TIP OF THE DAY 70: Ritual/cultic law

MJ. Smith

I am adding these posts to the previous tip list L/V 10 Tip of the Day ; Here I am testing the use of comments to expand the length of the post. Please comment on how you think this might work as a way around the post length restriction.

QUESTION: How does the red heifer reflect internal Jewish interpretation differences?

ANSWER: From Broshi, Magen. Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

There are five kinds of polemics: the first is an overt argument and the halachic rule includes demonstrative elements; the second is also overt, but it is devoid of any demonstrative acts; the third has a character of a covert argument—a dispute with an unnamed opponent; the fourth is praise and encouragement to certain deeds proscribed by the Qumranites; and the fifth, a sine qua non of polemics—marking the foe.[1]

b.The Red Heifer

Another case of demonstrative act is the ceremony of the slaughthering of the Red Heifer:

If the Red Heifer refused to go forth they may not send out with her a black heifer, lest they say, ‘They slaughtered a black heifer’; nor another red heifer, lest they say, ‘They slaughtered two’… And the elders of Israel used to go forth before them on foot to the Mount of Mishah (Olives). There was a place of immersion there: and they had [first] rendered unclean the priest that should burn the Heifer, because of the Sadducees: that they should not be able to say, ‘It must be performed only by them on whom the sun has set’ (m. Par. 3.7).

The Tosefta adds another illuminating passage:

Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Zadok adds: ‘Throw!’, ‘Throw!’, ‘Throw!’, and they would answer: ‘Yea!’, ‘Yea!’, ‘Yea!’ for each matter, three times for each matter (t. Par. 3.12).

The questions of red and black heifers, and so on, have not to do with different sectarian practices, but the principles concerning the time when the performing priest becomes ritually clean were very significant bones of contention. According to the Sadducees, the priest, although he has taken a ritual bath (tebul yom, i.e. ‘he that immersed himself that day’), was ritually unclean until the evening when he is called meʾurab shemesh (i.e. ‘he on whom the sun has set’). The Pharisees, on the other hand, thought otherwise—they regarded the tebul yom priest as clean. This matter, which might seem to us to be of slight importance (after all the contention is just over few hours), was of outstanding significance to all the different Jewish movements at the end of the Second Commonwealth. The Pharisees designed this ceremony in order to stress their principles, and they went so far as to render the priest unclean in order to have him take the ritual bath and enter into the category of tebul yom. The Qumranites also attached extraordinary importance to it and it was included in the short list of the halachic rules in which they differ from Normative Judaism (4QMMT B.13–17). To the importance of this principle testifies also the story told about Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai who met a Sadducee priest who took a ritual bath in the evening in order to be meʿurab shemesh and was punished for that—he died within three days (t. Par. 3.8).

c.The Burning of the Heifer

During the burning the ceremony continues:

When the Heifer burst he stood outside the pit. He took cedarwood, hyssop and scarlet wool and said to them, ‘Is this cedarwood?’ ‘Is this cedarwood?’ ‘Is this hyssop?’ ‘Is this hyssop?’ ‘Is this scarlet wool?’ ‘Is this scarlet wool?’—asking three times for each; and they answered, ‘Yea! Yea!’—three times for each (m. Par. 3.10).

Here, to the best of our knowledge, there was not a difference in interpretation of the pentateuchal law (Num. 19:1–6) between Normative Judaism and the Qumranites. Was the purpose of this demonstrative ceremony to accentuate the fact that the performing priest was a tebul yom?

Unlike the Talmudic ruling that decrees that all kinds of wood might be used for kindling on the altar, the literature close to the Dead Sea Scrolls allows the use of only a limited list of trees. Jubilees, quite a popular book at Qumran, has a specific list:

And take caution with the wood of the offering that you do not bring wood for the offering except as such as these: cypress, bay, almond, fir, pine, cedar, juniper, fig, olive, myrtle, laurel and asphalathos (Jub. 21.12).

A similar list is found also in T. Levi 9.12 and in greater detail in the Aramaic version of this book that was found in the Cairo Genizah, an undoubtedly a sectarian composition. It seems that here too there is a demonstration aimed against those who prohibited the use of such combustibles as the hyssop and scarlet wool (but cedar is rather mentioned in the sectarian compositions).[2]

QUESTION: What is the common thread between the scape-goat, the red heifer, and the living bird dipped in blood?

SOFTWARE: This is an example of how important pattern recognition is in Biblical interpretation. Mastery of the search, especially against the labels e.g. promises, commands, questions, is a significant tool for identifying patterns.

ANSWER: From Edersheim, Alfred. The Temple, Its Ministry and Services as They Were at the Time of Jesus Christ. London: James Clarke & Co., 1959.

The Scape-goat, the Red Heifer, and the Living Bird dipped in Blood

And here there is a remarkable analogy between three sacrifices, which, indeed, form a separate group. The scape-goat, which was to remove the personal guilt of the Israelites—not their theocratic alienation from the sanctuary; the red heifer, which was to take away the defilement of death, as that which stood between God and man; and the ‘living bird,’ dipped in ‘the water and the blood,’ and then ‘let loose in the field at the purification from leprosy, which symbolised the living death of personal sinfulness, were all, either wholly offered, or in their essentials completed outside the sanctuary. In other words, the Old Testament dispensation had confessedly within its sanctuary no real provision for the spiritual wants to which they symbolically pointed; their removal lay outside its sanctuary and beyond its symbols. Spiritual death, as the consequence of the fall, personal sinfulness, and personal guilt lay beyond the reach of the Temple-provision, and pointed directly to Him who was to come. Every death, every case of leprosy, every Day of Atonement, was a call for His advent, as the eye, enlightened by faith, would follow the goat into the wilderness, or watch the living bird as, bearing the mingled blood and water, he winged his flight into liberty, or read in the ashes sprung from the burning of the red heifer the emblem of purification from spiritual death. Hence, also, the manifest internal connection between these rites. In the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement and of the purified leper, the offering was twofold, one being slain, the other sent away alive, while the purification from leprosy and from death had also many traits in common.[3]

[1] Magen Broshi, Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 212.

[2] Magen Broshi, Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 213–215.

[3] Alfred Edersheim, The Temple, Its Ministry and Services as They Were at the Time of Jesus Christ. (London: James Clarke & Co., 1959), 349–350.

Patti Brouillette