The Animal Laws Before Kashrut: A System of Purity

[1] Although the root כ-ש-ר, k-sh-r, appears in several late biblical texts in the sense of “suitable, pleasing” (see Esther 8:5; Ecclesiastes 10:10; 11:6), it is never used in the Bible in reference to food laws; this is a rabbinic use only. 

I prefer the term “pollution” (which is often used in anthropological literature) over “impurity” (which is more common in biblical studies) because “pollution” conveys that טומאה is an active, contaminating force and not simply the negation of purity. Purity (טהרה) is the absence of pollution (טומאה), not the reverse.

For a summary of much of this research on disgust, see Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt, and Clark R. McCauley, “Disgust,” in Handbook of Emotions, ed. Jeanette M. Haviland-Jones and Michael Lewis (New York: Guildford, 2001) 637–53. Thomas Kazen suggested the relevance of this research for understanding the biblical concept of pollution in “Dirt and Disgust: Body and Morality in Biblical Purity Laws,” in Perspectives on Purity and Purification in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Baruch J. Schwartz et al. LHB/OTS 474 (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 43–64. I discuss these connections more extensively in my book, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 23–41.

For a good discussion of the relationship between these texts, including a summary of different views, see Walter Houston, Purity and Monotheism: Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law, JSOTSup 140 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 26–27, esp. 63–65. The language of the laws, including the classification of animals according to their “kind” (מן), is characteristic of P.

Jacob Milgrom offers a more detailed reconstruction of the text’s composition in Leviticus 1–16, AB 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 691–98. Slight modifications of Milgrom’s theory are offered by David P. Wright, “The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity,” in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel, ed. Gary A Anderson and Saul M. Olyan, JSOTSup 125 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 150–82, at 168; and Naphtali Meshel, “P1, P2, P3, and H: Purity, Prohibition, and the Puzzling History of Leviticus 11,” Hebrew Union College Annual 81 (2010), 1–15.

See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 656. This terminological distinction is undermined by verse 43, which appears to treat the שקץ and טמא as synonymous, but this verse may be a later addition by H, as noted above.

Verse 40 clearly presents eating such meat as a possibility (as does Leviticus 17:15 [H]), and this is confirmed by Leviticus 22:8 (H), which prohibits carrion specifically to priests and not to ordinary Israelites. (The rule in Leviticus 22:8 also appears in Ezekiel 44:31. The book of Ezekiel is closely related to P [including H], although the direction of influence is debated.) Deuteronomy 14:21, in contrast, prohibits carrion to all Israelites on the grounds that the whole people is holy, and the same rule appears in Exodus 22:30 (E).

To play out all the possibilities fully, an animal may be:

1. Permitted as food and not ritually polluting,
2. Permitted as food and ritually polluting,
3. Prohibited as food and ritually polluting,
4. Prohibited as food but not ritually polluting.

[9] The requirement to remain apart from the tabernacle and holy things while in a state of ritual pollution is not stated explicitly in this chapter, but it appears elsewhere in P.

[10] לְהַבְדִּ֕יל בֵּ֥ין הַטָּמֵ֖א וּבֵ֣ין הַטָּהֹ֑ר וּבֵ֤ין הַֽחַיָּה֙ הַֽנֶּאֱכֶ֔לֶת וּבֵין֙ הַֽחַיָּ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֖ר לֹ֥א תֵאָכֵֽל

[11] It is also possible to read the final form of the text as uncontradictory, although this reading is somewhat counterintuitive. Naphtali Meshel argues that verse 8 refers specifically to the four exceptional species that meet one criterion for permissibility but not the other (the camel, the hare, the daman, and the pig) and that verses 24–28 refer to species that meet neither criterion. (This reading interprets the ו’s in verse 26 as meaning “and” rather than “or”; the Hebrew conjunction can mean either.) Meshel further argues that in the case of prohibited marine life, the expression “you shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall abhor their carcasses” (verse 11) indicates that these species may not be eaten or touched, even though they do not pollute ritually. This would mean that animals may be ritually pure and permitted for touching (large land animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves, pure birds, and most land “swarmers”), ritually pure and prohibited for touching (marine life lacking fins and/or scales), ritually polluting and permitted for touching (large land animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves but have died on their own), or ritually polluting and prohibited for touching (large land animals that either have cloven hooves or chew their cud, but not both).

In Genesis 34, for example, Shechem is described as “polluting” Dinah by having sex with her out of wedlock. Other instances of this usage include the suspected adulteress (sotah) in Numbers 5:11–31 and the sexual prohibitions of Leviticus 18.

This usage is characteristic of the book of Ezekiel (e.g., 14:11; 20:30, 43; 39:24).

See, e.g., Leviticus 12:4, and note the warnings against polluting the tabernacle in Leviticus 15:31 and Numbers 19:13. Polluted people are excluded from the camp in Leviticus 13–14; Numbers 5:1–4; and Deuteronomy 23:11.

For an overview of the evidence, see Houston, Purity and Monotheism, 124–217. Pig consumption declined around the Iron Age, when the Israelite people emerged.

 These include prohibitions concerning milk and meat (based on Exodus 23:19; 24:26; Deuteronomy 14:21), eating the גיד הנשה, the sciatic nerve (Genesis 32:33), and not drinking non-Jewish wine (based on Daniel 1:8).

 Deuteronomy’s version of these laws is more similar to the later version of kashrut than P’s: it does not connect them closely to the laws of ritual purity (although it does use the language of purity and pollution), and it includes the separate prohibition of cooking a calf in its mother’s milk (14:21).