Blending the Seemingly Unblendable: Purity in the Book of Malachi (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ritual purity and defilement: What place does it have
When Women Speak... webzine, 2018
This paper discusses the nature of ritual purity and how it functions within Islam, particularly in relationship to the daily life of Muslim women. A look at the purity code in Leviticus and at purity issues in the New Testament offers a background to the attitude of Jesus and the New Testament writers to ritual purity. The paper suggests that the major New Testament concerns about purity and defilement were to do with the clean and unclean food laws, which together with circumcision, created a (horizontal) barrier between Jews and Gentiles that needed to be removed. However the ritual purity code which governs our (vertical) approach to God finds its fulfilment in baptism into Jesus' atoning death: and in Jesus, purity rather than defilement, becomes contagious. A response to Muslim women's conversations around ritual purity can affirm its importance, and point to its fulfilment in the Messiah.
This article presents some perspectives about Yahweh and ethics from Malachi’s criticism of the rituals of the temple. Malachi’s theological and ethical uniqueness is observed somehow most clearly in the preponderance of negative emphasis the prophetic book places on temple rituals and the way the language of the cult dominates its analysis of malpractices. Prophetic criticisms of temple rituals, as this article demonstrates, lies at the heart of the controversy between the prophets and the priest; namely the role of cult and ethics in the religion of Ancient Israel. While scholars have yet to fully explain the phenomenon of criticism of the cult in prophetic writings, this article brings the prophets and the priests closer by proposing that the one way to explain the discrepancy is to advocate that these prophets could not see the importance of rituals for the improvement of ethical life. If the cult is understood to be the vertical dimension of the Law and ethics its horizontal dimension, one would notice that these dimensions go together, both are expressions of God’s will. When the vertical dimension (worship, offering, sacrifice) is experiencing some degree of dysfunction, the horizontal dimension (social justice, etc) will be affected. Malachi’s emphases on the temple obviously help one to see that there was nothing wrong with the cult unless it was not used appropriately and effectively to enhance the ethical life of the people as an essential component of the larger framework of the covenant relationship that Yahweh had with them as his people. The article thus emphasizes some underlying theological reflection on the uniqueness of Malachi’s oracles about Yahweh and ethics for faith communities.
The Dual Strategy of Rabbinic Purity Legislation
Journal for the Study of Judaism, 39, 2008
An examination of Tannaic sources uncovers a dual strategy regarding the bounds of non-priestly purity. On the one hand, it was common during the period of the Second Temple and thereafter to exercise extreme caution in keeping impurity away even from the profane. On the other hand, however, the sages acted overtly to maintain a clear distinction between the theoretical-biblical concept of ritual impurity, which was steadily limited to the sacred, and the much more stringent customs they lived by. Th e article argues that, contrary to what has been accepted in the literature, there never existed any disagreement on this issue in the rabbinic world.
[book review of:] Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature / by Moshe Blidstein
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
This book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors thro...