custom of the early dynastic period (p. 173) revived in the Saite period.

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several hundred years before the rise of Israel. At all events it is clear that throughout the ancient Near East there was a strong tendency not to give equal regard to all domestic animals. 'Shepherd' was an appropriate epithet for kings and gods, 'swineherd' was not; their subjects could compare themselves to sheep, while gods could be called 'bull' or represented as one, or as a ram, but even the Egyptians did not have a pig-headed god, given that the Seth animal cannot really be regarded as a pig (Griffiths 1960: 32, against Newberry 1928). This tension could have led to a formal hierarchy among domestic animals (as among the Kalasha [below, §2.c]), but the more usual result in this region was the anathematization of the pig as unclean, and often also, as in Israel, the eventual cessation of its raising. c. Animals as Enemies Dogs and pigs, then, find themselves, despite their close association with humans, or I should say rather because of it, or because of its particular character, on the wrong side of the line that divides the good herbivorous domestic animals from the scavenging, blood-consuming carnivores: 'evil beasts' (Ezek. 14.15, 21) and 'the fowls of the air' (1 Kgs 14.11, etc.). And we have already established, primarily on the testimony of the Mishnah, that the unclean birds listed individually in Lev. 11.13-19 and Deut. 14.12-18 are overwhelmingly birds of prey and carrion-eaters. This is also true of the majority of the unclean beasts, at least those that are certainly behemd rather than seres. It has to be admitted (so Firmage 1990: 186) that the most prominent of these birds and beasts have good associations also; the lion and the neSer—eagle or vulture—are frequent examples of strength and power and the latter especially of swiftness (e.g. Deut. 28.49; Isa. 40.31 or 2 Sam. 1.23). Both lion and eagle feature here as similes for the strength and swiftness of the warrior. The lion exemplifies courage in 2 Sam. 17.10; but equally often serves as a figure for danger or treachery or implacability, as in Job 10.16, Pss. 7.3 (2), 10.9, 17.12, Isa. 5.29 and Amos 3.8. References to other carnivorous beasts and birds are relatively few. But, for example, the bear, which for some reason figures in our culture's folklore as a friendly beast, invariably stands for danger and ferocity in the Bible, and the she-bear robbed of her whelps is the type of frustrated anger and violence (2 Sam. 17.8; Prov. 17.12; Hos. 13.8). Among the smaller

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carnivores the Su'al, probably the jackal, features as a carrion-eater in Ps. 63.11 (10). There is however a special literary context in which many of the unclean species appear, including many of the birds that do not appear elsewhere outside Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, and it may enable us to use extrabiblical evidence. This is the prophetic curse of destruction, when it extends to descriptions of the deserted ruins of the doomed place, which become the habitation of many wild creatures, including a surprisingly high proportion of those that appear in our chapters as unclean. There are also passages that use the same idea of the ruins as the habitation of wild creatures, though they are not of the same genre. The passages in question include Isa. 13.21-22, Isa. 34.11-15, Jer. 50.39, Mic. 1.8, Zeph. 2.14, Ps. 102.7, Job 30.29, and a number of other Old Testament passages where only one of the creatures appears; the first Sfire inscription (KAI 222), at line A33; and perhaps the Balaam inscription from Tell Deir 'Alia, Combination 1, according to Hoftijzer's interpretation of this very fragmentary and uncertain text (Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1976: text 173-74, translation 179-80, commentary at 200-201); Garbini 1979 largely dissents, observing that the majority of the birds are 'small and offensive' (p. 178), and McCarter (1980: 51, 58), followed by Hackett (1984: 46-47), has given a possibly more convincing interpretation. But whether or not Hoftijzer's interpretation is accepted, his commentary is useful to us here, since he conveniently lists all the creatures that appear in all these texts, biblical and extrabiblical (Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1976: 206-207), and the great majority in fact occur in the Bible. It will be understood (cf. Chapter 2, §l.c.5) that many of them are not identifiable, and there is the further complication that the Balaam inscriptions are perhaps, and the Sfire inscriptions certainly, in Aramaic rather than Hebrew (for discussion of the language of the Balaam texts, see, among others, Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1978: 300-302; McCarter 1980: 50-51; Hackett 1984: 109ff.; and various articles in Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1991). However, many of the names of creatures are just the same as in the Old Testament, and others (e.g. 'rnb - BH 'arnebet) are not very different. I list the birds first, in alphabetical order, since these have more verbal contacts with Leviticus 11, where the unclean species are listed, then the beasts; however the qippod and the qippoz could well be birds. The names appearing in

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the Bible are given in vocalized transliteration, those in the inscriptions with consonants only, though when they also appear in Leviticus 111 have given the vocalized form as it appears there also. The references to the Deir 'Alia texts are to Hoftijzer's arrangements of the lines; Caquot and Lemaire (1977: 193) have suggested a rearrangement that has been widely accepted, but here I am following Hoftijzer. Balaam I: 10. Cf. Lev. 11.19, >andpd. Isa. 13.21; 34.13; Jer. 50.39; Mic. 1.8; Job 30.29. Garbini finds y'nh in Balaam 1.10. Cf. Lev. 11.16. dayyd Isa. 34.15. Cf. Deut. 14.13, where it appears to be a gloss (Chapter 2, § 1 .c.5). Undoubtedly intended as some kind of bird of prey. drr Balaam I: 10. Probably the swallow (BH derof)\ not unclean in the Bible, but cf. b. Hul. 62a. yanSOp Isa. 34.11. Cf. Lev. 11.17. kos (owl) Ps. 102.7; proposed in BHS as emendation in Zeph. 2.14 (RSV 'owl', REB 'tawny owl'). Cf. Lev. 11.17. lilit Isa. 34.14. Generally regarded as a demon, Lilith or the 'night hag', but REB prosaically 'nightjar'. nSrtywn Balaam 1:10-11 Heb. neSer, Lev. 11.13, is not referred to in these contexts in the Bible, but Hoftijzer takes nSrt as a fern. pi. and as a general designation: 'birds of prey from the marsh'. Caquot and Lemaire (1977) and Garbini (1979: 178) take ywn as another birdname: 'pigeon' (cf. BH yond), and nSrt as a singular, McCarter and Hackett agree on ywn but take nSrt as a verb. '"tallep (bat) Isa. 2.20. Cf. Lev. 11.19. 'qh KAI222.A33. Donner and Rollig 'magpie' referring to Aram, 'aq'aq. This is not among unclean birds in Lev. 11. 'oreb (raven) Isa. 34.11; Zeph. 2.14 LXX. Cf. Lev. 11.15. sdh KAI 222.A33. Donner and Rollig 'owl', referring to Jewish Aram. sacfyd'. Whether this is one of the birds in Leviticus 11 under another name is uncertain, but it is certainly of the same general kind. spr Balaam 1.11. Heb. sippor 'bird'; but here probably specifically 'sparrow' (Hoftijzer et al. 1976: 204). qd'at Isa. 34.11; Zeph. 2.14; Ps. 102.7. Cf. Lev. 11.18. rhm Balaam 1.10. Uncertain; Garbini reads rhpn, a verb. Cf. Lev. 11.18, rahan, probably a vulture of some kind. 'dah Isa. 13.21. Meaning uncertain; RSV 'howling creatures', REB 'porcupines'. 't Isa. 13.22; 34.14; Jer. 50.39. BOB, REB 'jackal'; RSV 'hyena'. But an older tradition takes it as a fabulous beast: LXX onokentauroi; cf. Wildberger(1982: 1325)—'Kobolden'. 'rnb Balaam I.I 1, KAI 222.A33. Cf. Lev. 11.6, 'arnebet, hare. pere' Isa. 32.14. Wild ass. 'nph batya'and

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sby if

KAI 222.A33. Heb. fbt, gazelle. Not unclean; cf. Deut. 14.5. Isa. 13.21; 23.13; 34.14; Jer. 50.39; but Pss. 72.9; 74.14, where the text is uncertain, are not really relevant here. Meaning uncertain; RSV 'wild beasts' (i.e. not translated), REB 'marmots'. But a strong tradition represented by the LXX and Vulgate and followed by Wildberger (1982: 1325) regards them as demons. qippod Isa. 14.23; 34.11; Zeph. 2.14. Meaning uncertain; BDB 'porcupine', RSV 'hedgehog' (both from LXX ekhinoi)', REB 'bustard'; 'bittern' also suggested; cf. BDB (s.v.), Hoftijzer et al. 1976: 207. qippoz Isa. 34.15. Meaning uncertain; LXX assimilates to the previous word. BDB 'arrow-snake', from the Arabic qqffaza, but they admit that this does not incubate its eggs; Wildberger however follows this; RSV 'owl'; REB 'sand-partridge'. Sa'fr Isa. 13.21; 34.14. Much disputed; normally means a he-goat, but in Lev. 17.7 is clearly a deity of some kind, hence the traditional translation 'satyr' (is this what is meant by the Vulg. 'pilosi'?), both there and in these passages. REB gives 'he-goat' here, of course not an unclean animal. Wildberger (1982: 1328, 1347) argues for the traditional understanding of this with '? and si, as well as lllit, as demons or fabulous creatures. Certainly there is no reason in principle why the text should not people these horrid ruins with mythological as well as real creatures. Sa'al Ezek. 13.4; Lam. 5.18. Probably jackal. Srn KAI 222.A33. Donner and Rollig 'wild cat', referring to Akk. Suranu. tan Isa. 13.22; 34.13; 35.7; Jer. 9.10 (11); 10.22; 49.33; 51.37; Mic. 1.8; Job 30.29. Usually 'jackal', but REB 'wolf. Hoftijzer notes that three of the creatures mentioned in the Balaam inscription are unclean in the Bible, and concludes from the listing above that 'in ancient Israel those animals and birds which could be used as "symbols" of destruction and doom, (normally) also were considered unclean'. One has to reckon with a literary tradition. There is probably a literary connection between the two principal Isaiah passages in chs. 13 and 34, and possibly some of the other biblical passages as well. There may also be some connection with the Deir 'Alia prophecies (if that is how they should be described) and the Sfire treaty, but there is not much overlap in the creatures mentioned. It is nevertheless remarkable that of all the animals and birds that could be mentioned as the inhabitants of ruins, those in the biblical texts are all unclean (with the possible exception of the sa Tr), and also that of the 21 or 22 names of unclean birds in the present texts of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, many of which occur nowhere else, no less than

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ten are mentioned either in the biblical texts or in the Balaam inscription. It is true that the two Aramaic texts mention clean creatures also, but even then certain kinds of swallow are held to be unclean in the Talmud. There does seem to be a very high level of correlation between uncleanness and presence in a literary tradition concerned with destruction and desolation—more certainly for the biblical texts than could be expected by chance. But which way did the connection go? Are the birds named as unclean because they inhabit, or are believed to inhabit, desolate places, or does the literary tradition select birds recognized as unclean to play this lugubrious role? If we recall our investigations of the list of unclean birds in Chapter 2, we found there that the list has been expanded. Originally, we suspected, it contained just eight birds, and twelve have been added. Now, of the seven names of birds (including the bat!) in the biblical desolation passages that appear in Leviticus 11 or Deuteronomy 14, all but one are among the added ones in the latter part of the list; that is, of the twelve added names, six are found in this distinctive literary tradition; bringing the Balaam inscription into the equation would possibly bring the number up to eight, but would add no further names found in the earlier part of the passage, unless you count neser. That is, of the original list of eight no more than two are represented in this tradition, but of the twelve added names at least half are. It therefore does not seem likely that the literary tradition selected unclean birds, at least not from the list we know, but rather that the expansion of the list was inspired by the literary tradition. On the other hand, there is no need to ascribe any excessive care for realism to the writers of the desolation passages. They were using a tradition, and the choice of birds and beasts may have been governed more by a traditional sense of fitness for such a role—that is, by cultural attitudes of fear or contempt—than by the actual likelihood that they would inhabit desolate places. I have noted before (Chapter 2, §l.c.5) that if the y ansup and the qa'at (and the rahcan and the >anapa) were really water birds, it would be improbable to find them in desert places as described in Isaiah 34 and elsewhere. G.R. Driver (1955) concluded from this that such an identification was mistaken. But this may have been a hasty conclusion, if I am correct. One curious point that may have a bearing on this is the strange assertion in Isa. 34.16: 'Seek and read from the book of the LORD: not one of these shall be missing'. What book, we want to ask? The

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commentators agree that it is the prophecy itself, the book of Isaiah or the whole prophetic canon; cf. Delitzsch n.d.: II, 71; the verse instructs the future reader to compare prophecy with fulfilment, and Skinner (1896: 258) remarks, in accepting this view, that the words also imply the existence of a prophetic canon. For Kaiser (1974: 359-60) it is the book of Isaiah itself, the chapter being one of the latest in the book and itself dependent on other passages in the book. Wildberger (1982: 1349-350) takes the verse in the same way, but dating the chapter relatively early (sixth century), regards it as a much later supplement. One may agree that it is a gloss of some kind. But is it so certain that the glossator intended to refer to the book he was glossing? Why should he instruct the reader to search in the very book he was reading already? And what book was more likely to be called 'the book of Yahweh' in the late Second Temple period than the Torah? Thus the glossator could, I suggest, be calling attention to the fact we have just been noting: that very many of the unclean creatures of the Torah are to be found in the prophecy (and therefore, naturally, in Edom; I am not denying the presence of the theme of the fulfilment of prophecy). As it so often happens, there is an element of hyperbole in the scriptural utterance. And this late contributor to Scripture testifies to the maintenance of the equivalence we have been demonstrating: creatures that inspire fear or revulsion, for whatever cultural reason, most of them scavengers and blood-eaters, are those that appropriately inhabit places where the LORD'S sword has descended for judgment, and are also those that are declared unclean for eating. It may be worth comparing the list of birds seen in Mesopotamian sources as birds of ill-omen (cf. Salonen 1973). They include (this is by no means a complete list; I give them with Salonen's translation, though most are very difficult to identify): adaburtu 'flamingo'; amassanu 'wild pigeon'; anpatu, also 'flamingo' (cognate with Heb. 'anapa); arebu 'crow' (Heb. 'oreb); ensubu uncertain, but cf. Heb. yanSup; ellebu a hawk, perhaps the hen-harrier; hasibaru 'hoopoe'; igiru 'heron'; qadu the 'large pin-tailed sandgrouse' (Arabic qata), though it is generally taken as an owl. It will be seen that most of these are certainly or probably the same birds as ones in the Leviticus 11 list, though there is also a pigeon and perhaps a grouse which would certainly be clean birds in Israel. In very broad terms, therefore, there are similar tendencies observable everywhere in the region to invest certain birds with reprobate status, particularly birds of prey and

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others that might be seen as unclean feeders. It is difficult to say anything useful about attitudes to water creatures that could illuminate Lev. 11.9ff. They are simply not mentioned to any significant extent by the writers of those dry and landlocked hills. To suggest that the distinction has something to do with the observed diet of bottom-feeding molluscs and crustaceans (Levine 1989: 248) is plausible in view of what we have been noting just now, but it is not based on native evidence. However, we have already observed that fish were associated with Asherah, and that this led in due course to the development of a taboo on their flesh in some quarters. d. Resume We begin to trace the outlines of a structure of thought about animals in the society out of which the Old Testament arose, related to the structure of the priestly definitions, but anterior to it logically, if not chronologically. The primary distinction is between domestic animals and wild ones. Domestic ones are within the community in the limited sense in which this can be true for non-human creatures, and to some extent people are able to identify themselves with them. They are tame and submissive, their docility confirms human power over the animal world, and their diet is acceptably pure. Wild creatures refuse the dominion of humankind, they tend to be violent and dangerous, and their diet typically tends to include waste matter and blood. Ambiguity arises in the case of the dog and the pig, which are domestic at least in the sense that they inhabit human settlements (and camps in the case of the dog), but their diet puts them on the wrong side of the line. The pig of course is traditionally eaten—it is bred for nothing else—but the dog is not. It is hardly surprising that this ambiguity should be resolved by using 'dog' as a word of abuse and by identifying pigs with underworld deities or avoiding their flesh, nor that this should happen not only in Israel but in a whole range of other societies in this general cultural area. There is no ambiguity in the case of the ass, which because it exists for labour is not in any case eaten, but it is possible that it did arise in the case of the camel in the late biblical period. A different kind of ambiguity exists in the case of the domestic creatures that are bred for meat among other uses. Their use for food is hedged around, in traditional custom, with the limitations and controls of ritual. It is a solemn occasion, marked by the

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invitation of the deity to share the feast (for discussion, see Chapter 4, §3.c; Chapter 5, §l.a; Chapter 6, §l.d). There are also ambiguities among the wild creatures. The most obvious is that some wild beasts are hunted for food, in some places being sacrificed. These are, by and large, those large herbivores that had always formed part of people's diet in this area, and closely resembled the domestic stock in appearance and manner of life and diet. This could be understood in terms of the structure of thought that we have begun to trace: certain wild beasts, because of their diet, behaviour and mode of life, could be seen as domestic animals in an honorary sense, as it were; and this would be a popular attitude directly undergirding the more formal Levitical rule. So far as the evidence of actual practice goes, and it is very limited, birds might be treated analogously. We saw (Chapter 4, §2.b.5) that in the very thorough analyses of the material from Heshbon and the Ophel, the only wild bird species found in significant quantity was the partridge, a ground-feeding, chiefly graminivorous bird like the pigeon, the goose and the domestic fowl. This was not, however, developed into a rule in our texts, which limit their rejection of birds mainly to those that can be seen to be predators or carrion-eaters or are associated with desolation; this last certainly a late literary development. There is virtually no direct evidence that could enable us to say how the smaller creatures, falling into the category of seres, were treated; only the indirect evidence of Leviticus 11 enables us to guess that with the exception of locusts they were, to use Leach's term, unconsciously tabooed. The main classification of animals that I have established for P and paralleled from Egypt (Hornung 1967; Chapter 2, §l.c.2) is not likely to be a purely learned classification; I also paralleled it among the Rangi (Kesby 1979). And it clearly affects the likelihood of creatures being accepted as food; of the three groups of land animals, the proportion of acceptable creatures declines as one proceeds down the scale from the birds of the air, to the beasts, to the creeping things of the ground. The conclusion that should perhaps be drawn is that birds raised less tension than beasts, that they were less significant overall to society and consequently were less likely to be ambiguous and neede'd to be surrounded by fewer restrictions.

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2. Parallels a. Leach on Animal Categories There are a few studies that may be helpful in paralleling and hence illuminating the pattern of associations we have been working out. First we ought to say something more about the very well-known paper by Leach (1964) which I have already referred to, to see if it has anything to contribute to our understanding of this pattern. It is a wide-ranging paper linking observations on language use in English (in England) with his field work among the Kachin of Burma, and drawing general conclusions with his characteristic acuity and equally characteristic rashness. The significance of this work from our point of view lies in its establishment of the notion of 'social distance' as a key element in the understanding of taboo, whether the taboo is expressed in linguistic or in behavioural terms. He argues that animals tend to fall into groups according to their closeness to human society and the degree of significance that they bear for it. Thus there are in English society pets, whose place is in the home; farm animals; preserved game, which is in a half-way position between tame and wild animals; and unequivocally wild animals. Taboo ideas tend to be concentrated on those animals that are in ambiguous situations as between the categories—this is a familiar idea in social anthropology that goes back to Radcliffe-Brown. For Leach taboo is not necessarily a matter of dietary prohibition, but may be expressed in the use of the animals's name for verbal abuse or sexual allusions, or in the surrounding of its hunting or eating with ritual. And the idea of social distance in animals may be linked up with such an idea in relation to marriage rules. This is worked out in a quite unconvincing way as regards English society, but the example from the Kachin carries a certain degree of conviction. He shows that the designations of some significant female relatives in Kachin tend to have homonyms broadly designating those areas of social distance for animals that can be seen as analogous to those of the relative in the field of marriage rules. Thus ni means 'mother-in-law' (with whom relations are incestuous) and 'near' of those animals such as the dog or the rat which live in the house and which normally cannot be eaten; na means an elder sister— and with a classificatory sister illicit relations are acceptable—and also a sacred holiday, an occasion on which farm animals are sacrificed, a necessary condition of their being eaten; nam means a cross-cousin,

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the privileged category of woman for marriage, and also the forest, from which animals may be eaten without ceremony; raw means to cease to be related, and also a tiger, the type of the remote large animals that are never eaten (Leach 1964: 61-62) There is an obvious inconsistency here: the woman with whom the ceremonial relationship of marriage may be contracted does not correspond to the animal category that is eaten with ceremony. But as far as the pure idea of 'distance' is concerned, there is a certain degree of plausibility. How far is this an illuminating model for our study? It clearly is not going to account for the binary opposition that is the basis of the system in the Old Testament in its developed form. Leach himself considers the value of his own paper to lie in the development of Levi-Strauss's theories of binary opposition in the direction of a graduated scale (1964, 62-63). But it is true to say that in practice there is a graduated scale in Israelite thinking, and that the same four main categories of animal can be recognized: inedible (close) domestic animals, domestic animals edible after sacrifice, edible wild animals, and inedible wild animals. It could be argued that all the inedible or reprobated domestic animals are associated too closely with the human community or its rejected wastes. We can also recognize a category of 'vermin' (cf. 1964: 45) in the eight unclean creeping things of Lev. 11.29-30, which obviously are those that are most likely to be encountered in the house and in cooking vessels. Though there can be no question of eating swarming things of any kind, this group are given special attention and laden with particular ritual consequences, doubtless because they draw attention to themselves in much the same way as the dog or pig: their proper place is outside the human community, but they invade not just the settlement, but the very houses and the holy place. This means there may be some value in Leach's theory with regard to the kind of relationships and attitudes we have been considering. But it is a little difficult to argue that the difference between edible and inedible wild animals in Israel is that of 'social distance'. Gazelles are no less 'socially distant' than jackals. Certainly also the idea of ambiguity as the basis of taboo is useful; we have already used it in the case of the pig, the dog, the eight unclean creeping things, and in a different way with other domestic animals. But we should be careful: the ambiguous status of these animals is not the result of natural facts in relation to a particular scheme of classification. It is rather some-

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thing imposed on them by the way in which they are kept and used in that particular society. Hence I would prefer to say that ambiguity is associated with their taboo status rather than that it is the basis of it. It is much more speculative, as we have seen with Mary Douglas, to link the categorization of animals with social relationships. Leach had at least a plausible linguistic basis for such speculation; none such seems to exist in Hebrew, if we except the obscene use of keleb, 'dog'. Moreover, there is a theoretical objection to attempting such a link. The marriage systems of the Kachin on the one hand and the Israelites and most other Near Eastern peoples on the other are radically different. The Kachin have the widespread institution of the exogamous clan that intermarries with other such clans, but between whose members marriage is forbidden. But the Israelites, as we have seen (Chapter 3, §2.d.2), practised endogamy. At every level of the social system a wife from within the same group was preferred to one without. If Leach is right in making a connection between the Kachin animal categories and their social categories, it is difficult to see how a very similar system of animal categories could be linked with a completely different marriage system. It would however be possible to argue that the much narrower list of permitted beasts in the Israelite system is related to the tendency to look inwards rather than outwards for marriage partners and in many other areas of life. This would be closely related to Mary Douglas's argument (Chapter 3, §2.d.2), and it is open in a similar way to the objections of Sahlins (1976: 118-19) and Hallpike (1979: 198) that the system of animal categories simply becomes a system of empty signs related only analogically to the cognitive appreciation of the animals. We have tried to overcome this objection by investigating the substantive characters of the animals in Hebrew thought, and we need now to see if there are other possible models that could give us some better illumination in applying this information. Leach's essay is based entirely upon the language and customs of long-established agricultural communities with no pastoral background. But our discussion in the last chapter led us to suspect that the significance of pastoralism in Israel's life and background could have had much to do with the development of the dietary law. And there are in fact a number of possible parallels in the modern literature concerning pastoral peoples. It can be argued that these parallels are

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more significant than any that can be found with customs among settled peoples. b. Game and the Pastoralist Long ago Frazer (1918: III, 158-61) noted the resemblance between the limitations placed by certain pastoral peoples of East Africa, the Masai (now usually spelt Maasai) and Bahima, on their hunting of game for food, and the rules about clean and unclean animals in the Old Testament. Both tribes lived almost exclusively on the milk and meat of their cattle (never mixing the two, another parallel: 1918: III, 150-54). The Masai despised game in general, but made an exception for the eland and the buffalo, apparently regarding them as kinds of cattle (1918: III, 159, citing Hinde and Hinde 1901: 84, 120); the Bahima allowed a slightly wider range, 'though these are limited to such as they consider related to cows, for example buffalo and one or two kinds of antelope, waterbuck and hartebeest' (Roscoe 1915: 108, in Frazer 1918: HI, 159-60). Frazer himself relates this custom to the separation of milk and meat practised by the same peoples, 'from a belief that cows are directly injured whenever their milk comes into contact with the flesh of wild animals in the stomachs of the tribesmen' (1918: HI, 160), which appears illogical, since he has told us only a few pages earlier that they made a strict separation between beef and milk, so that the wildness or cattle-likeness of the animals can have nothing to do with it. More reasonably, he concludes that 'the Hebrew usages in all these matters took their rise in the pastoral stage of society, and accordingly they confirm the native tradition of the Israelites that their ancestors were nomadic herdsmen' (p. 161). Frazer's method of culling likely-looking parallels from the four corners of the world is not that of the modern anthropologist, and does not help us to understand the meaning of the custom among the Maasai and Bahima, still less among the Israelites. But all observers of the Maasai are agreed that they are a people whose involvement, and even identification, with their cattle, which are the foundation not only of their livelihood but of their entire social system, is profound. 'Cattle are objects of affection and supreme religious significance. To the Maasai cattle give meaning to life; they mean life itself (Arhem 1985: 17). In such conditions it is understandable that the possibilities of wild animals in general as a source of food should be ignored or rejected, an attitude found among another East African pastoral

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people profoundly identified in many complex ways with their cattle: the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1956: 266-67).1 As Evans-Pritchard shows in the same chapter, although the Nuer like eating meat, and all cattle eventually find their way into the pot, they do so only by way of sacrifice, as in old Israel, and 'it is regarded as a fault to kill them "bang lora", "just for nothing", the Nuer way of saying that they ought not to be killed for meat' (1956: 265). When cattle offer the religious and social benefits of sacrifice with the following feast, in addition to the physical pleasure of eating meat, it is clear that the eating of game could only be a pale shadow of that. The attitude of the Maasai is perhaps only a variation on this; the buffalo obviously, and the eland slightly puzzlingly (why the eland in particular, rather than any other antelope?), could be understood metonymically, because of their outward appearance and manner of life, as acceptable, though scarcely adequate, substitutes for cattle. The parallels do undeniably suggest that such a restriction of game as is implicit in the material evidence from the Levantine Bronze and Iron Ages and explicit in the Levitical and other dietary codes may arise from a pastoral people's strong self-identification with their cattle. One finds such an identification among the East African pastoralists, and we have found features in the Old Testament above that suggest a similar identification between the people and their cattle, and that therefore tend to suggest at least a strong pastoral aspect to the Israelite culture. c. Pastoral Livestock Codes But the restriction on game is only one aspect of the dietary codes we are examining. Equally striking is the contempt for, and ultimate rejection of, the pig. Now since the pig is not kept by exclusively pastoral people, this is likely, as we have suggested, to be related in some way to the interaction between pastoral and agrarian elements in the population. There are two studies of transhumant pastoral peoples who also engage in some agriculture that may well throw some light on this 1. 'Usually they only pursue those graminivorous animals which come to drink near their camps and seem to offer themselves for slaughter. It is not that it is thought to be wrong to kill them, but that except in time of famine, Nuer are little interested in hunting. They speak of it as a Shilluk or Dinka practice beneath the serious attention of a Nuer who can boast of a herd' (Evans-Pritchard 1956: 267).

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aspect of the matter. The earlier is J.K. Campbell's book (1964) on the Greek mountain shepherds known as the Sarakatsani; the other is Peter Parkes's study (1987) of the only remaining non-Muslim people in the Hindu Kush, the Kalasha. Despite the great differences in their way of life and especially in their religion (the Kalasha are polytheists and the Sarakatsani are of course Christians), these peoples have a great deal in common. Their life is based on the herding of animals that move from the valleys to the mountains for the summer. In the Hindu Kush the men go up alone with the goats, and the women remain in the valley. Sarakatsani families, on the other hand, move as a whole with their flocks of sheep. Yet they are very similar in the sharp dichotomy they make between the sexes in economic function and ideological status, which is associated with a dichotomized view of the world. In each case the men have the exclusive care of the animals that have the highest regard: the goats among the Kalasha, the sheep among the Sarakatsani, while the women may look after the other animals and carry on agriculture, which is of some economic importance for the Kalasha, but very low in esteem. In each case women are held (at least by the men!) to be impure, and polluting in relation to the sacred herds. And the animals that they look after are correspondingly impure or at any rate of low esteem. According to Parkes, among the Kalasha, goats are 'conceptually opposed to women as respective embodiments of the "pure" and "impure" ritual spheres' (Parkes 1987: 640). Women are forbidden to approach the goat stables, lest their sexual pollution should attract spirits of ill-health towards its herd. Goats, particularly male goats, are treated as the most sacred of animals: to be tended by herdsmen under conditions of ritual purity and to be sacrificed exclusively for male deities.

However, the Kalasha also keep cattle and sheep. Cattle are impure; in the past the Kalasha avoided all cattle products and the shaman still does so. Cattle are kept in the village stables all year round, fed on waste fodder, and are required mainly for draught. Sheep do go up the mountains with the men and the goats in the summer, but they are kept separate from the adult goats, and may be kept with the cattle in the winter. They are the sacrificial animals of women, and associated with the valley demons. But the truly polluting animals are domestic fowl, which are generally associated with Muslims and thought to be dirty. Parkes goes on to list a whole series of pairs of contrasting

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concepts that exemplify and reinforce the basic dichotomy between the sacred and the polluting which are related to male and female spheres of association. The mountains and their pastures, with their typical vegetation of juniper and holm-oak are opposed to the valleys with their onions and garlic and rhong (a dyestuff); goats, with certain wild animals such as markhor, and honey-bees, which exemplify the cooperation and solidarity of the men in their summer encampments over against the family disputes of the village where agriculture is organized by households, are opposed to cattle, to hens and eggs, and to some extent to sheep. Even within the valleys the goat stables and the altars are opposed to the basdli house, where women are segregated in menstruation and childbirth, and to the graveyard (1987: 649). This last point provides particularly strong points of comparison with ancient Israel. The Kalasha say the basalt house and the graveyard are haunted by demons who are constantly seeking to enter human life and cause illness, and female sexuality and death are their best points of access. Women spend six days in the basdli house for menstruation and twenty to thirty days after childbirth. They may not touch anything associated with the goat stables; an unwitting breach requires a purificatory sacrifice. But prepubescent girls and postmenopausal women may approach their relatives' herds. On ritual occasions young boys may milk the nannies, but adult men require purification from their contact with women (1987: 651-52). There are similar livestock codes among neighbouring peoples, but the particular species may be shuffled round (1987: 654). Among the Sarakatsani it is the sheep that are sacred (a sheep is an iero prama— Campbell 1964: 277), and the goats exemplify the pollution of the women's sphere. The Sarakatsani keep goats to exploit grazing that is unsuitable for sheep, but except for the grazing it is the women who look after them, milking them, shearing them, delivering the kids. Conversely women, particularly married women and girls in their periods, 'do not approach the sheep unnecessarily' (1964: 31). For the Sarakatsani, sheep and goats, men and women, are important and related oppositions with a moral reference. Sheep are particularly God's animals, and their shepherds, made in His image, are essentially noble beings. Women through the particular sensuality of their natures are inherently more likely to have relations with the Devil; and goats were originally the animals of the Devil which Christ captured and tamed for the service of man... Sheep are docile, enduring, pure and intelligent.. .To match [their] purity and passive courage shepherds ought to be fearless

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Anton Blok (1981) adds to this the observation that an opposition between sheep and goats, more specifically between rams and billygoats, is widespread among pastoral communities in the Mediterranean area, in relation to the code of honour. The ram represents the powerful man who protects his honour, and the billy-goat is the cuckold and the symbol of shame; this reflects an observable fact of the sexual behaviour of the two species (1981: 428), and accounts for the very widespread connection of horns with cuckoldry. The specific opposition of sheep and goats is not reflected in the biblical world. Blok is mistaken here: he has misread the instructions about sacrifice, as it is so easy to do, through not being familiar with the context. He reads the fact that billy-goats are prescribed for the purification offering and for the bearing of sin in the 'scapegoat' ritual (Lev. 16) as reflecting the goat's status as a a symbol of shame. He has simply omitted to read Leviticus 4, dealing with occasional purification-offerings, where a private person brings a female goat or a ewe-lamb for a purification offering (Lev. 4.28, 32), and a priest or the whole community a bull (vv. 3, 14); only in the case of a chief (nasT) is a male goat offered. Moreover, the fact that a goat is prescribed to bear the transgressions of the entire community on the Day of Atonement bears witness rather to the honour accorded to this animal than the reverse. In Leviticus 4 it seems to be rather a question of the monetary value of the respective animals. A whole-offering (Lev. 1), which is the most honorific type of offering, may be made from any of the herds or flocks, provided that it is a male. The importance of these studies for our own is rather, in the first place, that they provide us with clear examples, from an appropriate kind of society, the pastoral, in one case with an agricultural side to the economy, of a code of oppositions being structured round animals actually kept by the society, so that animals that they keep and use and

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perhaps eat may be despised in relation to others. This offers a possible parallel to the opposition between pigs and other animals that is suggested by the material remains from Palestine as well as the written evidence from Egypt and Mesopotamia, with pigs being kept and yet given very low esteem and certainly never being offered in sacrifice to the acknowledged gods of state or tribe. As this situation must lie in the background of the sharper opposition found in the Old Testament texts, the parallels indirectly illuminate the proper subject of our study. And the whole series of oppositions worked out in these studies is rich in suggestive parallels to Israelite social and ritual customs, and may therefore help us in elucidating the place of animals in that culture. The societies studied by Campbell and Parkes are structured round a profound and far-reaching opposition between the sexes. In a society where women themselves are regarded (by men!) as dangerous and corrupting, the animals associated with them share their taint. And it is fairly clear that women were indeed viewed as dangerous and corrupting by a strong current of ideology among men in ancient Israel. This is suggested (not to mention a strong trend in the narrative of the Old Testament—Eve, Delilah, Jezebel and the rest) especially by an institution with close parallels in the pastoral societies of the Kalasha and the Sarakatsani: the uncleanness of menstruation and childbirth. While we cannot say how old this is, it is surely unlikely to be simply an exilic priestly invention (as for example Leonie Archer regards it, [1990: 38]); cf. 2 Sam. 11.4.1 Mary Douglas has convincingly argued that where men's determination to control their women is not sufficiently single-minded, but in conflict with other aims, sexual pollution is likely to be believed in. Sex is likely to be pollution-free in a society where sexual roles are enforced directly... But the principle runs into trouble if there is any other principle which protects women from physical control. For this gives women scope to play off one man against another, and so to confound the principle of male dominance (Douglas 1966: 141,149).

There is, however, no direct evidence that the sexes in ancient Palestine were associated with particular animals, at least not in the strict sense we find among the Kalasha and Sarakatsani. Certainly it is 1. Though this might conceivably derive from the sixth century or later (cf. Van Seters 1983: 277-91).

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not the case that women were kept away from the flocks. Shepherds were usually male, but in a couple of places in Hebrew narrative we find women in charge of the watering of the flocks: Rachel in Gen. 29.9, who is explicitly described as 'a shepherdess' (ro'a\ and the daughters of Reuel in Exod. 2.16ff. (Song 1.8 should also be compared). In both these places the women find themselves in difficulty, Rachel because only the men can roll away the stone from the mouth of the well, the daughters of Reuel because they are harrassed by the men; they are rescued in each place by the hero. Robert Alter has suggested (1981: 51-52) that we have here examples of a literary 'type-scene' (Gen. 24.10-61 is another), the conventional prelude to the hero's betrothal, which might suggest that we need not take their data all that seriously as social insight. But the situation presumed in any realistic narrative must be plausible to the reader; hence we can safely assume that girls did look after their father's flocks, but we have no evidence that married women might be shepherdesses. Whether the development of the situation in Exodus 2, with its suggestion of sexual antagonism on the part of the male shepherds, should also be seen as a common event, or whether it is simply there for the sake of the plot, is a more obscure question. It is also unclear whether communities existed or were common in which, as among the Kalasha, a large proportion of the men engaged in transhumance, leaving the women and the weak in the village, or whether transhumant pastoralism as part of a mixed economy was always only the work of a few specialist shepherds. We have even less information about the keeping of cattle, and still less of pigs, but it is safe to say that these were never taken away from home. And if, as I have supposed, where pigs existed they were mainly raised on domestic waste, they would almost certainly have been kept by the women; and this would have been even more likely where the men were absent for long periods. There is therefore at least some possibility that the pastoral contempt for swine was developed in the context of a sexual dichotomy for which other evidence exists. But this certainly cannot have been as strong or precise in relation to the animals as among the Kalasha or Sarakatsani. The importance of these studies may then be not so much in suggesting a very precise social situation out of which the pig taboo (and others) in Israelite society might have arisen, as in simply offering suggestive analogies to the situation that we can detect in that society. The key point is the development of a social dichotomy that is

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symbolized by particular animals seen as opposed to each other. Although there is a distinct possibility that a gender-based dichotomy lies somewhere in the background, there are more obvious ones suggested by the gradually emerging history of the distinction between clean and unclean animals. One is that between pastoral and agricultural communities, or within the same community where both 'clean' animals and pigs were kept. Since the most interesting parallels we have found have been in predominantly pastoral communities, it is this dichotomy that most obviously occurs to us. We can imagine that unfavourable comparisons (as among the Sarakatsani) could be made between the diet of pigs and those of the clean-living grazing animals (and that the omnivorous voraciousness of goats would be overlooked), and perhaps also between the ferocity of pigs, animals who will even eat their own offspring, and the docility of the shepherd's flocks. This would then offer a basis for linking the various wild animals with either sphere through the associations of ideas that we explored earlier in this chapter. Yet the dichotomy between city and village, suggested by significant aspects of the contemporary evidence, seems to be equally important, but it is not likely to be so closely illuminated by the Kalasha and Sarakatsani parallels, since it would have been a matter of unilateral city contempt for pigs without a dual symbolization of the two spheres. Let me make it clear here that when I speak of dichotomy, I am not speaking of communities alien to each other and in a state of open hostility. That would obviously not be true of the sexual dichotomy of the Kalasha or Sarakatsani, and it is also by no means often true of the dichotomy between pastoral and agrarian elements (Gottwald 1979: 437ff.), nor of that between city and village (Lemche 1985: 164ff.), even though in this case the relationship of mutual economic benefit frequently turns into one of exploitation. The right conditions for the emergence of cosmological dichotomizing as a reflection of social dichotomy occur when we have two elements that need each other, cannot live without each other, and hence can never be separated, and yet despise each other. That is unfortunately only too often the position between the sexes, and not only in a society like the Kalasha, and it may also be the position between economic classes or groups. Impurity is often an expression of tension or conflicting goals within society (Douglas 1966: 140-41). We may very well imagine, for example, that if economic configurations like that of Tell Jemmeh or

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the Refa'im valley were common, where communities depended both on pastoralism and on pigs in some measure, and if there were pressures driving the community towards the nomadic life (cf. Coote and Whitelam 1987: 113), the pigs and their keepers would easily become a source of tension. Whatever the source of social tension, attitudes of contempt only develop into formal taboos when a religious factor intervenes, and this is what we find when the pig is regularly excluded from the sacred offerings. Since it must have been city-based priestly elites who decreed this, it is not a direct reflection of the divide between pastoralists and pig-keepers, but it might possibly be an indirect result. At the end of Chapter 3 I suggested that while the Israelite priestly systematizers could not have imposed an entire body of custom upon a nation de novo, they could have supported one tradition against another within it. If we look at the whole body of customary avoidances codified in the Levitical and related codes, not only that of the pig, we are, I think, confirmed in our assumption that the pastoral tradition is their ultimate source. The principle of social distance, typical as Parkes notes (1987: 655) of agricultural communities, seems to be less significant, and the most suggestive analogies appear to be found in predominantly pastoral societies. At the very least, we may say that because of objections to non-ruminant game traditional in communities with a strong pastoral element or background, it was easier for the priests to enforce a code that distinguished among wild animals in the same way as among domestic ones. 3. Developments The evidence we studied in the last chapter suggests that the official cult throughout the West Semitic world adopted a code of meanings of this kind. It is striking how widespread is the agreement on the cultic unacceptability of the pig, and how different are the cults where the pig or indeed all non-ruminants are prohibited for food: those of the worshippers of one God at Jerusalem, of many gods at Harran, of the syncretized goddess at Hierapolis. Indeed, wherever we have explicit information of the presence of such dietary codes in the ancient Near East, they are connected with cultic situations: the only exception appears to be the reports about the Phoenicians. The precise Sitz im Leben in each case is surely likely to have been the pilgrimage festival.

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Both Jerusalem and Hierapolis were important pilgrimage sancturaries; perhaps Harran was once before the restriction of its cult to the city. The restrictions would have applied for the duration of the feast, even if not longer.1 The evidence also suggests that those populations who lived permanently within the influence of such cultic places, for example at Jerusalem, always observed the restrictions. Whatever the customary avoidances on which the priestly directors of these cults built, for them it served as a means of exalting the dignity of their divine patrons, protecting the holiness of their sanctuaries and controlling their worshippers. The dignity of the gods demanded that no contemptible victims should be offered to them, and that pointed to the pig, well-known as an eater of refuse. For the sake of the holiness of the sanctuaries, purity was demanded of the worshippers; this included abstinence from all flesh meats other than the sacrificial victims and a limited range of others that could be recognized, by the associations we have explored, as similarly acceptable. The confirmation of this range of associations by the supreme deities of these influential sanctuaries, who were frequently associated with state or nation, reinforced their protection of the social order by identifying the sacrificial victims and some like them with human society and condemning others as associated with the enemies of humanity. At some stage, however—the evidence is only late—those sanctuaries where one or more of the Semitic goddesses were worshipped elaborated this system in a novel direction. In their system, where doves or fish, or both, are avoided in honour of one of the goddesses, there are not two opposed groups of animals, but three, for it clearly cannot be said in this case that doves or fish are unclean; they are in fact holy. At the same time, so we are told, those who observed these avoidances also observed others more in line with the Old Testament system, and presumably regarded their objects as unclean. It is true that Lucian reports that devotees of the Dea Syria were disagreed on whether the pig was holy or unclean (see Chapter 4, §3.b.3). Perhaps a more 1. There are many parallels outside the immediate cultural region. In Babylonia gods had each their distinctive taboos, by which particular animals were not to be offered to particular gods (Saggs 1988: 306); a stronger parallel is afforded by the fifth oration of the emperor Julian (173d), in which he discusses the dietary requirements for the worshippers of the Magna Mater, introducing them under the heading •urcep TTJ<; ayiotemq aurfji; icai xfiq ayveia*; ('on her ritual and the purity she requires')-

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complex system is more open to misunderstanding, or perhaps Lucian (if it is he) is simply being satirical (cf. Oden 1977: 16-17). At least there can be no doubt that the origin of these respective avoidances is different. Yet we have not a totally independent tradition, but a development of the same one in a different direction. In the matter of the sacrifice of pigeons, Jerusalem preserves the ancient custom attested at Ugarit, and the worshippers of Ashtart are the innovators; they select the same bird to be given a different kind of symbolic significance: to represent the goddess rather than the worshipper, and therefore to be exempt both from sacrifice and from the table. Here we may perhaps detect the operation of the mechanism of self-definition by opposition to which I referred above (Chapter 3, §2.e.3); see further below, Chapter 6, §2.a.3. The avoidance of fish also seems to innovate as against ancient custom, though it is possible that particular species of fish, as in the (also late-reported) custom in parts of Egypt (Herodotus 2.77, Athanasius Contra Gentes 23), had been sacred since earlier times. However, the selection of scaly fish as against other water creatures is only found in the Old Testament, so we cannot say how old or widespread it is. This system, in contrast to the one we have been studying, with its simple dichotomy, suggests a cosmology in which there are three centres of power; crudely one might call them the powers of order, represented by the clean animals, fertility, represented by the sacred animals, and death, represented by the unclean animals. It would not perhaps be surprising if Lucian's informants disagreed about the status of the pig, since there is in this system a close analogy between the holy and unclean animals; they each represent their own set of cosmic powers and are untouchable in virtue of that fact. One might speculate that this system developed out of a simple dichotomy because of the need for a more positive group of symbols to represent women and their sphere of life, a development much easier within the cult of the goddesses than where a male high god such as Yahweh was entirely dominant. There is some evidence that the worship of the goddesses was particularly widespread among women (cf. Jer. 7.18; 44.15 (17), Winter 1983: 564, 668).1 The deep chasm that opens up between this and the Jewish priestly 1. Schroer (1987: 41) points further to 1 Kgs 15.13; 2 Kgs 23.6 as suggesting that 'the cult of Asherah appears to have offered women particular opportunities for cultic activity'.

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system is created beyond anything else by the demand for the worship of one God alone. The system appears to have developed in the great urban centres of Syrian paganism, which had always been markedly polytheistic as against the cults of the tribally based nations of Israel and Transjordan (Halpern 1987: 84). F. Stolz (1980: 148) suggests that there is a structural correspondence between the complex social structure of the city, with its many cooperating and competing centres of power, and the complex relationships of the gods within the pantheon: 'The gods form an articulated plurality, which is represented primarily as a kinship structure'.1 One might suggest that there is a similar relationship between the simple patriarchal structure of tribal society, whether nomadic or village-based, and the dominance of a single high god among subordinates (so Halpern 1987: 84); and the correspondence may then be extended to the dietary systems related to the respective cults; the complexity of the system of dietary taboos that developed in connection with the polytheistic system on the one hand, and on the other the simple opposition of clean foods acceptable to the deity and unclean ones that are not. The correspondence is more than merely structural or 'good to think'; the practical requirements of particular social groups lead, if only gradually, to the development of symbolic systems that serve their needs and enable them to express their individuality. The structure of meaning we have elucidated, whether or not modified in this manner, was ancient, generally accepted (it would seem) and dominant in most of the official places of cult. But the official cult was not the only means by which the divine could be approached in the old Semitic world. There is much evidence (see e.g. Albertz 1978, Holladay 1987) of types of personal, private devotion carried on in private houses and other unofficial meeting places, which did not— this is the important point—necessarily accept the standards and values of the official cult. Holladay, for example, shows from the archaeological record that in Israel the worship at the official sanctuaries was 'essentially aniconic' (p. 280), whereas at unofficial cult sites we find plentiful examples of female figurines, horse-and-rider models and so forth. It is probably somewhere within this range of unofficial (but not necessarily officially condemned)2 cult practices that we should 1. 'Die Gotter bilden eine gegliederte Vielheit, welche sich zunachst als Verwandtschaftsgefuge darstellt.' 2. To give such an impression would be to generalize the very unusual situation

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place the eating of unclean meat as a cultic act which we investigated in the last chapter (§3.d). The structure of meaning, even if accepted, might be used in a different way from the official cult. Pigs were raised and eaten in many places, even in Iron Age Israel. Wherever they were eaten it is natural to suppose that deities were invoked, since that was the general custom where animals raised on the farm were slaughtered. But they cannot have been the official deities of the state or tribe—in Israel certainly not Yahweh. Rather, since they symbolized a side of life seen as opposed to that blessed from above, they are likely, as the evidence we have looked at suggests, to have been the powers of the underworld, or else, perhaps, deities peculiar to the women's world within which the practice may have found a place, as among the Kalasha. Originally this will have been a natural and quite untendentious practice; but when, as in postexilic Judah (if not before), there was pressure to leave off the eating of 'unclean' beasts, it may have acquired the character of a ritual deliberately opposed to the official cult, and deliberately inverting the way in which it used the symbolism. It would then derive its significance from that of which it was an inversion, not primarily from its internal oppositions. For the purposes of this particular cult, clean is unclean and unclean is clean, just as Sheol is opposite to heaven and death to life. It is surely understandable that the tensions engendered by a fairly strict system of purity should require an occasional release, that the reality of the unclean powers should be acknowledged by for once submitting to their power rather than for ever keeping them at bay. Mary Douglas once again has written illuminatingly on this, in the last chapter of Purity and Danger (1966: 159ff.). A cult of the kind that appears to have existed may be compared to the Lele mystery cult in which a pangolin is sacrificed and eaten, the pangolin being the most anomalous of all animals ('an animal with scales like fish which lives in a tree'), and the Lele normally avoiding such anomalies. Throughout their daily and especially their ritual life the Lele are preoccupied with form... Then comes the inner cult of all their ritual life, in which the initiates of the pangolin, immune to dangers that would kill uninitiated of postexilic (probably we should say post-Ezra) Judaism. To some extent Holladay falls into this trap by using the question-begging term 'nonconformist' rather than 'unofficial' or 'private'. The word 'nonconformist' implies a standard to which people are required to conform, and it is not demonstrable for monarchic Israel and Judah that the avoidance of images was required in this way.

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men, approach, hold, kill and eat the animal which in its own existence combines all the elements which Lele culture keeps apart... If they consistently shunned ambiguity they would commit themselves to division between ideal and reality. But they confront ambiguity in an extreme and concentrated form (1966: 170).

Similarly the Nyakusa reject everything that they see as filth, and say that madmen eat filth. 'But in spite of this normal avoidance the central act in the ritual of mourning is actively to welcome filth. They sweep rubbish onto the mourners' (1966: 176-77). Douglas sees this as an acknowledgement that the ritual avoidance of all forms of danger in the striving for blessing does not necessarily achieve its goal; death is an inescapable reality, and at some point its power must be acknowledged. (Turner's concept of rituals of communitas ought to be compared [Turner 1969: 96ff.]; below, Chapter 6, §2.a.3.) The parallel may be particularly relevant if the ritual eating of unclean meat is an occasional or regular part of the cult of the dead or the powers that control them. One of the features of the Levitical system that will claim our attention is its rigid exclusion of this way of acknowledging evil, in its concern for the unbroken holiness of all and everything that is consecrated to the Holy One who alone may be worshipped as God. But with this we reach the subject of our next chapter, in which we return to the texts and try to assess their significance against the background that, to a small extent, we have uncovered.

Chapter 6 PURITY AND MONOTHEISM 1. The Literary Contexts a. Introduction We must now return to our texts, to Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, and try to work out their meaning against the social background, material and cultural, so far as we have been able to determine it, and in relation to their wider literary contexts. We are in one respect on safer ground here than we were in the last chapter, where we could only hazard the vaguest speculations about the significance of dietary and ritual practices themselves very imperfectly known from our investigations in Chapter 5. We have the advantage in the Pentateuch of having in each case a detailed body of material setting out an understanding of the cosmic, social and ritual world: a 'world of meaning' to use the expression of Frank Gorman (1990: 15); and in these it is relatively easy to place the rules about clean and unclean food. In the broadest sense these contexts may be defined respectively as the Tetrateuch, or effectively the priestly writings, including the Holiness Code (for useful descriptions from various points of view, see Haran 1983, Milgrom 1970, 1983, Gorman 1990, Jenson 1992);1 and the Deuteronomic literature (see especially Weinfeld 1972); each of these of course not a unitary work from a single pen but an accumulation of material evolved over a long period from a distinctive tradition with a characteristic ideology, whatever the variations of expression in successive strata. The texts are not related in the same way to these two contexts. In Deuteronomy 14, vv. 4-20 is alien to its context in style and conceptual structure, but the closely related text of Leviticus 11 is entirely at 1. I should particularly like to draw attention to the last two for their extensive illumination of the subject through anthropological models.

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home in Leviticus. This might suggest that there is no real need to set the text in Deuteronomy against the background of the book. However, this would deprive us of any chance of answering the question why it is there, unless indeed the answer is simply that a late reviser of the whole Pentateuch was disturbed at the absence of any definition of 'abomination' in the matter of food. But even if this is true, there is sufficient importance in the genuinely Deuteronomic vv. 3 and 21 a to require us to reflect on their relation to the ideas of Deuteronomy in general. There are indeed profound differences, as well as obvious similarities, between the theology and ideology of P and Deuteronomy. They share a thoroughly monotheistic faith and an ethnocentric application of expressed, in both sources, in variations of the formula 'Yahweh the God of Israel—Israel the people of Yahweh'. Both are strongly nationalistic in feeling; at a period of great external influence in Judah, first from the Assyrians, then from the Egyptians, and then from Babylon, they are marked by their resistance to such influence and by pride in the Israelite national identity, shared by the two kingdoms. Both envisage a single sanctuary, though in the case of the priestly work this may not be true of the earliest levels (see Weinfeld 1972: 218, who refers to Kaufmann 1937: I, 124, and Elliger 1966: 317). But from the point of view of this study the differences are equally significant. An initial sketch will be followed by a more detailed treatment of each system in turn. The difference may be summed up in the theme of 'demythologization and secularization', as Weinfeld chooses to term it (1972: 190), or, in the terms used by Belo (1981: 38ff.), the 'system of pollution' as against the 'system of debt'. However, the latter opposition does not precisely correspond to the contrast between the two works, and describes their interests rather than their approaches, while the term 'secularization', if taken in its usual modern sense, exaggerates the profundity of the revolution sought by the Deuteronomists; it needs to be taken in conjunction with Weinfeld's detailed description (1972: 191-243), though even here we find some exaggeration. Nicholson's term 'desacralization' (1991) is more precise. It is stating the obvious to say that the central interest of P is in ritual; more interestingly, everything else of which it treats is seen from the point of view of ritual or in ritual terms. Thus, to take an example treated by Weinfeld (1972: 238-39), warfare is a sacral under

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taking in P (as in early Israel and in many primitive and less primitive societies): the holy vessels were brought into the battle with horns and trumpets (Num. 10.9; 31.6 [etc.]); and a portion of the war spoils was set aside as a gift for the LORD to be disposed of by the sanctuary (Num. 31.50-4 [etc.]). According to P the returning warriors were required to purify themselves (Num. 31.19 and 24) and cleanse their clothing and utensils (w. 20-3) (1972: 238).

The conception of warfare in Deuteronomy contrasts with this, in that, as Weinfeld notes, all these sacral features are missing. Deut. 23.10-15 however does provide for the purity of the military camp in a way that is only explicable in terms of sacral purity; Weinfeld here overstates a strong case when he says that 'there is no Biblical reference to the effect that human excrement defiles'. As we have seen (Chapter 1, §2), Ezek. 4.12-15 refutes him. Generally, however, it is perfectly fair to say that Deuteronomy sees war, although commanded by Yahweh (7.1-5, 17-26; 20.16-18) or seconded by him (20.1, 4, 1315), and in that sense 'religious', as in itself an activity not constrained by ritual, but only by ethical considerations, for this surely is how the rules in 20.5-15, 19-20 should be seen (cf. Houston 1985: 16ff.). And the same could be said of a wide range of other activities, including the administration of justice (Weinfeld 1972: 233ff.) and the conception of sin and punishment (239ff.). It is correct to note against Weinfeld that a good part of the differences he notes is traceable to the different purposes of the two codes: Deuteronomy is law in the ordinary sense (German Recht or Heb. miSpaf), while P is concerned above all to govern the cult and what bears upon it; they are concerned in Belo's terms with the systems of debt and pollution respectively, and Deuteronomy is not necessarily opposed to the implementation of the latter—see, for example, 24.8; 'leprosy', a purely ritual matter, is simply not its concern, but rather the concern of the Levitical priests. But it is also, and vitally, true that when Deuteronomy deals with the cult itself, it radically desacralizes many of its most basic features. The sanctuary itself is no longer, as in the Psalms as well as P, the dwelling of God himself but 'the place that he shall choose to put his name there'; tithes are not 'holy to the LORD' (Lev. 27.30-33), but remain the property of the original owners, who consume them themselves with those whom they invite (Deut. 14.2227); the contrast of Deut. 15.19 and Lev. 27.26 shows that 'in the

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deuteronomic view, sanctity is not a taboo that inheres in things which by nature belong to the divine realm but is rather a consequence of the religious intentions of the person who consecrates it' (Weinfeld 1972: 215). b. The Priestly Writings The world-view of the priestly writings not only revolves around the ritual of the sanctuary, but is dominated by a conception of order that extends through the cosmos, the sanctuary and human society. It is expressed in two main forms. The first is that of binary opposition, as we see it in Leviticus 11, or in the account of creation in Genesis 1, which is initiated by a series of separations: light and darkness, water below and water above the firmament, land and sea. The second form of order is that of concentric grades of holiness (cf. Jenson 1992). In so far as this relates to the sanctuary in the priestly picture of Israel's wandering with the tabernacle in the wilderness, it is carefully described by Haran (1985: 175ff.): within the tabernacle there is a gradation of holiness from the Holy of Holies, or Most Holy Place, where God himself appears above the Ark, through the Holy Place, or outer chamber of the tabernacle (and the altar) to the court, and so to the camp in general. The outer boundary of the camp is as far as the field of holiness extends, and it is appropriate that the leper and the scapegoat should be sent out of it. For each spatial grade there is the corresponding group of personnel: high priest, priests, Levites, Israelites; and there are also other homologies. From another point of view, characteristic of the Holiness Code but not exclusive to it, the Land of Israel may be seen as holy; see Num. 35.33-34; Lev. 18.24ff. These passages warn against the defilement of the land by bloodshed or sexual misconduct. Presumably the holiness in danger of such defilement extends only to the borders of the land, but it is not clear how it relates to the greater sanctity of the sanctuary within it. All the concerns of the priestly work are embraced in the programmatic statement of Lev. 10.10 (cf. Ezek. 22.26) that the priests' duty is 'to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean'. For these are undoubtedly ritual terms, the first pair in origin, the second as P uses them. The term 'holy' (qados) and its cognates are in constant use to express the monotheistic and ethnocentric emphases of the priestly world-view in the Holiness Code and elsewhere, including the conclusion of our chapter; and the terms

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'holy' and 'unclean' encapsulate and bring together the concern for order in its different forms, since the binary opposition of holy and common defines the boundary between each concentric grade and the one within it, and the binary opposition of unclean and clean defines what threatens the order of each grade from within or without. While the term 'unclean' seems to have a reference that can be defined absolutely, in that certain objects and processes are unclean in all circumstances, the term 'holy' is always relative. How seriously uncleanness is viewed depends on the grade of holiness that is in view, so that some things may be acceptable for a layman that are not for a priest. For an example compare Lev. 22.8 with 17.15-16: the layman is permitted to eat carrion provided that he purifies himself afterwards, but the priest, who belongs to a higher grade of holiness, is absolutely forbidden to do so. While it may be true, as Weinfeld suggests, that holiness is viewed in P as an inherent character of certain things and places, or of things in specified relationships, we should note that in the Holiness Code, in relation to priests and people, it is not inherent. It is a status given by God to his priests in his good pleasure, as in the repeated phrase 'I am the LORD who sanctifies (you, [etc.])' (21.8,15,23; 22.9, 15, 32). Once (20.8) this is said of the people; but more frequently in this connection holiness is to be striven for and preserved by human effort to be separated from impurity and sin—an imitatio del: 'You shall be holy as I am holy' (or variations: 19.2; 20.7; 20.26). In these passages holiness is no longer a technical ritual category; it concerns the relationship of the people of Israel to Yahweh, and has a strongly ethical character. By remaining faithful to their God and keeping themselves free of offences against the good order, purity and justice of society, Israel may achieve that character of holiness that inherently is God's alone. Constantly, then, the priestly work concerns itself with structure, with internal boundaries, and not only those relative to the sanctuary, for it is the Holiness Code, not Deuteronomy, that gives the incest rules (Lev. 18), and P that gives the rules of inheritance (Num. 27.111; 36), which Deuteronomy refers to only in passing (21.15-17). Many of these are doubtless ancient; some can be shown to be so by evidence elsewhere (see Weinfeld 1972: 233ff.); others may be the fruit of the authors' Utopian imagination, or of practical accommodation to modem developments, as in the permission for women without brothers to inherit, which argues some assimilation of the advance of

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women's rights seen in Deuteronomy (see below). There is always some relationship between culture, 'an ordered system of meaning and symbols, in terms of which social interaction takes place' (Geertz 1975: 144), and the social system itself, but, as Geertz reminds us, the precise relationship varies widely in different situations, is subject to strain and incongruity especially in situations of social change and social conflict (pp. 144-45), and, in the case of ancient literature, often cannot be determined for lack of evidence. But while we cannot uncover the precise relationship of the priestly authors' ideas to the social system, and without question it will have differed in different periods and for different subjects, we can still say a good deal about their social setting. It is generally agreed that it lies among the priesthood of the Jerusalem temple; that priests were the authors is obvious enough from the interests of the material, and no candidates from other sanctuaries are in view for the final composition of material that certainly in its present form postdates the exile, because of the abandonment of all other official sanctuaries. Even if similar works were in process of formation at other sanctuaries, and even if the impression given by 2 Kings 23 of their destruction by Josiah is misleading, they would not have survived the exile, which was followed by the re-establishment of Jerusalem alone as the centre of the restored community. (It is of course possible that material originating from other sanctuaries had been included in the Jerusalem work before the exile [Porter 1990: 392b].) The priestly work represents the official religion of Judah, whether the state religion under the monarchy or the continuation of that religion after the exile. I have already (Chapter 5, §3) referred to J.S. Holladay's (1987) distinction between 'establishment' and (what he calls) 'noncoTnformist' sanctuaries and shrines in Israel and Judah. He shows (pp. 270ff.) that such a distinction can be drawn on the basis of the archaeological record; the sanctuaries at Arad and Dan, for example, are clearly marked out as of an official character by their size, mode of access and so forth, as against such sites as Jerusalem Cave 1, and furthermore, as we have seen, 'establishment' worship, so far as present discoveries show, is 'essentially aniconic' (p. 280), against the frequent appearance of female figurines, horse-and-rider models and the like, in 'nonconformist' sites and domestic assemblages. This provides a useful pattern; the aniconic character of the 'establishment' worship, though it raises certain problems in relation

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to the biblical record (pp. 295ff.), certainly corresponds well with the monotheism of the priestly work, given the close relationship between the 'first' and 'second' commandments of the Decalogue. We need to be careful in making this distinction. As I have indicated, I do not accept the word 'nonconformist', which implies a social schism that cannot be deduced from the finds—and only doubtfully from the Bible—for the monarchic period. Those who specifically condemned unofficial worship need not initially have been more than a party (so M. Smith 1987 and Lang 1983). Moreover, there is a great deal in the biblical record to show that official worship in the monarchic period was not monolatrous (see now M.S. Smith 1990, who details the evidence thoroughly). It might however be definable as monotheistic in the sense defended by Halpem (1987: 78ff.), appealing to the authority of Kaufmann, which does not exclude the offering of cult to lesser divinities who are not seen as being God in the same sense. (It is interesting that this is precisely what Evans-Pritchard [1956] does with Nuer religion.) Though this is certainly not the monotheism of P (or of Deuteronomy), which strikingly excludes all supernatural powers other than Yahweh, it could have been the formative background from which biblical monotheism developed intellectually. There can in any case be no question that the cult promoted by the priestly writers of the Pentateuch was, or was derived from, the 'establishment', state-sponsored cult of the monarchy, and further that they were in fact among those who rejected all unofficial cults as illegitimate (cf. e.g. Lev. 17.7). It will be important to trace the respective effects of the official and monotheistic aspects of the priestly socio-religious position on the text and practice that we are examining. But there will be no surprise that men in such a social position, officials and leaders in the most conservative of all social institutions, at a time when the traditional social structure was coming under tremendous pressure, or, still more, at a time when it had to be constructed anew out of the ruins of occupation and deportation, should seek to mark out an area within society where role and action could still be governed by position and by traditional expectation, so that old symbols could still retain their meaning, and pollution could be understood as something objective. (Cf. Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 195ff., who links the understanding of purity and impurity as objective and unconnected with human intention especially with the ascriptive understanding of status in a hereditary caste). Others at the same

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historical turning point, their own roles governed far more by personal achievement and moral choice, saw salvation in attempting a very different kind of social patterning. c. Deuteronomy The concept that Israel is a people holy to Yahweh, his exclusive possession (segulld), is one of the dominant themes of Deuteronomy. Less easily noticed is that Israel is virtually the only thing in Deuteronomy that is pronounced holy.1 The word is not even used of God himself, which is a marked contrast with the Holiness Code and with Lev. 11.44-45, where the holiness required of Israel is defined by the holiness of Yahweh. A further contrast, given much weight by Weinfeld (1972: 225-26), is that the holiness of Israel is not a requirement, as in the Holiness Code, but a decision of God that cannot be affected by human action; it cannot be threatened but it must be respected. The passage on the purity of the camp, already referred to (23.10-15), is perhaps the only one that throws doubt on Weinfeld's analysis; it would appear that the holiness of the camp, if not of the people themselves, is threatened by impurity. Otherwise it is true that where the holiness of the people comes into the argument, as it does in our chapter, the argument is not—as in the Holiness Code (and Lev. 11.4445), 'You shall be holy as I am holy; so (to achieve this) be removed from impurity'—but 'You are holy to Yahweh; so (to respect this) avoid abomination'. It clouds discussion to treat holiness in these passages as if it were the same concept as in the Holiness Code or in P; in P holiness is related to the cult, marks degrees, distinguishes some among the people from others, creates structure; in the Holiness Code it is a character that can be achieved by the people by human effort to avoid sin; in Deuteronomy it defines a permanent characteristic of the entire nation as against the rest of humankind and has nothing to do with the cult, even though the word is used in a technical cultic sense 1 The root «hp is used at 5.12; 7.6; 12.26; 14.2, 21; 15.19; 22.9; 23.15; 26.13, 15, 19; 28.9; 32.51; 33.2. Quoted texts (5.12; 32.51; 33.2) can obviously be left out of consideration; 26.15 may reasonably be counted in the same category, since it is a poetic expression (Driver 1902: 292). At 12.26, 15.19, 22.9 and 26.13 the technical vocabulary of the sanctuary is used of that which is dedicate to it. 23.15 requires the Israelite camp to be 'holy' (afnp) because of the presence of Yahweh, and seems to be the only place where the concept is deliberately applied to something other than the people themselves, as is the case in all the remaining examples.

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elsewhere in Deuteronomy. It is in fact a term borrowed from the cult to define something quite different, and different also from the Holiness Code's conception: that Israel, all Israel and Israel alone, belongs to Yahweh as his personal property and is his personal representative on earth; this is clear in 28.9-10. This boundary, between Israel and all other nations, is the one boundary that Deuteronomy is concerned to celebrate. No other deserves ritual protection; there are no privileged castes in Deuteronomy's Israel, no powers sacrally derived. Israel as envisaged by Deuteronomy is not a structured society where relationships are governed by degree, family relationship and traditional legitimacy, but 'a single nation of brothers' (Perlitt 1980).1 The relationship between one Israelite and another is that of brotherhood; even where it is a question of a king, the king is 'not to be exalted above his brethren' (17.20). There are, it is true, authorities in the commonwealth, but they are simply people with a particular function, not possessing sacrally derived powers. Perlitt (1980: 50-51) observes that the idea of brotherhood in Deuteronomy is not derived from the 'nomadic' idea (actually not only nomadic, but general in segmentary societies) of the literal bloodrelationship of the whole tribe to each other by way of the genealogical relationship of families, but is rather an ethical concept, which is first clearly delineated in ch. 15, not in the collective exhortations to faithfulness in chs. 6-11. 'The Deuteronomic nucleus of the book acknowledges no subdivision of Israel into families and tribes' (p. 51). This is doubtless an exaggeration, but an illuminating one, like Weinfeld's. It is quite true that in Deuteronomy 15 (contrast Lev. 25.25), no special responsibility to the family is recognized, only to 'your brother' (vv. 2, 7, 12), defined by v. 3 as a fellow-Israelite, this expresson itself in v. 12 defining 'Hebrew' (cf. Exod. 21.2). Further, in ch. 19, the role of the next-of-kin (never defined as such) as 'the avenger of blood' is not so much laid out as limited: the institution of asylum (not a sacral institution as in Num. 35 or Exod. 21.13-14) is intended to thwart his vengeful fury. Finally 13.6-11 makes it entirely clear that family loyalty ranks nowhere in relation to loyalty to the God of Israel. Although the ger or resident alien is not a 'brother', the duty owed to him is ethically identical; see 24.14. And in spite of the use of the masculine term 'brother' the brotherly duty is owed to 1.

'Ein einzig Volk von Briidem'.

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women as well as to men (cf. Weinfeld: 1972: 291-92); some older laws have been specifically altered in this sense (cf. 15.12-13 with Exod. 21.2-11).1 There is, moreover, a strong case for maintaining that the addressees of Deuteronomy are all free adult Israelites, women as well as men; this is argued by G.A. Smith (1918; supported by Weinfeld 1972:291-92) on the grounds that 'your wife' is not mentioned in the lists of persons participating in the pilgrimage festivals, though 'your daughter' and 'your maidservant' are. Obviously the wife was not expected to stay at home while everyone else went off to the Temple, but must be included in the address. The presence of women at the festivals is itself a departure from the older custom (Exod. 23.17), though the older law is quoted at 16.16. Israel then in Deuteronomy may be seen as a single people under a single God, bound by no traditional or sacred ties, but an assembly of individuals bound together solely by the choice of their God and recognizing no special individual duties (except to the members of their immediate household) but the universal moral obligations of love, justice and generosity owed to all their brothers. Within this unitary world the cult does not, as in P, form a privileged enclave with a complex structure, nor is there, except marginally, a special class of ritual activities that are not related to the fundamental themes of Deuteronomy's theology: the one God and the one nation of brothers. The law of the one place for pilgrimage and sacrifice appropriately underlines the unity of the one nation under its one God. The removal of the other sanctuaries where Israel had been accustomed to sacrifice and to celebrate festivals removes sacral validation from local and familial groups, as well as a potential point of entry for the worship of other gods. Blessing is secured not through the presence of the deity in his temple, but through faithfulness to his commandments, that is, through loyal love of Yahweh and the practice of righteousness towards the brothers. The very purpose of ritual action is redefined as 'rejoicing before Yahweh' (12.7, etc.) with charity towards those in need of material help (16.11, 14). Throughout the book we find the approach of rationalizing intellectuals to whom the ancient ritual symbols have ceased to appeal in the original way, but who wish to 1. In Deut. 15.12, Exod. 21.2 is simultaneously supplemented, by identifying the 'Hebrew' as 'your brother', and extended to females, producing the awkward phrase mayn IN '-o^n -prw which, whatever its grammatical deficiencies, makes it as clear as could be that 'your brother' is not necessarily male!

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preserve them because they are useful in the rational enterprise of strengthening national unity and enhancing the dedication of the nation to its sole God. Ernest Nicholson, in a recent essay (1991), has fruitfully drawn on Mary Douglas's ideas in Natural Symbols (1973a) to illuminate the ideology of Deuteronomy. It may be seen as a case of that type of response to social change that finds old rituals and symbols inadequate because they no longer correspond to social reality. It does not indeed seek to destroy institutions but to give them a new rationale based on loyalty to the one God of Israel and on love to the fellow-Israelite, the brother, and the ger who is equally deserving of compassion. This may be described as a moralizing of rituals and other institutions. As a response to social disruption, it is the antithesis of the priestly attempt to retain the ritual with its original ritual significance. The Holiness Code may be seen as taking a middle line. It is clearly, in parts at least, influenced by Deuteronomy (Perlitt [1980: 46-50] shows how Lev. 19.11-18 assumes the Deuteronomic reinterpretation of 'brother'), above all in its placing of the symbolic weight on the external boundary, but at the same time it retains much of the sacral symbolism of the priestly tradition. Much fruitless discussion has raged round the question of the circles in which Deuteronomy was composed (von Rad 1953; Nicholson 1967; Weinfeld 1972). It ought to be clear from what has been said that the question is in principle unanswerable, since the authors, with whatever institution they may have been connected, took up the classic position of the reformer, a position of sympathetic but critical detachment from all institutions, which were all in need of reform. It seems likely that their own position would owe little to traditional structures, but beyond that we can say little. They cannot be described as revolutionaries; they supported the official cult and other institutions in their outward form, but wished to renew them by giving them new meaning. d. Sacral and Secular Eating of Flesh The general characterization I have given to the two large bodies of material in which the law we are concerned with is found is well illustrated as we move closer to our specific subject. I have already (Chapter 4, §3.c; Chapter 5, §l.a) defended the widely accepted view that in early Israel the custom was not to slaughter domestic cattle

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without a ritual dedication, that is, without at least offering the blood to a deity. Every meal where the family's own beast was eaten was thereby a a ritual occasion, on which consecrated flesh was eaten and blessing was received from the deity. I have also pointed out that it would generally only be on ritual occasions that animals were slaughtered; some religious justification by way of public feast or personal crisis was required to slaughter and eat one of the flock or herd. This confronted the monotheistic reformers, priestly or secular, with a problem, which is simply expressed in Lev. 17.7: the promiscuous slaughtering of beasts over the countryside meant that all kinds of unofficial deities could be being honoured in this way, as seemed fit to the individual head of household. Both groups tried to deal with this problem, each in its own way—Leviticus 17 and Deuteronomy 12. There has been disagreement over which of these texts has the priority. Classical Wellhausenian criticism has seen the Deuteronomic move to secularize slaughter as prior, and the Holiness Code as responding to a misuse of the privilege given by Deuteronomy by restricting slaughter to the temple in Jerusalem (Wellhausen 1885: 50). The Jerusalem school (Kaufmann 1961: 180-81) has replied that once slaughter had been secularized its re-sacralization would be impossible, suggesting that in its original form and setting Lev. 17.3-4 referred to a plurality of sanctuaries, and hence predates the Deuteronomic reform. But it ought at least to be considered whether it does not make most sense to see the two texts as essentially contemporary responses to the same situation. Thus, the priestly approach was to retain, and indeed enhance, the sacral character of the slaughter of flesh, but to restrict its occasions to the worship of Yahweh and its place to Yahweh's sanctuary, whereas the Deuteronomic solution was to restrict all sacrificial worship to a single site and permit the secular slaughter of domestic animals elsewhere. On the face of it, the permission for secular slaughter given in Deut. 12.15-16 and 20-25 is simply a consequential adjustment required by the removal of the country sanctuaries; but in the light of our foregoing discussion the whole chapter has to be seen as a profound challenge to popular custom and feeling, not least on this particular point. The suggestion that no special occasion is required for the eating of meat, but that appetite alone may govern it (esp. v. 20); the specific statement that ritual conditions need not be observed and the assimilation of the meal to the eating of game (vv. 15, 22);

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and the prohibition of any ritual focused on the blood—'like water', vv. 16, 24; and Chapter 5, §l.a—all these would radically impoverish the symbolic density of the common people's life, and indeed there is no probability that so radical a sweeping away of custom could have been achieved before the trauma of the exile—which is not to say that it was not proposed before the exile. It is certainly all of a piece with the general approach of Deuteronomy that we have been discussing. These local popular ceremonies were a threat to the radical insistence of the reformers on the sole legitimacy of one God and one people. They celebrated different and divergent boundaries and values: the village and the clan, the local hero, the local holy place, and indeed holy places and people in general; if these were useful for particular aims from time to time, they could not be sacrally celebrated. Ritual sanctification must be reserved for the commitment of the whole people to their one God. 2. The Texts I now proceed to examine our texts in the light of their social and literary context. In effect, my treatment concentrates on each of the four main parts of Leviticus 11 separately: the main text in vv. 2b-23; the section on ritual uncleanness in vv. 24-40; the sermonic conclusion in vv. 41-45; and the editorial framework in vv. l-2a, 46-47.1 deal with the Deuteronomy text immediately after Lev. 11.2b-23, to which it is parallel. However, it is not so much the literary units that I am interested in here as the themes that they encapsulate or point to, and these are not necessarily strictly confined to the units I have indicated. Respectively they are: the prohibition of the eating of particular animals; unclean animals when dead as ritually polluting; abstinence from unclean flesh as a mark of the holy people of Yahweh; and the cosmic and ethical themes raised by the inclusion of the chapter in the Pentateuch as a whole. We have detected a process of redactional construction in Leviticus 11, and I shall make use of this in describing its literary and social relationships. But each of the elements in the chapter arises out of and finds its place in the same broadly consistent world-view and ritual system, and the chapter as a whole contains no striking inconsistencies; indeed I believe I have shown that the general effect of successive supplements has been to reduce ambiguity and enhance consistency. It

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is therefore possible to describe the intention of the chapter as a whole, as well as in its successive elements. I shall argue that each of the themes, except the first, may be associated with a broader literary context within the priestly corpus and that each of the four may be associated with a particular setting in life or history, which illuminates the purpose of the authors in taking over, developing and transmitting the widespread understanding of the cleanness or uncleanness of particular kinds of creatures that is found here. It is the third element that binds the whole composition into a unity, and it will be most appropriate to consider the chapter as a whole in connection with it. a. The Prohibition of Unclean Fesh 1. General. We note first the learned character of our text. It does not represent primitive thought, but learned reflection by men with at least basic zoological knowledge. At least four characteristics of the text may be seen as reflecting their traditional learning and scholarly interests. The first is its use of 'Aristotelian' classification. The text as a whole relies on a fourfold division (Chapter 2, §l.c.2) of the entire field of living creatures that is found elsewhere in the priestly writings of the Pentateuch, and also in Egypt. Further, the clean animals are defined by the use of precise morphological criteria applied on three occasions to animals within previously defined groups, creating definitions per genus et differentiam. The second is the comprehensive coverage of the definitions. In the text's final form no animal of any kind is overlooked or left in doubt; all are explicitly or implicitly defined as clean or unclean. Undoubtedly this was the intention, though, as we have seen (Chapter 2, §3), it took some time to become fully expressed. But since only a minute proportion of all animal species were ever normally used for food (Chapter 4, §2), the practical significance of this drive to comprehensiveness was small. It reflects simply the resolve of an intellectual circle of authors to extend the logic of their classifications as far as it would go. Thirdly, we have noted (Chapter 2, §l.c.5) that the number of species in each of the lists in the chapter is divisible by four. This interest in what I have called numerical symmetry is again the mark of an intellectual circle. And fourthly, the chapter can be seen as presenting in Hebrew dress a body of internationally shared knowledge. I must emphasize this as a corrective to those views, true so far as they go, which present the text as a unique expression of Yahwistic monotheism, 'an all-encom-

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passing classification scheme of singular significance that is without parallel in the ancient Near East' (Firmage 1990: 185). In fact, as we have seen (Chapter 4, §3.b.3), there are parallels within our knowledge. True, the comprehensive character of the text is not paralleled, but one must point out that Judaism is the only system of thought that has survived with its scriptures from the Near East of the first millennium BC—that we know of any parallels at all is a matter of sheer luck. So, positively, we must say that the identification of clean beasts is identical to that accepted at all major sanctuaries in the SyroPalestinian area for at least a thousand years before the present law came into existence, and that the classification of unclean birds is paralleled at least at Harran; and we have just noted the correspondence of the classification system to one used by Egyptian scribes. From the evidence we have seen at Harran, in Lucian and in Porphyry, the text is likely to be a surviving example of the kind of teaching given by the priests at many ancient sanctuaries in the SyroCanaanite area in order to ensure the purity of their holy places and congregations at the time of festival. In its present context its purpose obviously goes beyond that, yet I do not think it unreasonable to suppose that such was the original Sitz im Leben of some form of this teaching. We noted in Chapter 2, §l.c.3, that the best explanation of v. 8a{3, forbidding Israelites to touch the dead bodies of unclean animals, is that it applied for the period of the festival at which they had to show themselves in the holy courts (and of course permanently to the priests and Levites who served there). It would seem probable, in consequence, that the original Sitz im Leben of all the dietary restrictions also is priestly instruction given to those who came to Yahweh's pilgrimage festivals, to inform them of his requirements of his worshippers. This would be likely to be true even if vv. 4-8 are, as I suggested, a supplement to the original text, for in view of the general development of the rules it seems unlikely that a supplement would apply to a more restricted situation than the original text. In the development of the text the consciously national character of Yahweh's worship comes to the fore, and the rules are applied to Israel in their daily life. But I shall go into this below. 2. The Development of the Rules. The relation of the rules defined in this chapter to the surrounding culture is most easily seen in connection with the beasts. They can be related in a general way to dietary

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custom, and more precisely to cultic practice. The beasts permitted correspond to those normally eaten in Israel, with the exception of some limited use of the pig, which seems likely in any case not to have been customary in early Israel for both cultural reasons (their pastoral background) and environmental ones (they lived in the highlands with their problematic water supplies); see Chapter 4, §§2.b.2, 4.b. It would be tempting to argue from this that the text here expresses the characteristic ethnocentricity of the priestly work, and simply throws the weight of a religious law behind the early practice of the people. But it is also true that the clean beasts correspond morphologically to those accepted for sacrifice according to Leviticus 1-7; so that Firmage would have some support for his view (see Chapter 3, §2.e) that the criteria are intended to define as clean for eating the same or similar kinds of beasts as are acceptable for sacrifice. The full range of the evidence examined above suggests that, while both these views have a measure of truth, they are too simple. Our researches have shown that the text here formulates a widespread understanding of the ritual status of the domestic and larger wild beasts found well beyond the borders of Israel and established long before the nation came into existence. So far as domestic animals are concerned, all the beasts prescribed as victims for the regular public cult of the Semitic peoples are here permitted as food, all those that are not normally found as such are forbidden, regardless of their use as food elsewhere or indeed in Israel itself. This cannot conceivably be a coincidence. All wild beasts permitted for food are closely related to the animals that belong to the ritual repertory, and one of them, the fallow deer, is found as a sacrificial victim, both within Israel (Chapter 4, §3.b.l) and outside (Chapter 4, §3.b.2). Thus we have not (against Firmage) in the rules as such a distinctive expression of monotheistic Yahwism. The criteria for cleanness in beasts are doubtless designed, as Firmage suggests (1990: 187), to be applied by lay people, and to that end are formulated as simply as possible, in a way that would enable them to be applied by simple inspection. They are derived, as I suggested above (Chapter 3, §2.e.2), and as I think the evidence of prior custom suggests, by comparison between the characteristics of the known sacrificial beasts, cattle, sheep and goats (and fallow deer?), and the known non-sacrificial beasts, particularly, it would be natural to expect, the domestic ones: dog, ass and pig. Each of the three

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criteria eliminates one of these in turn, first the dog, then the ass, finally the pig; of course the dog and the ass are also excluded by the succeeding criteria. The camel is a little more problematic; the fact that it is not in reality excluded, as the text asserts, by the criterion of hooves (or either of the others; see Chapter 2, §l.c.3), may indicate that the criteria were formulated before the camel became an often used animal in Israel. For as we see from the Talmud, it is possible to formulate criteria that genuinely exclude it. The fact that in the supplement, vv. 4-8, care is taken to exclude the camel explicitly perhaps suggests a relatively late date for the supplement, and certainly shows that the conviction that the camel was cultically unacceptable is prior to the formulation or application of the criteria. This would of course be a necessary consequence of the conservatism of the cult, since the camel was a relative newcomer to the scene in settled Israel and Judah, and for some time must have continued to be associated mainly with foreigners. Milgrom's question (1990: 184), 'Which came first, the taboos or the criteria?', is now on the way to being answered. At least for the beasts the answer is that some 'taboos', or rather a general pattern of cultic and dietary custom, came first. The associations of the dog and the pig (Chapter 5, §l.b), and in a different way those of the donkey (and the camel), made them unacceptable for sacrifice, or for food and sacrifice, while the associations of cattle, sheep and goats made them unacceptable for food without prior sacrifice, and the only wild beasts commonly eaten were the fallow deer and the gazelle. The criteria developed to protect the worshippers from impure food were cast in such a way as to include cattle, sheep and goats, fallow deer and gazelle, and to exclude dogs, donkeys and pigs. The effect of this was to exclude a vast range of other beasts, so that there is also a sense in which we can say that the criteria came first. Because of the desire for comprehensiveness, the harmless hare and hyrax fell under the ban; but we have to repeat that there is virtually no evidence that they, or any other 'unclean' animal was ever normally eaten in any case. If they had been, the criteria would have had to be formulated differently, as the case of the locusts clearly shows. It is possible on the basis of the desire for comprehensiveness in the authors, and by analogy with what has happened with the beasts, to offer an explanation for the criterion for water creatures, which has otherwise eluded our investigation. We have to assume (cf. Chapter 2,

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§l.c.4) that the otherwise learned authors knew little about marine zoology. What they did know was that most of the fish normally eaten by Jews came from creatures that had scales and fins, and also perhaps that many others would be likely to be unacceptable because of their feeding habits (cf. Levine 1989: 246; Chapter 5, §l.c). Hence, simply in order not to say nothing about a great section of the animal kingdom, the criterion of scales and fins was laid down. In this instance it may actually be the case that a number of relatively common food species were excluded, for example catfish (Hiibner 1989: 228; Chapter 4, §2.b.6), probably in ignorance. But the effect would at first have been very limited, especially if we can assume a pre-exilic origin for the rules. Few Jews in that period, certainly in Jerusalem, ever saw fish in a form that would enable the criteria to be applied (Chapter 2, §l.c.4). However, the growth of the Jewish communities in Mesopotamia and Egypt must have changed that. I discuss shortly below the question whether opposition to the pagan taboo on fish is to be traced here. We have throughout found it difficult to discuss the section on birds because of the lack of criteria. We need to confront this problem directly. Why are there no criteria? Our attribution of the text to a learned priestly circle makes the question more difficult to answer. I have already expressed the opinion (Chapter 2, §l.c.5) that if there were any rationality in the prohibitions, the authors would have expressed it; we cannot assume with Firmage (1990: 191) that merely because a criterion might have been difficult to apply they would have suppressed it. The difficulty must have been with them and not with their presumed readers. It would be reasonable to assume that limits derived from cultic practice in some way lie behind this section, as that of the beasts. But if the rules on beasts could be linked with cultic practice throughout the cultural area, so may these. The difficulties are that practice seems to have varied more, and that we know less about it. At Ugarit (Chapter 4, §3.b.2) doves were sacrificed, and occasionally geese, but also other unspecified birds; at Harran 'all birds without talons' were accepted, according to al-Nadim (Chapter 4, §3.b.3), and Gen. 8.20 appears to assume the same kind of range; and we do not know precisely what birds were covered by the Marseilles tariff. The evidence indicates that it would be unwise to assume with Firmage (1990: 19091) that we should begin from the paradigm of the dove. It would be

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more fruitful to begin from the other end, with the unclean birds that are actually mentioned. The parallels from Harran and Egypt suggest that an international cultic tradition lies behind some of these identifications of birds as unclean. This is likely to be true at least of the original eight (see Chapter 2, §l.c.5). No doubt they would be taken as representative of all birds with associations with bloodshed and the eating of blood and waste matter (cf. Chapter 5, §l.c), which made them unacceptable within the sacred sphere, and thus dangerous to the purity of the congregation; the number is not the total possible, as the later addition of others makes clear. The expanded list is considerably more heterogeneous in character, and we have detected literary motives in its composition (Chapter 5, §l.c), though doubtless it can be taken for granted that the birds mentioned were in fact avoided by people at the time. Once again, there is a markedly theoretical character to the list—it must be comprehensive, and therefore includes creatures that nobody who was not starving can have had any mind to eat, such as hoopoes and bats! I will discuss shortly the possibility of an opposition to the pigeon taboo. We have to attribute once again to the impulse for comprehensiveness the inclusion of a prohibition of flying insects. In this case the impulse overreached itself, and the original form of the prohibition as found in Deut. 14.19 excluded a very popular supplement to the country diet. The concession of locusts was inevitable, and clearly illustrates the limits to priestly systematizing. As I have already emphasized, the text is not concerned to impose a system on the populace in defiance of current custom, but rather to integrate custom into its system. However, the concession gives an opportunity for another attempt, not this time very successful, at developing a morphological criterion to identify the permitted creatures. The lack of success is indicated by the necessity to supplement it with a list, though once again the influence of the learned numerical obsession means that we cannot be sure it is complete. I discuss the prohibition of all 'swarming things of the ground' below in connection with the Holiness redaction of the chapter, with which it is closely associated. As I shall show there, the prohibition is more than simply the completion of the system, but is tied up with the preaching of the avoidances as a way of holiness for the people of God in daily life. At this point, all that needs to be said is that so far as we can tell the prohibition conforms with common custom—so common

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and actually unquestionable that the earliest version of the rules saw no necessity to mention it. The reference in Isa. 66.17 is to something totally out of the ordinary (see Chapter 4, §3.d.2, and below, §2.d). 3. Interpretation. I noted above (§l.b) that the priestly concern for order is expressed in two main forms: binary opposition and concentric grades. The text we are dealing with overtly expresses its concern for order in the form of a binary opposition: animals are either clean or unclean, either to be eaten or to be abominated. But more than one student has observed that this superficial binary structure reveals an underlying concentrism as soon as we reckon in the rules defining which animals are acceptable for sacrifice (cf. Douglas 1975b: 263ff.; Chapter 3, §2.d.2; Milgrom 1990: 179ff.; 1991: 721ff.). Not all animals are fit for the table; not all that are fit for the table are acceptable for the altar. The concentrism of animals is echoed by other concentrisms in the priestly system.1 As Israel is required to make a strict separation between animals that may be eaten and that may not, so (Lev. 20.24ff.) there is a strict separation between Israelites and all other nations; and the distinction between animals that may be eaten but not sacrificed and ones that are accepted on the altar is echoed in the distinction between lay people, who may enter the court of the tabernacle, and priests, who (if unblemished and in a state of ritual purity) may perform ritual duties at the altar. A finer analogy may be drawn between animals of a kind acceptable for sacrifice which may nevertheless not be sacrificed because of blemishes (Lev. 22.22-25), and people who may not enter the sanctuary because of ritual impurity and priests who may not serve because of blemishes (Lev. 21.16-23; Milgrom draws particular attention to this). The sanctuary itself, with its successive domains, each holier than the one without, provides the spatial model for these analogies. Douglas argues (p. 269) that The sanctity of cognitive boundaries is made known by valuing the integrity of physical forms. The perfect physical specimens point to the perfectly bounded temple, altar and sanctuary. And these in their turn point to the hard-won and hard-to-defend territorial boundaries of the Promised Land. Israel is the boundary that all the other boundaries celebrate.

1. Douglas makes a number of mistakes in her description on pp. 267-68, which are corrected by Milgrom.

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Yet while I would certainly agree with the last sentence as an interpretation of the chapter in its present form, the rules as such, which are our present concern, do not reveal a concern with that boundary. Lev. 20.24ff. is, like 11.44-45, part of the stream of theological reflection that has made the dietary rules symbols of the holiness of Israel. But the rules themselves are older than that theology, and, if I am right, shared in a general way at least with other priestly elites throughout the region. If my analysis of their origin is correct, it is not the outer boundary—among the animals, that between clean and unclean—that is the key to their meaning, but the inner one, that marking off the sacrificial animals and the sacred realm. It is not so much that the sacrificial animals are a subset taken out of the edible animals (though this may be true in a historical sense), but that the edible animals are an extension of the set of the sacrificial animals at a lower level of significance. Since we find wild animals accepted for sacrifice at several other sites, it is likely that the whole set of clean animals are those accepted for sacrifice somewhere, though Jerusalem restricted victims to domestic animals. The altar, the victims offered upon it and the priests who dash the blood against it, guarantee the blessing of the deity. In order to share in that blessing, the laity are required to restrict their eating of flesh to such creatures as are acceptable within that cultic setting, a selection limited, so far as beasts are concerned, to such creatures as conform to the model of sacrificial animals. The deity who dwells in the Most Holy Place is the source of blessing, and blessing is mediated by way of the Holy Place and the altar to the congregation in the court outside. This concentric structure is mirrored in the concentric structure of the sets of animals called for in sacrifice and permitted on the table. But if the concentric structure conveys meaning in this way, this does not leave the binary opposition of clean and unclean without meaning, even before the specific theological development in the redaction of this chapter. We may quote Mary Douglas once more (1975b: 273): the boundary that divides edible from inedible bounds the area of structured relations. Within that area rules apply. Outside it anything goes... the ordered structure which is a meal represents all the ordered systems associated with it.

The associations of the animals that we explored in the last chapter indicate how the individual species could have been lined up in this

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way to symbolize the order of society or the disorder that surrounds and threatens it. The respect for God represented by abstinence from unclean flesh is at the same time respect for the explicit structure of society and acceptance that God's blessing is reserved for what is righteous and ordered according to traditional norms. I speak of explicit structure in contrast to what Victor Turner (1969: 94-95) has termed 'communitas': 'society as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals' (p. 96), which emerges in liminal situations, but also among millenarian or subversive movements or licensed jesters in more complex societies. It is at least possible that this idea may help us to understand some of the evidence, limited as it is, of practices contrary to the official rules, and also perhaps the rules themselves in so far as they appear to set themselves explicitly against such subversive practices. So far the meaning we have found in the rules as such flows very much more from the character of priestly religion as official—and therefore in support of the state and the traditional orders of society— than from its character as monotheistic or monolatrous. But a further point needs to be raised in connection with the meaning of the rules. It is arguable that what is left unsaid in the two sections on creatures of the water and the air is more important than what is said. For the permission given here to eat fish contrasts with the prohibition of fish associated with the worship of Atargatis, and probably Asherah before her (Chapter 4, §3.c); and similarly the pigeon taboo associated with Astarte (Chapter 4, §3.c) finds no place here and contrasts with the prominence of the pigeon in the sacrificial prescriptions earlier in the book. There is no question that from a 'reader response' point of view, assuming a reader who observed one or both of these taboos or knew of others who did, the clash is plain: these rules, in opposition, say, to those adopted at Hierapolis, deny the category of 'holy' animals, and with them the power and dignity of the goddess. There is a simple dichotomy between clean and unclean. That is, there is no centre of holiness other than Yahweh; Yahweh has no consort and there are no powers governing fertility other than the ordering will of Yahweh. Fertility and order (cf. Chapter 5, §3) are not to be separated into independent spheres, but are bound up together in the will of Yahweh. In this respect we may then say that the rules as such, seen in opposition to rules in other sanctuaries, do represent a monotheistic vision.

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But we have also to say that in seeing doves and fish as ordinary edible animals, Yahwism was holding to the ancient custom, which we may trace at Ugarit (Chapter 4, §3.b.2). So it could also be understood as expressing opposition to unofficial religion which was perhaps trying innovatively to express other values than those lying within the orbit of the official cult with its support of publicly recognized values and structures, and, possibly on behalf of women in particular (cf. Chapter 5, §2.c), serving to express a sense of 'communitas' (cf. Turner 1969: 96ff.) that could not find expression in the official cult. But such worship could only have had such significance where it was unofficial; where, as in the Syrian cities, it was part of the official cult, it could not have expressed anti-establishment values. Hence its rejection in priestly Yahwism would not there be felt as expressing official values, but very possibly nationalistic ones. There may thus be a great variety of readings of the apparent opposition here disclosed. But when we come to the historical question whether such an opposition was intended, there may be only one answer in theory, but we cannot say what it is, because of our ignorance about the temporal and geographical spread of the taboos, and because it is the cults of the goddesses that are the innovators in this respect, and not the cult of Yahweh. There is not even any agreement on whether Asherah was worshipped in monarchic Israel, or even known at all in Iron Age Canaan. It is quite impossible to go into the question here,1 and even if we settled it its bearing on our problem would be far from clear. On the other hand there is no question that Astarte was known in Israel, and not just as the name of a Phoenician goddess (1 Kgs 11.5, 33; 2 Kgs 23.13); the name occurs several times in the plural in the Deuteronomistic history as the female counterpart of 'the Baalim' to whom the Israelites are said to have apostatized (Judg. 2.13; 10.6; 1 Sam. 7.3-4; 12.10; cf. 31.10). It is rather difficult to assess the significance of this idiom. But it does seem to suggest that 'Ashtart was understood around the seventh and sixth centuries as the 1. It may be studied, to name only some of the more recent treatments, in Oden 1977: 88ff.; Winter 1983: 483ff.; 55Iff.; Day 1986; Holladay 1987: 278; McCarter 1987; and particularly Olyan 1988 and M.S. Smith 1990: 80ff. Olyan decides for, and Smith against Asherah as a goddess worshipped in Israel. For myself, I have to say that I do not find impressive the attempts to explain away such texts as 1 Kgs 15.13; 18.19; 2 Kgs 23.4, 7 as references to the cult-object of the same name or confusions with Astarte.

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typical name of a goddess as Baal was of a pagan god. It would be more important to establish whether the fish and pigeon taboos already existed at the same period. This we cannot do. However, Xenophon appears to allude to the fish taboo, so that it must have been in existence by the fifth century; it is at least possible, then, that by the time the chapter reached its final shape the contrast was conscious. The pigeon taboo, however, is not attested so early. The only other kind of evidence that can be cited is iconographic, and that is very indirect. Silvia Schroer can cite many examples of models of doves from Iron Age Israel (1987: 119-20), though their function as symbols of the love-goddess is not in my opinion unequivocal. Fish are equally common as decoration (71), but Schroer admits in this case that there is no clear sign of cultic significance. There is then no strong evidence that these taboos existed early enough to have influenced the actual development of the Yahwistic dietary rules, and it is much more likely that the influence (by reaction) was in the other direction, with worshippers of Astarte for example objecting to the use of her bird as a sacrificial victim. However, it is rather more possible that in the period when the rules were being set forth as the badge of Yahweh's holy people, a conscious contrast with the taboos of the goddesses was intended or at least perceived. b. Deuteronomy 14 We need not follow up the details of the text of Deut. 14.3-21a once again here; in substance and in structure most of it is identical to Lev. 11.2b-23, apart from the failure to permit locusts. Our purpose will be rather to draw out the significance that this essentially priestly set of regulations may have in the theological and ideological setting of the Deuteronomic work. The trend towards secularization in Deuteronomy, and in particular the secularization of the very act of flesh-eating which this text is concerned with should make us want to ask why it should be concerned to place any ritual restrictions at all on it. If 'unclean and clean may eat of it' (12.15), why should there any longer be any concern for the cleanness of the flesh itself? Why does Deuteronomy not abandon the very notion of unclean flesh? This question must be particularly insistent if, as it appears, the torah used by the redactor in vv. 4-20, closely parallel to Lev. 11.2b-23, has a Sitz im Leben in the cult and bears no traces of adaptation for life outside the pilgrimage setting

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such as is implied by the final verses of Leviticus 11 or by v. 3 here. The immediate context provides an answer to this initially puzzling question. The chapter opens: You are sons to Yahweh your God...for you are a people holy to Yahweh your God, and you Yahweh has chosen to be a peculiar people to him, out of all the peoples that ate on the face of the earth.

This is one of the most elaborate and emphatic statements of the doctrine anywhere in the book, and is immediately followed by the opening injunction of our text: 'You shall eat no abominable thing*. At the conclusion of the text, the command concerning carrion is again followed by 'for you are a people holy to Yahweh your God', in this case closely following the source in the Covenant Code (Exod. 22.30 [Eng. 31]). It is thereby made clear that the traditional distinctions are to be put to a new use (not indeed quite new, since the Covenant Code was already moving in that direction): to symbolize, celebrate and reinforce the one structure of meaning in the Deuteronomic universe: the dedication of the people of Israel to their God in contrast to all other nations, and their honour, dignity and self-respect. Like other institutions, this ancient custom of distinguishing clean and unclean meat is not abandoned but given new meaning. How is it possible for it to attain this meaning? Mary Douglas has drawn attention (1966: 114-15) to the function of purity rules in defending the boundaries of a people or caste under real or imagined external threat. The body becomes an image of society, and all that passes its boundaries is watched as the bearer of threat to the people as a whole. We have referred to this idea already, and there can be no question of its relevance to such a text as Lev. 20.24-26. But I should like to question whether it truly represents the state of ideas in Deuteronomy. So far as I can see there is no anxiety about external boundaries in Deuteronomy. No obstacle is put in the way of thirdgeneration immigrants from Edom or Egypt entering the 'assembly of Yahweh' (23.7-8), and the only nations for which this is prohibited are Ammon and Moab. Marriage with foreign captives is not discouraged (22.10-14). What there is anxiety about is contact with idolatry: hence the strict demand for the total destruction of the Canaanites and their gods in ch. 7. Almost the entire book breathes a spirit of national self-confidence that fits ill with such a 'theatened boundaries' view of the significance of the law of unclean flesh (and also with the increasingly popular view that Deuteronomy is

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predominantly a work of the exile). Either we must suppose that the verses are an exilic supplement, which is of course perfectly possible, or that it has a different significance. I believe that the latter can be convincingly argued. Douglas's attempt (1975c: see Chapter 3, §3.d.2) to forge an essential link between the structure of Israelite animal symbolism, the structure of their society, their fear and rejection of foreigners and their monotheistic religion founders on several rocks, but most obviously here on the fact that the men who wrote Deuteronomy did not fear or reject foreigners, but simply believed that God had chosen Israel in preference. There can be no one generally valid interpretation of similar ritual observances in different cultures. Elsewhere where purity rules defend group boundaries there is no connection with monolatry. Given the generally accepted conception of a distinction between clean and unclean animals, it lent itself as naturally in Israel to symbolize the demand upon the holy people to cleave to one God alone as more widely to symbolize the defence of the boundaries of the holy people. So, more precisely, how is this achieved in Deuteronomy? Although there can be no certainty that vv. 4-20 were in any early redaction of the text, it is most likely that the theme of 'abomination', to'ebd, stated in v. 3, always implied a traditional understanding of unclean flesh, as also that of carrion dealt with in v. 21. I adopted above (Chapter 2, §2.c.l) Weinfeld's definition of this word as 'that category of things which the delicate find odious or abhorrent' (Weinfeld 1972: 226; detailed discussion above)—in other words, a secular rather than a ritual or theological understanding. Unclean meat is 'abomination' in the sense that self-respecting people, regardless of their religious allegiance, do not touch it. I would consider that some of the evidence rehearsed in the last two chapters goes to support this, particularly the evidence from important urban centres (Chapter 4, §4.a) that urban elites avoided pig meat as carefully as did the cult. We have noted something of the range of meaning that the cultic distinction between clean and unclean meat engendered. In ordinary life it will have at least implied the associations we worked out in the last chapter, and even if these were of little account to the average peasant simply concerned to keep himself and his family, they would have been important to those who perceived themselves as well-broughtup people. The difference between the priestly and the Deuteronomic approaches is that for P the cultic unacceptability of the meat is the

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basis for its dietary rejection, while for Deuteronomy its general cultural disapprobation makes it unacceptable for Israel as an honourable nation and the special possession of Yahweh. There is therefore a large element of what Douglas calls 'selfevidence' (1975c) in the Deuteronomic concept of abomination. While she would find that self-evidence mainly in the pure structure of the opposition of clean and unclean, we have been able to show it in the associations of the animals. And at some level in the background those associations still remain in the social consciousness, as is plain in Lev. 11.41ff. (see below, §2.d). There is no explicit use for them, but they are likely to be implicit in the minds of the readers. 'Abomination' implies unofficial rites involving unclean flesh, dealing with the powers of death, the subversion of proper social order. To reject 'abominable' food would be equivalent to rejecting all these things, supporting traditional social values, rejecting the search for power in dangerous places. Consciously or not, the Deuteronomists are able to support their call for loyalty to Yahweh alone by linking it with these traditional values. The passage concludes with two further dietary rules derived from the Covenant Code or a parallel law. The contrast with the priestly law arises naturally out of the contrasting interests and ideologies, as I have already shown (Chapter 2, §2.c.3). Once again the rule in Deuteronomy reinforces the commitment of Israel, and Israel alone, as a people, to their God, underlining the external boundary, while that in the Holiness Code and P protects the purity of the sanctuary and of the land, hence it must apply to native and alien indifferently; the rule in Deuteronomy is absolute, because it is a matter of absolute commitment and self-respect, while the priestly rule is a technical ritual matter and so can allow for ritual purification. c. The Theme of Contact Impurity The theme of ritual pollution by the dead bodies of unclean animals (and of clean animals when not ritually slaughtered) appears in Lev. 11.8, 11, 24-40 and it is also probably responsible (see Chapter 2, §l.c.4) for the use of the expression tame' rather than Seqes for the prohibited animals in the clarifying supplement vv. 4-8. It aligns this text with the concerns of the series of toroth on purities in the following four chapters, and with the concern for corpse pollution that is alluded to in Leviticus (21.1-4, 11; 22.4) but not dealt with

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systematically until Numbers 19. As in those other texts, uncleanness is thought of here as a contagious force, which may be transmitted from objects to people, and from the source of uncleanness to vessels. In dealing with unclean animals in this way, the text puts them in the same category with sexual sources of pollution, with 'leprosy', and with human corpses. There is of course no surprise in this; the 'implicit meanings' of unclean animals in the cultural background embrace those dangers perceived as most serious within the explicit social structure (cf. our discussion in the last chapter), and it is entirely to be expected that, in a systematization of pollution ideas, animal uncleanness should be placed alongside the pollution sources that represent some of those dangers more directly. However, it is also to be expected that the systematizer should turn the whole idea of purity towards his own concerns. In the case of the priestly system, that concern, though not immediately apparent here, is the defence of the sanctuary; see Lev. 12.4, 15.31, Num. 19.13, 20. The vision of order underlying the priestly work is, as we have noted, a concentric one. There is one source of holiness, blessing and order, threatened on every side by a great variety of pollutions. It needs to be protected against these threats, especially by warning the Israelites about the dangers of unpurified pollution. To defile the sanctuary by failing to make use of the available means of purification is to risk death. It is the more remarkable in that of these four texts, three appear to assume that the sanctuary is defiled whether the defiled person approaches it or not: Lev. 15.31 and more explicitly Num. 19.13, 20 (cf. Milgrom 1983b). How is this thought of as possible? It seems to me that the key lies in the words in Lev. 15.31 'in defiling my tabernacle [or more literally 'my dwelling-place': miskani] that is in their midst'. Yahweh dwells certainly in his own dwelling-place, but that is now not on Sinai but in the very middle of the camp (cf. Exod. 29.45), and to a certain degree the whole camp partakes of the holiness of the tabernacle. The camp boundaries form a basic division between those areas affected by the holiness radiating from the holy of holies and those areas outside the camp. The camp boundaries thereby establish a basic line of demarcation between the realm of the holy and the realm of the profane (Gorman 1990: 208).

In a certain sense the whole camp forms a single holy area, so that Yahweh's tabernacle, or rather his tabernacling, is defiled by pollution

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anywhere within it. However, it should not be deduced from this, as a superficial reading of Gorman would suggest, that it is the camp boundary (in settled Israel the city wall would correspond to this; cf. Lev. 14.40, 45 with 13.46) that is the key boundary defended by the purification of uncleanness. It is after all the tabernacle that is said to be defiled, and it is its holiness that is the main concern. The various boundaries, both external and internal, that are defended or symbolized by the various pollution threats doubtless remain present in a more or less conscious way, but they are dominated by and subsumed in the boundary of the Tabernacle, which preserves the presence of Yahweh among Israel and the blessing that flows from him. But the very fact that the priestly work can conceive of Israel under the image of a military camp gathered closely round the tabernacle implies a very high degree of connection between the holiness of the tabernacle and the holiness of the people. There is a clear connection between the contact impurity theme and the holiness theme that follows, as we shall see. In this section, however, this ultimate significance of ritual impurity seems far away. There is no direct mention of the sanctuary, and moreover there is a distinction to be drawn between uncleanness transmitted by the bodies of beasts or crawling things to persons (vv. 24-28, 31, 39-40) and the uncleanness contracted by vessels and food from the bodies of crawling things (vv. 32-38). It is only the uncleanness of persons that is ever said to defile the tabernacle simply by being in the camp (cf. Milgrom 1976: 397), and the latter type of uncleanness is not said to be transmissible to persons any more than the uncleanness of unclean beasts is transmissible by eating them. Very much closer at hand, therefore, is the symbolism of vermin as breaching the boundaries set within human society. The eight selected Seres—pursuing the numerical symmetry set in the main text—stand for any creatures that may invade the home or storeroom though they belong, ideally, elsewhere. They therefore serve to recall any boundary that may be of particular significance; in the context of the priestly work this must ultimately be the tabernacle, but, since the vermin cause particular problems with food that is prepared for eating by the addition of liquids (vv. 34, 38), we are bound to recall Mary Douglas's comments on the importance of purity in cooking food in Hindu castes. Before being admitted to the body some clear symbolic break is needed to express food's separation from necessary but impure contacts. The cooking process, entrusted to pure hands, provides this ritual break. Some

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such break we would expect to find whenever the production of food is in the hands of the relatively impure (Douglas 1966: 127).

While ancient Judaism hardly provides a close parallel to the Hindu caste system, there are important analogies that are often overlooked. The most significant is the purity rules that surround the priestly lineages (Lev. 21-22). The marriage rules (especially 21.14 requiring the high priest to marry within his lineage) give the priests some of the characteristics of a caste. The strict enforcement of purity rules required if the priests were to carry out their duties (Lev. 22.1-9) created just such a break between priests and laymen, and because 'relatively impure' hands were certainly involved in the production of food for priestly families, it was all the more important that care should be taken to preserve purity at the final point of preparation. Thus it could well be that the boundaries symbolized by the uncleanness of vermin are not simply those of the sanctuary as such but also of its sacred personnel. Thus a traditional concern for the purity of sanctuary and priesthood is reflected in the selection of material in relation to purity such as that which we have before us here, but its broader context is more striking. What situation can we envisage in which this vision could have arisen of the people of Israel as an armed camp surrounding the tabernacle of the God of Israel in close array and living so closely within the influence of its holiness that any pollution pollutes the sanctuary itself? Certainly not one in the loosely governed realms of monarchical Israel and Judah. But the vision could have found its place in the programme of a priestly elite of the gold who in exile laid plans for the restoration of the community after a new Exodus (cf. Clines 1978: 97ff.). The extraordinarily compact view of the people's relation to the sanctuary certainly reflects anxiety about external pressure on the boundaries of the people (cf. Douglas 1966: 114ff.), but also perhaps a visionary conception of the return of Israel through the wilderness to regain the promised land as of old. On this journey, a sacred religious and military undertaking, similar standards of purity would need to apply as on military campaign or on pilgrimage, though because it would be a long-term undertaking concessions would need to be made—there could not be abstinence from sexual intercourse (cf. Exod. 19.15; 1 Sam. 21.6), but there could be purification after it (Lev. 15.18). While there can be no certainty that this is indeed the context in which we should understand the priestly work, it has the

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advantage of giving more practical significance to the historicizing form in which it is set than any other view. d. The Holiness Redaction I have given this title to the redaction evidenced in the sermonic conclusion to the chapter, for it employs terms and conceptions that are typical of the Holiness Code in chs. 17-26 of Leviticus; in particular the whole formula 'You/he shall be holy for I am holy' occurs at 19.2; 20.7, 26 (this also in the context of unclean food); 21.7. It has been suggested that the chapter was actually once part of the Holiness Code, but has been moved to its present position in order to form part of the code of purities. If I am correct in my view that the section on contact impurity was already present when this redaction was undertaken, this is perhaps unlikely, and it in any case attributes greater coherence to the Holiness Code itself than it actually possesses; but it is at all events clear that the appropriate literary context within which to interpret this conclusion, and therefore the chapter as a whole, is the Holiness Code, or at least some parts of it. The closely related passage 20.24-26 needs to be given particular attention.1 The fundamental term used in Lev. 11.44-45 is qadol, 'holy'. Yahweh is holy and therefore his people must be holy. I have analysed the meaning of this term above (Chapter 2, §l.c.7). Its use in this context extends the ritual situation to the continuous life of the people, rather than implying an ethical reference, as in the Holiness Code itself. In the ritual situation purity is demanded so that the people may be sanctified to the deity (e.g. Exod. 19.14-15). Those objects and processes and situations that are generally seen as polluting, such as the eating of unclean meats, are to be avoided when God is approached; and I have suggested that this is the original setting of the dietary rules. As now redacted, specifically through its conclusion in vv. 4Iff., the chapter demands that the state of purity to be maintained continuously for the sake of holiness is that state appropriate to one who approaches the deity. It is to be maintained by the people of Israel as a whole, and in perpetuity, because this people is to be permanently dedicated to Yahweh, to one single deity. The fundamental motivation for the demand for abstinence from unclean foods made in the chapter 1. Moreover, it is worth drawing attention here to the view of Knohl, followed by Milgrom (1991: 13-14,696), that H is a widespread redactional layer in P and not simply to be identified with the main material of the code of chs. 17-26.

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as it now stands is thus the demand for the worship of Yahweh alone. The holiness redaction thus takes up the call made in Deuteronomy. The symbolic weight laid on the observance closely parallels that in Deuteronomy, and is probably traceable ultimately to its influence. It could be described as the Deuteronomic air transposed into a priestly key. In both texts the eating of (self-evidently) unclean meat is pronounced unfitting for a people dedicated to Yahweh—in Deuteronomy because it is unfitting for anyone with any self-respect, in Leviticus because it is cultically unacceptable.1 Within the chapter as a whole, closed as it is by this holiness redaction, the previous section on contact impurity has also now to be understood from this point of view. It is concerned with the preservation of the purity of the people. Whereas the toroth on purities in their own context are rooted implicitly or explicitly in the need to preserve the integrity of the sanctuary, the centre of interest here is different; it is the people rather than the sanctuary, and the language is correspondingly different. The sanctuary is holy because God is present there, and, as long as he is present, there is no question of its losing its holiness; the danger to the people in the camp lies in the clash between holiness and uncleanness, and because of this they must preserve or continually restore their purity. But the people have no such automatic claim to holiness; they must continually make that good by maintaining their purity and their single-minded devotion to God. Undoubtedly the conception of holiness itself is different; it is here not a force or influence that spreads by geographical proximity from the holy of holies outwards, but a spiritual or moral characteristic that can be gained or at least preserved by action. Spatial proximity does not come into it; it is clearly demanded of the whole people wherever they may be. It thus involves a distinct and important development of the original ritual conception. This becomes still clearer in the Holiness Code itself, where this precise language of the demand for holiness is used in relation to the requirement of moral uprightness and faithfulness to Yahweh. I shall shortly come to consider the precise relationship between such 'ritual' and 'moral' conceptions of holiness. It is of course basic to any cultic conception of holiness that what is holy should be separated from what is not. Thus the way in which the 1. I cannot here deal with the proposal of Milgrom (1991: 13ff., 696) that the bulk of Holiness redactional work dates from the late eighth century and has influenced Deuteronomy, not vice versa.

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exhortation on the same subject is framed in 20.24-26 is related to what is said here. But different aspects are emphasized. This passage emphasizes the vertical bond between God and the people; that in ch. 20 emphasizes the separation of the people horizontally, as it were, from all other peoples. They are of course two sides of the same coin, so far as the Old Testament is concerned. Sociologically, however, we may well wish to lay some stress on the situation of the people of Israel that may be suggested by the emphasis laid on this symbolism—a people under external pressure and concerned to defend the integrity of their national existence more particularly by stress on the national cult. Unlike Deuteronomy, Leviticus does contain some evidence of anxiety about national boundaries; Lev. 20.2426 certainly suggests it. Is there any more particular evidence which might suggest the setting of the redaction of Leviticus 11? We have noted (Chapter 2, § 1 .c.7) that in this final section of the chapter the warning to abstain from all creeping things, which fills up a lacuna in the provisions of the main text, leads naturally into the general exhortation, with which it is inextricably bound up. We must suppose that the material completion of the subject and the formal peroration are the work of the same hand and the same occasion. Abstinence from the swarming things of the ground serves as a metonymy for the whole range of abstinences demanded of Israel for the sake of holiness. But is it not rather remarkable that the metonymy selected should be the apparently least likely of all possible breaches of the law? Apart from some unusual ritual situation, it is hard to envisage an occasion on which the consumption of such small creatures could have been considered worthwhile, as Harris would emphasize. It is true that it could be explained as something of an accident. The main text omitted the swarming things of the ground because, I have suggested, it could be taken for granted that such things are not eaten— 'implicit taboo' in Leach's terms. The redactor taking up this text was concerned both to add a suitable exhortation and to ensure that the text itself was as complete as possible. Having noted an obvious deficiency, he then proceeded to kill two birds with one stone by writing his exhortation as a sermon on the text of the swarming things of the ground. But it would have been as easy, and more appropriate, to base the exhortation on the whole range of abstinences, like 20.24ff. The fact that he did not do this suggests to me that there was some real concern behind the addition of the swarming things of the ground,

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that it was more than simply the technical completion of the system. Milgrom (1991: 685-86) explains it on the grounds that the land swarmers are the only one of the four main groups of animals that are without exception forbidden, and this because of their connection with the earth, the realm of death. But we have noted possible evidence of an immediate reason for such concern in Isa. 66.17; see Chapter 4, §3.d.2.1 argued there that Isa. 65.3-5 and 66.17 offer some consistent evidence of a cult of the dead carried on in cemeteries and marked by the deliberate sacrifice and consumption of unclean food. In the case of 66.17 this would appear to have gone to the extreme of eating not just food generally recognized as unclean, like swine (65.4), but food not generally recognized as food. Of course, an interpretation is possible (cf. Hanson 1979: 197ff.) that takes Lev. 11.41-42 as prior (cf. Volz 1932: 292, and other authorities noted above) and Isa. 66.17 as a satirical and ironic inversion of priestly standards. But assuming that my interpretation can be sustained, the priestly author may be seen as reacting against a particular extreme of an unofficial cult of the dead that did indeed involve the eating of such things as mice. The prohibition of their eating would then be required not just by system but by the real necessities of the day. And that day would of course be postexilic (not necessarily very late) and in Palestine, in line with the evident setting of the last chapters of Isaiah. Since we have established that this section must be dated subsequently to the section on contact impurity, and since we have aligned that with the exilic material in P, this comes as no surprise. There is no other evidence for the use of 'swarming things' in a cult of this kind in the immediate area. We may regard it as the intensification of the kind of practice using mainly pigs for which we did find some slight evidence, and we might hold that such intensification is a characteristic expression of anomie, in this case arising out of the disorientation caused by the severe disruption of society by the defeat and deportations of the sixth (and possibly the early fifth) centuries. As the restrictions of ordinary life reflect the power of the social system to regulate and confine, but also to provide security, so the disruption of the social system and the decline of its power create insecurity, one reaction to which may be to attempt to seize on, or bow to, the power of disorder, which has obviously been successful. This power is seen in unclean food; and the search for a stronger power led to the choice of food that no-one had previously regarded as edible. In

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reaction, those seeking by contrast to rebuild society with its traditional structure and values on the basis of monolatrous Yahwism had to say that mice and all such creatures were seqes. This whole class of creatures, 'implicitly tabooed' before, leaps into consciousness as an affront to Yahweh's holiness. The prohibition—implicitly all the prohibitions—can then be seen as a strong assertion that the powers of death and disorder must be excluded from the realm where the people of Israel dwell with their God. In confrontation with those who were employing the same symbolism in the opposite sense it functions as a call for the restoration of the traditional order of society with the proper relations of power and the traditional sexual restrictions. The generalization of the demand for purity excludes even the ritual reversal of normal values. At a time when the official cult at Jerusalem had become firmly monolatrous, this was effectively to demand the acknowledgement of Yahweh alone as the recipient of any form of worship. Israel cannot be renewed by such methods; devoted to Yahweh alone, they must see any other power only as a threat. The cult deals with the problem of the demonic by simple denial. In this light the connections that the rhetoric of the chapter sets up with various parts of the Holiness Code take on a new significance. Just as the second part of the chapter aligned animal uncleanness with other forms of ritual impurity, the use here of language related to that of the Holiness Code aligns the deliberate defilement of the eating of unclean flesh with such serious crimes—from the point of view of the committed Yahwist—as the devotion of one's children to Molech and the use of wizards and mediums (20.1-7), sexual wrongdoing such as incest (ch. 18; 20.10-21), breaches of basic social morality (ch. 19; cf. v. 2), and the pollution of the serving priest (ch. 21; cf. v. 8). A widespread rabbinic view (Levine 1989: 243; cf. b. Seb. 3a, 7a; b. Hul. 7la; and Maimonides' Code [Chapter 3, §l.d]) makes this categorization explicit, placing forbidden food, sexual offences and idolatry in the category of turn'at qodes—'uncleanness that relates to holiness'. What all these have in common is that they are breaches of the fundamental duty owed by Israelites to their God to maintain their state of devoted commitment to him. It should no longer be surprising that the law of unclean flesh is placed in the same category as these fundamental moral and religious demands. Clearly the alignment depends on a symbolic understanding of the

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demand for purity. We can now see that both in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus there are two aspects to this; the symbolism works on two levels. On the one hand, there is the function of the symbolism of separation from unclean food as a bare sign; separation as such recalls the separation demanded from all strange gods and all immoral behaviour, and the cleaving to Yahweh alone. But it should by now be amply evident that the symbolism of unclean flesh is more than a bare sign, it is a true symbol, that is, a motivated sign, which carries its meaning within itself. The committed servant of Yahweh, the true Israelite as defined by the priestly writer, must abstain from creeping things and all unclean flesh because they are excluded from the cult of God, and also because the untrue does not—because the unclean uses unclean things in the service of unclean gods—because there is an ineradicable association between unclean flesh and the unapproved worship of unacknowledged gods and spirits. Thus the law functions not merely to symbolize but to enforce the separation of Israelites from all such unofficial cults. It should be noted that this is not the same as the older view, sufficiently refuted above (Chapter 3, §l.c), that the unclean animals are those honoured in the cults of the heathen. It is much closer to de Vaux's view that pigs were unclean because they were used in a particular type of cult, not in normal pagan cults. Where I differ from de Vaux is in my view that pigs and other unclean animals were used in these cults because they were considered unclean rather than the other way round. e. Leviticus 11 in the Priestly Story The editorial framework of the chapter identifies the torah in question as having been given by Yahweh to Moses, and in this case also to Aaron, like all the others, so that they all form a unified mass of material given to Israel at a particular moment in its history, the culminating point of the history that the Priestly work tells. Generally, it is true, critics (e.g. Elliger 1966: 9ff.; Zenger 1983: 27-28) would see this and other ritual laws as expansions rather than integral parts of the basic priestly document, P8 as it is usually designated. Nevertheless, they stand now together, and there is this intimate connection between them: that the story culminates in God's coming to dwell with Israel as their God, while the ritual laws set out the terms on which this presence may be a blessing to them. It is not unreasonable, I believe, to

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read the law in the framework of the story, which is not at all unconcerned with the relations between human beings and animals. I have entitled this book, and this chapter of it, 'Purity and Monotheism'. So far I consider that I have successfully demonstrated that the law of unclean flesh has a meaning related to the monolatry demanded of Israel in the Torah. But what about monotheism? This is a cosmic conception, and is related to the cosmic framework of the entire priestly work. And within this cosmic framework, God, humanity and animals all have their distinct parts to play. In Genesis 1, the one who creates is God, later (Exod. 6) identified as Yahweh, who can be known as 'God' because there is no other god; at most the 'let us make' of v. 26 suggests a vague trace of a former polytheism (cf. Westermann 1984: 144-45 for a detailed discussion). In contrast to the prevalent myths (prevalent also, it must be emphasized, in Israel; cf. Day 1985), he creates by his word alone, without any conflict with any other power. It is clear from the start, therefore, that it is a true monotheism that confronts us. And the one God creates a world that he pronounces good. This world is in his intention entirely free of violence and killing of any kind. This may not be immediately obvious. But it has been an important theme in a number of recent studies, e.g. Lohfink 1983 (87-90), Zenger 1983 (especially 11-22, 84-98, 116-24), Beauchamp 1987: 139-82,1 all summarized by Rogerson (1991: 17-25). I have myself attempted to prove something of the kind elsewhere (Houston 1979: 165-66), but let me briefly summarize the argument. After the living creatures of every sphere have been created, humanity is created in God's image to rule over all other creatures. Now this has sometimes been taken to mean that humanity is created to have licence to exploit the earth and the other creatures as they see fit. But this is clearly not so, for v. 29 gives them explicit permission (which would not have been required on the interpretation in question) to use plants, and plants only, for food. That the grant of vegetarian food is exclusive is clear from 9.3, which explicitly varies it. Similar permission is given to the animals in the following verse, 1.30. Animals are to use the green parts of the plants while human beings use the fruits and seeds. It is already apparent that in the world that God has created, there is to be, according to its maker's intention, no predation, no meat-eating 1.

This was not available to me.

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and of course no animal sacrifice. But how is this possible? At this point we return to the commission to rule given to humanity in v. 28. It is clear from the foregoing that it must be interpreted in line with the Bible's usual understanding of the rights and duties of kings; and this of course is anything but a licence to exploit. The most relevant comparative passage is Isa. 11.1-9. Here the rule of the messianic king creates justice and peace throughout the world, even in the animal kingdom—the lion no longer preys on the lamb, just as human oppressors are repressed. It is reasonable to suppose that this Utopian vision of the future draws upon the same mythical source ('shepherd of the animals': Zenger 1983: 92-93) as Gen. 1.30. It is clear from this that the rule of humans in Genesis 1 must be interpreted in a sense similar to the rule of the Messiah in Isaiah 11. Creation as originally intended is a harmony inconceivable in the postdiluvian world—humanity as the regents of God rule in peace over creatures who live in peace. But it was not to be. 'All flesh (kol basar) had corrupted its way upon earth' (Gen. 6.12). The phrase 'all flesh' often means 'all humanity', and that is how it is often taken here. But in the light of the foregoing discussion, of the destruction of all creatures in the Flood, and of 9.2, 5 and 10 (to be discussed), it is much better to take it, with Lohfink, for example (1983: 87), as 'all creatures'.1 Human beings had allowed their lives to be lived in 'violence' (see footnote), and animals had begun to prey upon other animals. Although God deals with this by sweeping away all flesh in the Flood, things are not to be the same again; the primitive idyll has gone for ever. When Noah comes out of the Ark, God announces to him that the limits on the human exploitation of the world have been removed: "The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon all creatures of the earth...into your hands they are delivered' (Gen. 9.2). J.A. Baker (1975: 96) notes that this is the 1. This is the more general opinion (cf . Westermann 1984:414), but Westermann himself, following Hulst 1958, dissents, apparently on the grounds that ntoa ^3 in prophecy 'means only humans where it occurs in the context of guilt and judgment' (p. 414), and that oan (v. 11) is never used of animals. The former point seems to have little weight, certainly in the present context the phrase is frequently used of all creatures (human and animal) as Westermann admits (6.17; 9.11,16,17). The latter is weightier, and undoubtedly the sense 'cold-blooded and unscrupulous infringement of the personal rights of others, motivated by greed and hate and often making use of physical violence and brutality' (TDOT, IV, 482) applies most obviously to humans. But I see no reason why P should not have applied it in a transferred sense also to the predatory activity of animals.

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language of military conquest.1 Humankind is still in charge, but is now a military governor rather than a peaceful sovereign, a 'lord' rather than a 'shepherd' (so Zenger 1983: 118). This arises from the fact that violence has now spread among the animals, and humans must protect both themselves and the weaker animals against the stronger (p. 118). They have the power and the need to treat animals with violence lest they treat them with violence (cf. v. 5), and they are entitled to use them for food. 'I give you for food every moving thing that lives' (9.3); there are no exemptions and only one proviso: that the blood is not consumed. But though human beings in general are permitted to eat any animals, animal sacrifice, in the priestly conception, is still no part of life. We must speak cautiously here, since obviously the priestly redaction of the Pentateuch as a whole includes many narrations of animal sacrifice from Abel onwards (cf. Firmage 1990: 203). But if we may assume that the distinctively priestly passages, if they do not form a complete story, at all events offer a coherent viewpoint, they do not give us any account of sacrifice until at Sinai God establishes the means whereby he may be Israel's God and they his people, whereby his glory may be present in Israel and the means of blessing to them. Essential to this is the sacrificial system, and bound up with this is the distinction among animals as food. After the sacrificial system has been established and inaugurated in Leviticus 1-10, the first thing that follows is the chapter on clean and unclean animals. This is a law addressed to Israel alone. It says nothing about the intrinsic character of the animals mentioned (which have all been called good by God himself), but simply lays upon Israel the responsibility of distinguishing the meat they may eat from that which they may not, so that they may take an active role in sanctifying themselves as his people, and so enabling him to continue as their God. Now the triple pattern of vegetarianism followed by unrestricted 1. Many interpreters agree with this assessment, e.g. Lohfink 1983: 87-88; Zimmerli 1967: 323-24; Beauchamp 1987. Zenger (1983: 117ff.) resists it, and claims that Pg remains 'true to its pacifist tendency', on the grounds that the closest parallels (Deut. 2.25; 11.25) speak of the fear of God enabling Israel to take over the promised land without using force. But his subsequent account of the myth of the 'Heir der Tiere [Lord of the animals]' undercuts this position, since it contains clear elements of coercion. Moreover, Zenger fails to explain the permission to use the animals for food within his view of the text.

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meat-eating followed by restricted meat-eating is a typical example of the pattern of two extremes and a mediating position that is found again and again in the myth and ritual of many peoples (cf. Leach 1983). The ideal is vegetarianism, which enables humanity to rule the earth as God's representative, as the princes of peace. But because of sin this is an unstable condition. 'Man will have meat and will kill to get it' is Milgrom's arresting opening to his first essay on the dietary laws (1963: 288 [= 1983: 104]). But this means a world with the minimum of law (Gen. 9.4-6) and without the presence of God. There is so little restraint on our destructive tendencies that God cannot inhabit this world, and we cannot rule it in peace. The solution to the dilemma is found in God's election of Israel to be holy to him, to observe the restraints that make it possible for a sanctuary to be built and institutions established so that God may dwell with his people. Central to these restraints are the restrictions on the eating of meat— which themselves, as we have seen (Chapter 5, §1), echo the schism in the cosmos brought about by the presence of violence in the animal world. Both the primitive vegetarianism and the postdiluvian omnivorousness are of course myths. They enable the dilemma to which the priestly institutions are the mediating solution to be presented in narrative form. Firmage's quite different conclusion (1990:198) that the three stages represent successively closer approximations to the practice of God himself, who receives the flesh of the clean sacrificial animals, is unacceptable because, like his view on the significance of clean meat as such, it implies a degree of anthropomorphism that is unlikely for P. It also implies that God's original creation was imperfect, a direct contradiction of the repeated divine assessments in Genesis 1. The same objection may be raised against Lohfink's view (1983: 89) that the 'war of humanity against animals' is intended by God as the necessary condition for the establishment of the cult, rather than being, as I have suggested, part of the state of things that creates the necessity for the cult. Milgrom (1983: 288) may thus be seen to be correct in attributing an ethical purpose to the dietary laws, as they now stand in the Pentateuch and certainly as they are in practice observed by Jews (cf. Chapter 3, §l.d). The law with which we are concerned inculcates restraint in the use of animals for food, and Milgrom may surely be allowed to have a strong case in saying that some of the others are

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based on humanitarian considerations. While it is unlikely that the law on the kid in its mother's milk had originally a humanitarian purpose (cf. Keel 1980 and Knauf 1988), it could certainly be held to do so in its context in Deuteronomy (14.21b), which contains other humanitarian laws on the treatment of animals (22.6-7; 25.4), and certainly at a later stage.1 And without doubt such postbiblical laws as that requiring the slaughterer's knife to be sharp and to have no irregularities have such a purpose. But, as I have shown, the priestly law of unclean flesh, in so far as it has an ethical purpose, derives it from a narrative setting that enables profound reflection to take place on the relations between human beings and animals and the conditions on which God's presence in this world of violence may be sustained. 3. Conclusion Judaism inherits from the development of custom and thought in prebiblical and biblical times a law of animal kinds that summarizes in itself a great richness of symbolic themes. It stands for the order and peace of civil society over against the disorder and violence of the wild; for the just and traditional ordering of society against anarchy; for the purity of the sanctuary against the permanent threat of pollution; for the holiness of the people of God as his devoted ones; for their protection against pressures from without, and their separation from all that would threaten their dedication to their one God; for the possibility, not confined to Israel alone, of living in peace with God's creatures and in the experience of his presence. It does not merely symbolize these things; by the constant practice of the rules it actually inculcates them, as Milgrom argues (1991: 736): 'In the biblical view the Decalogue would fail were it not rooted in a regularly observed ritual, central to the home and table, and impinging on both senses and intellect, thus conditioning the reflexes into patterns of ethical behaviour'. When early Christianity abandoned the law of forbidden food it rejected, to all appearance, all these good things. What did it get in return? To this and related questions our last chapter is devoted. 1. Milgrom now (1991: 740-41) concurs with Keel in seeing the kid law (and the other apparently humanitarian laws in Deuteronomy) as prohibiting the symbolic confusion of the source of the animal's life (mother's milk) with the process of its death. But this is still, he would argue, bound up with the reverence for life, and is therefore an ethical concern.

Chapter 7 MONOTHEISM WITHOUT PURITY I could not, even if I had wished, follow out in detail the appropriation of the biblical rules in the course of Jewish history. I have already trespassed on too many fields that are not my own in the course of this study. But as a Christian acknowledging the Bible, Old and New Testaments, as my scriptures, I am under an obligation to do more than would be expected of a neutral investigator. I need to examine what it means that I, along with nearly all other Christians, do not observe these rules while Jews do. The last three words of that sentence are vital. There exists of course a large literature going back to the earliest days of Christianity on the interpretation of biblical law, and to what extent and how it need be observed by Christians; but with few exceptions it is based on the assumption that how Jews treat the same body of Scripture may be condemned or ignored; that the Law meant one thing before Christ and now means another thing, ignoring or deprecating the continuing existence of a people to whom the Law still means essentially what it always meant. (And unfortunately, as E.P. Sanders has observed, this approach has invaded ostensibly critical works written by believing Christians [1985: 278 and n. 42]; such writers as Goppelt speak of Jesus 'putting an end to Judaism', 'shattering the Law' and so forth.) But since the laws we have been studying are bound up almost more than any others with the very existence of this people, what Christians' abandonment or repudiation of the observance of this law might mean for the understanding of their relation to Judaism cannot be ignored here. Moreover, the insights that we have gained in the course of this study need to be applied to the question. Not only the function of the law as a boundary marker, but the fact that it serves to represent a wide range of social and religious structures, needs to be taken into account.

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As I observed at the very beginning of the book, for Jews the discrimination of clean and unclean flesh is part of their national and religious identity. As I have now shown, it defines and protects equally their 'vertical' relationship to God and their 'horizontal' difference from all other peoples. It is generally true that the observance of this law does not long survive the abandonment of either of these dimensions of identity by individuals or families. In Israel today there is or used to be a flourishing trade in what is delicately termed 'white meat' (i.e. pork) for secular Israelis who have abandoned their religious faith and for whom the difference from other peoples of the earth has become a political matter, identified with the tenaciously defended physical borders of the state of Israel. But even in the diaspora, while a firstgeneration secular Jew may continue to eat kosher, it is unlikely that his son will continue to set much store by it. At the time of the emergence of the Christian church, such phenomena did not exist. There was no dispute about the observance of the law against eating unclean animals within Judaism, though the laws on contact uncleanness, like others of the same kind, could be sources of dissension and in their various interpretations markers of party or sectarian identity (Neusner 1973: 32ff.; cf. Sanders 1990: 13Iff.; Dunn [1990: 72ff.] emphasizes the factional character of purity disputes; and cf. Countryman 1989: 64-65). Even if other purity laws tended to divide Jews, this one united them and marked them off simply as Jews, not as Pharisees, Essenes or 'am ha-ares. In the Hellenistic world, where pig meat was common and relatively cheap (Sanders 1990: 278), it was a more effective marker than in the Levantine world before Alexander. It is not therefore necessary to search far for the most obvious interpretation of the fact that Christians do not observe these laws: Christians are not Jews. Jews do not eat pork; Christians do: therefore, Christians are not Jews, not part of the community of Israel. The syllogism may be reversed to give the subjective point of view: Christians are not Jews, therefore they eat pork. Now, it is true that an individual Christian might well be surprised to be told that the reason she ate pork was to show that she was not a Jew, and of course it would not be true so far as she personally was concerned. If of some theological literacy she would be likely to protest that she ate pork because others around her did, and that Christians are not called to be

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separated from the world, though they are called not to be conformed to it in things that matter morally. Such a case might of course be criticised in several points, but what matters to us here is to note that the assumption that the people of God are not called to be separated from the world by 'merely' ritual observances is in itself a specific rejection of a biblical principle (not just of particular observances), that of Lev. 20.24-26, and may be justified either on the ground that this has been superseded, or on the ground that it only ever applied to Israel after the flesh. In either case a separation from Judaism is presupposed. This is nothing more than the fact as it is at the present day and for ages past. Jews see Christians simply as goyim; Christians see Jews as adherents of another religion. (I am not of course referring to members of either church or synagogue who are more conscious of the historic relationships between the two faiths and ready for rapprochement and dialogue; I am painting with a very broad brush). However, it might be held that a slightly different picture emerges from those passages in the New Testament that address the subject. I referred in Chapter 1 to Peter's vision in Acts 10, in which the eating of unclean flesh is used explicitly as a symbol of the crossing of the boundary between the Jewish and Gentile world by the Christian mission, with the consequent entry of Gentiles into the Church on terms (Acts 15.20, 29) that may be defined (Malina 1981: 146) as those purity rules held to be binding on strangers in Israel, gerim1 (see Lev. 17.8, 10, 13 and 18.26). Unlike these, the law of unclean kinds marked the separation between Israel as a nation and all other peoples, whether settled in the land of Israel or not, and it is therefore the one that Luke selects to symbolize the breaking down of the wall of partition. But Luke does not suggest, in his picture of the first-century Church, that any Jewish Christians ceased to be Jews, or even to observe the Law; in fact he is at pains to portray Paul as a faithful Jew who undertakes pilgrimage and discharges vows. Clearly the Christian Church in Acts is not a non-Jewish body but one in which Jews and Gentiles participate on equal terms and which is the true successor to the promises to Israel (28.25-28). The book skates lightly over the practical problems of table-fellowship that this would have caused, which emerge clearly enough in the letters of Paul. There are at least three places in the New Testament where different 1. In the biblical sense, not in the rabbinic sense in which it is applied to proselytes, those who became full members of the community.

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authors declare that the distinction between clean and unclean foods is now abolished (or never existed): Mk 7.19 (the interpretation by Mark of an alleged saying of Jesus); Acts 10.15 (11.9); Rom. 14.14. All these passages have some direct or indirect bearing on the issue of relations between Jews and Gentiles. I need say no more about Acts 10. The Marcan pericope says nothing about Gentiles itself, but is immediately followed by the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mk 7.25-30; the collocation is noted by Belo [1981: 145], Wenham [1981] and Lindars [1988: 69]), where Jesus responds to the challenge of a Gentile by letting blessing flow to her. The text does not let us forget the issues raised in the previous pericope, both by using bread as a metaphor (so Lindars) and by calling the Gentiles 'dogs' (cf. our discussion of the dog in Chapter 5, §l.b). Lindars comments, "The episode is intended as a pointer to the Gentile mission of the Church'. In Romans 14 there is no overt reference to tensions between Jews and Gentiles in the church, and indeed at first sight the reference to vegetarianism (v. 2) moves in a different circle. But Dan. 1.12 should be compared (with other references: see Dunn 1988: 801; and in general 799ff. for the following); many scrupulous Jews may have circumvented the problem of obtaining kosher food in a Gentile environment by abstaining from meat altogether (so Dunn 1988: 801, who points to the situation in Rome after Claudius's expulsion of the Jews; but more generally Sanders 1990: 279). When we come to vv. 14 and 20 there can be no doubt about it: the issue is one of purity, and therefore of the Jewish law, since there was no category of impure food in Greek culture (Parker 1983: 357), and the use of koinos is distinctively Jewish (Dunn 1988: 830). Paul's theoretical position here is quite uncompromising: nothing is impure of itself, impurity is a purely subjective matter. But the practice that he recommends shows that the main issue is good relations within the church. He urges the 'strong' (those who agree with his own theoretical position) to take care not to offend the conscience of the 'weak'; thus paradoxically the purity rule, while disappearing in that it symbolizes the barrier between Jew and Gentile, is retained in practice in order to raise no barriers of a different sort, presumably between Jewish and Gentile Christians1. 1. It has been widely assumed that the 'strong' and the 'weak' both here and in 1 Cor. 8-10 effectively mean Gentile and Jewish Christians respectively. But in relation to 1 Corinthians Theissen (1975), largely followed by Meeks (1983: 68-69), argues that this distinction is likely rather to have corresponded to differences of

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In Chapter 1, I spoke of 'the erasure of the boundary' which the distinction between clean and unclean meat celebrated and maintained. But erasing boundaries is not in itself an unambiguous operation. The abolition of the boundary between Jews and Gentiles could mean a number of things: ignoring purely artificial possibilities, it could imply either that the Christian Church is a new entity including both Jews and Gentiles; or that it consists of Gentiles, its Jewish members ceasing to be Jews (in this case the boundary persists but is of no significance for Christians); or that Israel is being reconstructed in a way that no longer excludes outsiders. This last possibility can be argued for and does seem to be suggested by certain passages. The New Testament throughout maintains that Jesus is the true Messiah of Israel and the true fulfilment of the biblical promises, but at the same time he is the saviour of all. Occasionally language that normally refers to Jews is used of the Christian Church as a whole (see Phil. 3.3, 1 Pet. 1.1), and at least once (Gal. 6.16; cf. 1 Cor. 10.18; also probably Rev. 7.7) the name Israel appears to be used in this way (Burton [1921: 358] argues against this as regards Gal. 6.16). But far more frequently the distinction between Jew and Gentile is maintained, however much they form one church and maintain table-fellowship. Apart from the passages referred to, 'Israel' always means the physical nation, the Jews. But even where a purely Gentile church is addressed, as apparently in Galatians, Ephesians or 1 Peter, it is always assumed that within the wider church they share fellowship with Jews, and in Ephesians this is made a subject of specific celebration (2.11-12). As regards the alternatives offered in the last paragraph, the text here is somewhat ambiguous, since expressions suggesting that the Gentiles have come to be part of the existing divine community alternate with ones asserting the emergence of a new society out of the two. But the weight is surely on the second

income and status: the relatively well-off with active business and social contacts would have found them awkwardly hampered by having too fine a conscience about meat sacrificed to idols, while the poor, who rarely ate meat, would have done so mainly on cultic occasions and so associated it with the worship of the pagan gods. But it seems doubtful whether we can apply this distinction to the different issue discussed in Rom. 14, and it seems much more probable that Paul is using vocabulary developed at Corinth in a somewhat transferred sense. It remains most likely that the issue of dietary purity at Rome was one which divided Jewish and Gentile Christians.

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of these two alternatives: 'that he might form the two in himself into one new humanity* (v. 15), through the destruction of 'the law with its rules and regulations'. The cornerstone of the new temple is Christ Jesus (v. 20); and in Gal. 2.15ff. the problem of how Jews can have fellowship with Gentile 'sinners' is solved by the principle that Christians live not by 'works of the law' but by faith in Jesus Christ. 'Works of the law', as Dunn argues (1990: 220), following Lohmeyer (n.d.: 67), is to be taken 'in the sense of obligations set by the law, the religious system determined by the law'—and this of course is the system that identifies the Jew as a member of the covenant community. The nub of the matter is that the key term in the religious system, alongside God, is not Israel but Christ (Sanders 1975, passim); and in Phil. 3.4ff. Paul declares his entire Jewish heritage written off for the sake of Christ. Hence the relationship of the Church to the existing Israelite nation does not need to be precisely defined; what matters is the relationship to Christ.1 This means that the first of our three alternatives is the one that comes closest to the predominant sense of the New Testament—certainly of Paul, and arguably of the rest of the New Testament also—that the church is a new community. However, socially speaking, this was an unstable and temporary situation. Paul's advice in Romans 14 seems not to have been followed, at least not after a generation or less had passed. After the catastrophe of 70 AD Jews were in a much more defensive posture and probably providing far fewer converts to Christianity; the birkat ha-minim shows that Christianity was formally rejected as a legititimate part of Judaism in a way that does not seem to have happened to sects before. Hence, within the Church, the idea that it included Jews became precarious. In the sub-apostolic literature there are traces of conflict on the food laws and other issues affecting relationships with Judaism, and the view that predominates, for example in the so-called Epistle of Barnabas, was not merely that Christians have no need to observe the 'ritual law', but that they positively must not do so. Thus Christians were encouraged in the belief that they need not care what Jews might think about their lifestyle, and Christians of Jewish origin began to cease to think of themselves as Jews. The first possibility had been 1. So Eilberg-Schwartz (1990: 140) associates the rejection of the dietary rules in Paul, as an exemplification of animal metaphor, with the move to a new 'root metaphor', that of the body of Christ; so also the role of animal sacrifice is taken over by the Cross.

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abandoned and the second embraced, for good. The abandonment of kosher, which in the New Testament implies the abolition of the boundary between Jew and Gentile, had come to mean the drawing of the line anew, with the Church on the other side of it. Though this was and is the empirical reality, that Christians are non-Jews, simply, the brief glance we have given to the New Testament's witness on the issue must lead us to doubt whether Christians have any right to regard the situation as normatively justified. 2. Forbidden Flesh and Other Structures We have noted the wide range of symbolic associations evoked by the law of unclean flesh; its function as a boundary marker of Israel is only one. To what extent are these involved in its rejection? Would not the abandonment of dietary purity threaten the entire range of social and moral structures with which it is associated? This might well be suggested by Mary Douglas's view that a whole series of purity laws constructed analogically set up the great inclusive categories in which the whole universe is hierarchised and structured... the classification of animals into clean and unclean, the classification of peoples as pure and common, the contrast of blemished to unblemished in the attributes of sacrificial victim, priest and woman, create in the Bible an entirely consistent set of criteria and values (Douglas 1973b: 139).

It is not simply the external boundary, but the entire internal structuring of the people that is supported by these rules. To remove one major prop of this cultural universe must cause the whole structure to fall in ruins. Now of course, early Gentile Christianity was not a moral and social chaos. It was a new community with its own structures, its own standards and its own boundary markers (cf. Meeks 1983). But to leave it at that would give a very misleading impression. None of the structures, standards and boundary markers were minted from virgin metal. To a very large extent they were carried over from Judaism into the new community that was still able to conceive of itself as Israel. A few reflections will be in order on the way in which structures and ideas associated with purity in Judaism are used, rejected or transformed in the construction of the new moral and social universe. To begin with, as has been argued by Fernando Belo (1981) and

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William Countryman (1989), purity and impurity are not, as Mary Douglas maintains (1973b: 138), the only 'dominant contrastive categories leading to holiness' in the Old Testament. One would not gather from reading Deuteronomy or the prophets (other than Ezekiel) that purity and impurity were the dominant categories. Righteousness and wickedness would be much more like it. No Jew depended solely on the notions of purity and impurity to understand the world. Belo (1981: 37-59) has persuasively argued that there are in fact two systems of contrastive categories in the Old Testament: what he calls the 'system of pollution' dominant in P, and the 'system of debt' overwhelmingly dominant in Deuteronomy, where the main categories are gift (the form that blessing invariably takes in Deuteronomy) and debt, Belo's preferred term for the sin of injustice that infringes the rights of others. Countryman (1989), dealing with sexual ethics, and apparently in independence of Belo, speaks of the ethics of purity and of property. My own preference, like Countryman's, would be for positive rather than negative terms, but 'property' is too narrow a term; far better and undoubtedly central in the Old Testament both as an ethical and a cosmological term (cf. Schmid 1974) is 'righteousness' (sedeq, sedaqa), perhaps better translated 'justice' in relation to the strictly ethical sphere. However important purity may seem to be in Second Temple Judaism, particularly as a source of dissension within the community, it is never the idiom in which all social discourse is conducted; that much Douglas ought to have gathered from reading Neusner 1973, to which her critique is appended. Destroy that system, and there still remains the other; Atlas has yet a Hercules to sustain the pillars of the world. Nevertheless a world sustained by the rule of justice looks a very different place from one sustained by the purity rule. This is part of Douglas's argument in Natural Symbols. For the individual, the weight of responsibility tends to move, from a structure that prescribes behaviour according to understood and invariant rules, to his or her own personal moral decision. Now this can easily be exemplified from the passages that declare the annulment of dietary purity. If we return to Mk 7.15ff. with its authorial interpretation, 'thus he declared all foods clean', we find that it sets against the annulled system of purity in food a different kind of purity: it is 'what comes from within, from the heart' that really defiles. And as Belo puts it, the evils that 'really' pollute one 'belong to the debt system (theft, murder, adultery, and avarice; the others are

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variants that can be easily inscribed in these four), a fact already indicated by the seat assigned to them, namely the heart' (1981: 143); for the heart is 'the site of the strategic choices that...give rise to practices (good or evil)' (1981: 144). And 'purity of heart' is a metaphor; this is rightly emphasized by Countryman (1989: 86). We tend to assume that 'purity' of heart is real purity, and physical purity only a symbol of this. But the essential meaning of purity and impurity relates to what physically passes the boundaries of the body, while 'purity of heart' relates to the moral choices of the individual within what Belo calls the debt system and I prefer to call the justice system. That physical purity may be understood as symbolic does not mean, as Mary Douglas emphasizes (1973b: 138), that it is a metaphor for goodness. Nevertheless this metaphorical understanding of purity is already a cliche at the time of Jesus; it is a commonplace in the Old Testament itself (Neusner 1973: 12ff.), and is the dominant understanding in Philo (Neusner 1973: 44ff.). It was also a commonplace, as Neusner shows (1973: 76ff.) to criticize opponents on the ground that they neglected 'true' moral purity in the pursuit of physical purity. The vital difference in the New Testament is that Philo (for example), while interpreting the purity laws as an allegory of virtue, keeps them literally because they are commanded, while Mark (at least) regards them as annulled. Thus in Philo purity continues as a symbolic system as well as a metaphor (which it had always been), while in Mark, and the New Testament generally, the metaphorical understanding of purity replaces the symbolic. As memory of the metaphor's vehicle faded, we may say that it ceased to be understood as a metaphor, as is true today. Similarly with Paul. When in Rom. 14.14 he implies a systematic rejection of the entire category of purity, he does not leave the individual without a basis for action, but substitutes the basis of consideration for others; that is, he relies on the individual's moral responsibility. It is true that purity themes are frequent in Paul's language. They are exploited by Michael Newton (1985: 52-53), who argues that purity is vital to Paul's understanding of the church, which he sees as the temple whose holiness must be preserved. Countryman is clearly justified, however, in his comment (1989: 98 n. 2) that Newton has failed to distinguish between purity in its physical and its metaphorical sense. In fact practically all the uses of purity language in Paul that Newton discusses are metaphorical; they are concerned

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with morality. And when Paul argues that the Law is not binding on his Gentile converts, of course he does not mean that they are not bound by the moral requirements of the law, that is, primarily those that are inscribed in the system of property/debt/justice. Secondly, the general expression 'purity' conceals distinctions that I have been at pains to make throughout this study (cf. Chapter 2, §l.c.6; Chapter 6, §§2.c, 2.d). I have distinguished between on the one hand those aspects of purity associated with the dietary rules by Lev. 11.24-40, that is, purifiable bodily impurity generally suffered unintentionally or necessarily, the subject matter of Leviticus 12-15 and Numbers 19, and on the other hand 'impurity related to holiness', in which Lev. 11.41-44 includes the dietary code, and the Holiness Code the laws against idolatry and sexual immorality. These are concerned with deliberate offences that cannot be purified. But that does not mean that 'impurity' is here simply being used in the metaphorical sense of moral wrongdoing, for we are here concerned with offences that for the most part do not form part of the justice system. Eating unclean meat, partaking in sacrificial meals in honour of pagan gods, and committing incest do not infringe the rights of others, but are symbolic ways of denying the consecration of the people of Israel to their God, and each is a violation of a prescribed boundary that is basic to the structure of the community. But there are distinctions to be made even within this group. As we have noted in connection with the so-called Apostolic Decree of Acts 15, the law of unclean meat applies only to Israel as a people, but most of the other laws apply both to Israelites and to genm; they are derived from the Holiness Code, which is concerned with the Land as a sacred space comparable to the Temple (Lev. 18.25ff.). Now a study of key passages with these distinctions in mind reveals important differences. In the first place, no part of the New Testament shows much interest in the first type of impurity. In the Synoptic Gospels the leprosy rules are alluded to without comment (Mk 1.44 and parallels), and Luke in a similar fashion makes Mary bring the offering for her purification from childbirth, without criticism. But all this is purely on the level of narrative, so it is not possible to say, for example, with Countryman (1989: 87), 'Mark does not reject all observance of the purity code by Christians'. In general these rules were of significance only in relation to the sanctuary, and would be of little interest in the diaspora. Their disappearance therefore neither

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deepened the breach between Jews and Christians nor threatened the social structure of the emerging Christian community, which repeatedly refers to itself as the temple of God. The treatment of turn'at qodel is far more important and more interesting. The rejection of the law of forbidden flesh carried with it a potential inconsistency, which may well account for much of the growing bitterness between church and synagogue. As we have seen, it had a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension; before it symbolizes the separation between Israel and the nations, it symbolizes the consecration of Israel to their one God. It is because of its horizontal dimension that it has to be rejected—but what then becomes of the vertical? But since the symbolism of holiness reappears in the Holiness Code in a form that includes Gentiles as sharers in a sacred space with Israel, the possibility remained of using those laws as markers of the purity and boundaries of the new comunity. And to some extent this is actually what we find, certainly in the Apostolic Decree, which has a logic intelligible in terms of an Old Testament understanding of purity. As the terms in which that decree is couched already make clear, the main forms in which this issue will confront the Gentile church are 'meat sacrificed to idols' andporneia, that is, sexual immorality of any kind.1 The discussion of the first in 1 Corinthians 8-10 is complex and at times seemingly contradictory. There is a helpful treatment in Meeks 1983: 97-100. What seems to come out of it is that Paul is unwilling to allow the 'strong' to treat the matter in absolutely the same terms as he himself treats unclean meat in Rom. 14.14. 'Nothing is impure of itself, but he draws back in the end, despite his initial assertion in 8.4, from saying that 'an idol is nothing'. To partake in a cultic meal in a pagan context is to share your meal with demons (10.19ff.). However, the final advice does largely depend on the subjective aspect; you may eat meat from the meat-market without worrying about whether it has been sacrificed, and eat as a guest of a pagan without asking questions, but if someone draws attention to the cultic character of the meal, you should not eat, to avoid giving the impression that you do in fact 'eat with demons'. The alternative approach in Rev. 2.20 simply rejecting, like Acts 15, the eating of such meat, should also be noted; that verse clearly shows that it 1. The eating of blood does not emerge as an issue, probably because, as Sanders observes (1990: 278-79), Greeks used the same slaughtering technique as Jews, so that meat sold in the Greek world would normally be free of blood in any case.

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continued to be a matter of dissension in the church at least up to the end of the century. If on this issue the New Testament speaks with a somewhat ambiguous voice, so that it is unclear whether it could function as a clear purity rule, actual worship at pagan shrines is absolutely excluded, and becomes in the relations of the Church to state and society over the next few centuries the one great boundary-marker for the sake of which men and women give their lives as gladly as Eleazar did for the dietary law. When it comes to sex, the issue is relatively clear, despite Countryman's quixotic attempt (1989: 97-98) to prove that Paul rejects all purity rules in relation to this as to all other subjects. The laws and ethical perceptions in Judaism about sex were rooted in cultural features that were seen (for the most part rightly) to be common to all humankind, and they were therefore held by Jews to apply to all human beings, whether gerim or not. Even if such perceptions did in fact divide Jews from Greeks, they did so, in the Jewish view, because of pagan corruption, not because the rules in question were designed to make Jews distinctive. It is naturally to be expected that they should appear in the New Testament, for though purity-based they are inevitably seen as moral rather than 'ritual' rules. Their focus, the family, continued to be important, despite radical assertions like Mk 3.34-35 or Matt. 10.27/Lk. 14.26; and it would therefore be understandable if it continued to be set about with the fence of purity. So at 1 Cor. 6.12-14 Paul draws a sharp distinction between the way food and sex should be understood ethically (cf. Countryman 1989:104). But Countryman consistently argues that the New Testament (Paul in particular) does not retain purity thinking in the realm of sex. Whenever Paul speaks of some sexual practice as unclean and wrong, Countryman uses a range of arguments to prove one of three points: that it is not unclean (i.e. for Paul the objection lies in the 'property' system), that it is not sexual (he consistently interprets porneia in lists of vices as a reference to idolatry, though there is generally nothing in the context to suggest it), or that it is not wrong—this last is how he treats homosexuality in Romans 1. This argument fails. It is a very odd reading of Rom. 1.24-27, with its strongly pejorative language, to say that Paul is not condemning

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homosexual activity; and a more general view of what Paul says about sex shows that he frequently uses purity language about sexual conduct of which he disapproves. He retains the traditional Jewish abhorrence of those sexual practices that are condemned in purity terms in the Law: incest (1 Cor. 5.1) as well as homosexual conduct, and also the use of prostitutes (1 Cor. 6.12-20), which is not referred to in those terms in the Old Testament itself, but which in later Jewish thinking is generally tarred with the same brush. In the Pauline writings the term akatharsia, 'uncleanness', is used several times in close connection viiihporneia 'fornication': 2 Cor. 12.20-21; Gal. 5.19-21; Eph. 5.3; Col. 3.5. It seems doubtful whether in these cases Countryman can be right in saying that 'uncleanness' is a very general term for immoral, selfish conduct, and not a reference to the purity system. It is especially significant that the term 'sanctification' is used three times in 1 Thess. 4.3-8 in the discussion of this issue, and that Paul calls the body a temple in 1 Cor. 6.19 in discussing the use of prostitutes. This is a classic expression of purity thinking. Am I the only reader of that passage to have been puzzled in the past by the apparent illogicality of the argument? 'Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?' If it is a matter of whom Christians belong to (as Countryman thinks), the argument should rule out sex with anyone at all. There is of course a suppressed premise: being joined to a harlot in itself defiles the sanctity of the members of Christ and pollutes the temple of the Holy Spirit, as married intercourse would not. It is therefore clear that the rules structuring the relations of the sexes are seen by Paul in much the same light as in Judaism. Certain forms of conduct are wrong in themselves, regardless of whether they infringe the rights of others, and they are at the same time threats to the holiness of the body of Christ. Therefore they may be understood as breaches of purity. These are rules by which all people ought to live, but because those outside the holy community do not (Lev. 18.24; 1 Thess. 4:5), they define and protect its holiness. This is true even though Meeks (1983: 101) is correct in saying that 'sexual purity' in Paul 'is defined mostly in terms of values that are widely affirmed by the larger society'. It is a widespread habit to assure the identity of one's own community by attributing condemned practices to others (Oden 1987: 133ff.). But it is clear that sexual purity in Paul is an ethical principle; it has nothing to do with automatic bodily pollutions, but is concerned exclusively with deliberate acts, acts for

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which the conscience may bring one to account.1 What then remains of purity as a category in the moral world of New Testament Christianity? First, purity language in the New Testament is predominantly metaphorical, and points rather to the system of justice than to that of purity in its literal sense. Secondly, the entire system of purities in its technical sense as an understanding of bodily processes disappears. Wherever literal purity survives it is an ethical principle and never refers to involuntary processes. But as regards 'purity that relates to holiness', the answer is less clear-cut. The compromise that, if we are to believe Acts, the Jerusalem church attempted to impose, whereby Gentile Christians could be conceived in the same light as strangers within the community of Israel, sharing in a limited degree of purity in order to inhabit the same sacred space, did not last; it is not referred to by Paul, whose own solutions are more radical. For purity considerations in relation to issues of 'unclean' food and food sacrificed to idols, he substitutes consideration for the conscience of others; in these fields purity has for him no longer any objective reality: 'there is nothing unclean of itself. However, in relation to deliberate sexual conduct, this principle does not apparently apply. In this respect, and this respect only, purity and impurity as 'contrastive categories leading to holiness' are retained. To use the vocabulary of Natural Symbols, Paul is at a level of 'grid' well below the priestly writers of Leviticus 15, or of Leviticus 11. He cannot objectify the dangers that threaten the Christian society in terms of a symbolic system of external impurity, because the structure of that society is not a traditional objective system that determines roles by ascription (Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 204-205); rather, that society is held together by a personal bond to the Lord, and by moral appeal to the members. Hence the impurities that threaten it derive from the moral choices of individuals. And to the moral understanding of purity and impurity corresponds a moral understanding of purification and sacrifice: it is Christ 'who was obedient even to the point of death' (Phil. 2.8), who is the means of expiating sin; his death is understood as a voluntary act of obedience, which stands in implicit contrast with the unsought death of sacrificial animals. The dietary system, as we have seen, is closely related to the sacrificial system. Transform the one, and the other is bound to be transformed as the 1.

For discussion of purity as an ethical system, see Countryman 1989: 1 Iff.

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community's structure of thought seeks consistency. But it is important to note also that Paul is at a level of 'grid' well above his converts, at least in Corinth. He has to struggle not merely against their natural inclinations to self-indulgence, but against an antinomian ideology: 'I am free to do anything' (1 Cor. 6.12; 10.23) appears to be their slogan; it is scarcely Paul's. They have the freedom of the Spirit, and may be led either to asceticism (7.1) or libertinism (6.12). What these seemingly contrary attitudes have in common is a contempt for the body—for their physical bodies as an expression of the body social, or in theological terms as the temple of the Holy Spirit (3.16)—and for the social body as expressed in such a basic institution as marriage. This appears to come out also in their denial of the resurrection (15.12). Along with this devaluation of the body goes the high value set on the Spirit, on the gifts of the Spirit and above all on glossolalia. The mode of worship that they favour is informal, unstructured (14.26), even undisciplined; apparently two or more prophets might speak at the same time (14.27ff.); the favoured forms of expression involve immediate inspiration and bodily dissociation, and (as Paul sees it) they aim at individual rather than social edification (14.4). For them the rejection of boundaries and structures implied in the rejection of the distinction of clean and unclean foods is total, as it is not for Paul. He has to urge them to take their bodily and social life seriously, and to make their taking of bread and wine a symbol both of the Lord's bodily death and of their own unity as a body. To fail to 'discern the body' is death to them (11.29-30). Mary Douglas suggests in Natural Symbols (1973a: 99ff.) that varying levels of bodily control in ritual correspond to the degree of social control and structure. Extremely unstructured forms of ritual, and especially a high valuation of forms such as trance and glossolalia, occur where social structure is loose, roles unascribed and groups not sharply bounded. She notes that this is clearly true of the Pentecostalists of Caribbean origin in London studied by Malcolm Calley (1965). It is also obviously true of the Corinthian church. In place of any detailed study here I refer to Meeks 1983. Further, according to Douglas, this style of interaction and this contempt for ritual and symbol is seen (1973a: 18Iff.) as characterizing the revolt of those who feel themselves excluded within impersonal mass societies, which leads to millenarianism and utopianism. For

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The Corinthian church could reasonably be described as millenarian, for they had accepted a gospel that proclaimed the early coming of the Lord in power. And it is also reasonable to suppose that their members experienced life as controlled by remote and invisible powers. Power and privilege in the large cities of the Roman world was in the hands of small self-perpetuating elites, and the rest of the population tended to be a melting pot of individuals and groups of very diverse origins, with no shared symbolic system. In the ranks of the church at Corinth there were 'not many wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many well-born' (1.26); although Meeks suggests (1983: 51ff.) that there were many people of moderate wealth and of upward social mobility, he also observes that people of inconsistent social status are prominent, high on some measures and low on others. These are the very people who are most likely to experience sharply their exclusion from real power within the broader community. The victims of this system react as Douglas predicts they will react: by expressing themselves in 'inarticulate, undifferentiated symbols' (p. 183). They are therefore receptive to a movement that though arising out of a culture highly structured both socially and symbolically has drastically simplified the symbolism in its message. It is by no means sufficient that it has abandoned those symbols that underlined the external boundaries of the group. That was essential, but also required was the simplification of the purity system as a whole, which also occurred, as we have seen. The early missionaries to the Gentiles offered the urban masses Gospel without Law, which for our purposes means monotheism without purity. 3. Origins But how were they able to do this? How were they able to separate the vertical from the horizontal dimension of significance in the food law? How could a Jew like Paul perform the act of symbolic dissociation which enabled him to say 'there is nothing unclean in itself?—or, to put it in another way, how was it that alone among Jewish sects

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Christianity was able to cross the divide to the Gentiles without demanding that they become Jews? It is not really plausible to regard it as some kind of accident, a position into which devout Jews were betrayed by the practical exigencies of their situation, though this is the impression given by some accounts—that initially the Gentiles were simply invited to join the Church without becoming proselytes, and therefore not being committed to the observance of the Law; this in no way affected the position and practice of Jewish Christians, who continued to be observant Jews. But once Gentiles had become members of the community it was necessary to eat with them, and hence Jewish Christians like Peter found themselves in practice ignoring some of the requirements of kosher diet for the sake of fellowship. Paul then made a principle out of what had been a practical step. That account may describe what happened in an external sense, but it overlooks the meaning of what was going on. The first step was the decisive one: to invite non-Jews into the messianic community and to let them remain non-Jews. This instantly relativized the boundary marked by the food law, and at once evacuated that law of meaning—in the horizontal dimension certainly, but also in the vertical, since all were worshippers of the one God in any case. In congregations formed in this way, it would have been plain from the start that uncleanness was a matter simply of individual sensibility and had no collective meaning (except where it had the character of an ethical principle), which is precisely what Paul says in Rom. 14.14. The life and reality of any purity system lies in the conviction of its objectivity; if pollution is seen as something subjective, it is not pollution at all. The Jewish Christians who took that first step were already convinced of the unreality of pollution. Can this conviction be traced to their founder? To revert to Mark 7, it would nowadays be widely agreed that even if the saying in v. 15, elaborated in 18-23, is correctly attributed to Jesus, Jesus himself cannot have meant by it what Mark takes him to mean. The pericope is the subject of a detailed monograph by Roger P. Booth (1986), and has recently been investigated by Lindars (1988) and by Dunn (1990: 37-60). All agree (Dunn 51; Booth 70-71, 219; Lindars 65-66; cf. Malina 1981: 144; Sanders 1990: 28) that the saying can and, as a saying of Jesus, should be understood not as a denial of the validity of the purity laws but as a statement of their relative subordination to the demand for purity of the heart—and this we have seen was a

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commonplace. There are of course a large number of earlier writers who assert the contrary. But the fact that table-fellowship was without question an issue in the Gentile mission (Gal. 2.1 Iff.; cf. Dunn 1990: 39; Sanders 1985: 268; Lindars 1988: 66ff.) strongly suggests that the first Christians had not understood Jesus as subverting the purity laws, and that these first became an issue when Gentiles began to enter the congregations. Wenham notes (1981: 12) that the evangelist does not attribute the conclusion to Jesus, and comments that 'this is of a piece with the synoptic writers' presentation of Jesus' mission as a mission to the Jews rather than to the Gentiles'. But though Jesus cannot be seen as originating the abandonment of the dietary and other purity laws, there were certainly features of the movement that he created that are radical enough to make its evolution into a purity-free Gentile mission intelligible. In the first place it was of course a 'millenarian' movement, if that is the appropriate word, looking for an early end to the present world order and its authorities, the coming of the Kingdom of God, the restoration of Israel under the Messiah and probably with a new temple (cf. Sanders 1985: 61-62). These ideas it shared with many other movements in the Judaism of its time. But 'the one distinctive note which we may be certain marked Jesus' teaching about the kingdom is that it would include the "sinners'" (1985: 174). Now Sanders argues (1985: 177ff.) that this term 'sinners' should not be understood, as so frequently, as the impure or those who sat light to the ritual demands of the Law, but as the wicked, who have committed serious sins (such as fraud and oppression, in the case of the tax-collectors)1 and who are therefore religiously unacceptable without repentance and restitution. Against this, Dunn argues (1990: 61-88) that the designation 'sinners' is characteristic of the sectarian denigration of those seen as inadequately observant. In either case, they are not ideal models of observance for a community that defines belonging by 'works of the law'; yet Jesus included them in his fellowship preparing for the Kingdom. Above all, the movement venerated a Lord who had been rejected by the community's leaders and executed as a criminal. Even though it shared the general community's expectation and worship and symbolic systems, it was marginal to its structure and had its own distinctive symbols. 1. Violations in the debt system, to use Belo's terminology; yet Belo himself, despite translating auapKoXoi as 'debtors', fails to draw the same conclusion (1981: 109-10).

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Thus even though we cannot be certain how much of the distinctive Christian theology already existed in early Jewish Christianity, that is, how far the Christian symbols had begun to displace the Jewish ones, we can say that the Christian movement was a movement of those marginal to the community, those whom it had in various ways failed to integrate within its structures, and who were expecting a radical transformation of those structures in the near future. It was, consequently, a movement putting a high value on what Victor Turner (1969: 96ff.) calls 'communitas', that is, a model of society opposed to the structured and differentiated system of normal social life, seeing it as an unstructured community of equal individuals who are directly related to each other as persons rather than in terms of their status—as brothers, in other words. Such a model of society is manifested regularly, Turner shows, in the liminal stage of rites of passage, where all those who are shortly to acquire higher status are reduced to the level of the lowest. It also is evidenced in a paradoxical form (pp. 177ff.) in annual rites (such as the Roman Saturnalia, to take an example better known than most of Turner's) where the status of the participants is reversed in relation to each other, and the masters serve the slaves. Turner suggests that both phenomena can be seen in permanent religious and other movements. There are those like the Franciscan order (pp. 141ff.), or many millenarian movements, in which the group sets itself against all status and all personal property— which if Acts is to be trusted is what happened in the early Jerusalem church. There are on the other hand some modern movements arising from among the disadvantaged that have very elaborate hierarchies (pp. 189ff.); this is true of many of the African independent churches, and also of a group like the Hell's Angels. Turner calls these 'pseudo hierarchies', because they are not related to real functioning social structure, but have a ' "play-acting", fantastical quality'; nonetheless he is careful to point out that they may come to have real function as circumstances change (p. 192); and he regards them as taking the place of an actual exchange of statuses within a 'liminal-religious' group of equally-ranked individuals usually of inferior status within the wider society. Would it be too rash to see the Twelve as such a pseudo hierarchy?1 The two types of movement are quite distinct in 1. Although they may have expected to 'sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel' (Matt. 19.28), no one has been able to suggest what their function in the currently existing Jerusalem church was, and in fact when Paul describes his suc-

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Turner's discussion, but the early Church seems to have been sufficiently diverse to have included groups of both types. Millenarian, apocalyptic ideology or theology is characteristic of both (153-54, 189ff.), and this was also true of the early church; 'social structure is intimately connected with history, because it is the way a group maintains its form over time', therefore structureless groups expect the end of history shortly. However, it surely cannot always be certain which is cause and which effect; in the case of movements arising within Judaism, where there had been a long apocalyptic tradition, the apocalyptic expectation may well be the basis of the abandonment of structure.1 The group only awaits the reversals of the end-time which will truly fulfil the ideal of communitas. Turner does not deal with the fate of purity systems in groups embodying communitas as a normative aim, but everything would suggest that they would be downgraded. In so far as symbolic systems represent social structure and boundaries, they will naturally fade in significance in a situation where people have turned their backs on the official social structure to find reality in their own relatively unstructured group. It is apparent that Turner is looking from another point of view at some of the phenomena dealt with in Douglas's Natural Symbols, and she finds that loose social structure is associated with a lack of richness in bodily symbolism and ritual. Moreover, as we have seen, Christians for whom the priestly symbolic system had ceased to be meaningful still had a rich biblical tradition to fall back on, with its own symbolic order, including a powerful representation of the ideal of communitas in the book of Deuteronomy and elsewhere. The ideal limits of communitas are set only by the limits of the human race; and there is a biblical theme of the gathering of the nations to worship the God of Israel in the last days (Isa. 2.2-4; 66.18; Zech. 14.16ff., etc.; cf. Jeremias 1958; Sanders 1985: 212ff.). A group that was drawn from 'the streets and lanes of the city' would be naturally disposed to go out into the 'highways and hedges' to 'compel cessive visits to Jerusalem in Gal. 1-2, he never mentions them; the 'pillars', that is, the real leaders in the church, were James, Peter and John (2.9). Their institution therefore seems likely to be more related to the apocalyptic expectation of the church than to anything functional. (I believe this is what emerges from the discussion in Sanders 1985:98ff., though Sanders's own conclusions are very vague.) 1. But not a sufficient basis; cf. the Qumran community, with its elaborate (and real!) hierarchy.

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them to come in', and the symbolic configuration that they had developed served to lessen the significance of the barriers to doing so set up by the symbolic configuration of the wider society. Even before they turned to the Gentiles, if they still observed the purity code as a matter of routine, it no longer carried the main weight of their religious understanding; they may have had purity and monotheism, but the link between them was corroded almost to breaking. 4. Profit and Loss We may conclude by drawing up a profit-and-loss account of Christianity's independent growth as a religion not acknowledging the Torah, and specifically the law of unclean flesh, as binding upon it. No one with any knowledge of Judaism would now speak of it in the traditional Protestant fashion as 'legalist' in the sense of basing ultimate salvation on obedience to a code. But Sanders's term 'covenantal nomism' (1975: 422 and passim) seems accurate for at least the great body of Judaism, which is based on a covenant between God and Israel that includes God's gracious choice of Israel but on Israel's part calls for the observance of a law, in which the ritual elements are as significant as the moral; it is in no less than the whole way of life of a people that they come to know their God. It is not legalist, but it is legal; it is not exclusivist, but it is particularist. By contrast, the Church in its origins is committed to the idea of its Gospel as universal, meant for all humanity, to the equality of all humanity before God, and to the relative character of all human institutions and cultures in the face of the Lordship of Christ. It is clear that a symbolic system necessarily bound to the life of a particular people and its culture, and still more one that celebrated and guarded the uniqueness and separateness of that people, would have been incompatible with this universal aim. Old Testament religion, monotheism guarded by purity, had to lose the protection of the purity system, if its monotheism was to become the universal religion that it ought logically to be. Universal monotheism required something of quite a different character as the way of salvation. Islam has the Qur'an and the five pillars. Christianity has faith in Christ. To put it in theological terms, the Torah's function in the divine dispensation was to create the people out of whom Christ could come, 'born under the law' (Gal. 4.4); it

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was 'our paidagogos to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith' (Gal. 3.24). So much is obvious. But it also needs to be stressed that in the necessary process of transformation something of value was lost. A price was paid for the universal character of the Christian Gospel. I have already spoken of the separation of the Christian Church from its mother community as a tragedy, perhaps a tragic necessity, but a tragedy none the less, which has led in the course of an evil history to still more tragic consequences, for which the Church must bear most of the blame. But there is more. 'He who would do good to others must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the Hypocrite and the Scoundrel.' Minute particulars are needed not just for doing good, but for experiencing good and being good. I have said that Jews know and honour God in their whole way of life, in every minute particular of their existence. The food laws remind them every time they take a meal of their election and call to holiness. Christians have nothing really comparable. More, these laws are a means ever to hand by which they may learn and exercise moral restraint in the use of the animal creation—a lesson and an exercise that the Christian world is only now laboriously learning, a praxis that it is slowly constructing from the ground up. It is obvious that the New Testament is not sufficient as the basis of a whole way of life; despite its length, roughly comparable with that of the Torah, it is poor in minute particulars. Pure communitas is evanescent, for the endurance of a community structures, customs, symbolic systems are required. Christians must construct these for themselves, partly by judicious use of the Old Testament as well as the New, partly by the proper use of the cultures in which they find themselves. In the use of the Old Testament the Ten Commandments have taken a prominent place, as have in a more informal way the prophets and to a lesser extent the moral and 'judicial' parts of the Torah—the system of 'debt'. The 'ceremonial' law or system of 'pollution' has generally been regarded as superseded, though there is some doublethink here, since the fourth of the Ten Commandments is plainly a ceremonial law. But taking this as broadly true, is it a good thing? I would hope that if this study has achieved nothing else, it should have demonstrated (in one minute particular) the utility of ritual; and to demonstrate this I would take to be the use of the ritual law for Christians. Once again, in a movement that aspires to universality no

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particular rituals can be binding. But any enduring community must express its self-understanding and its understanding of the cosmos in some concrete, graspable way. Every particular Christian community has its rituals, whether intentionally or not and whether it knows it or not. A study of the Old Testament ritual law helps us to be conscious of our own rituals and articulate about them. I might suggest that such a study would be of value not only to Christians but also to humanists concerned about the integrity of their culture. The relation of Christianity to culture has been one of the many things that have divided Christians, often in theory (cf. the classic study by Richard Niebuhr [1951]) but certainly also in practice. The universal availability of Christianity, its lack of distinctive rituals and structures of its own, other than the bare outlines of the two sacraments, has enabled it to establish itself in, and adapt itself to, societies with every kind of culture—something impossible to Judaism, which is felt as, and feels itself to be, a foreign body in every society where it is established. Even Islam is a culturally coherent entity in a way that Christianity (even 'Christendom') is not. Symbolic structures may be adapted from the surrounding culture to serve Christian purposes, or, still more frequently, Christians are simply allowed to continue to use in their daily life the symbols and structures of their culture without Christian content. Tension arises when Christians disagree about particular customs that some feel are unchristian—examples would be polygamy and female circumcision in Africa. Some customs are certainly destructive and pernicious, including of course some that have alwa'ys been accepted in the countries of Christendom; but the more purely symbolic aspects of culture, it is evident from our study, have no fixed meaning; they are forms whose contents are mutable and may be baptized into Christ, if that is what is required. Yet the 'Christ against culture' response (Niebuhr 1951: 45ff.) may insist that Christians may use only those forms that are specifically Christian. The result, generally speaking, is a sectarian social formation with a bleakly impoverished symbolic life—the culture of the Closed Brethren, or of what in Douglas's terms (1973a: 136ff.) is 'small group' with its strong outer boundary and constant search for scapegoats in the form of witches (in Central Africa or in seventeenth-century New England) or heretics. The opposite error is perhaps more widespread, in which a universal church or a denomination is content with the formal assent of its members and does too little to ensure that their lives express the

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faith that they have accepted. It is clear that Judaism avoids both these extremes, the former by the richness of its internal symbolic life, a small section of which we have investigated in this book, the latter by the strength of its external boundary, which is marked especially by the rules we have been studying. A third possibility is to develop a rich internal symbolic life, and to believe in its objectivity and forget the relativity of all culture, including religious culture, before the Gospel of Christ. This, crudely put, is what has happened in Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Douglas, a Catholic herself, values the traditional symbols of her religious culture, such as Friday abstinence, and puts well the usefulness of these symbols in establishing identity and enabling members to understand their lives at a level deeper than moralistic sloganizing (1973a, especially pp. 59ff.). This point is well taken, but perhaps she forgets the necessary commitment of the Christian Church as such to the search for communitas and universality. She also forgets the extent to which the advance of education and mass culture enables people to think articulately about their culture (cf. again Goody and Hallpike); symbols will always be useful, but it is very unlikely that there will ever again be a time when most people, as in the ancient world, believe in the objective reality of impurity. And as I have said, that means there can never again be a true purity system. For my fellow-Christians the moral is this. Our inheritance is given, and we do well to maintain the fundamental inheritance of the universal Gospel. But wherever we find ourselves set, we need to develop that inheritance in particular forms, appropriate to the setting, the people and the local culture, that enable Christians, and those who become Christians, not merely to believe their faith but to grasp it in vivid and concrete ways, not merely to take moral decisions in its light but to live it, without having to think about it, in the minute particulars of their lives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Ancient and Medieval Works Aristeas, Pseudo-. 'The Letter of Aristeas'. Ed. H. St-J. Thackeray. H.B. Swete: An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, 499-574. Cambridge, 1900. Artemidorus. Artemidori Daldiani Oneirocriton libri V. R.A. Pack. Leipzig, 1963. Athanasius. Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione. Ed. and trans. R.W. Thomson. Oxford, 1971. Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily. Ed. and trans. C.H. Oldfather and others. LCL. 12 vols. London, 1933-67. Eusebius. Eusebii Pamphili Evangelicae Praeparationis libri XV. Ed. and trans. E.H. Gifford. 5 vols. Oxford, 1903. Herodian. Herodian. Ed. and trans. C.R. Whittaker. LCL. 2 vols. London, 1969-70. Herodotus. Herodotus. Ed. and trans. A.D. Godley. LCL. 4 vols. London, 1920-25. Hyginus. Hygini Fabulae. Ed. H.I. Rose. Leiden, n.d. [1934]. Julian. The Works of the Emperor Julian. Ed. and trans. W.C. Wright. LCL. 3 vols. London, 1913-23. Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Abraham. «np'i -IBO ; p'?n...Di>ons .a.1? aa rrfrnj rntnpa. New York, NY, 5716 [1955-56]. Justin. M. luniani lustini Epitomae Historiarum Philippicarum Pompeii Trogi. Ed. O. Seel. Stuttgart, 1972. Lucian. 'The Goddess of Surrye'. Lucian, IV, 367-411. Ed. and trans. A.M. Harmon etal. LCL. 8 vols. London, 1913-67. —The Syrian Goddess, attributed to Lucian. Ed. H.W. Attridge and R.A. Oden. Missoula, MI, 1976. Maimonides, M. Guide for the Perplexed. Ed. and trans. M. Friedla'nder. 2nd edn. London, 1904. The Mishnah. Ed. and trans. H. Danby. Oxford, 1933. Nadim, al-, Abu al-Faraj Muhammad ibn-Ishaq. The Fihrist ofal-Nadim. Ed. and trans. B. Dodge, New York, 1970. 2 vols. paginated as one. Nahmanides (Ramban). Commentary on the Torah. III. Leviticus. Ed. and trans. C.B. Chavel. New York, NY, 1974. Origen. Patrologia Graeca. Ed. J.-P. Migne. XI: Origenes. Paris, 1857. Philo of Alexandria. Philo. Ed. trans. F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker. LCL. 10 vols. with 2 supplementary vols. London, 1929-53. Pliny the Elder. Pliny: Natural History. Ed. and trans. H. Rackham and others. LCL. 10 vols. London, rev. edn, 1949-62. Plutarch. Plutarch's De hide et Osiride. Ed. and trans. J.G. Griffiths. Cardiff, 1970.

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Porphyry. Porphyre: De I'Abstinence. Ed. and trans. J. Bouffartigue and M. Patillon 4 vols. Paris, 1977. Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac), top11! IBO a pl?n...a'oriB .a.1? os mVru mtnpn. New Yoik, NY, 5716 [1955-56]. Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi's Commentary, Ed. and trans. M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann. London, 1928-32, repr. New York, n.d. [196-?]. Sextus Empiricus. Sextus Empiricus. Ed. and trans. R.G. Bury. LCL. 4 vols. London, 1933-49. Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud (trans, various). Ed. I. Epstein. London, 1935^48. Xenophon. Xenophon: Anabasis. Ed. and trans. C.L. Brownson. LCL. London, 1922. 2. Modern Works Achtemeier, E. 1982 The Community and Message of Isaiah 56-66. Minneapolis. Aharoni, Y. 1975 Investigations at Lachish. Tel Aviv. Ahlstrom, G.W. 1984a The Early Iron Age Settlers at Hirbet el-MSaS (Tel Masos)'. ZDPV 100: 35-52. 1984b 'An Archaeological Picture of Iron Age Religions in Ancient Palestine'. StOr 55: 119-45. Albertz, R. 1978 Personliche Fromigkeit und offizielle Religion: Religiousinterner Pluralismus in Israel und Babylon. Stuttgart. Albright, W.F. 1968 Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan. Garden City, NY. Almagro-Gordea, M.J. 1980 'Les reliefs orientalisants de Po/o Moro (Albacete: Espagne)', in J. Duchemin (ed.), Mythe et personnification, 123-36, plus 8 plates. Paris. Alter, R. 1979 'A New Theory of Kashrut'. Commentary. August, 1979: 46-52. 1981 The Art of Biblical Narrative. London. Amiran, R. 1978 Early Arad: The Chalcolithic Settlement and Early Bronze Age City. I. First-Fifth Seasons of Excavations 1962-1966. Jerusalem. Archer, L.J. 1990 'Bound by Blood: Circumcision and Menstrual Taboo in Post-Exilic Judaism', in J.M. Soskice (ed.), After Eve, 38-61. London. Arhem, K. 1985 Pastoral Man in the Garden of Eden: The Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Uppsala. Avigad, N. 1955 'The Second Tomb-Inscription of the Royal Steward'. IEJ 5: 163-66.

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Beauchamp, P. 1987 'Creation et fondation de la loi en Gn 1,1-2, 4', in F. Blanquart (ed.), La creation dans I'orient ancien, 139-82. Paris. Belo, F. 1981 A Materialist Reading of the Gospel of Mark. Maryknoll. ET of Lecture matlrialiste de I'evangile de Marc. Paris, 1974. Bimson, J.J. 1991 'Merenptah's Israel and Recent Theories of Israel's Origins'. JSOT 49: 3-29. Blanquart, F. (ed.) 1987 La creation dans I'orient ancien. Paris. Blok. A. 1981 'Rams and Billy-Goats: A Key to the Mediterranean Code of Honour'. Man NS 16: 427-40. Blome, F. 1934 Die Opfermaterie in Babylonien und Israel. Rome. Boas, F. 1965 The Mind of Primitive Man. New York (1938). Boessneck, J. and A. von den Driesch 1981 'Erste Ergebnisse unserer Bestimmungsarbeit an den Tierknochenfunden vom Tell HesbSn, Jordanien'. Archdologie und Naturwissenschaften 2: 55-71. 1978 'Preliminary Analysis of the Animal Bones from Tell HesbSn'. AUSS 16: 259-87. Booth, R.P. 1986 Jesus and the Laws of Purity: Tradition History and Legal History in Mark 7. Sheffield. Botterweck, G.J. and H. Ringgren (eds.) 1974Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids. [Theologisches Worterbuch zum Alien Testament. Stuttgart, 1973-] Bouffartigue, I. and I. Patillon (eds.) 1977 Porphyre: De I'abstinence. t.l, Paris. Brentjes, B. 1962 'Das Schwein als Haustier des alten Orients'. Ethnographischarchaologische Zeitschrift3: 125-38. Brown, F., S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs 1907 Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford. Brown, S. 1991 Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice. Sheffield.

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Rothenberg, B. 1972 Timna. London. Rowton, M.B. 1967 'The Woodlands of Western Asia'. JNES 26: 261-77. 1974 'Enclosed Nomadism'. JESHO 17/1: 1-30. Runciman, W.G. 1983 A Treatise on Social Theory. I. The Methodology of Social Theory. Cambridge. Saggs, H.W.F. 1988 The Greatness that was Babylon. London. Sahlins, M. 1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago and London. Salonen, A.I. 1970 Die Fischerei im alien Mesopotamien. Helsinki. 1973 Vogel und Vogelfang im alien Mesopotamien. Helsinki. 1974 Beitrage zur Geschichte des Schweins im Zweistromlande. Studia Orientalia 43/9. Helsinki. Sanders, E.P. 1977 Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion. London. 198S Jesus and Judaism. London. 1990 Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. London. Schmid. H.H. 1974 'SchOpfung, Gerechtigkeit und Heir, in Altorientalische Welt in der alttestamentliche Theologie. Zflrich. Partially translated in B.W. Anderson (ed.), Creation in the Old Testament, 102ff. London and Philadelphia, 1984. Schroer, S. 1987 In Israel gab es Bilder. Freiburg-Schweiz and GOttingen. Segal, J.B. 1953 'Pagan Syrian Monuments in the Vilayet of Urfa', Anatolian Studies 3: 97-119. Simoons, F.J. 1961 Eat not This Flesh: Food Avoidances in the Old World. Madison. Skinner, J. 1896 The Book of the Prophet Isaiah: Chapters I-XXX1X. Cambridge. Smith, G.A. 1918 Deuteronomy. CB. Cambridge. Smith, M. 1987 Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament. 2nd corrected edn. London.

300 Smith, M.S. 1990 Smith, W.R. 1894 Soler, J. 1979 Speiter, D. 1975

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INDEXES INDEX OF REFERENCES OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 1

1.6-9 1.20-21 1.20 1.24 1.24-25 1.25-26 1.26 1.28 1.29 1.29-30 1.30 6.7 6.12 6.17 6.20 6.21 7.2 7.2-3 7.3 7.14 7.21 7.23 8.17 8.19 8.20 9.2 9.3 9.4-6

9.7 9.10 9.11 9.16 9.17 17.12 24.4 24.10-61 24.15 29.9 34.5 34.13 34.27 43.32

184, 255, 256 104 255 255 255 255 184 99 210 99 210 42 42 42 59

Exodus 1.7 2.16ff. 6 7.8 8.13-14 8.26 9.8 9.9 9.22 9.25 12.1 12.12 12.43 13.2 13.13 19.14-15 19.15

104 210 25 32 34 59 32 34 34 34 32 34 32 184 184 248 247

9.5 49, 63, 64, 254, 255, 257 33 105 104 33 33 104 108, 254 108, 254 184, 254 77, 114, 145 184, 254, 255 33 185, 255 255 33 145, 147 182 145 145 33 33 33 34 34 145, 146, 235 255 77, 254, 256 257

20.10 21.2 21.2-11 21.13-14 21.29-32 22.28-29 22.29 22.30 23.17 29.45 34.19 Leviticus 1-7 1 1.3 4 4.3 4.14 4.28 4.32 5.2 5.6 5.7 7.18 7.23-25 10.10-11 10.10 11-15 11 11.1-23 ll.l-2a 11.1

184, 186 226, 227 227 226 184 184 184 53,60, 189, 242 227 245 184

149, 233 208 148, 184 37, 208 208 208 208 208 28, 33 28 151 18 188 221 28 13, 28, 53 13, 15, 19, 20,26 114 32, 230 84

Index of References 11.2-23 11.2-8 11.25-23

11.2b-14 11.3-8 11.3 11.4-8

11.4-7 11.4-6 11.4 11.5-6 11.5 11.6 11.8 11. 8a 11.85 11.9ff. 11.9-12 11.9 11.10-23 11.10

11.11 11. lib 11.12 11.13-23 11.13-19 11.13 11.15 11.16 11.16a 11.17 11.18 11.19 11.20ff. 11.20-21 11.20 11.21-23 11.21-22

27 50 26, 34, 56, 60, 63, 230, 240, 241 65 35 36, 40, 1 15, 156 36, 39, 41, 43, 48, 96, 102, 104, 106, 232, 234, 244 43.50 28, 36, 50 36 38 35 195 41,43,50, 244 39 53 199 40 33 54 41,43, 104, 105 40-43, 244 53 43 33,43 29, 193 195 195 195 65 195 195 195 43, 104, 108 105, 108 48, 50, 65 34 48

11.21 11.22 11.23 11.24ff. 11.24-40 11.24-38 11.24-31 11.24-28 11.24 11.26-27 11.26

11.27 11.29-31 11.29ff. 11.29-30 11.29

11.30 11.31-38 11.31 11.32-38 11.36 11.39-40 11.39 11.40 11.40a 11.40b 11.41ff. 11.41-45 11.41-44 11.41-44a 11.41-42

11.41 11.42 11.42a 11.43ff. 11.43-45 11.43 11.44ff.

33, 49, 66, 105 29,48 48, 105 52 27, 230, 244, 268 27 50 52, 53, 246 33, 50, 84 36,40 33, 36, 50. 118 50, 97, 104 29, 97 104, 107, 109 48, 54, 104 33, 35, 50, 254 35 27 246 246 49,56 27, 52, 60, 246 52 18,52,56 53 52 104, 105. 244, 248 27,54, 115, 230 268 33 51,54,65, 251 34 35 54 54 27,55 27 238

305 11.44-45 11.46-47 11.46 12-15 12.3 12.4 13.46 14.40 14.45 15 15.18 15.24 15.31 16 17-26 17 17.3-4 17.4 17.7

17.8 17.10-14 17.10-11 17.10 17.11 17.13 17.15-16 17.15 17.16 18 18.19 18.22 18.24ff. 18.24 18.25ff. 18.26 19 19.2 19.5-8 19.7 19.11-18 20

28, 52, 76, 245, 248 56, 230 33, 34 52, 268 184 245 246 246 246 42 247 53 33, 53, 245 208 248 52,53, 187, 229 80, 187, 229 187 196, 224, 229 261 52 187 261 188 149 222 18,56,6062 63 42, 59, 222, 252 53 189 221 271 268 261 252 222, 248, 252 70 18 228 13, 14, 76, 250

Purity and Monotheism

306

20.24 20.25-26 20.26 21 21.1-4 21.7-9 21.8 21.11 21.13-15 21.14 21.15 21.16-23 21.18-20 21-22 22.1-9 22.4 22.8 22.9 22.15 22.17-25 22.22-25 22.22-24 22.27 22.32 25.25 26.22 27.26 27.30-33 17.15-16 21.23

252 222, 248 252 59, 189 53 24, 75, 76, 98, 146, 147, 242, 248, 250, 261 13 13, 237, 238 222, 248 252 244 42 222, 252 244 42 99, 247 222 184, 237 184 247 247 244 222 222 222 184 237 184 184 222 226 184 220 220 222 222

Numbers 8.16ff. 19 19.13 19.20 27.1-11 31.19

184 52, 268 245 245 222 220

20.1-7 20.7 20.10-21 20.13 20.18 20.24-26

31.20-23 31.24 35 35.33-34 36 36.7b-10a Deuteronomy 2.25 4.17-18 5.8 5.12 5.14 6-11 7 7.1-5 7.6 7.17-26 7.25 7.26 11.25 12 12.7 12.15-16 12.15 12.16 12.20ff. 12.20-25 12.20 12.22 12.23-25 12.24 12.26 12.31 13.6-11 13.15 14.2 14.3-21 14.3-21a 14.3

14.4-20 14.4-8

220 220 226 221 99, 222 99 256 34,35 34 225 184 226 242 220 225 220 59 59 256 59, 187, 229 227 157, 229, 241 61, 149, 187, 229 187, 230 187 157, 229 229 149, 229 187 230 225 58 226 59 56, 225 56 241 56, 59, 107, 219, 240, 243 56, 57, 60, 63, 218, 241, 243 35

14.5 14.7-8 14.7 14.8 14.10 14.11 14.12-18 14.13 14.19 14.20 14.21

14.21a 14.21b 14.22-27 15 15.2 15.3 15.7 15.12ff. 15.12 15.19 16.11 16.14 17.1 17.4 17.20 18.9 18.12 19 20.1 20.4 20.5-15 20.13-15 20.14-18 20.16-18 20.18 20.19-20 21.15-17 22.9 22.10-14 23.10-15 23.15 23.19 24.4 24.8 24.14 25.16

36, 196 60, 102-104 64 60 43 60,63 193 195 62, 235 60,62 53, 56, 57, 225, 243 27, 60, 219 63, 258 220 226 226 226 226 227 226, 227 220, 225 227 227 184 59 226 59 59 226 220 220 220 220 98 220 59 220 222 225 242 18, 220, 225 18, 225 189 42,63 56, 220 226 59

Index of References 26.13 26.15 26.19 28.4 28.9 28.9-10 28.18 28.49 28.50-57 29.16 32.51 33.2

225 225 225 184 225 226 184 193 184 41 225 225

Judges 2.13 6.5 10.6 13.7

240 186 240 146

1 Samuel 7.3-4 12.10 14.32-34 17.34-35 17.43 20.26 21.5 21.6 24.15 31.10

240 240 187 185 189 52 52 247 189 240

2 Samuel 1.23 3.8 9.8 11.4 16.9 17.8 17.10 1 Kings 3 5.3

11.5 11.33 14.11 15.13 16.4

193 189 189

52, 209 189 193 193

166 188 240 240

189, 193 214, 240 189

18.19 21.19 21.23 21.24 22.38 2 Kings 5 6.25 7.3ff. 8.13 9.10 9.36 10.15-16 18.27 21.18 23 23.4 23.6 23.7 23.13 Isaiah 1.29 2.2-4 2.20 5.29 11.1-9 13.21-22 13.21 13.22 14.23 23.13 31.4 32.14 34.11-15 34.11 34.13 34.14 34.15 34.16 35.7 40.11 40.31 45.18-19 53.7 56.9-57.13 56.10-11

240

189, 191 189 189

189, 191

52

140, 186 52 189 190 190 173 167 166 223 240 214 240 240

166 278 195 193 255 194-96

307 56.10 57.5-8 57.6 59.5-6 65-66 65.3-5

65.3 65.4

158 166 167 166 73

165, 166, 251 166

166, 167, 251

66.3 66.17

73, 183 165-68 165-68, 237, 251

66.18

278

Jeremiah 7.18 9.10 10.22 35.6-10 44.15 49.33 50.39 51.37

214 196 196 173 214 196 194-96 196

66

Ezekiel 4 4.12-15 4.12 195, 196 195, 196 8.7-13 13.4 196 196 14.15 14.21 185 195 18 194 22.26 45, 195, 196 34 195, 196 34.5 195, 196 34.8 195, 196 38.20 197 196 Hosea 185, 193 2.5 193 7.11 167 9.3 11.11 185 167 13.8 189

18,71 220 18 73 196 193 193 42 221 18 185 185 34

112 188 146 188 193

308 Amos 3.8 Micah 1.8

Purity and Monotheism 74.19 95.7 102.7

193

194-96

Zechariah 2.14 14.16ff.

45, 194-96 278

Psalms 7.3 10.9 17.12 23 49.13 59.7 59.15 63.11 69.32 72.9 74.14

193 193 193 185 34 189 189 194 36 196 196

188 185

194, 195

Job 10.16 21.33 28.4 30.1 30.29 38.39-39.30 40.30 Proverbs 8.7 11.22 17.12 24.9 26.11 29.27

Song of Solomon 210 1.8 2.14 188 188 5.2

193 167 167

Ecclesiastes 9.4

158, 189 194-96

Lamentations 5.18 196

185 116

59 191 193 59 189 59

189

Esther 3.8 14.17

14 14

Daniel 1.8 1.12

14 262

Nehemiah 13.16

116

APOCRYPHA

Judith 12.1-2 12.19

14 14

Tobit 4.12

99

2 Maccabees 14 6.18-31 6.24 14 7.1-42 14

NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY CHRISTIAN

Matthew 7.6 10.27 15.26 19.28 23.24 Mark 1.44 3.34-35 5.11 7.15ff. 7.18-23 7.19 7.25-30 7.27

189, 190 270 189 277 51

268 270 89

226, 275 275 262 262 189

Luke 14.26 15.16 John 19.41 Acts 10.9-16 10.15 10.28 11.9 15 15.20 15.29 28.25-28

270 89

Romans 1.24-27 14 14.2 14.14

166

14 262 14 262 269 261 261 261

270

15, 262, 263 262

262, 267, 269, 275

14.20

262

/ Corinthians 1.26 3.16 5.1 6.12-20 6.12-14 6.12 6.19

273 273 271 271 270 273 271

309

Index of References 7.1

273

8-10

262, 269

8.4

269 263 269 273 273 273 273 273

10.18 10.19ff. 10.23 11.29-30 14.26 14.27-28 15.12

2 Corinthians 271 12.20-21 Galatians 1-2 2.9 2.1 Iff. 2.15ff. 3.24 4.4 5.19-21

278 278 276 264 279 279 271

6.16

263

Ephesians 2.1 Iff. 2.15 2.20 5.3

263 264 264 271

Philippians 2.8 3.2 3.3 3.4ff.

272 189 263 264

Colossians 3.5 271 1 Thessalonians 4.3-8 271 4.5 271 / Peter 1.1

2 Peter 2.22

189, 191

Revelation 2.20 7.7 22.15

269 263 189

Athanasius Contra Gentes 23 214 Deipnosophistae 3.95f.-96a 162 Didache 8.1

122

Eusebius Prep. Ev. 8.14.64

160

263

CLASSICAL AND HELLENISTIC WRITERS

Artemidorus Oneirocritica 160 1.8 Diodorus Siculus 160 2.4.3 164 20.14.4-7 Herodian 1.6.22 Herodotus 2.47 2.77 Hygenus Fabulae 197

157

Justinus 19.1.10

159

Lucian De Dea Syria 45 160 54 160 Johannes Lydus De Mensibus 4.65 162

214

Pliny the Elder Hist. Nat. 29.14 159

160

Plutarch De Iside et Osiride 8 156

156, 157

Porphyry De Abst. 1.14 2.11 2.25 4.7 4.15

157, 159 153 186 156 160

Sextus Empiricus Hypotyposes 3.223 160 3.225 159 Xenophon Anabasis 1.4.9

160

310

Purity and Monotheism OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES

Mishnah Hul. 3.6 3.7 8.6 Tosefta Hul. 3 (4).20-21 3 (4).25

71a 128b 46 40,49 188

36 49

Babylonian Talmud Seb. 3a 7a

Hul. 59a 61-65a 62a 65a

36,38 46 46, 195 46

252 51

Pseudo-Aristeas Ep. Arist. 146 46 al-Nadim Fihrist 9.5.9 9.7

163 163

Semitic Inscriptions CIS 1.165 150 KAI 69 222.A33

150 194-96

Balaam 1.10-11 1.10 1.11 Ugaritic Texts CTA 4.2.29ff.

195 195 195

160

KTU 1.40.26 1.40.34 1.40.43 1.106.30 1.119.10 1.119.16

151 151 151 151 160 151

UT 62 67.V.9 1024.rev. 4 1091.6

152 152 152 152

INDEX OF AUTHORS Achtemeier, E. 165, 166 Adjeman, Y. 140, 179, 180 Aharoni, Y. AhlstrOm, G.W. 137 Albertz, R. 215 Albright, W.F. 69,72 Almagro-Gordea, M.J. 164 Alter, R. 113,210 Archer, L.J. 209 Arhem, K. 204 Avigad, N. 167 Baker, J.A. 255 Barnett, R.D. 141 Bate, D.M.A. 179 Beauchamp, P. 254, 256 Belo, F. 100, 219, 220, 262, 265-67, 276 Bimson, J.J. Blok, A. 208 Blome, F.I56 Boas, F. 17 Boessneck, J. 128, 143, 180 Booth, R.P. 275 Brentjes, B. 163 Brown, S. 164 Budd, P.J. 100 Buitenhuis, H. 132, 178, 180 Buhner, R. 102, 107, 108 Burton, E.W. de 263 Callaway, J.A. 172 Galley, M.J.C. 273 Campbell, J.K. 206, 207, 209 Caquot, A. 195 Carroll, M.P. 33, 34, 101, 104, 107, 108, 113, 114

Cassuto, U. 146 Cauvin, J. 130 Chan, K.-K. 68, 71, 72, 78 Chaplin, R.E. 125, 127, 148 Chwolsohn, D. 154, 163 Clark, W.M. 33, 34 Clason, A.T. 180 Clines, D.J.A. 247 Clutton-Brock, J. 130, 140, 158, 179 Compagnoni, B. 141 Coon, C.S. 86, 170 Coote, R.B. 172, 174, 212 Countryman, L.W. 100, 266-68, 27072 Dahood, M.J. 167 Danby, H. Darby, W.J. 90, 192 Davis, S.J. 35, 130, 180 Day, J. 163, 240, 254 Delitzsch, F. 198 Dever, W.G. 137 Diener, P. 88, 90, 91, 170, 171 Dillmann, A. 38, 44, 45, 49, 51, 146 Dodge, B. 154 DOller, J. 142, 159 Donaldson, M. 99 Donner, H. 153, 195, 196 Dothan, M. 158, 179 Douglas, M. 16, 20, 22, 27, 35, 39, 40, 42,50,51,65,68,72,78,83-85, 93-102, 106-14, 116, 117, 12023, 181, 184, 190,203,209,211, 216, 217, 228, 237, 238, 242-44, 246, 247, 265-67, 273, 274, 278, 281, 282 Driesch, A. von den 128, 143

312

Purity and Monotheism

Driver, G.R. 44, 45, 48 Driver, S.R. 61, 187, 197, 225 Drori, I. 179 Ducos, P. 130, 179, 180 Dunn, J.D.G. 260, 262, 264, 275, 276 Durkheim, E. 21, 96 Dussaud, R. 153 Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 16, 19, 63, 64, 83, 184-86, 224, 264, 272 Eissfeldt, O. 164 Elliger, K. 26, 27, 33, 43, 48, 49, 62, 64, 219, 253 Emery, W.B. 192 Emmerson, G.I. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 187, 205, 224 Fedele, F. 165 Feig, I. 180 Fevrier, J.G. 153 Finkelstein, I. 85, 134, 135, 137, 139, 140, 147, 172, 174 Firmage, E.B. .20,23,40,41,46-48, 50-53,60,61,63,65,66,6876, 77, 101, 104, 105, 108, 112, 11421, 123, 147-93, 232, 233, 235, 256, 257 Fishbane, M. 28, 37 Frank, K. .156 Frazer, J.G. 204 Frick, F.S. 173 Fritz, V. 137, 143 Garbini, G. 194, 195 Garrard, A.N. 130 Geertz, C. 22, 223 Gibson, J.C.L. 160 Goodman, L.E. 71, 74, 76 Goody, J. 19,282 Gophna, R. 130, 136, 139, 178 Goppelt, L. 259 Gordon, C.H. Gorman, F.H. 121, 218, 246 Gottwald, N.K. 93, 172-75, 211 Granqvist, H. 99 Griffiths, J.G. 192, 193 Grosvenor Ellis, A. 179 Gunkel, H. 146

Haas, N 178 Hackett, J.A. 194, 195 Hakker-Orion, D. 141, 178-80 Hallpike, C.R. 19, 22, 123, 282 Halpern, B. 215, 224 Halverson, J. 17, 183 Hanson, P.D. 165, 166, 251 Haran, M. 47, 98, 115, 121, 218, 221 Harris, M. 17,21,38,70,79,83-93, 107, 108, 111, 139, 181,250 Harrison, D.L. 35 Heider, G.C. 163, 164, 167 Helck, W. 192 Hellwing, S. 135, 136, 140, 144, 17880 Helmer, D. 130 Hempel, C.G. 90 Hesse, B. 125, 127, 133, 170, 171, 175, 180 Hinde, H. 204 Hinde, S.L. 204 Hirsch, S.R. 36,51,75 Hoftijzer, J. 194-96 Holladay, J.S. 215, 216, 223, 240 Hope, E.R. 35, 61 Hopkins, D.C. 175 Homung, E. 35, 200 Horst, F. 57 Horwitz, L.K. 35, 128, 136, 142-44, 146-49, 159, 170, 171, 178, 179 Houston, W.J. 189, 220, 254 HUbner, U. 126, 137, 143, 149, 152, 157, 163, 165, 176, 179, 180, 235 Hulst, A.R. 255 Hunn, E. 35, 38, 39, 43, 61 Hyginus 160 Irwin, W.H. 167 Jenson, P. 218, 221 Jeremias, J. 278 Kaiser, O. 198 Kaufmann, Y. 187, 219, 224, 229 Keel, O. 63,258 Keesing, R.M. 90-93 Kempinski, A. 137

Index of Authors Kennedy, C.A. 164, 167, 168 Kesby, J.D. 35, 200 Knauf, E.A. 63, 187, 258 KnoW, I. 248 Knudtzon, J.A. 189 KOhler, I. 141 Kooij, G. van der 194 Kornfeld, W. 68,72,73 LaBianca, 0.S. 128, 180 Lang, B. 112,224 Leach, E.R. 17, 22, 49. I l l , 183, 187, 201, 202, 250 Lemaire, A. 195 Lemche, N.P. 99, 112, 121, 172, 175, 211 Lernau, H. 178,179 Levine, B. 36, 38, 68, 150, 182, 184, 187, 199, 235, 252 Lewis, T.J. 166, 167 Lexikon fiir Agyptologie Lindars, B. 262, 275, 276 Lipschitz, N. 130 Lohfink, N. 254-57 Lohmeyer, E. 264 London, G. 172 Macalister, R.A.S. 161 Macht, D.I. 70 Maimonides, M. 69, 71, 74, 75 Malina, B.J. 100, 261, 275 Mauss, M. 96 Mayes, A.D.H. 23, 24, 57, 59, 62 Mazar, A. 169 McCarter, P.K. 194, 195, 240 McConville, J.G. 187 McNicoll, S. 179 Meadow, R.H. Meeks, W.A. 262, 265, 269, 271, 273, 274 Merendino, R.P. 57, 60, 64 Metzger, M. 180 Milgrom, J. 27, 32, 36, 38-41, 43, 4850, 52, 53, 55, 61, 62, 63, 65, 76, 77,94, 101, 104, 117, 161, 184, 218, 234, 237, 245, 248, 249, 251, 257, 258 Moran, W.L. 62

313

Movers, F.C. 159 Myhrman, D.W. 156 Nahmanides 69 Neusner, J. 260, 266, 267 Newberry, P.E. 193 Newton, M. 267 Nicholson, E.W 121, 219, 228 Niebuhr, H.R. .281 Nobis, G. 135, 144 Oden, R.A. 72, 99, 160, 214, 240, 271 Oesterley, W.O.E. 72 Olyan, S.M. 240 Paley, S.M. 168 Parker, R. 262 Parkes, P. 206, 209, 212 Paschcn, W. 41,42 Patai, R. 170, 171 Patillon, I. 159 Perlitt, L. 226, 228 Planhol, X. de 88, 160 Porath, Y. 158, 168 Porter, J.R. 38, 50, 100, 223 Rabinowicz, H. 46 Rad, G. von 228 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R 201 Ramban. See Nahmanides Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac) 36, 40, 106 Rendtorff, R. 63 Robkin, E.E. 88, 90, 91, 170, 171 Rogerson, J.W. 78, 93, 111, 121, 13739, 254 Rohr Sauer, A. von 161, 163 ROllig, W. 153, 195, 196 Roscoe, J. 204 Rosen, B. 128, 134 Rothenberg, B. 180 Rowton, M.B. 129, 139 Runciman, W.G. 23, 24 Sadeh, M. 135 Saggs, H.W.F. 155,213 Sanlins, M. 17, 23, 79, 93, 112, 114, 203 Salonen, A.I. 41, 156, 198

314

Purity and Monotheism

Sanders, E.P. 15,51,259,260,262, 264, 275, 276, 278, 279 Schmid, H.H. 266 Schroer, S. 73, 214, 241 Segal, J.B. 154 Simoons, F.J. 68-70, 79, 81-83, 88, 111, 140, 159, 160, 172, 173 Skinner, J. 146, 198 Smith, G.A. 227 Smith, M.S. 121, 164, 167 Smith, Morton 224 Smith, W. Robertson 22, 68, 78, 80, 81, 158, 163, 240 Soler, J. 113 Sperber, D. 103 Sprague, G.F. 89 Stager, L.E. 159, 164, 165, 189 Steck, O.H. 165 Stendebach, F.J. 73, 161 Stolz, F. 215 Streck, M. 190 Tambiah, S.J. Tarragon, J.M. de 150, 151 Tchemov, E. 35, 128, 143, 159, 179, 180 Theissen, G. 262 Thompson, T.L. 173 Toplyn, M. 178 Torczyner, H. 189 Tosi, M. 141 Tufhell, O. 135, 179 Turner, V.W. 22, 217, 239, 240, 277, 278 Twersky, I. 75 Uerpmann, H.-P. 125, 128

Ussishkin, D. 143, 167 Van Seters, J. 209 Vaux, R. de 72, 128, 150, 157, 161-63, 253 Velde, H. te 192 Vermeylen, J. 165 Volz, P. 165 Wapnish, P. 87, 125, 133, 141, 179, 180 Warmington, B.H. 164 Weiler, D. 180 Weinfeld, M. 52, 60, 187, 190, 191, 218-22, 225-28 Wellhausen, J. 229 Wenham, G.J. 50, 51, 72, 100, 184, 185, 262, 276 Westermann, C. 145, 146, 254, 255 Whitelam, K.W. 172, 174, 212 Whybray, R.N. 166 Wildberger, H. 195, 196, 198 Winter, U. 214, 240 Wiseman, D.J. 190 Wolff, H.W. 147 Woolley, C.L. 161 Wright, D.P. 27, 53, 77 Wuthnow, R. 95 Xclla, P. 150-52, 160, 167 Yerkes, R.K. 47 Young, G. 89 Zenger, E. 253-56 Zertal, A. 147 Ziegler, R. 180 Zimmerli, W. 73, 256

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Supplement Series 50

THE CHRONICLER'S HISTORY Martin Noth Translated by H.G.M. Williamson with an Introduction

51

DIVINE INITIATIVE AND HUMAN RESPONSE IN EZEKEEL

52

THE CONFLICT OF FAITH AND EXPERIENCE IN THE PSALMS : A FORM-CRITICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDY

Paul Joyce

Craig C. Broyles

53

THE MAKING OF THE PENTATEUCH: A METHODOLOGICAL STUDY R.N. Whybray

54

FROM REPENTANCE TO REDEMPTION: JEREMIAH'S THOUGHT IN TRANSITION Jeremiah Unterman

55

THE ORIGIN TRADITION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL: l . THE LITERARY FORMATION OF GENESIS AND EXODUS 1-23

56

THE PURIFICATION OFFERING IN THE PRIESTLY LITERATURE: ITS MEANING AND FUNCTION

T.L. Thompson

57

N. Kiuchi MOSES:

HEROIC MAN, MAN OF GOD George W. Coats

58

THE LISTENING HEART: ESSAYS IN WISDOM AND THE PSALMS IN HONOR OF ROLAND E. MURPHY, O. CARM. Edited by Kenneth G. Hoglund, Elizabeth F. Huwiler, Jonathan T. Glass and Roger W. Lee

59

CREATIVE BIBLICAL EXEGESIS: CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH HERMENEUTICS THROUGH THE CENTURIES Edited by Benjamin Uffenheimer & Henning Graf Reventlow

60

HER PRICE is BEYOND RUBIES: THE JEWISH WOMAN IN GRAECO-ROMAN PALESTINE L6onie J. Archer

61

FROM CHAOS TO RESTORATION: AN DSTTEGRATIVE READING OF ISAIAH 24-27

62

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND FOLKLORE STUDY

Dan G. Johnson Patricia G. Kirkpatrick

63

SHILOH: A BIBLICAL CITY IN TRADITION AND HISTORY

64

To SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE: ISAIAH 6.9-10 IN EARLY JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION

Donald G. Schley

Craig A. Evans 65

THERE IS HOPE FOR A TREE: THE TREE AS METAPHOR IN ISAIAH

66

SECRETS OF THE TIMES : MYTH AND HISTORY IN BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY

Kirsten Nielsen

Jeremy Hughes 67

ASCRIBE TO THE LORD:

BIBLICAL AND OTHER STUDIES IN MEMORY OF PETER C. CRAIGIE Edited by Lyle Eslinger & Glen Taylor 68

THE TRIUMPH OF IRONY IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES Lillian R. Klein

69

ZEPHANIAH, A PROPHETIC DRAMA

70

NARRATIVE ART IN THE BIBLE

71

QOHELET AND HIS CONTRADICTIONS

72

CIRCLE OF SOVEREIGNTY: A STORY OF STORIES IN DANIEL 1-6

Paul R. House Shimon Bar-Efrat Michael V. Fox

Danna Nolan Fewell 73

DAVID'S SOCIAL DRAMA: A HOLOGRAM OF THE EARLY IRON AGE

74

THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF BIBLICAL AND CANAANITE POETRY

James W. Flanagan Edited by Willem van der Meer & Johannes C. de Moor 75

76

DAVID IN LOVE AND WAR: THE PURSUIT OF POWER IN 2 SAMUEL 10-12 Randall C. Bailey GOD IS KING:

UNDERSTANDING AN ISRAELITE METAPHOR Marc Zvi Brettler 77

EDOM AND THE EDOMITES John R. Bartlett

78

79

SWALLOWING THE SCROLL: TEXTUALITY AND THE DYNAMICS OF DISCOURSE IN EZEKIEL'S PROPHECY Ellen F. Davies GIBEAH:

THE SEARCH FOR A BIBLICAL CITY Patrick M. Arnold, S.J.

80

THE NATHAN NARRATIVES Gwilym H. Jones

81

ANTI-COVENANT:

COUNTER-READING WOMEN'S LIVES IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Edited by Mieke Bal

82

RHETORIC AND BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION Dale Patrick & Allen Scult

83

THE EARTH AND THE WATERS IN GENESIS 1 AND 2: A LINGUISTIC INVESTIGATION

84

INTO THE HANDS OF THE LIVING GOD

David Toshio Tsumura Lyle Eslinger

85

FROM CARMEL TO HOREB: ELIJAH IN CRISIS

86

THE SYNTAX OF THE VERB IN CLASSICAL HEBREW PROSE

Alan J. Hauser & Russell Gregory Alviero Niccacci Translated by W.G.E. Watson

87

THE BIBLE IN THREE DIMENSIONS : ESSAYS IN CELEBRATION OF FORTY YEARS OF BIBLICAL STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

88

THE PERSUASIVE APPEAL OF THE CHRONICLER: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

Edited by David J.A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl & Stanley E. Porter

Rodney K. Duke

89

THE PROBLEM OF THE PROCESS OF TRANSMISSION IN THE PENTATEUCH RolfRendtorff Translated by John J. Scullion

90

BIBLICAL HEBREW IN TRANSITION: THE LANGUAGE OF THE BOOK OF EZEKEL Mark F. Rooker

91

THE IDEOLOGY OF RITUAL: SPACE, TIME AND STATUS IN THE PRIESTLY THEOLOGY Frank H. Gorman, Jr

92

ON HUMOUR AND THE COMIC IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Edited by Yehuda T. Radday & Athalya Brenner

93

JOSHUA 24 AS POETIC NARRATIVE

William T. Koopmans

94

95

WHAT DOES EVE DO TO HELP? AND OTHER READERLY QUESTIONS TO THE OLD TESTAMENT David J.A. Clines GOD SAVES:

LESSONS FROM THE ELISHA STORIES Rick Dale Moore

96

ANNOUNCEMENTS OF PLOT IN GENESIS

Laurence A. Turner

97

THE UNITY OF THE TWELVE

Paul R. House

98

ANCIENT CONQUEST ACCOUNTS: A STUDY IN ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN AND BIBLICAL HISTORY WRITING

99

WEALTH AND POVERTY IN THE BOOK OF PROVERBS

K. Lawson Younger, Jr R.N. Whybray

100

A TRIBUTE TO GEZA VERMES: ESSAYS ON JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN

LITERATURE AND HISTORY Edited by Philip R. Davies & Richard T. White

101

THE CHRONICLER IN HIS AGE

102

THE PRAYERS OF DAVID (PSALMS 51-72): STUDIES IN THE PSALTER, II

Peter R. Ackroyd

Michael Goulder

103

104

THE SOCIOLOGY OF POTTERY IN ANCIENT PALESTINE: THE CERAMIC INDUSTRY AND THE DIFFUSION OF CERAMIC STYLE IN THE BRONZE AND IRON AGES Bryant G. Wood PSALM STRUCTURES:

A STUDY OF PSALMS WITH REFRAINS Paul R. Raabe

105

ESTABLISHING JUSTICE

Pietro Bovati

106

GRADED HOLINESS: A KEY TO THE PRIESTLY CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD

107

THE ALIEN IN THE PENTATEUCH

Philip Jenson Christiana van Houten

108

THE FORGING OF ISRAEL:

IRON TECHNOLOGY, SYMBOLISM AND TRADITION IN ANCIENT SOCIETY Paula M. McNutt

109

SCRIBES AND SCHOOLS IN MONARCHIC JUDAH: A Socio- ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACH David Jamieson-Drake

110

THE CANAANTTES AND THEIR LAND: THE TRADITION OF THE CANAANITES

Niels Peter Lemche

111

YAHWEH AND THE SUN:

THE BIBLICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE J. Glen Taylor

112

WISDOM IN REVOLT: METAPHORICAL THEOLOGY IN THE BOOK OF JOB Leo G. Perdue

113

PROPERTY AND THE FAMILY IN BIBLICAL LAW Raymond Westbrook

114

A TRADITIONAL QUEST: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF Louis JACOBS Edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok

115

I HAVE BUILT You AN EXALTED HOUSE: TEMPLE BUILDING IN THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF MESOPOTAMIAN AND NORTH- WEST SEMITIC WRITINGS

116

NARRATIVE AND NOVELLA IN SAMUEL: STUDIES BY HUGO GRESSMANN AND OTHER SCHOLARS 1906-1923

Victor Hurowitz

Translated by David E. Orton Edited by David M. Gunn

117

SECOND TEMPLE STUDIES: 1. PERSIAN PERIOD Edited by Philip R. Davies

118

SEEING AND HEARING GOD WITH THE PSALMS: THE PROPHETIC LITURGY FROM THE SECOND TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM Raymond Jacques Tournay Translated by J. Edward Crowley

119

TELLING QUEEN MICHAL'S STORY: AN EXPERIMENT IN COMPARATIVE INTERPRETATION

120

THE REFORMING KINGS: CULT AND SOCIETY IN FIRST TEMPLE JUDAH

Edited by David J.A. Clines & Tamara C. Eskenazi

Richard H. Lowery

121

KING SAUL IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF JUDAH Diana Vikander Edelman

122

IMAGES OF EMPIRE Edited by Loveday Alexander

123

JUDAHITE BURIAL PRACTICES AND BELIEFS ABOUT THE DEAD Elizabeth Bloch-Smith

124

LAW AND IDEOLOGY IN MONARCHIC ISRAEL Edited by Baruch Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson

125

PRIESTHOOD AND CULT IN ANCIENT ISRAEL

126

W.M.L.DE WETTE, FOUNDER OF MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY

Edited by Gary A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan

John W. Rogerson

127

THE FABRIC OF HISTORY: TEXT, ARTIFACT AND ISRAEL'S PAST Edited by Diana Vikander Edelman

128

BIBLICAL SOUND AND SENSE:

POETIC SOUND PATTERNS IN PROVERBS 10-29 Thomas P. McCreesh, OP

129

THE ARAMAIC OF DANIEL IN THE LIGHT OF OLD ARAMAIC Zdravko Stefanovic

130

STRUCTURE AND THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH Michael Buttenvorth

131

FORMS OF DEFORMITY: A MOTIF-INDEX OF ABNORMALITIES, DEFORMITIES AND DISABILITIES IN TRADITIONAL JEWISH LITERATURE Lynn Holden

132

CONTEXTS FOR AMOS: PROPHETIC POETICS IN LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

133

THE FORSAKEN FIRSTBORN:

Mark Daniel Carroll R.

A STUDY OF A RECURRENT MOTIF IN THE PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES R. Syren

135

ISRAEL IN EGYPT: A READING OF EXODUS 1-2 G.F. Davies

136

A WALK THROUGH THE GARDEN: BIBLICAL, ICONOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY IMAGES OF EDEN Edited by P. Morris and D. Sawyer

137

JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS:

BIBLICAL THEMES AND THEIR INFLUENCE Edited by H. Graf Reventlow & Y. Hoffman

138

TEXT AS PRETEXT: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF ROBERT DAVIDSON Edited by R.P. Carroll

139

PSALM AND STORY:

INSET HYMNS IN HEBREW NARRATIVE J.W. Watts

140

PURITY AND MONOTHEISM: CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS IN BIBLICAL LAW Walter Houston