Chapters 12-15: Purity and Pollution, Part 2

Do you know what a chiasm is?  I didn't either.  So I'm going to guess that since you didn't know, you too had a hard time figuring out what leprosy and clothes and houses have to do with menstruation and childbirth and other bodily emissions.  With the help of some of our favorite scholars, I think we can find some pretty cool stuff going on here beneath the surface - way, way beneath the surface - of these strange and possibly unpleasant chapters.  If you haven't read them yet, stop and do it now.  I'll wait.

I.  Ritual Pollution of the Body: What Comes Out of the Body
        First, however, I echo the premise of our exploration of the dietary regulations of chapter 11: contrary to common assumption, interpreting these chapters as guidelines for health and hygiene is woefully inadequate.  Much is left out, and much is (according to this schema) just silly.  Rest at ease that I'm not going to try to make a case for this kind of interpretation.
        Abandoning the idea of health and hygiene, we find instead an overarching theme of reproduction.  Why are runny noses, skinned knees, and upset stomachs not included in this list of emissions that cause impurity?  Because only menstruation, childbirth, and reproductive or vital fluids are in close enough proximity to the boundary between life and death - these guidelines symbolically affirm life by maintaining and protecting the boundaries between life and death.  There is a deep concern that what is supposed to be inside the body should not be outside the body, and vice versa.  However, remember that these are all natural processes of life - although these types of emissions and discharges result in ritual impurity, they do not imply moral trespass.  No one is to blame, and nothing is wrong - it is simply a part of life that must be handled in certain careful, respectful ways before one can approach holy things, and it is for everyone's protection.  It is because we are human, not divine.
        But... what can skin diseases possibly have to do with this?  They are not exactly bodily emissions.  They aren't related to the reproductive cycle.  Good thing we already know better than to read Leviticus in a straight, discursively logical, line.

A chiasm is a literary device used to highlight particular details of importance, with a "ring" or parallel structure such as A, B, C ... C, B, A.  The meaning that a chiasm is used to highlight is found at the pivot of a series of parallels - in this case, whatever came after C would help explain A, B, and C.  Chapters 12-15 happen to form a chiasm in which the overarching theme is reproduction and in which skin diseases - another kind of boundary violation - are the pivot that explains it.

Pillar: Ch 12 – Reproduction: discharge of blood related to lifecycles                                        Ch 13 – Leprosy: person/garment                     Ch 14 – Leprosy: person/house Pillar: Ch 15 – Reproduction: discharge of vital fluids, men and women

This is all interesting, but we still haven't explained what moldy garments and houses with leaks have to do with the body.  The key lies in this use of chiastic structure - explaining something through something else - and points us to two questions: 1) "How are skin-garments-houses alike?" and 2) "How does this explain the surrounding life-cycle regulations?"  I know we're dangerously close to overusing these two words, but what we have here is a microcosm in which concentric boundaries point to the purpose of the regulations:

• All of these things are coverings - the house that is upon the garment that is upon the skin that is upon the body which contains life-generating substances - and coverings provide protection.  These sequences indicate that what is covered, layer over layer, is what most needs to be valued and protected. 
• All of these, whether disorders or normal functions, pose equivalent threats to the integrity of what they contain or cover because boundaries are being crossed.  A leaky roof threatens the integrity of a home, and so on and so forth. 
• All of these afflictions - discharges, skin diseases, mold - make the body vulnerable, and symbolically or actually endanger life.   

Finally, the three analogies related to skin diseases (skin-garment-house) point us directly to a fourth, which is the analogy of the tabernacle: the ultimate protective "covering" for the people.  Chapter 16 addresses the purification of the tabernacle and the High Priest precisely so that this function of protection may be maintained, and is the point at which everything that has been said in chapters 1-15 converges.

For next time, read chapters 16-17: Purification and Atonement through Blood