80 A History of Judaism
them on health or other scientific grounds are not convincing. It is prob-
able that these taboos applied originally only to priests and that they were
extended to ordinary Jews only quite late in the composition of the Bible.
The religious significance of the distinction between permitted and for-
bidden animals seems to lie in the distinction itself and the requirement it
imposed upon Jews to avoid foodstuffs, such as pig products, quite widely
available in the societies in which they lived. The slaughter of the mam-
mals had to be carried out in such a way as to remove most of the blood,
because ‘the blood is the life’. The notion of kosher food (kasher means
‘fit’, for consumption) has a firm biblical base, even if the details of what
is prohibited were to evolve considerably.^13
Care for preserving the body in a notional state of purity extended
beyond prohibition of the ingestion of certain food to a series of taboos
with regard to emissions related to sexual activity or skin disease. The
law treated such emissions not as wrong but as precluding some activ-
ities, most notably entry into the sanctuary of the Temple, until the trace
of impurity was deemed eradicated by the passage of time and (in some
cases) ritual ablutions. Menstruation and similar flows of blood were
considered to render a woman ritually impure for a period, and the bib-
lical text lays down the procedure for her return to purity through
bringing bird offerings:
If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her
impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, for all the
days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her
impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies during all the
days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and every-
thing on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity.
Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes,
and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. If she is cleansed of her
discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. On
the eighth day she shall take two turtle- doves or two pigeons and bring them
to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting. The priest shall offer one
for a sin- offering and the other for a burnt- offering; and the priest shall
make atonement on her behalf before the Lord for her unclean discharge.The main focus of the biblical author was the effect of female impurity
on the adult males to whom the laws are essentially addressed – ‘you
[meaning an adult male Israelite] shall not approach a woman to
uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness’ –
rather than its impact on the woman herself.^14