Rolling in the (Waters of the) Deep: Purification and Water Imagery in Early Jewish Literature

Abstract

Scholars such as Jonathan Klawans have distinguished between two types of impurity described in priestly texts: ritual and moral. The former, which denotes bodily pollution, occurs as a result of natural human processes (i.e., birth, death, genital discharge) and can render one temporarily unfit for temple worship, though it bears no clear ethical implications. Conversely, moral impurity refers to the more permanent defilement brought about by ethical transgressions (i.e., murder, apostasy, adultery), and has the capacity to stain the land of Israel itself, in addition to threatening the sanctity of the temple. However, this separation between ritual and moral dimensions of pollution are not absolute, as even Klawans allows that these categories are rather “pliable” (and to a certain extent, intertwined.) This thesis explores the concept of purity (both ritual and moral) in early Jewish literature, through a detailed analysis of water and cleansing language. In particular, I emphasise conceptual links between water for a) ritual washing and b) moral cleansing or sanctification. In this way, I highlight the flexibility of scholarly purity categories, demonstrating how purification can often be understood “holistically,” as encompassing both ritual and moral dimensions. I also illustrate how water seems to embody liminal tensions, oscillating between thresholds of purity and pollution, as well as primordial chaos and cosmic order. The thesis is divided into two major sections: Part One focuses on representations of water in the Hebrew Bible, whereas Part Two examines non-canonical texts from the Second Temple period.