Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible
  • Cited by 5
      • Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      December 2021
      November 2021
      ISBN:
      9781009042642
      9781316517574
      9781009045650
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009042642
      Dimensions:
      (235 x 158 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.65kg, 336 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.546kg, 336 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Biblical Studies - Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, Religion
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Biblical Studies - Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, Religion
    Information

    Book description

    In this book, Yitzhaq Feder presents a novel and compelling account of pollution in ancient Israel, from its emergence as an embodied concept, rooted in physiological experience, to its expression as a pervasive metaphor in social-moral discourse. Feder aims to bring the biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence into a sustained conversation with anthropological and psychological research through comparison with notions of contagion in other ancient and modern cultural contexts. Showing how numerous interpretive difficulties are the result of imposing modern concepts on the ancient texts, he guides readers through wide-ranging parallels to biblical attitudes in ancient Near Eastern, ethnographic, and modern cultures. Feder demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary and psychological research can be applied to ancient textual evidence. He also suggests a path of synthesis that can move beyond the polarized positions which currently characterize modern academic and popular debates bearing on the roles of biology and culture in shaping human behavior.

    Awards

    Winner, 2023 Best Book on the Hebrew Bible, Biblica Archaeology Society

    Reviews

    ‘Overall, this monograph is a significant step forward for the study of priestly ritual and the concepts of purity and pollution. … [It] is a powerful argument against the scholarly creation of abstract symbolic systems, and a testament to the messiness of lived experience the religious and ritual practices that emerge from it. Such a corrective is extremely necessary, and it is one which I enthusiastically welcome.’

    Liane M. Feldman Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies

    ‘… Feder’s application of cognitive theories to biblical pollution regulations and rhetoric calls into question the ancient and continuing efforts to explain them systematically. These very important contributions to the field should be engaged by everyone working on these issues.’

    James W. Watts Source: Vetus Testamentum

    ‘Feder places the biblical purity laws in their ancient Near Eastern context while also using insights from psychology, anthropology, and cognitive linguistics to illuminate aspects of the biblical purity rules, showing how similarly/differently contagion and pollution are thought about today. Some of Feder’s arguments will be contested, but any scholar interested in this topic will need to reckon with Feder’s nuanced, thought-provoking approach. Summing Up:***’

    J. S. Kaminsky Source: Choice

    ‘… one of the best and richest books about the broad and multifaceted concept of impurity ever published.’

    Thomas Kazen Source: Review of Biblical Literature

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Page 1 of 2

    Contents

    Page 1 of 2

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.