Dziahel GENERIC THINKING AND IDEOLOGY OF PURITY IN THE WORLDVIEW OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE PERSIAN PERIOD (6th–4th CENTURIES BC)
GENERIC THINKING AND IDEOLOGY OF PURITY IN THE WORLDVIEW OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE PERSIAN PERIOD (6th–4th CENTURIES BC)
H. V. Dziahel
PhD (History) Associate Professor International University “MITSO” 21/3, Kazintsa Str., Minsk, 220099, Belarus annadjagel@gmail.com
Generic thinking and ideology of purity are some of the key characteristics proper for the worldview of the Jewish community in Palestine during the Persian period. The book of Ezra-Nehemiah shows the strongly expressed generic thinking of the people of Israel. Hence the demand for divorce from non-Jewish wives and the abandonment of children born in mixed marriages. From the point of view of the community leadership, this was the only way of exclusion of “impurities”. The boundaries of the community were impenetrable, and their violation endangered ritual purity and the entire community. Israel is a holy seed, all other nations are an ordinary seed. The community separated from the “peoples of the earth”, strove for the ritual purity of the priests, for the fulfillment of the Law. The basis of this generic, communal worldview is the ideology of purity. In Nehemiah’s book, aliens “ritually” pollute the community through physical presence. In the book of Ezra, pollution is the desecration of “abomination”. In a later, antique period, the Jerusalem Second Temple was the core of Jewish ritual purity. Generic thinking was transformed into the concept of ritual purity, not only by the Levites and priests, but also by ordinary members of the Jewish community.
Keywords: the ideology of purity, Judea, Persian period, Achaemenid state, the Jewish community, Jewish identity
Preislamic Near East 2021, (2):47-52
https://doi.org/10.15407/preislamic2021.02.047
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