Uncleanness: A Moral or an
         Ontological Category in the Early
                      Centuries A.D.?

 

 

                                    JACOB NEUSNER
                      THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

                                               and

                                   BRUCE D. CHILTON
                                         BARD COLLEGE

 

 

   I. SYSTEMIC ANALYSIS AND CATEGORY-FORMATION

 

Diverse Judaic systems, or Judaisms, interpret each in its own way the

received categories of ancient Israelite religion as portrayed in the Old

Testament.¹ Consequently, interpreting a given system's documen-

tary representation of a category established in the Israelite writings

of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. requires considerable reflection.

Opening the Old Testament and out of its resources declaring the

meaning of an Old Testament category for a Judaism represented in

much later writings is not merely anachronistic. It also distorts the

later writers' systemic reading and adaptation of the received cate-

gory. For what a systemic construction makes of that category—not

only the selection and definition, but the very classification and the

importance accorded to one Old Testament category and not to

another—finds realization in the systemic construction of all other

categories, that is, in the composition, shape, and structure of the sys-

tem itself. These simple and easily demonstrable principles of analysis

that have emerged in the history of ideas, including theological ideas,

over the past century or so do not always exercise the influence that

they should. Consequently, even today we find harmonization where

 

            1. The first five parts of this article were written by Jacob Neusner and revised by
Bruce D. Chilton. The sixth part was written by Bruce D. Chilton and revised by Jacob
Neusner.

64                      Bulletin for Biblical Research 1

there should be differentiation, mere paraphrase where analysis ought

to take place. Opening the Hebrew Scriptures as an encyclopaedia for

first-century Judaism, people misinterpret the complexity of the Juda-

isms of that time by portraying as a single, unitary, harmonious, and

linear development the chaos of Judaic systemic formation, reconsti-

tution, and even dissolution.

            These general remarks on the importance of differentiation and

analysis, the centrality of context and nuance, will not elicit surprise

and ought to be received as truisms. For who, in this day and age,

imagines a single, unitary "Judaism" emerging in a linear unfolding

straight out of the Old Testament, any more than that a single, unitary

"Christianity" is portrayed, as of its point of origin, by the New Testa-

ment? These conceptions, legitimate theological necessities, everyone

understands, impede the description, analysis, and interpretation of

the diverse Judaic and Christian systems that, leaving their detritus of

holy books, holy doctrines, and holy rites, define the tasks of theology.

A half-century or more of learning separates us from the age in which

anyone fabricated a single, "orthodox" Judaism, and we have gone

beyond the then fruitful debates of Walter Bauer and H. E. W. Turner

on the pattern of Christian truth. Yet we still have accounts of the sin-

gle, unitary and internally harmonious "Judaism" described out of all

sources deemed "normative," without regard to time and place of

composition or auspices and circumstances of promulgation, that

formed the background and setting for "Christianity." So the pretense

of one Judaism and one Christianity is maintained, as though that

single, unitary, harmonious Judaism, spun in a linear path out of the

Old Testament, were any longer accessible of description. And, more

to the point, people still open the Old Testament as the handbook for

that "Judaism" that "Christianity," even in the person of Jesus himself,

addressed.

            A single author, and a single point in question, will show the

intellectual tasks that have yet to be accomplished, specifically, those

of learning how to reframe our questions in light of our own knowl-

edge of diversity and complexity. If we concede that there was a

diversity of Judaic, and also Christian, systems, and that that diver-

sity characterized not only (for Christianity) the second and third cen-

turies but (even) the first, and even ab origine,² then we can no longer

address matters under the title "Jesus and Judaism." The Gospels

research of our day surely encourages us to speak, rather, of

"Jesuses," as much as, virtually all scholarship knows, we describe

"Judaisms." Then, of course, which Jesus and which Judaism become

              2. Indeed, the theory of a single, unitary beginning itself constitutes a powerful
polemic and apologetic, as Burton Mack demonstrates.

                 NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness                        65

the centerpiece of inquiry, and category-formation begins at what, at

present, we perceive to be the very commencement of thought.

            By way of illustrating the outcome of recognizing the diversity of

Judaisms, inclusive of the Judaisms presented to us by the Old Testa-

ment, we turn to a simple problem of category-formation. It concerns

the classification or categorization of uncleanness, an important con-

sideration in the Gospels' accounts of Jesus' relationship with persons

and institutions in his time, and also a central category in Judaisms

from the formation of the Old Testament Pentateuch in ca. 450 B.C.

through the framing of the Mishnah in ca. A.D. 200. Specifically, un-

cleanness, here important, there not interesting at all, serves diverse

systems in diverse ways, and any conception that there was a single

reading of the matter is untenable. Not only so, but in one Judaism,

the Essene Judaism of Qumran, uncleanness served as a metaphor for

sin, while in another Judaism, the Judaic system first set forth in the

Mishnah (ca. A.D. 200, on the foundations of materials originating over

the prior two hundred years, some of them from Pharisees),³ the con-

ception of uncleanness functioned in an entirely different framework,

so that associating uncleanness with sin bore no meaning and made

no sense at all. Uncleanness addressed an issue quite distinct from a

moral one, which can be proven very simply. To identify the category

of a conception, address to an authorship the challenge: state the

opposite. The antonym tells us the category that guides thought. In

the Essene Judaism of Qumran, uncleanness served as a metaphor of

evil, and the opposite of unclean was virtuous, e.g., one who dis-

obeyed the rule was punished by being declared unclean for a given

spell. In the Judaic system of the Mishnah, by contrast, the antonym of

uncleanness is holiness (just as is the case, in general, in the book of

Leviticus, as we shall see presently). And virtue and holiness consti-

tute distinct classifications, the one having to do with morality, the

other with ontology. Indeed, as we shall now try to show, phenome-

nologically and also historically, in one important Judaism, with roots

in the first century, uncleanness formed an ontological category, not a

moral one at all. To explain how uncleanness is an ontological, not a

moral, category, is very simple and may be presented with heavy

emphasis:

            To be able to become unclean formed a measure of the capacity to become

holy, so that, the more susceptible to uncleanness, and the more differentiated

the uncleanness to which susceptibility pertained, the more capable of

becoming holy, and the more differentiated the layers and levels of holiness

that entered consideration.

 

            3. See Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (2d printing, augmented;
Atlanta: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies, 1988).

 

66                 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1

            That statement clearly bears no implications whatever for whether

or not an unclean person was a sinner, or a clean person not a sinner.

For in the classification of uncleanness at hand, the opposite of unclean

is holy, precisely as, throughout the priestly code (e.g., the book of

Leviticus) the antonym of unclean is holy, far more than it is merely

clean (tamé/ qaddosh, appears far more regularly than tamé/tahor). As

we shall presently see, in the Mishnah, the more susceptible to

uncleanness a person or an object (e.g., food) is, the more layers or lev-

els of sanctification that person or edible may attain. We think that to

be "holier than thou" means to be more virtuous than the other. But in

the context of the Mishnah's laws, we shall demonstrate at some

length, to be "holier than thou," one has also to be more capable of

becoming more unclean than thou, e.g., to be more susceptible to

uncleanness in more ways or at greater degrees of sensitivity to

uncleanness, than whatever "thou" is at hand.

            Throughout the Mishnah and much of its successor literature,

" Israel ," that is, the social entity of a Judaic system, is consistently

represented as more susceptible to varieties and differentiated types

of uncleanness than gentiles, and that forms, in a systemic context, an

ontological judgment as to the ultimate being of that " Israel ," and not

a moral judgment as to the conduct and ethical character of Israelites

or of " Israel " in general. That is why, as we shall see, representing

uncleanness as sin and a sign of wickedness represents a systemic

reading of uncleanness, not a broadly held conception generated by

"the Old Testament," and, if must follow, representing uncleanness as

part of a hierarchical classification of social entities likewise consti-

tutes a systemic reading of the matter. In both cases we deal with how

systems form their categories, and the way they do so is by making a

systemic statement upon, and through discourse concerning, each of

the systemic categories. What a system says anywhere, it says every-

where.

            In the case at hand, whether or not uncleanness formed a moral or

an ontological category or classification, it must follow, the represen-

tation of uncleanness as a mark of sin or wickedness which requires

eschatological purification through baptism constitutes a Christiani-

ty's reading of uncleanness, not a generally accepted datum upon

which Jesus in particular laid down a judgment or to which he

responded. The Christianity that deemed eschatological immersion

for sin to relate to the category of uncleanness made its statement of

an eschatological system through that detail, as through other details,

and the representation of uncleanness as a matter of sin formed a sys-

temic statement of that Christianity, not a response to or a use of a

fact of "Judaism." There were no facts, there was no Judaism, so far as

our sources tell us, for their accounts portray their respective systems.

               NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness                          67

  Any other reading of matters, in particular the one that sees a unitary

Judaism emerging in a linear and single development from the Old

Testament, itself being an essentially cogent and harmonious state-

ment, yields only confusion. Evidence of that fact derives from the

rather odd and contradictory representation of uncleanness in a recent

work, as not a matter of morality on one page, then as a matter of sin

and hence wickedness on the next page. Analysis will show what hap-

pens when a single Judaism, against which a single Christianity, in

the person of its founder, Jesus, is to be represented, forms the gener-

ative analogy and the formative metaphor in the mind of scholarship.

The case at hand derives from the properly well-regarded writing of

E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism. His confusion of categories yields a

manifest contradiction in his account of uncleanness as at once merely

functional to entry into the Temple (a trivialization that vastly under-

states matters) but also a symbolism of evil (a correct reading in one

context but not in another context). So Sanders provides our occasion

for the demonstration of the conceptual urgency, for purposes of clear

thought, of the simple propositions with which we commenced.

 

   II. UNCLEANNESS AS A MORAL CATEGORY IN CURRENT
                          NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

In portraying the laws of uncleanness, E. P. Sanders stresses that

uncleanness in some instances, in an of itself, is a sin. Accordingly, he

reads uncleanness as a moral category. Quite correctly, in describing

the Old Testament account of uncleanness Sanders carefully stresses

that "most impurities do not result from the transgression of a prohi-

bition, although a few do."⁴ He accurately emphasizes that an impure

person is not a sinner; contact between an impure and a pure person is

not ordinarily considered a sin. Once he has so represented biblical

law, however, Sanders proceeds to allege the following:

 

     One should ask what was the situation of a person who disregarded the
     purity laws and did not use the immersion pool, but remained perpet-
     ually impure. Here it would be reasonable to equate being impure with
     being a "sinner" in the sense of "wicked," for such a person would have
     taken the position that the biblical laws need not be observed.⁵

That statement contradicts the judgments Sanders makes in his précis

of the biblical representation of uncleanness, except for a single matter,

which is sexual relations between husband and wife when the wife is

menstruating. That is penalized by extirpation (Lev 20:18), as Sanders

says, and represents an exception, again explicitly specified by Sanders:

 

            4. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 183.
            5. Sanders 184.

 

 

68                    Bulletin for Biblical Research 1

      But as a general rule, those who became impure ... did not, as long as
      they lived their ordinary lives, sin. Normal human relations were not
      substantially affected.⁶

            Now in order to harmonize the judgment made here with the position

taken immediately following, Sanders gives an example, but, as we

shall see, the example exemplifies only its own case:

     All the laws of purity and impurity are to be voluntarily observed. If,
     for example, a husband and wife agreed not to observe the prohibition
     of intercourse during menstruation, no one would ever know unless
     they announced the fact. If the woman never used the immersion pool,
     however, her neighbors would note that she was not observant.... Not
     intending to be observant is precisely what makes one "wicked"; but the
     wickedness comes not from impurity as such, but from the attitude that
     the commandments of the Bible need not be heeded.
            Thus these biblical purity laws, which most people seem to have ob-
     served, did not lead to a fixed view that the common people were
     sinners.⁷

In fact, the case exhausts the category; the only Old Testament purity-

law that affects conduct outside of the cult is the one that serves

Sanders's claim that being impure may be equated with being a sin-

ner in the sense of wicked.

            Sanders's categorization of impurity as (sometimes) an issue of

morality leaves open the question of how (at other times) we should

classify the matter. The answer to that question will prove diverse, as

we move from one Judaism to another. No one need doubt, for

example, that Sanders's reading of uncleanness as sin will have found,

in the Essene Judaism of Qumran, a broader scope than merely men-

strual uncleanness, and eschatological immersion in view of sin, so

prominent a motif in the description of John the Baptist, assuredly

conforms to Sanders's view. But were we to interrogate the Judaism

represented, as to its initial statement, by the Mishnah, we should

come up with a quite different view of matters.

III. UNCLEANNESS AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE " ISRAEL "
             OF THE JUDAISM OF THE DUAL TORAH

Let us start from the negative, which may be stated simply and cate-

gorically. Not a single line in the entire Mishnah treats cultic uncleanness

as in and of itself a representation of sin. An unclean person is not a sin-

 

            6. Sanders 183.
            7. Sanders 184-85. Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan Chapter Two contains an
explicit statement in accord with Sanders's example here, drawn from the privacy of
marital relations.

                NEUSNER CHILTON: Uncleanness                            69

ner, therefore not, in Sanders's language, wicked. An unclean person

cannot do things that a clean person can do. We find at Mishnah trac-

tate Sotah 9:15 the following:

     Heedfulness leads to physical cleanliness, cleanliness to levitical purity,
     purity to separateness, separateness to holiness, holiness to humility,
     humility to the shunning of sin, shunning of sin to saintliness, saintli-
     ness to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit to the resurrection of the dead.

Clearly, the unclean person is not on that account wicked, and a poly-

thetical taxonomic scheme does not permit the contrast only of

uncleanness with morality.

            How, then, does the Mishnah's treatment of uncleanness identify

the correct classification or categorization of the matter? The answer is

that, for the authorship of the Mishnah, uncleanness and cleanness

form ontological rather than moral categories. The capacity to become

clean, a stage on the route to holiness as we saw, finds a counterpart

in the capacity to become unclean; the more "holy" something may

become, the more susceptible it is to uncleanness. Then to be suscepti-

ble to varieties and differentiated forms of uncleanness is a mark of,

not sinfulness but, holiness. That conception finds no place in Sand-

ers's representation of matters. And yet, as we shall now show in a

very specific case, it is fundamental to the concrete legislation of the

Mishnah's authorship, a position so profound in its implications as to

mark as simply beside the point the allegation that an unclean person

was, or could be construed as, a sinner or wicked.

            Let us consider two concrete cases that demonstrate the deep lay-

ers of thought on the hierarchization of uncleanness and holiness in

the Mishnah's system. Both of these statements will show us two facts.

First, that the opposite, for the authorship of the Mishnah, of unclean

was not clean but holy. Second, that the synonym for unclean was not

sinful or wicked but something of an ontological, that is, in context,

hierarchical, ordering of matters. That forms the key to the identifica-

tion as ontological of the matter at hand, the conception that through

capacity to become unclean, on the down side, and holy, on the up

side, we hierarchize the entities before us, e.g., gentiles and " Israel ,"

or common food and food that has been designated as tithe, priestly

rations ("heave offering") and even Most Holy Things of the Temple

altar itself. The first case derives from the very matter in which we

shall presently, in later writings of the same system, find a moral

dimension, namely, "leprosy." What we find here is a simple state-

ment that the more susceptible a person to uncleanness, the more cap-

able that person is of warding off the effects of uncleanness. The

second case, offered in the next section, then will give us a richer per-

ception of what is at stake in the simple assertion of correspondences

70                  Bulletin for Biblical Research 1

  with which we now deal. The reader will want to see the entire matter

as it is set forth in the Mishnah and successor writings, even though

the operative language is presented only in italics at the end. The ver-

sion of the matter at Mishnah tractate Negaim 13:10 is as follows:

13:10  F. If he was standing inside [an unclean house] and put his hand
                outside with his rings on his fingers, if he remained there a
                sufficient interval to eat a piece of bread, they are unclean.

            G. [If] he was standing outside and put his hand inside with his
                rings on his fingers

            H. R. Judah declares [the rings] unclean forthwith.

             I. And sages say, "Until he will remain long enough to eat a piece
                of bread."

             J. They said to R. Judah, "Now if when his entire body is un-
                 clean, he has not made what is on him unclean until he re-
                 mains a sufficient time to eat a piece of bread, when his entire
                 body is not unclean, should he not render unclean that which
                 is on him only after he remains a sufficient time to eat a piece
                 of bread"?

To this point we have no account of Judah 's thinking and therefore

no reason to see the pertinence of the case to the principle we claim to

locate here. To see what is at stake, we turn forthwith to the Tosefta's

amplification of the matter. We present the operative language in

italics:

            K. Said to them R. Judah, "We find that the power of him who is un-
                clean is stronger in affording protection than the power of him who is
                insusceptible to uncleanness.

            L. "Israelites receive uncleanness and afford protection for clothing in
                the diseased house. The gentile and the beast, who do not receive un-
                cleanness, also do not afford protection in the diseased house"
                [T. Negaim 7:9].

The Tosefta's authorship's amplification on Judah 's reasoning pro-

vides the statement of correspondence and contrast, that is, of what is

at stake, that we require. The reader will rightly ask why we maintain

that the Tosefta's reading of the Mishnah's representation of Judah 's

view may be imputed to the Mishnah's authorship's conception, and

the answer is, we can show that elsewhere the Mishnah's authorship

on its own presents precisely that view, only in a much more subtle

and complex statement. So we beg the reader's indulgence.

            To this point, we have offered only a statement of the single prop-

osition that the opposite of unclean is holy, and the synonym of

unclean is not sinful but outsider or gentile. The entire composition as

it is represented by the authorship of Sifra, which cites the Mishnah

and the Tosefta verbatim and then joins the whole to an exegetical

                NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness                             71

  framework, makes that point explicit, since it introduces the beast and

the gentile as operative categories, and neither the beast nor (by sys-

temic analogy) the gentile forms a moral category, but only an onto-

logical one. We give the Mishnah in bold-face type and the Tosefta in

italicized bold-face type, to make clear the sequence of unfolding and

underline still later work of the authorship of Sifra:⁸

 

      7. A.  Might one think that the beast and the gentile afford protection
                to garments in the diseased house?

            B. Scripture says, "He will launder the garments" (Lev 14:47)—as
                an inclusionary clause.

            C. He whose clothing can be rendered unclean affords protection to
                clothing in the diseased house.

            D. The beast and the gentile are excluded from the rule, for their
                 clothing is not made unclean, and they do not afford protection
                 for clothing in the diseased house.

            E. In this connection sages have said:

            F. If he was standing inside and put his hand outside with his
                rings on this fingers, if he remained there a sufficient interval
                to eat a piece of bread, he is unclean.

            G. [If] he was standing outside and put his hand inside with his
                 rings on his fingers

            H. R. Judah declares [the ring] unclean forthwith.

            I.  And sages say, "Until he will remain long enough to eat a
                piece of bread."

            J. They said to R. Judah, "Now if when his entire body is un-
                clean, he has not made what is on him unclean until he re-
                mains a sufficient time to eat a piece of bread, when his entire
                body is not unclean, should he not render unclean that which
                is on him only after he remains a sufficient time to eat a piece
                of bread" [M. Neg. 13:10]?

            K. Said to them R. Judah, "We find that the power of him who is
                 unclean is stronger in affording protection than the power of
                 him who is insusceptible to uncleanness.

            L. "Israelites receive uncleanness and afford protection for cloth-
                 ing in the diseased house. The gentile and the beast, who do not
                 receive uncleanness, also do not afford protection in the dis-
                 eased house [T. 7:9].

            Now to review the main point: the most important language is

Judah 's assertion that a person who is more susceptible to uncleanness

also affords greater protection from uncleanness than a person who is

not. If sraelites are susceptible to uncleanness, they also can afford

protection for clothing. Gentiles or beasts, insusceptible to the

uncleanness of "leprosy," entering the afflicted house will forthwith

 

            8. This sequence, Mishnah, which begat the Tosefta, which begat the Sifra and
Sifrés, of course does not work everywhere in the later writings. But it does work here.

72                   Bulletin for Biblical Research 1

produce contamination for garments or sandals which they may be

wearing, even though they themselves are not susceptible to this form

of uncleanness at all. What has all this to do with morality? Nothing

whatsoever. The focus, the issue, these concern one's state or condi-

tion in an utterly abstract world of relationships that are intangible

and unseen, yet, withal, critical. When Sanders correctly says that

uncleanness has nothing to do with morality, he may point to a pas-

sage such as this one. Let us turn to what is at stake in what is clearly

a set of ontological distinctions and points of differentiation.

 
IV. UNCLEANNESS AND HOLINESS IN THE MISHNAIC
    STRATUM OF THE JUDAISM OF THE DUAL TORAH

Judah 's position is personal, hence not normative. But the principle

that he expressed in finding a hierarchical relationship between the

capacity to receive uncleanness and the capacity to afford protection

presents a very important and explicit statement of the matter at

hand. In what follows we shall find a clear hierarchization of sanctifi-

cation in terms of capacity to receive uncleanness, and the hierar-

chization is the premise of discourse, not the private opinion of one

party, hence built into the normative structure of the legal-theologi-

cal system of the Mishnah. What we shall now see in a still less acces-

sible case is that the greater one's susceptibility to uncleanness, the

more exalted one's capacity for sanctification. To state the proposition

in more abstract language, such as ontology demands: the greater the

capacity for differentiation, the higher the potential of consecration.

This fundamentally ontological principle of hierarchization is ex-

pressed in the detail of a legal case, and we shall have to work our

way through the details of the case to see how profoundly imbedded

in the law is the conception of a hierarchical, or rather, hierarchizing,

ontology that is fundamental to the system at hand. This case then

will leave no doubt whatsoever that uncleanness for the system at

hand, that is, the systemic statement of the Mishnah in particular,

forms in no way a moral, but only an ontological category. The sys-

tem as a whole, which proposes a hierarchizing ontology expressed

through sanctification, then makes its statement here, as it will, uni-

formly, at all other relevant points. And to that system, the concep-

tion of uncleanness as a metaphor for evil is simply beside the point,

monumentally irrelevant.

            We see this in a discussion of the several removes from a source of

uncleanness and how they affect food in several degrees of consecra-

tion or sanctification. Once more we turn first to the text, then to the

exposition, of Mishnah-tractate Tohorot 2:2-7.

             NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness                      73

  Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2:

A. R. Eliezer says, "(1) He who eats food unclean in the first remove is
     unclean in the first remove;

     "(2) [he who eats] food unclean in the second remove is unclean in
            the second remove;

     "(3) [he who eats] food unclean in the third remove is unclean in the
            third remove."

B. R. Joshua says, "(1) He who eats food unclean in the first remove
     and food unclean in the second remove is unclean in the second re-
     move.

     "(2) [He who eats food] unclean in the third remove is unclean in the
            second remove so far as Holy Things are concerned,

    "(3) and is not unclean in the second remove so far as heave-offering
            is concerned.

C. "[We speak of] the case of unconsecrated food

D. "which is prepared in conditions appropriate to heave offering."

 

Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:3:

A. Unconsecrated food:

     in the first remove is unclean and renders unclean;

B. in the second remove is unfit, but does not convey uncleanness;

C. and in the third remove is eaten in the pottage of heave-offering.

 

Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:4:

A. Heave-offering:

     in the first and in the second remove is unclean and renders unclean;

B. in the third remove is unfit and does not convey uncleanness;

C. and in the fourth remove is eaten in a pottage of Holy Things.

 

Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:5:

A. Holy Things:

     in the first and the second and the third removes are susceptible to
     uncleanness and render unclean;

B. and in the fourth remove are unfit and do not convey uncleanness;

C. and in the fifth remove are eaten in a pottage of Holy Things.

 

Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:6:

A. Unconsecrated food:

     in the second remove renders unconsecrated liquid unclean and ren-
     ders food of heave-offering unfit.

B. Heave-offering:

    in the third remove renders unclean [the] liquid of Holy Things, and
    renders foods of Holy Things unfit,

C. if it [the heave-offering] was prepared in the condition of cleanness
    pertaining to Holy Things.

74                    Bulletin for Biblical Research 1

     D. But if it was prepared in conditions pertaining to heave-offering, it
          renders unclean at two removes and renders unfit at one remove in
          reference to Holy Things.

 

     Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:7:

     A. R. Eleazar says, "The three of them are equal:

     B. "Holy Things and heave-offering, and unconsecrated food: