Table of Contents

I. Setting the Stage: 1. Introduction; 2. What is pollution?; II. Embodying Pollution Through the Life Cycle; 3. The 'touch' of leprosy: diagnosing disease between language and experience; 4. The missing ritual for healing skin disease; 5. Diagnosis sin; 6. Naturalizing disease: pollution as a casual theory; B. The soul: from the table to the grave: 7. You are what you eat: impure food and the soul; 8. Death and the polluting spirit; C. Mating: 9. Sexual pollutions: the moralized body; 10. Gender fluidity and the danger of leaky manhood; 11. Did women need to wash? III. Images, Codes and Discourse: 12. Contagious holiness; 13. Conclusion: naturalizing a religious concept.

Promotional Information

A novel account of pollution in the Hebrew Bible, from its embodied origins, to its metaphorical expression in moral discourse.

About the Author

Yitzhaq Feder is a lecturer at the University of Haifa. His research integrates textual study with advances in psychological and anthropological research. He has received numerous prizes, including the 2012 SBL David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Innovation in Biblical Studies. His most recent research focuses on biblical and ancient Near Eastern notions of taboo and their implications for understanding the emergence and historical development of morality.