Bulletin for Biblical Research (BBR) 1991
Bulletin for Biblical Research 1 (1991) 63-88
Ontological Category in the Early
Centuries A.D.?
JACOB NEUSNER
THE
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
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,
"
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 "
a moral judgment as to the conduct and ethical character of Israelites
or of "
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
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
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
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
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 "
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:
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 "
or common food and food that has been designated as tithe, priestly
rations ("heave offering") and even Most Holy Things of the
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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:
"which are at the first remove of uncleanness render unclean at two
removes and unfit at one [further] remove in respect to Holy Things;
"render unclean at one remove and spoil at one [further] remove in
respect to heave-offering;
"and spoil unconsecrated food.
C. "That which is unclean in the second remove in all of them renders
unclean at one remove and unfit at one [further] remove in respect to
Holy Things;
"and renders liquid of unconsecrated food unclean;
"and spoils foods of heave-offering.
D. "The third remove of uncleanness in all of them renders liquids of
Holy Things unclean,
"and spoils food of Holy Things."
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2-7 presupposes knowledge of the
Mishnaic system of ritual purity. A review of some of its essential ele-
ments is necessary for an understanding of the arguments and analy-
ses that follow. In the system, ritual impurity is acquired by contact
with either a primary or a secondary source of uncleanness, called a
"Father" or a "Child" (or "Offspring") of uncleanness, respectively. In
the first category are contact with a corpse, a person suffering a flux, a
leper, and the like. Objects made of metal, wood, leather, bone, cloth,
or sacking become Fathers of uncleanness if they touch a corpse.
Foodstuffs and liquids are susceptible to uncleanness, but will not
render other foodstuffs unclean in the same degree or remove of
uncleanness that they themselves suffer. Foodstuffs furthermore will
not make vessels or utensils unclean. But liquids made unclean by a
Father of uncleanness will do so if they touch the inner side of the
vessel. That is, if they fall into the contained space of an earthenware
vessel, they make the whole vessel unclean.
Food or liquid that touches a Father of uncleanness becomes
unclean in the first remove. If food touches a person or vessel made
unclean by a primary cause of uncleanness, it is unclean in the second
remove. Food that touches second-remove uncleanness incurs third-
remove uncleanness, and food that touches third-remove uncleanness
incurs fourth-remove uncleanness, and so on. But liquids touching
either a primary source of uncleanness (Father) or something unclean
in the first or second remove (Offspring) are regarded as unclean in
the first remove. They are able to make something else unclean. If, for
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 75
example, the other side of a vessel is made unclean by a liquid—thus
unclean in the second remove—and another liquid touches the outer
side, the other liquid incurs not second, but first degree uncleanness.
Heave-offering (food raised up for priestly use only) unclean in
the third remove of uncleanness, and Holy Things (that is, things
belonging to the cult) unclean in the fourth remove, do not make other
things, whether liquids or foods, unclean. The difference among
removes of uncleanness is important. First degree uncleanness in com-
mon food will convey uncleanness. But, although food unclean in the
second remove will be unacceptable, it will not convey uncleanness,
that is, third degree uncleanness. But it will render heave-offering
unfit. Further considerations apply to heave-offering and Holy Things.
Heave-offering can be made unfit and unclean by a first, and unfit by
a second, degree of uncleanness. If it touches something unclean in the
third remove, it is made unfit, but itself will not impart fourth degree
uncleanness. A Holy Thing that suffers uncleanness in the first, sec-
ond, or third remove is unclean and conveys uncleanness. If it is
unclean in the fourth remove, it is invalid for the cult but does not
convey uncleanness. It is much more susceptible than are noncultic
things. Thus, common food that suffers second degree uncleanness
will render heave-offering invalid. We already know that it makes liq-
uid unclean in the first remove. Likewise, heave-offering unclean in
the third remove will make Holy Things invalid and put them into a
fourth remove of uncleanness. With these data firmly in hand, let us
turn to a general discussion of M. Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2-7.
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2 introduces the removes of unclean-
ness. Our interest is in the contaminating effect upon a person of eat-
ing unclean food. Does the food make the person unclean in the same
remove of uncleanness as is borne by the food itself? Thus if one eats
food unclean in the first remove, is he unclean in that same remove?
This is the view of Eliezer. Joshua says he is unclean in the second
remove. The dispute, Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2A–B, at Mishnah-
Tractate Tohorot 2:2C–D is significantly glossed. The further consid-
eration is introduced as to the sort of food under discussion. Joshua is
made to say that there is a difference between the contaminating
effects upon the one who eats heave-offering, on the one side, and
unconsecrated food prepared in conditions of heave-offering, on the
other. This matter, the status of unconsecrated food prepared as if it
were heave-offering, or as if it were Holy Things, and heave-offering
prepared as if it were Holy Things, forms a substratum of our chapter,
added to several primary items and complicating the exegesis.
Tosefta-Tractate Tohorot 2:1 confirms, however, that primary to the
dispute between Eliezer and Joshua is simply the matter of the effects
of food) unclean in the first remove upon the person who eats such
76 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
tional-thematic link between Joshua's opinion and the large construc-
tion of Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:3-7. Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot
2:3-5, expanded and glossed by Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:6, follow
a single and rather tight form. The sequence differentiates unconse-
crated food, heave-offering, and Holy Things each at the several
removes from the original source of uncleanness.
Eleazar, Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:7, insists that, at a given
remove, all three are subject to the same rule. The contrary view,
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:3-6, is that unconsecrated food in the
first remove makes heave-offering unclean and at the second remove
spoils heave-offering; it does not enter a third remove and therefore
has no effect upon Holy Things. Heave-offering at the first two
removes may produce contaminating effects, and at the third remove
spoils Holy Things, but is of no effect at the fourth. Holy Things in the
first three removes produce uncleanness, and at the fourth impart
unfitness to other Holy Things. Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:6 then
goes over the ground of unconsecrated food at the second remove,
and heave-offering at the third. The explanation of Mishnah-Tractate
Tohorot 2:6C is various; the simplest view is that the clause glosses
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:6B by insisting that the heave-offering to
which we refer is prepared as if it were Holy Things, on which
account, at the third remove, it can spoil Holy Things. At Mishnah-
Tractate Tohorot 2:7 Eleazar restates matters, treating all three—Holy
Things, heave-offering, and unconsecrated food—as equivalent to
one another at the first, second, and third removes, with the necessary
qualification for unconsecrated food that it is like the other, conse-
crated foods in producing effects at the second and even the third
removes. Commentators read Eliezer. They set the pericope up against
Joshua's view at Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2, assigning to Joshua
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:3ff. as well. To state the upshot simply:
So far as Eleazar is concerned, what is important is not the source of
contamination—the unclean foods—but that which is contaminated, the
unconsecrated food, heave-offering, and Holy Things.
He could not state matters more clearly than he does when he
says that the three of them are exactly equivalent. And they are,
because the differentiations will emerge in the food affected, or con-
taminated, by the three. So at the root of the dispute is whether we
gauge the contamination in accord with the source—unconsecrated
food, or unconsecrated food prepared as if it were heave-offering, and
so on—or whether the criterion is the food which is contaminated.
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:3-5 are all wrong, Eleazar states explic-
itly at Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:7A, because they differentiate
among uncleanness imparted by unclean unconsecrated food, unclean
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 77
heave-offering, and unclean Holy Things, and do not differentiate
among the three sorts of food to which contamination is imparted. It is
surely a logical position, for the three sorts of food do exhibit differe-
ntiated capacities to receive uncleanness; one sort is more contamin-
able than another.
And so too is the contrary view logical: what is more sensitive to
uncleanness also will have a greater capacity to impart uncleanness. The
subtle debate before us clearly is unknown to Eliezer and Joshua at
Mishnah-Tractate Tohorot 2:2. To them the operative categories are
something unclean in first, second, or third removes, without distinc-
tion as to the relative sensitivities of the several types of food which
may be unclean. The unfolding of the issue may be set forth very
briefly by way of conclusion: the sequence thus begins with Eliezer
and Joshua, who ask about the contaminating power of that which is
unclean in the first and second removes, without regard to whether it
is unconsecrated food, heave-offering, or Holy Things. To them, the
distinction between the capacity to impart contamination, or to receive
contamination, of the several sorts of food is unknown. Once, how-
ever, their question is raised—in such general terms—it will become
natural to ask the next logical question, one which makes distinctions
not only among the several removes of uncleanness, but also among
the several sorts of food involved in the processes of contamination.
This protracted and somewhat arcane discussion, akin to a kind of
physics in its abstraction, shows us with great power how uncleanness
looks when it forms an ontological category within a hierarchizing
system. Readers should not, however, imagine that the view of
uncleanness as an ontological category exhausts matters within the
unfolding of the Judaism of the dual Torah. The Mishnah formed only
the initial statement. Other successor documents made their own
statements, sometimes in addressing Scripture, the written Torah,
sometimes in dealing with the Mishnah, the oral Torah. A full picture
of matters therefore requires us to show how uncleanness looks when,
in the system of Judaism at hand, it serves as a moral, not an ontologi-
cal, classification.
V. UNCLEANNESS AS A MORAL CATEGORY IN
LATER CANONICAL WRITINGS OF THE JUDAISM OF THE DUAL
TORAH
Now that we have a clear picture of how uncleanness serves within
the system of the Mishnah, namely, as an ontological category, as
indicator of holiness, we turn to the disposition of that same category
in later stages of the same Judaic system. For, as time rendered still
more remote the reality of the cult and as the focus of thought within
the unfolding system shifted to the governance, by sages, of that holy
78 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
ongoing system, as represented in successive writings, exhibited cate-
gorical reconstructions in diverse ways. And one of these ways, we
think symptomatic of systemic changes in other categories also, repre-
sented uncleanness as not an ontological but a moral category.
The representation of levitical or cultic uncleanness as a matter of
sin emerges, in the unfolding of the writings of the Judaism originally
set forth in the Mishnah (a Judaism we call "the Judaism of the dual
Torah"), only in much later stages, in documents brought to closure
long after the destruction of the
as a metaphor for evil. A very rapid survey of the representations of
uncleanness in successive documents beyond the Mishnah shows us
that a contrast between uncleanness and morality was drawn by the
authorship of the Tosefta, which condemned the view that "the
uncleanness of the knife is more disturbing to
of blood."9
Explicit statements that uncleanness forms an indicator of wick-
edness emerge in documents that first reached closure not before
A.D. 300, and possibly considerably after that time. Here is an explicit
statement:
R. Yosé the Galilean10 says, "Come and see how strong is the power of
sin, for before they put forth their hands in transgression, they were
not found among [the Israelites] people unclean through having a dis-
9. Tosefta Kippurim 1:12.
10. It should be clear that the temporal assignment of sayings rests solely on the
time of closure of the documents that contain those sayings, not on the attributions,
which cannot be shown to go back to the time and person to whom the sayings are as-
signed. Since the same saying can be given by diverse authorships and their documents
to various authorities, and since no attribution can be shown to derive from firsthand
evidence, e.g., a book written by a named authority and preserved by his disciples in a
chain of transmission we can trace as we can, for example, books by Philo, Josephus,
Paul, Irenaeus, Justin, and other first and second (and later) century figures, there is no
alternative for critical scholarship. We therefore trace the canonical history of ideas, that
is, the point, in the unfolding of the writings, at which a saying first occurs or an idea
first makes its presence known. The sequence of writings, first this, then that, is be-
yond serious doubt, since writings posterior to the Mishnah, such as the Tosefta, Sifra,
and the two Sifrés, cite the Mishnah verbatim entirely outside the structure of their own
discourse and comment on Mishnah-passages. The received conception of these writings
as deriving from the first and second centuries, that is, the same time as the period of
the formation of the Mishnah, and not from the third or fourth or still later times, rests
upon the occurrence of the same names in both the Mishnah and the Tosefta or Sifra or
the two Sifrés. That same theory assigns to the first or second centuries all sayings in the
two Talmuds that appear bearing attributions of authorities who lived in those early
times. But absent the demonstration that that was so, we can no more assume that if the
Tosefta or the Talmud of the Land of Israel or the Talmud of Babylonia assigns a saying
to Yosé the Galilean, he really made that saying, than we can take for granted that
Moses really said everything that the Pentateuchal authorships say he said.
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 79
charge and lepers, but after they put forth their hands in transgression,
there were among them people unclean through having a discharge
and lepers. . . . "11
True, no rabbi ever declared a sinner to be cultically unclean on that
account, while in the Essene Judaism of Qumran, being impure is a
sin, just as committing certain sins automatically imposed a period of
uncleanness.12 Still, we cannot doubt that, for the authorship that has
included the saying attributed to Yosé, uncleanness marked a moral
category.
A still more explicit statement of the same viewpoint, quite
specific to a single, identified sin, maintains that the skin ailment
described in Leviticus 13 (wrongly translated "leprosy") is caused by
a specific sin, namely, gossip. This view appears in Tosefta Negaim
6:7, Sifré to Deuteronomy 175, and Sifra Mesora Parashah 5:9, and is
as follows:
8. A. "Saying" (Lev 14:35)--
B. The priest will say to him words of reproach: "My son, plagues
come only because of gossip [T. 6:7], as it is said, 'Take heed of the
plague of leprosy to keep very much and to do, remember what
the Lord God did to Miriam' (Deut 24:8).
C. "And what has one thing to do with the other?
D. "But this teaches that she was punished only because of gossip.
E. "And is it not an argument a fortiori?
F. "If Miriam, who did not speak before Moses' presence, suffered
so, one who speaks ill of his fellow in his very presence, how
much the more so?"
G. R. Simeon b. Eleazar says, "Also because of arrogance do plagues
come, for so do we find concerning Uzziah,
H. "as it is said, 'And he rebelled against the Lord his God and he
came to the
Azzariah the Priest came after him and with him priests of the
Lord, eighty strong men, and they stood against Uzziah and said
to him, It is not for you to do, Uzziah, to offer to the Lord, for only
the priests the sons of Aaron who are sanctified do so. So forth
from the sanctuary. And Uzziah was angry,' etc. (2 Chr 26:16 f.)"
[T. Neg. 6:7H].
The same inquiry into the moral foundations of cultic uncleanness
leads the authorship of Babylonian Talmud Niddah at 31b to attribute
to Simeon b. Yohai the following explanation for the requirement that
a woman after childbirth bring a sacrifice:
11. Sifre to Numbers Naso 2.
12. See Neusner, Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973) 81.
80 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
"When she kneels in bearing, she swears impetuously that she will
have no intercourse with her husband. The Torah . . . ordained that she
should bring a sacrifice."
But this does not encompass Levitical uncleanness in particular. To
summarize: the view that impurity is a sign of sin does not occur in
the Mishnah. It does occur in the Tosefta in the specific allegation that
leprosy is a sign that a person is guilty of having gossiped or is a sign
of arrogance. Even in these passages, however, no concrete sanction or
penalty of a moral order is invoked, as an explicit violation of the law
would precipitate a concrete sanction. Sages do not leave a record of
having imposed a penalty of uncleanness upon a gossip.
VI. CONFUSION IN CATEGORY-FORMATION:
UNCLEANNESS AND SANDERS'S JESUS AND JUDAISM
As the discussion above demonstrates, the distinction between of
cleanness and holiness is centrally important to that system of Judaism
which animates the Mishnah. Indeed, that distinction is irreducible or
systemic: there is no future in attempting to decipher the two condi-
tions, of being clean and being holy, as metaphors of moral station or
of accessibility to redemption. The issue naturally emerges, however,
whether that Judaism evinced by Mishnah is the milieu in which the
movement that resulted in the New Testament unfolded. Methodolog-
ical skepticism is warranted, but an undifferentiated exclusion of the
evidence of Mishnah would be most unwise. Early, pre-Mishnaic
Judaism is not substantially recoverable from sectarian, Hellenistic,
and apocalyptic writings alone. They are no more "normative" than
Rabbinica was once taken to be. The rabbis and their predecessors con-
tributed to the mix of early Judaism, although their dominance
brought about a distinctive phase, a Judaism in which purity was a
matter of fidelity to halakhah, as defined by the dual Torah, and no
longer a matter of what actually could occur in association with wor-
ship in the
pels, that is to say, within that development of Judaism—shaped by
Jesus and his followers—which produced the Gospels.
If we may limit our attention, for the moment, to one thematic
example from the Synoptic Gospels, the matter of purifying leprosy
proves to be of systemic importance. Jesus cleanses a leper, and orders
him to see a priest and bring an offering (Matt 8:1-4/Mark 1:40-44/
Luke 5:12-14). Sometimes by the presentation of comparable material
(cf. Matt 11:5/Luke 7:22), sometimes by employing differing rhetori-
cal tactics and materials altogether (cf. Matt 10:8; Luke 17:11-19),
Matthew and Luke contrive to present cleansing from leprosy as a
characteristic and paradigmatic feature of Jesus' ministry.
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 81
When Sanders deals with the question of sayings of Jesus in
which practices of purity are commended or condemned, he makes
short shrift of them, as being unauthentic in their present form.13 He
is not loath, in principle, to dismiss entire pericopae, such as the story
concerning what happened where Jesus' disciples plucked grain on
the Sabbath, as "creation(s) of the church."14 It is possible that the
pericope of the cleansing of the leper might be dealt with in that way
(although that has not been the trend in recent scholarship), but Sand-
ers's index gives no trace of such a treatment. It is interesting, in this
context, that the eight "almost indisputable facts" about Jesus, upon
which Sanders sets out to base his work, contain no reference at all to
any of Jesus' disputes concerning purity and holiness.15
His closest approach to that nexus of issues is in his discussion of
Jesus' occupation of the
consciously dispenses with an approach based upon a sensitivity to
purity,16 and instead argues that "Jesus' action is to be regarded as a
symbolic demonstration,"17 in respect to the destruction of the
and the establishment of a new one, as a prophet of restoration, after
the pattern of Essene and apocalyptic literature.18 Instead of serving
as a focus of sanctity, in Sanders's judgment the
where Jesus chooses to engage in a symbolic act. The category of
cleanness is simply left to one side.
There appear to be two reasons for which Sanders proceeds in the
manner he does. First, he genuinely believes that matters of purity, in
the Judaisms of the first century, were expendable. He conceives of the
Pharisees, for example, as a party devoted to the oral law and its
explication, rather than as a movement concerned systemically with
issues of purity.19 "Ritual" and "trivia" are to Sanders's mind a natural
13. Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 260, 261, 276, 277 (on Matt 23:25,
26) and 266 (on Mark 7:19). Luke 11:39 is not cited in the index.
14. Jesus and Judaism 266, on the same page on which Mark 7:19 is discussed.
15. Jesus and Judaism 11.
16. Jesus and Judaism 67, 68.
17. Jesus and Judaism 69-71.
18. Jesus and Judaism 77-90.
19. Jesus and Judaism 188, 388, 389. Sanders leaves out of consideration Neusner's
Judaism: The Evidence of Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), in which a
systemic concern for sanctification is established. Two recent works, by scholars of the
New Testament, accept the Pharisaic focus upon purity; cf. M. J. Borg, Conflict, Holiness
and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus: Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 5 (New
in Mark 7: Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series 13 (
JSOT, 1986). Sanders appears not to have observed that the Pharisaic and rabbinic
movements did not regard their traditions as ends in themselves, but as instrumental.
82 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
association,20 so that a concern with such matters would not, on his
assessment, characterize a group as important as the Pharisees
undoubtedly were. Second, Sanders has a consistent interest in por-
traying Jesus as a teacher who accepted, not merely the impure, but
the wicked into his fellowship. Indeed, the latter concern amounts to a
driving force within Jesus and Judaism, and requires detailed explana-
tion in respect to the present question.
In his longest consideration of the place of purity in Judaism,21
Sanders accepts without demur that cleanness was fundamentally
related to the suitability of persons or objects to approach the
Once the issue is placed in that context, of course, the pericopae in
which Jesus is said to engage in disputes concerning purity are natu-
rally associated with those in which Jesus pronounces on cultic mat-
ters. His cultic teaching in Matthew includes reference to the taking of
oaths (23:16-22), instructions for the offering of sacrifice (5:23, 24),
and an elaborate story which relates to the payment of the half shekel
(17:24-27,22 cf. 23:23; Luke 11:42). All of those passages are uniquely
Matthean, and yet are widely accepted as relating to the substance of
Jesus' attitude towards the
Jesus' teaching in respect to a widow's offering (Mark 12:41-44; Luke
21:1-4), his occupation of the holy precincts (Matt 21:12, 13; Mark
11:15-17; Luke 19:45, 46), his discourse concerning the destruction of
the
impression that the
practical concern within Jesus' movement.23 But Sanders ignores the
natural association of purity with the
purity, in terms of moral wickedness.
The collapse of purity, from a cultic category of integral meaning,
into a subset of moral stature, is accomplished by means of dubious
exegesis. Proceeding from a reading of Lev 7:22-27 (the prohibition
against eating fats and blood), Sanders comes to the conclusion that
What distinguished them from the covenanters of
Wisdom in the Diaspora was not a concern for traditions of the elders, but what they did
with such traditions.
20. The linking of the two words in several forms appears in Jesus and Judaism 180,
187, 210. Sanders first refers to "ritual and trivia" when he characterizes the tendency of
scholarship to equate ritual and trivia as Pharisaic preoccupations. In his defense of the
Pharisees, he seems thoughtlessly to consign the issue of purity to puritanical "minu-
tiae" (187).
21. Jesus and Judaism 182-85.
22. Cf. Chilton, "A Coin of Three Realms (Matthew 17:24-27)," The Bible in Three
Dimensions (eds D. J. A. Clines, S. E. Fowl, S. E. Porter: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990)
269-82.
23. Cf. Chilton, "[w(j] frage/lliou e)k sxoiui&wn (John 2.15," Templum Amicitiae (ed.
W. Horbury; Sheffield:
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 83
"A few purity transgressions, such as eating blood, are in and of
themselves sins; that is, they require atonement."24 The sole justifica-
tion for the finding is a) that the penalty for the act in Leviticus is that
the transgressor "shall be cut off from his people," and b) that "In the
later Rabbinic interpretation, 'cutting of' puts the transgression
strictly between human (sic!) and God, and is atoned for by repen-
tance."25 The simple fact of the matter is, that the phrase only appears
in Leviticus within the nexus of purity and sacrifice (7:20, 21, 25, 27;
17:4, 9, 14; 18:29; 19:8; 20:17, 18; 22:3; 23:29).26 That Sanders should cite
a few verses in isolation, blandly ignore their literary setting, impute a
foreign meaning to them, and then transfer that meaning to the whole
of "the later Rabbinic interpretation," is nothing short of astonishing.
And if we wish to discover what that "later Rabbinic interpretation"
is, we are directed to that well-known source of ancient exegesis, Paul
and Palestinian Judaism.27 The relevant pages of Sanders's earlier work,
however, in no way address the issue at hand. The point Sanders
established in his book on Paul is that repentance effected atonement
(as was only natural in the period after the destruction of the
seen as wicked. (As a matter of fact, Sanders particularly stresses, in
the pertinent section, that "sins against God were more easily for-
given than sins against one's fellow-man." In other words, the ten-
dency of the argument is diametrically opposed to what is being said
in Jesus and Judaism.) The assertion in respect to "later Rabbinic inter-
pretation" in Jesus and Judaism, then, is made without support.
The basis of Sanders's perspective is less any text or group of
texts, than a global view of Judaism: "wickedness comes not from
impurity as such, but from the attitude that the commandments of the
Bible need not be heeded."29 Sanders's intentionalist construal of
Judaism is also apparent in his earlier work;30 the grounds of his
confident generalization are less so. It is nonetheless used as a herme-
neutical category which links early Judaism and rabbinic Judaism:
24. Jesus and Judaism 183.
25. Ibid.
26. 20:17 may appear to be an exception, in that the issue is sexual, but the context
of the chapter, and particularly the material which follows, establishes the normative
perspective of Leviticus.
27. Cf. Jesus and Judaism 387 n. 41.
28. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 179, 180.
29. Jesus and Judaism 185.
30. Paul and Palestinian Judaism 147. Sanders here calls the intentionalism on which
he bases his scheme "all-pervasive." Unfortunately, the "intention" to which he appeals
as a rabbinic category is not defined or defended.
84 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
After the destruction of the
the sacrifices prescribed in the law, although the Day of Atonement
maintained a special place in Jewish life. Ultimately, what is required is
that one intends to remain in the covenant, intends to be obedient.31
Sanders's conclusion therefore requires a faulty exegesis of Leviticus,
an excessively unitary view of Judaism, and a hypothetically invoked
myth of intentionalism. Only so can impurity be equated with
wickedness.
The thematic importance of that equation pervades Jesus and Juda-
ism. Sanders treats "the sinners" as a primary category through which
Jesus' ministry is to be approached.32 Within that treatment, the cate-
gory of impurity dissolves into that of sin, and sin, in turn, becomes
wickedness. Sanders relates the term "sinners," in the accusation that
Jesus' fellowship included the unacceptable, to the word "wicked" in
Hebrew (reša‘im), which Sanders construes to be a technical term for
those outside the pale of Judaism. No argumentation whatever is
offered for the equation with hamartōloi ("sinners") in the Gospels,
apart from a reference (once again) to Paul and Palestinian Judaism.33
The discussion in that work also does not substantiate a reading of
hamartōloi in terms of reša‘im, although it does establish that "the
wicked" are, on the whole, scheduled more for punishment than for
repentance. The central, linguistic equation of Sanders's case, however,
remains unexamined. From the point of view of ordinary, exegetical
practice, that is the Achilles' heel of the thesis under consideration.
Within the Septuagint, hamartōlos corresponds to five roots in the
Masoretic Text (ht', hnp, hrš, r‘, rš‘), only one of which would support
the equation proposed by Sanders.34 When the probabilities of transla-
tion into Aramaic are also taken into account, that equation appears
difficult to sustain. The root rš‘ does appear, for example, in the Isaiah
Targum, both adjectivally and as an abstract noun. The Hebrew roots
rš‘ and hnp are represented by the Aramaic usage, but the other three
equivalents of hamartōlos are not.35 Clearly, the linguistic range of rš‘ in
Aramaic is not as wide as that of hamartōlos in Greek. By contrast, the
roots rš‘, hnp, ht', and several others are presented by appropriate forms
31. Paul and Palestinian Judaism 177.
32. Jesus and Judaism 174-211.
33. Jesus and Judaism 386 n. 16, citing Paul and Palestinian Judaism 142f., 203, 342-45,
351-55, 357f., 361, 399-404, 414.
34. E. Hatch and H. A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint (
1977) 64, 65. Sanders's review of the evidence of the Septuagint is so incomplete as to be
misleading, cf. p. 342 in Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The simple fact is that hamartōlos is
used too flexibly to be equated with a "technical term" of restricted meaning, as Sanders
claims in Jesus and Judaism 177.
35. J. B. van Zijl, A Concordance to the Targum of Isaiah (Missoula: Scholars, 1979)
182, 183.
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 85
of the Aramaic term, hwb' (or its verbal counterpart, hwb): "debtor," or
"sinner," is the functional equivalent of words covering a variety of
defects in the Masoretic Text. When the semantic range of Targumic
hwb' is considered, two features of the usage are immediately striking
from the present point of view. First, because rš‘ can be included within
a wider list of roots for representation by a form of hwb', the argument
that "the wicked" is a technical term appears strained. (There is, of
course, no question but that "the wicked" is a harsh designation; only
its technical meaning, as putting someone beyond the pale of the cove-
nant, is at issue here.) Second, the Aramaic usage hwb', which may or
may not represent (or correspond to) rš‘ in Hebrew, is the natural coun-
terpart of hamartōlos in the Septuagint. As a simple matter of fact, "debt-
ors" can be seen in the Targum of Isaiah as punished by the Messiah
(11:4), broken by the LORD (14:4, 5), but also as capable of repentance
(28:24, 25),36 or a species of wicked Gentile (34:2), or another enemy
of
univocal or exclusive meaning of the Aramaic term seem incredible.
Quite evidently, a contextual construal of living in-stances of the word
will alone produce an accurate appraisal of its meaning.
Within the Gospels, a coherent language of "debt" is attributed to
Jesus. When, in the Matthean version of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus
instructs his followers to ask God, "forgive us our debts, as we also
forgive our debtors," there is no doubt but that the New Testament is
preserving an Aramaic idiom (6:12). Luke only partially preserves the
usage: "Forgive us our sins, as we also forgive everyone who is
indebted to us" (11:4). Jesus' recourse to the Aramaic idiom is not a
mere matter of convention: several of his parables turn on the meta-
phorical and literal senses of "debt," much as in the Targum of Isaiah
50:1, where the term refers in one breath to money owed, and in
another breath to sins before God.38
Several instances of parabolic presentation of "debt" in this sense
are especially striking. In Matt 18:23-35, a debtor is said to owe the
astronomical sum of ten thousand talents (18:24). When it is borne in
36. Cf. Chilton, "Jesus and the Repentance of E. P. Sanders," Tyndale Bulletin 39
(1988) 1-18.
37. Cf. van Zijl (1979) 57, 58; A. Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic III The Latter Prophets
(Leiden: Brill, 1962), and B. D. Chilton, The Isaiah Targum: Introduction, Translation, and
Notes: The Aramaic Targum (Wilmington: Glazier, 1987).
38. The passage reads as follows:
Thus says the LORD, "Where is the bill of divorce which I gave your congregation,
that it is rejected? Or who had a debt against me, to whom I have sold you? Behold,
for your sins you were sold, and for your apostasies your congregation was rejected."
As in Chilton (1987), italicized words represent innovative departures of the Aramaic
rendering from the Hebrew text which underlies it. The first usage of "debt" corresponds
86 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
mind that the annual imposition of tax upon the whole of
Peraea amounted to merely two hundred talents (cf. Antiquities
17.9.4), the hyperbole involved in the parable becomes readily appar-
ent. The debtor is in no position to repay such a debt, nor is there any
credible way in which he could have incurred it. He behaves astound-
ingly, after his debt is forgiven (v 27), in a manner all but calculated to
trivialize such forgiveness: he refuses to deal mercifully with a col-
league who owed him one hundred denarii (vv 28-30). The latter
amount is by no means insignificant: a single denarius has been esti-
mated as the going rate for a full day of labor.39 But the contrast with
the king's incalculable generosity cannot be overlooked, and the close
of the parable makes it unmistakably plain that God's forgiveness
demands ours (vv 31-35). To fail to forgive one's fellow, even when
what needs to be forgiven is considerable, is to betray the very logic of
forgiveness which alone gives us standing before God.
Two other parables portray, in an apparently paradoxical fashion,
the inextricable link between divine forgiveness and our behavior.
Within the story of Jesus at the house of a Pharisee named Simon
(Luke 7:36-50), a parable explains why Jesus chose to forgive a sinful
woman (vv 40-43). Of two debtors, the one who has been released
from the greater debt will obviously love his creditor more. The sinful
woman's great love, therefore, in an outlandish display of affection
and honor (vv 37-38, 44-46), is proof that God had forgiven her
(v 47). Her love is proof of her capacity to be forgiven.40 She had suc-
ceeded precisely where the unforgiving servant of Matthew 18 had
failed: her actions displayed the value of forgiveness to her. The same
logic, developed more strictly in respect of debt, is evident in
the otherwise inexplicable parable of the crafty steward (Luke 16:1-9).
The lord praised the steward for his cleverness (v 8) in reducing the
debts of those who owed commodities to the lord (vv 5-7). The
scheme was devised so that the lucky debtors would receive the stew-
ard (v 4) after his lord had followed through on the threat of dismiss-
ing the steward for dishonesty (vv 1, 2). On any ordinarily moral
accounting, the steward had gone from bad to worse, and yet his lord
well to the underlying idea in the Masoretic Text, which refers to creditors. The second
usage (here rendered "sins") represents "iniquities" in the Hebrew text, and is also a
straightforward, formally correspondent rendering. The point is, however, that both
usages together produce a uniquely Targumic juxtaposition of "debt" in its literal and
metaphorical senses.
39. J. Jeremias (tr. S. H. Hooke), The Parables of Jesus (London: SCM, 1976) 136-39.
40. Cf. C. F. D. Moule, ... As we forgive ... ': A Note on the Distinction between
Deserts and Capacity in the Understanding of Forgiveness," Essays in New Testament In-
terpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 278-86, 282-84.
NEUSNER & CHILTON: Uncleanness 87
praises him (v 8). Because God is the lord, what would be bribery in
the case of any ordinary master's property turns out to be purposeful
generosity. The effect of the steward's panic is to fulfill the lord's
desire,41 because he is the same as the unforgiving servant's king, the
God who forgave the sinful woman.
The usage of "debt" attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, therefore,
is initially to be understood as an Aramaism. But he appears, on the
evidence prima facie, to have exploited the metaphorical possibilities of
the term in a way which is precedented in the Targum of Isaiah, but
in a characteristically parabolic fashion. The general activity of telling
parables, of course, is well attested among early rabbis;42 at issue here
is not absolute uniqueness, but the relative distinctiveness which dis-
tinguishes any significantly historical figure from his contemporaries.
A well-established theologoumenon of early Judaism spoke not only
of debts, but of credit in respect to God.43 Jesus appears to have
exploited the latter metaphor, as well as the former (cf. Matt 6:19-21;
19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33, 34; 18:22). But it was in his adaptation
of an idiom and theology of "debt" that Jesus developed a systemic
aspect of his message as a whole.
Jesus' usage of the language of debt has provided an opportunity
to test the adequacy of Sanders's thesis. It has elsewhere been doubted
whether the aspect of repentance can be eliminated from the message
of Jesus as easily as Sanders would have it,44 but the focus here is
upon his attempt to use "wickedness" as an over-arching concept,
inclusive of impurity and sin, and more powerful than either. Jesus, as
portrayed by Sanders, "could truly be criticized for including the
wicked in his ‘kingdom.'"45 That portrayal is only possible, as we
have seen, by tendentiously reducing impurity and sin to an artificial
definition of "wickedness," as an intention to put oneself outside the
covenant. Sanders has provided us with a definition of Judaism as
"covenantal nomism," in which the law is an instrument of remaining
within a graciously bestowed covenant. But having offered that useful
insight, Sanders persists in understanding Jesus and Paul as in polar
opposition to a central tenet of Judaism: Jesus includes the wicked,
and Paul includes anyone who accepts participation in Christ.46
41. Cf. B. D. Chilton, A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible. Jesus' Understanding of the Inter-
preted Scripture of His Time: Good News Studies 6 (Wilmington: Glazier, 1984) 117-23.
42. Cf. B. D. Chilton and J. I. H. McDonald, Jesus and the Ethics of the Kingdom: Bib-
lical Foundations in Theology (London: SPCK, 1987) 31-43.
43. Cf. F. Hauck, "opheilō," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament 5 (ed.
G. Kittel, tr. G. W. Bromiley;
44. Cf. Chilton and McDonald (1987) 40, 41; Chilton "w(j frage&llion . . . . "
45. Jesus and Judaism 323.
46. The plainest exposition of Sanders's overall picture is available in "Jesus, Paul,
and Judaism," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 25.1 (ed. W. Haase;
88 Bulletin for Biblical Research 1
Where earlier scholarship portrayed the polarity as between works
and grace (utilizing the language of Paul), Sanders transposes it
between the concepts of covenant and universal inclusiveness. More-
over, Sanders pairs Jesus and Paul in contrast to early Christianity
generally, and so provides—in effect—a new account of the essence
of Christianity in the manner of Adolf von Harnack: the radical, prac-
tically antinomian teaching of the founders is rejected by Judaism and
subverted by Christianity. But such an ultimately simplistic account is
only conceivable when Jesus is set in opposition to a "Palestinian"
Judaism denatured of a concern for purity, and when Paul is placed in
the context of the same Judaism, although his natural habitat was
Hellenistic. If Judaism in the first century were a unitary, ideological
movement, and were Jesus and Paul characterized by philosophical
reflection, there would be some plausibility in Sanders's reconstruc-
tion. As matters stand, however, his Jesus and his Paul appear as refu-
gees from another century, and from a historiography which was
discarded long ago.
de Gruyter, 1982) 390-450. The similarity with the romanticism of Adolf von Harnack is
striking (cf. W. G. Kummel [tr. S. McL. Gilmour and H. C. Kee], The New Testament. The
History of the Investigation of Its Problems [