defilement

135:1.1John had no school from which to grad­u­ate at the age of four­teen, but his par­ents had se­lected this as the ap­pro­pri­ate year for him to take the for­mal Nazarite vow. Ac­cord­ingly, Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth took their son to En­gedi, down by the Dead Sea. This was the south­ern head­quar­ters of the Nazarite broth­er­hood, and there the lad was duly and solemnly in­ducted into this or­der for life. Af­ter these cer­e­monies and the mak­ing of the vows to ab­stain from all in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks, to let the hair grow, and to re­frain from touch­ing the dead, the fam­ily pro­ceeded to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, be­fore the tem­ple, John com­pleted the mak­ing of the of­fer­ings which were re­quired of those tak­ing Nazarite vows.

135:2.1Af­ter an ill­ness of sev­eral months Zach­a­rias died in July, A.D. 12, when John was just past eigh­teen years of age. This was a time of great em­bar­rass­ment to John since the Nazarite vow for­bade con­tact with the dead, even in one’s own fam­ily. Al­though John had en­deav­ored to com­ply with the re­stric­tions of his vow re­gard­ing con­tam­i­na­tion by the dead, he doubted that he had been wholly obe­di­ent to the re­quire­ments of the Nazarite or­der; there­fore, af­ter his fa­ther’s burial he went to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, in the Nazarite cor­ner of the women’s court, he of­fered the sac­ri­fices re­quired for his cleans­ing.

185:0.3Though Pi­late con­ducted much of Je­sus’ ex­am­i­na­tion within the prae­to­rium halls, the pub­lic trial was held out­side on the steps lead­ing up to the main en­trance. This was a con­ces­sion to the Jews, who re­fused to en­ter any gen­tile build­ing where leaven might be used on this day of prepa­ra­tion for the Pass­over. Such con­duct would not only ren­der them cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean and thereby de­bar them from par­tak­ing of the af­ter­noon feast of thanks­giv­ing but would also ne­ces­si­tate their sub­jec­tion to pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies af­ter sun­down, be­fore they would be el­i­gi­ble to par­take of the Pass­over sup­per.

185:0.4Al­though these Jews were not at all both­ered in con­science as they in­trigued to ef­fect the ju­di­cial mur­der of Je­sus, they were nonethe­less scrupu­lous re­gard­ing all these mat­ters of cer­e­mo­nial clean­ness and tra­di­tional reg­u­lar­ity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the rec­og­ni­tion of high and holy obli­ga­tions of a di­vine na­ture while giv­ing metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to things of tri­fling im­por­tance to hu­man wel­fare in both time and eter­nity.

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

84:4.8The so-called mod­esty of women re­spect­ing their cloth­ing and the ex­po­sure of the per­son grew out of the deadly fear of be­ing ob­served at the time of a men­strual pe­riod. To be thus de­tected was a griev­ous sin, the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo. Un­der the mores of olden times, ev­ery woman, from ado­les­cence to the end of the child­bear­ing pe­riod, was sub­jected to com­plete fam­ily and so­cial quar­an­tine one full week each month. Ev­ery­thing she might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was “de­filed.” It was for long the cus­tom to bru­tally beat a girl af­ter each monthly pe­riod in an ef­fort to drive the evil spirit out of her body. But when a woman passed be­yond the child­bear­ing age, she was usu­ally treated more con­sid­er­ately, be­ing ac­corded more rights and priv­i­leges. In view of all this it was not strange that women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks held the men­stru­at­ing woman as one of the three great causes of de­file­ment, the other two be­ing pork and gar­lic.

84:4.6Child­bear­ing was once gen­er­ally looked upon as ren­der­ing a woman dan­ger­ous and un­clean. And many tribal mores de­creed that a mother must un­dergo ex­ten­sive pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies sub­se­quent to the birth of a child. Ex­cept among those groups where the hus­band par­tic­i­pated in the ly­ing-in, the ex­pec­tant mother was shunned, left alone. The an­cients even avoided hav­ing a child born in the house. Fi­nally, the old women were per­mit­ted to at­tend the mother dur­ing la­bor, and this prac­tice gave ori­gin to the pro­fes­sion of mid­wifery. Dur­ing la­bor, scores of fool­ish things were said and done in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate de­liv­ery. It was the cus­tom to sprin­kle the new­born with holy wa­ter to pre­vent ghost in­ter­fer­ence.

122:9.1Moses had taught the Jews that ev­ery first-born son be­longed to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sac­ri­fice as was the cus­tom among the hea­then na­tions, such a son might live pro­vided his par­ents would re­deem him by the pay­ment of five shekels to any au­tho­rized priest. There was also a Mo­saic or­di­nance which di­rected that a mother, af­ter the pass­ing of a cer­tain pe­riod of time, should pre­sent her­self (or have some­one make the proper sac­ri­fice for her) at the tem­ple for pu­rifi­ca­tion. It was cus­tom­ary to per­form both of these cer­e­monies at the same time. Ac­cord­ingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem in per­son to pre­sent Je­sus to the priests and ef­fect his re­demp­tion and also to make the proper sac­ri­fice to in­sure Mary’s cer­e­mo­nial pu­rifi­ca­tion from the al­leged un­clean­ness of child­birth.

122:10.2Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small sav­ings were rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing. Even at the time of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies at the tem­ple, Joseph deemed him­self suf­fi­ciently poor to war­rant his of­fer­ing for Mary two young pi­geons as Moses had di­rected for the pu­rifi­ca­tion of moth­ers among the poor.