THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
idolatry (Jer. ii. 23), and his land (ii. 7, vii. 30, xxxii. 34). Lamentations: polluted with blood (iv. 14-15).] In Ezekiel are parallels to I. 1: food baked with dung of man is unclean 1. Evi- (jy 12-13); the menstruating woman is mentioned (xxii. 10); the defiled land is compared to her uncleanness
in the Prophetic
Writing-s. (xx^vi. 17); that which dieth of itself;
or is torn in pieces, is unclean (iv. 14)]; Yahweh's house is defiled by bones out of the sepulchers (ix. 7, xliii. 7); priests may defile themselves only in the case of the death of father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or unmarried sister (xliv. 25); [the sanctuary and Jerusalem are defiled by idols (v 11, xiv. 11, xxii. 3, 15, and often); ancient Jerusalem is defiled by blood (xxiv. 9, 11); uncleanness and apostasy together (xxxix. 24); the neighbor's wife is defiled by adultery (xviii. 6, 11, 15, xxii. 11); God pronounces Israel unclean because of sin (xx. 26); but will cleanse Israel (xxxvi. 25, 29, xxxvii. 23); finally the soul becomes polluted by uncleanness (iv. 14)]. Ezekiel laments over the priests who made no difference between the unclean and the clean (xxii. 26), and makes it a special duty of the priests to teach this difference (xliv. 23). Deutero- Isaiah: The uncircumeised and unclean shall come no more into Jerusalem (Isa. lii. 1); " touch no unclean thing " (11); the unclean shall not be in the land in the Messianic time (xxxv. 8). Haggai: A dead body defiles (ii. 13). Since the oldest literary monuments of Israel contain essentially the same laws of uncleanness as are contained in Lev. xi.-xv., Num. xix., there can be no question that Israel's views concerning purifications are, for the most part, very old.
4. Ethnic Analogries: Among the Aryans the impurities described in the Hindu Manu-shastra have an esthetic, not a religious-esthetic, character. Greeks and Romans used lustrations after contact with the dead (Vergil, jEneid, vi. 229), and reckoned hair, wool, and nail-parings as impurities. Spiegel, Justi, and Tiele regard Persian conceptions as differing in starting-point and area from the Hebrews', though Hitzig ascribes to Persian thought a considerable influence upon Old Testament religion. That Babylonians made a distinction between clean and unclean is proved, and on specified days certain kinds of meat were unlawful. Regulations existed also concerning contact with the dead and resulting disability, also concerning sexual relations. The Sabeans and Arameans, according to Chwolson, prohibited as food the flesh of the camel and of animals which had incisors in both jaws, also of swine, dog, and ass, except in the yearly swinesacrifice. They refused also doves, birds of prey, and certain vegetables. Those afHicted with certain diseases were considered unclean. Emission and the menses received attention from them, and contact with a corpse necessitated purification. Prayer was forbidden those in an impure state. Among the northern Mandaeans distinctions were made as to clean and unclean animals, the woman who had givrn birtVi to a child was isolated, contagious diseases were defiling, and the results of nocturnal emissions and the menses were similar to those among the Hebrews. Of the Syrians
Lucian reports {De dea Syria, liv.) that swine were neither eaten nor sacrificed. Fish they eschewed, since Derceto had the form of a fish, and doves, because Semiramis had been transformed into a dove. Uncleanness for a day resulted from the breach of some of these taboos. Phenicians also had distinctions as to kinds of animals fit for food, but in respect to birds their distinctions were not those of the Hebrews. In the mystic sacrifice they offered men, dogs, and swine (Smith, Rel.ofSem., 220- 221). In northwestern Arabian inscriptions directions with respect to sexual relations, contact with a corpse and a menstruating woman are found. Egyptians feared to eat doves, ascribed uncleanness to certain plants, and in general had the distinction between clem and unclean.
The result of this inquiry is, therefore, that, while the Hebrews inherited a stock of notions upon the subject, comparison shows that in their religion they developed these notions along lines of their own choosing.
5. Orig-in of the Old Testament Doctrine of Uncleanness; The idea of the Old Testament is that in the specified objects actual uncleanness inheres, but not that the result is absolute and necessary psychological irreligiousness and immorality. "While symbolical interpretations have from time to time been offered (e.g., Barnabas, Epistle, x.; Philo, De agricultura Now, xxv.-xxxi.; Clement of Alexandria, Pcedagogus, iii. ; Kurtz, Opferkultus, pp. 7-8, Mitau, 1862), such an interpretation is not indicated in the Old Testament and is not consistently applicable. The view has been advanced that the object was to protect the dwelling of God from approach by a man in a 1. TJnsat- condition unbecoming a worshiper, or
isfactory Expla-
that Israel was by the laws concernnations, purity separated and differentiated from other peoples. But these replies simply put the question a stage farther back. The explanation has been given that the regulations arose from fear of contagion, from disgust or natural abhorrence or instinctive revulsion. But these explanations do not cover all the facts, particularly the omissions (for example, of a contagious disease like the plague). Physiological motives are insufficient. Riehm and Schlottmann have brought the subject into relation with sin; but the relationship of sin to uncleanness is a late notion, coming out in Ezekiel. As Giesebrecht remarks {Grundziige der israelitischen Geschichte, p. Ill, Leipsic, 1903), "the conceptions clean and unclean have nothing immediately to do with the ethical." Others have brought in the two factors of final being, birth and death, procreation and corruption, origin and end, with the idea that the ethical opposition to absolute holiness inherent in these relegates them to the sphere of the 2. The sinful and impure (e.g., G. F. Oehler, Principal AUtestamentliche Theologie, §§ 123-124, Tubingen, 1873-74). But this theory is met by the objection that the newborn child was never regarded by the Hebrews as unclean. The principal idea in the Old Testament conception of uncleanness was the relation to death apparent in the given phenomena. The opposition
Idea the Kelationship to Death.