|
by
Doug Ward |
Jesus was born into a Jewish world where life centered around the
teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures. Not surprisingly, then, the Gospel writers
often reference those Scriptures as they chronicle the events of Jesus' life.
For
instance, Luke relates that when Jesus was an infant, his mother Mary and her
husband Joseph "brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the
Lord" (Lk 2:22). Luke explains that the family carried out two Torah
commandments during their visit to the Temple. First, since Jesus was Mary's
firstborn son, they paid the redemption price of five shekels for him (Lk 2:23;
Nu 18:15-16). The practice of redeeming the firstborn was a reminder that God
had spared the firstborn of the Israelites on the first Passover when he
brought them out of Egypt. The redemption price satisfied God's claim upon the
life of a firstborn male Israelite.
Second,
they brought the sacrifice required to conclude the forty-day period of ritual
impurity that Mary entered when she gave birth to Jesus (Lk 2:24; Lev 12).
During a time of ritual impurity, one was not allowed to worship at the Temple.
One became ritually impure through contact with a corpse, contracting certain
types of skin diseases, or having a genital discharge of blood, semen, or pus
(Lev 11-15).
|
Understanding
Ritual Impurity |
The Bible's ritual purity rules were not mainly matter of hygiene
or public health. They were also not a matter of sin. Activities that led to
ritual impurity-things like attending a funeral, having sexual intercourse, or
giving birth-were normal activities in which people should engage at
appropriate times. Occasionally being ritually impure was simply a part of life
and did not need to be avoided. One just had to take the proper steps to remove
the impurity before worshiping at the Temple.
Biblical
scholars explain that the various kinds of ritual impurity all have a
connection to death or human mortality. In the case of contact with a corpse or
animal carcass, this is obvious. A skin disease gave the appearance of death
and decay. During childbirth the lives of both mother and child hung in the
balance. One message of the ritual purity rules is that death and decay were to
have no contact with the God of life who was present at the Temple. Coming into
the presence of the holy God was a privilege not to be taken lightly.
Luke
states that the visit of Jesus' family to Jerusalem occurred "when the
time came for their purification" (Lk 2;22). The fact that Luke refers to
"their purification" rather than "her purification" raises
questions, since Leviticus 12 only mentions a mother's ritual impurity after
childbirth. Was the baby also ritually impure? We can understand why the text
does not address this question directly, since infants would not be attempting
to travel to the Temple to worship.
We
might infer from Leviticus that a baby would pick up ritual impurity by coming
into contact with blood during the birth process. (This assumes, of course,
that the baby is already a separate individual-and not just an extension of the
mother-before the birth.) There is evidence that at least some Jews in Jesus'
day believed that a newborn infant was ritually impure.1
In
Luke 2:22, then, Luke may be implying that Jesus was ritually impure during the
initial weeks of his life. Such a conclusion is consistent with the doctrine
that Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine, and that he voluntarily
humbled himself when he came as a human being (Php 2:5-8).The early church
father Origen of Alexandria interpreted Luke 2:22 this way, pointing to this
verse as evidence that Jesus had a real human body.2
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Defeating
the Forces of Death |
The topic of ritual impurity arises frequently in the Gospels,
which describe Jesus' encounters with people who had skin diseases (Lk 5:12-16;
17:11-19), a woman who had been bleeding for many years (Lk 8:43-48), and
people who had recently died (Lk 7:11-17; 8:49-56; Jn 11). In each case Jesus
healed the afflicted person, completely removing the source of ritual impurity.
These
great miracles testified to the messianic identity of Jesus. In removing a
serious skin disease, he followed in the footsteps of Moses (Nu 12:13) and
Elisha (2 Ki 5). In raising the dead, he was like Elijah (1 Ki 17:17-22) and
Elisha (2 Ki 4:18-37). Based on passages like Ezekiel 36:25 ("I will
sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses"),
people anticipated that ritual impurity would be removed in the messianic age.
With his healings, Jesus was ushering in the messianic age (Lk 7:18-23).
As
noted above, ritual impurity symbolized death and human mortality. Jesus'
removal of the causes of ritual impurity shows that he came to solve the
problem of human mortality by conquering death and all the forces of death.
When the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years touched the fringes of
Jesus' tallit, a power was triggered that immediately stopped the flow
of blood (Lk 8:43-48). This was "a force of holiness that opposes the
forces of impurity."3
Matthew
reports that when Jesus died on the cross, "the tombs were also opened.
And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out
of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared
to many" (Mt 27:52-53). Normally a death was a major source of ritual
impurity, but Jesus' death produced life and resurrection instead.
As a
human being, Jesus occasionally entered a state of ritual impurity along with
other first-century Jews. But as the divine Messiah he solved the problem of
human mortality, defeating all sources of impurity, including death itself.
1See Chapter 2 of
Matthew Thiessen's Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels' Portrayal of
Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism, Baker Academic, 2020.
2See Homily 14 of his Homilies
on Luke.
3Jesus
and the Forces of Death, p. 92.
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