What’s Wrong with Contagious Purity? Debunking the Myth that Jesus Never Became Ritually Impure

How to cite this article: Joshua N. Tilton, “What’s Wrong with Contagious Purity? Debunking the Myth that Jesus Never Became Ritually Impure,” Jerusalem Perspective (2024) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/29371/].

Somewhere along the line it became popular among the Bible commentary writing crowd to insist that Jesus was uniquely immune to ritual impurity. Instead of Jesus becoming impure when he touched impure persons, they claim, the impure persons became pure.^[50] But implicit in this claim is a false dichotomy. Why does Jesus have to remain pure in order for the person he touched to be healed? Anyone who understands how ritual purity actually worked would say, even though Jesus became impure when he touched impure persons, the sources of their impurity disappeared. When Jesus touched the man with scale disease, the man’s scale disease disappeared (Matt. 8:3 ∥ Mark 1:41-42 ∥ Luke 5:13).^[51] When the hemorrhaging woman touched Jesus, her blood flow ceased (Matt. 9:22 ∥ Mark 5:29 ∥ Luke 8:44). When Jesus touched the bier of a widow’s dead son, her boy came to life (Luke 7:14-15). None of these stories require us to suppose that Jesus was immune to ritual impurity. Jesus typically healed by touch,^[52] and the touching of ritually impure persons with severe impurities necessarily caused Jesus to become ritually impure.

More recently, some scholars have claimed that Jesus reversed the normal functions of ritual purity. Jesus supposedly neutralized the contagiousness of ritual impurity and activated his personal purity in such a way that he could spread it to others. In essence, Jesus allegedly concocted a never-before-imagined concept of “contagious purity,” which for some reason many of Jesus’ contemporaries were supposedly willing to take seriously, even though it contradicted everything the Torah teaches about ritual purity.

To understand why the notions of Jesus’ immunity from ritual impurity and his contagious purity are so preposterous, one needs to have a basic understanding of how ritual purity functioned in ancient Jewish society.^[53]

Conclusion

The view that Jesus could not be affected by impurity and that Jesus was able to spread his purity to others is based on faulty assumptions and invalid inferences. Theologians wrongly assume that if Jesus could have experienced impurity, this would in some way diminish his divinity or undermine his sinlessness. New Testament scholars wrongly confuse purity with holiness and therefore draw all sorts of false conclusions about the purpose of the Temple and how purity functioned. Others repeatedly interpret the sources’ silence with regard to purity issues as proof that Jesus was indifferent or impervious to impurity. Better awareness of what purity is and how it functioned in ancient Jewish society leads to more solid conclusions about Jesus, namely that in order to release people from conditions that kept them in a state of chronic impurity, Jesus willingly made himself impure.

While some observers may have thought it was Jesus’ attitude toward impurity that was unusual, it is more likely the case that it was Jesus’ ability to heal these impure individuals that his contemporaries found remarkable. Average people in Jesus’ society probably did avoid contracting ritual impurity from people with scale disease or abnormal discharges, but that may be because most people in Jesus’ society were not able to heal such persons by their touch. Therefore, it is unwise to draw conclusions on the basis of these healings regarding Jesus’ attitude toward impurity: whether he was strict or lenient or indifferent. However strict or lenient Jesus may have been with regard to purity in its own right, he placed love of neighbor over personal purity concerns. It is those cases where Jesus shows caution with regard to impurity and those instances where Jesus recommends participating in purification rites to others or participates in them himself that offer a clearer glimpse of the value Jesus placed on purity and the validity he attributed to the normal means of purification.

Although the notion that Jesus was immune to impurity and that his purity was contagious sounds theologically deep, it is spiritually shallow. It is an amoral doctrine that imparts no spiritual values. There is no ethical lesson to be drawn from the idea that Jesus possessed these anti-Torah powers. On the other hand, there are great spiritual depths to be plumbed from realizing that Jesus was willing to give up his own ritual purity for the sake of helping others in need. It is a lesson in compassion and humility that Jesus’ followers (or his admirers) can emulate. It can embolden us to not let religious scruples stand in the way of doing good to people who are different from ourselves or with whom we disagree. It can inspire us to reach out with the hand of friendship toward those whose ways we find strange or foreign. It can teach us to care less about how our religiosity affects ourselves and to care more about how our religiosity affects others.

[*] Music in the Audio JP files is excerpted from the Hebrew song Moshe written by Immanuel Zamir in a recording sung by Yaffa Yarkoni obtained from Wikimedia Commons.

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• ^[1] See Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23. ↩
• ^[2] Ibid., 25. ↩
• ^[3] Another human activity foreign to the divine nature is eating and drinking. But since human beings generally cannot go for long periods of time without food and drink, the prohibition of eating and drinking in order to enter God’s presence was untenable. Nevertheless, there was a separate “purity” system that regulated the diet of God’s holy people, the laws of kashrut, that restricted the kinds of animals Israelites were permitted to eat. We also find that certain holy individuals fasted for longer or shorter periods before entering God’s holy presence. Thus Moses refrained from food and drink before meeting God on Mount Sinai. A Jewish source (Avot de-Rabbi Natan, Version A, §1 [ed. Schechter, 1]) states that the reason for Moses’ fasting was to allow the digestive processes to purify his body from all foods (בשביל שימרק מכל אכילה ושתיה שהיה במעיו [“in order that he might be purged from all the food and drink that was in his bowels”]). In other words, Moses’ digestive system had to be flushed out before being admitted into the divine presence. Hence we find that the Israelites in the desert encampment around the Tabernacle had to take precautions against offending the divine presence by defecating outside the camp (Deut. 23:13-14).
  
  An idea similar to the notion about Moses’ fasting is found in Mark 7:18-19, where Jesus claims that whatever enters through the mouth gets digested and goes out into the sewer, thus purifying all the foods from the body. Hence Jesus declared it is not what goes into a person but that which comes out that defiles. This is true, both in the literal and the moral sense. Just as bodily secretions (genital discharges and scale disease eruptions) make a person ritually impure, the evil impulses of the heart manifest themselves outside and make a person morally “impure.”
  
  Puzzlingly, in an article we will discuss in further detail in the course of this discussion, Tom Holmén attributed to Jesus the opposite view: “...it is not so much what comes outside a person that can defile” (Tom Holmén, “A Contagious Purity: Jesus’ Inverse Strategy for Eschatological Cleanliness,” in Jesus Research: An International Perspective: The First Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Prague 2005 [ed. James H. Charlesworth and Petr Pokorný; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009], 199-229, esp. 213). Perhaps his misquoting of Mark 7:15 is due to the accidental omission of the crucial preposition “from”: “it is not so much what comes from outside a person that can defile”? ↩
• ^[4] There were certain materials, such as stone, that were impervious to impurity. Also, Gentiles were not subject to the laws of ritual purity and were in that sense “immune,” since they were not required to purify themselves. But neither were they admitted into holy places. ↩
• ^[5] In his article “A Contagious Purity,” Holmén admitted (211) that “Jesus...seems to be a holy man without a correspondent in the living representatives of Israel’s holiness.” Such an admission should make us suspicious that Jesus actually fulfilled a role that cannot be accommodated to Second Temple Judaism. ↩
• ^[6] In fact, denying that Jesus was susceptible to ritual impurity risks denying Jesus’ humanity through the denial of Jesus’ Jewishness. For if we are to take seriously the words of the creed that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary,” then we cannot escape the implication that Jesus was a human only as a Jew. Since it was Gentiles who were exempt (or immune) from the laws of ritual purity, claiming that Jesus was immune to impurity has the dangerous effect of making Jesus out to be a Gentile, thereby denying one of the basic facts of his humanity. ↩
• ^[7] In fact, the notion that Jesus bore the impurities of others should be easy for Christians to accept. After all, Christians believe their guilt was transferred to Jesus, who bore their sins on the cross. If Jesus could bear another’s guilt to make them moral, why can he not have borne another’s impurity to make them pure? ↩
• ^[8] See Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 210. ↩
• ^[9] Ibid., 211. ↩
• ^[10] Ibid., 216. One wonders how an impurity incapable of defiling can be regarded as impure. This “inverse strategy” has the effect of emptying words of their meaning. ↩
• ^[11] This is not an exhaustive list of Holmén’s arguments. Here we focus on those refuted by a proper understanding of purity and holiness and the distinctions and interactions between the two. ↩
• ^[12] Ibid., 206. ↩
• ^[13] See Shmuel Safrai, “The Temple,” in The Jewish People in the First Century (2 vols.; CRINT I.1-2; ed. Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern; Amsterdam: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 2:865-907, esp. 877. ↩
• ^[14] Indeed, Holmén (“A Contagious Purity,” 207 n. 39) conceded that Jesus may have purified himself on these occasions. ↩
• ^[15] See Chana Safrai, “Jesus’ Devout Jewish Parents and Their Child Prodigy,” Jerusalem Perspective 40 (1993): 10-11, 14-15 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2673/], esp. 10 under the subheading “Two More Ceremonies.” ↩
• ^[16] See Joseph Frankovic’s response to a JP reader’s comment, “I am depressed by the situation of Jewish women!” Readers’ Perspective, Jerusalem Perspective 48 (1995): 8-9 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/4171/]. ↩
• ^[17] Josephus described John’s baptism in the following manner:

  ...he [i.e., John the Baptist—JP] was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practice justice towards their fellows and piety towards God, and so doing to join him in baptism. In his view this [i.e., righteous living—JP] was a necessary preliminary if baptism was to be acceptable to God. They must not employ it to gain pardon for whatever sins they had committed, but as a purification [ἁγνείᾳ] of the body implying that the soul was already thoroughly cleansed by right behaviour. (Ant. 18:117; emphasis ours)

  Translation adapted from that of Louis H. Feldman, trans., Josephus: Jewish Antiquities Books 18-19 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 81-83. ↩

• ^[18] See R. Steven Notley, “John’s Baptism of Repentance,” Jerusalem Perspective (2004) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/6137/]. ↩
• ^[19] Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 206. ↩
• ^[20] The less credible Markan and Matthean versions of the story describe a whole crowd of people being present inside the house (Matt. 9:25; Mark 5:40). All of these people would have been ritually impure from being in the same house as a corpse, so Jesus would not have needed to worry about spreading impurity to them if they had been present.
  
  Kazen stated that Luke’s version “gives the impression that the mourners are inside,” but this is true only if Luke is read through the lens of Mark. Read on its own terms, the statement “they were all weeping and mourning her” (Luke 8:52) refers to no one other than the girl’s parents and Jesus’ disciples, since Luke’s version of the story makes no mention of the presence of other mourners. See Thomas Kazen, “Jesus and the Zavah: Implications for Interpreting Mark,” in Purity, Holiness, and Identity in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Memory of Susan Haber (ed. Carl S. Ehrlich, Anders Runesson, and Eileen Schuller; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 112-143, esp. 123. ↩
• ^[21] See David N. Bivin, “Jesus and the Oral Torah: The Hem of His Garment,” Jerusalem Perspective 7 (1988), 1-2 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2133/], under the subheading “Hebrew to Greek”; idem, “The New International Jesus,” Jerusalem Perspective 56 (1999): 20-24 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/5197/]; JP Staff Writer, “Tangled up in Techēlet: Tzitzit (Ritual Tassels) in the Time of Jesus,” Jerusalem Perspective (2023) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/27237/]. ↩
• ^[22] See Ze’ev Safrai, “Halakha in the Gospels,” Jerusalem Perspective (2024) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/28876/], under the heading “Appendix 2: Tzitzit.” ↩
• ^[23] The reptile’s carcass is explicitly stated to be ritually defiling in b. Hul. 127a. ↩
• ^[24] See Geza Vermes, “Ḥanina ben Dosa: A Controversial Galilean Saint from the First Century of the Christian Era,” Journal of Jewish Studies 23.1 (1972): 28-50, esp. 36. ↩
• ^[25] On the defilement caused by Gentile residences, see John 18:28 (cf. Acts 10:28); m. Ohol. 18:7; t. Ohol. 18:11; Semaḥot 4:13 (ed. Zlotnick, 9). ↩
• ^[26] On the contrast between the centurion’s moral worthiness and his ritual fitness, see JP Staff Writer, “Two Neglected Aspects of the Centurion’s Slave Pericope,” Jerusalem Perspective (2024) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/28673/]. ↩
• ^[27] The only time purity issues raised the eyebrows of observers is in relation to eating. In Mark 7:1-2 (∥ Matt. 15:1-2) certain Pharisees note that Jesus' disciples did not purify their hands before eating, and in Luke 11:38 a certain Pharisee notes that Jesus did not immerse before the meal. Eating common food in a state of ritual purity was not a religious requirement, but it was the practice of certain very strict Pharisees known as ḥaverim. That certain Pharisees expected Jesus and his disciples would adhere to the highest standards of purity observance suggests that he was perceived as generally following purity observances. If Jesus had been regarded as lax toward purity, his practice of eating without ritual handwashing would not have evoked surprise.
  
  On the public perception that Jesus was punctilious about purity, see Safrai, “Halakha in the Gospels,” under the subheading “Section 2: Literary Contexts: b. Halakha in Debates: 14. Violating the prohibition on eating with a tax collector (Matt. 9:11 ∥ Mark 2:16 ∥ Luke 5:30; 15:2).” ↩
• ^[28] Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 206. ↩
• ^[29] It is true that one of the men Jesus healed from scale disease did not show himself to the priest. Instead, he came back to give thanks to Jesus (Luke 17:15-16). This man had every reason to be reluctant to show himself to a priest, since as a Samaritan he would not have recognized the authority of the Jerusalem priesthood. As a Samaritan this man’s position was also ambiguous from the point of view of Jewish halakhah. It may be that Jesus decided that the Samaritan man did not have to follow the Jewish rules of ritual purification. ↩
• ^[30] Ibid., 203. ↩
• ^[31] Thus one of the main functions of the rabbis was to make determinations about whether something was pure or impure. People often could not tell on their own and had to rely on the opinion of experts. ↩
• ^[32] Pace Holmén (“A Contagious Purity,” 204), who takes the narrative’s silence regarding the zavah’s purification as proof that her reintegration into society was a fait accompli. ↩
• ^[33] Holmén, referring to the widow’s son and the synagogue ruler’s daughter, demurred that “It is difficult to imagine that Jesus understood himself to have raised these people from the dead but not to have restored their purity as well” (ibid.). He went on to ask: If a corpse, being raised to life, ceased to be a corpse, “would not its impurity also cease to be?” inferring that it would. But just this scenario is discussed in rabbinic literature with the opposite answer:

  הנוגע במת, נוגע במת טמא [ו]אין מת עצמו טמא נוגע במת טמא [ו]אין בנה של שונמית טמא אמרו בנה של שונמית כשמת כל שהיה עמו בבית טמא היה טומאת שבעה וכשחיה היה טהור לקודש חזרו ונגעו בו [ו]טמאוהו הם הרי זה אומר מטמאיך לא טמאוני ואתה טומאתני.‏
  

  The one touching a dead body [Num. 19:11]. One touching a dead body is impure, so is not the dead body itself impure? One touching a dead body is impure, so was not the Shunammite’s son impure? They [i.e., the rabbinic authorities—JP] said, “When the Shunammite son died, all that was with him in the house was impure with a seven-day impurity. And when he came to life, he was pure for holy things. But then they [i.e., the things with him in the house—JP] touched him again and they made him impure. Behold, this one said, ‘What made you pure [i.e., my corpse—JP] did not make me impure, but you [who are contaminated with my corpse impurity—JP] are the cause of my impurity!’” (Sifre Num. Zuta, Ḥuqat 15:11 [ed. Horowitz, 305])

  The rabbinic discussion concerns the purity issues involved in the case of the Shunammite woman’s son whom Elisha restored to life (2 Kgs. 4:18-37). According to their view, the impurity generated by a corpse does not disappear simply by the removal of the corpse (in this case via the corpse returning to life). And why should it? Removing a corpse by the usual means (i.e., burial) did not automatically purify the house or the people and objects within it. The passage of time and purification rituals were required to restore those that had been defiled by the corpse to purity. The mere fact that the corpse of the Shunammite woman’s son came back to life did not erase the fact that everything in the house had been defiled by a corpse. Hence, although the son who came back to life no longer possessed the impurity of a corpse, his body was defiled by a one-day impurity from contact with the objects in the house that bore the seven-day impurity from the presence of a corpse.

  Thus, what Holmén found difficult to imagine—that if a corpse was restored to life its impurity would continue to exist—the sages accepted as a matter of course. Once again, from the sources’ silence Holmén drew the wrong conclusion.

  On the rabbinic discussion in Sifre Zuta, see Vered Noam, “Ritual Impurity in Tannaitic Literature: Two Opposing Perspectives,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 1.1 (2010): 65-103, esp. 89-91. ↩

• ^[34] Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 212. ↩
• ^[35] Hence at the beginning of the instructions for the purification for people who had scale disease we read, “This shall be the ritual for the person with scale disease on the day of his purification” (Lev. 14:2), the first step of which is examination by a priest to determine that the scale disease has indeed disappeared. Only then, “on the day of his purification,” can the seven-day waiting period and the rites of purification begin. Likewise, regarding a man with an abnormal discharge we read, “When the zav is pure from his discharge, he will count seven days...” (Lev. 15:13), only after which he can immerse himself and be pure. So, too, in the case of the zavah we read, “If she is purified from her discharge, she will count seven days and afterward she will be pure.” In each case there is a “purification” (or cessation) of the contaminating condition, followed by a waiting period and purification rites that are required for the person to be pure. ↩
• ^[36] Cf. Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 103. ↩
• ^[37] Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 223. ↩
• ^[38] Ibid. ↩
• ^[39] Since purity was the default state of persons and objects, purity did not really require a “source.” Purification could generally be obtained wherever there was a sufficient quantity of living water. In the case of corpse impurity and impurity from Gentile lands, sprinkling with the ashes of the red heifer was necessary, but as these were prepared away from the Temple, it is clear that the Temple was not the source of purification from these impurities.
  
  Holmén (ibid., 222-223 n. 104) seems to have misunderstood Safrai’s statement that “For Diaspora Jews this visit [i.e., to the Temple] was almost the only means of purification, and a specific time and place were allotted for the cleansing of the ritually unclean” (Safrai, “The Temple,” 877). Safrai simply meant that the Temple was the most convenient place for pilgrims from distant lands to obtain sprinkling with the ashes of the red heifer. As Safrai wrote elsewhere, “...a Jew who treads upon foreign soil becomes impure, and must undergo purification rites upon his return to Israel. Until he does so he may not partake of sacrificial meals or enter the sanctuary.” See Shmuel Safrai, “The Land of Israel in Tannaitic Halacha,” in Das Land Israel in biblischer Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 201-215, esp. 206. ↩
• ^[40] Hence people with scale disease were forbidden to enter Jerusalem. ↩
• ^[41] Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 223 n. 104. ↩
• ^[42] See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 30, 35, 41. ↩
• ^[43] Nevertheless, it is clear that such individuals had to be physically pure before bringing these sacrifices to the Temple. That is why the purification sacrifices were brought only after waiting periods and ablutions had been completed. ↩
• ^[44] Holmén, “A Contagious Purity,” 223. Note yet another argument from silence! For nowhere does Jesus claim that the Temple is ineffective or obsolete, only that its administrators were corrupt and its existence was endangered. ↩
• ^[45] So far, Holmén is correct. ↩
• ^[46] Ibid., 208. ↩
• ^[47] Ibid., 211. ↩
• ^[48] See Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus שמות (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 191 (“shall become holy That is, its [i.e., the altar’s—JP] holiness is contagious”). ↩
• ^[49] U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (trans. Israel Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967; repr. 1997), 398 (“...if any object touches them [i.e., the altar or its utensils—JP] a part of their sanctity will cleave thereto, and it will be prohibited to treat it as something profane.”) ↩
• ^[50] Statements such as the following are a representative sample:

  …his [i.e., Jesus’—JP] power is greater than that of the leprosy, so that he cannot himself be affected by it…. (Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark [Blacks New Testament Commentaries; London: A & C Black, 1991; repr. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997], 80)

  Jesus’ touching of the dead and raising them to life should certainly have brought him uncleanness, but in fact had the effect of restoring them. (N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996], 192)

  …instead of impurity passing from the man to Jesus, the purity of Jesus’ holiness…passes from him to the man…. (Joel Marcus, Mark [2 vols.; AB 27; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 2000; AB 27A; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009], 1:209)

  The touch which should have made Jesus unclean in fact worked in the opposite direction (R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text [NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 118)

  A reverse contagion has taken place: rather than Jesus being polluted by the leper, the leper is cleansed by Jesus’ holiness. (James R. Edwards, The Gospel Accroding to Luke [PNTG; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015], 160)

  Because God’s holiness and power is present in Jesus, he is not made unclean by touching a leper, but he changes the uncleanness of the leper into cleanness. (Michael Wolter, The Gospel According to Luke [2 vols.; trans. Wayne Coppins and Christoph Heilig; Waco, Tex.: Baylor, 2016-2017], 1:231)

  Dramatically, instead of the leprosy rendering Jesus unclean, Jesus delivers the man from his uncleanness…. (R. Alan Culpepper, Matthew: A Commentary (New Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2022], 167)

  ↩
• ^[51] In this article we refer to the ritually defiling skin disorder(s) as “scale disease” because the term “leprosy” is entirely misleading. Whatever condition(s) the ritually defiling skin disorder(s) of Scripture may have been, it was (or they were) not Hansen’s disease (commonly referred to as “leprosy”). See E. V. Hulse, “The Nature of Biblical ‘Leprosy’ and the Use of Alternative Medical Terms in Modern Translations of the Bible,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 107.2 (1975): 87-105; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus (Anchor Bible; 3 vols.; Doubleday: New York, 1991), 1:775; The Oxford Annotated Mishnah: A New Translation of the Mishnah With Introductions and Notes (3 vols.; ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 3:611. ↩
• ^[52] In addition to the numerous stories in which Jesus healed through the laying on of hands, Jesus’ surprise at the centurion’s suggestion that Jesus could heal simply by speaking the word demonstrates that healing by touch was Jesus’ usual method. Healing through speech also seems to have been a strategy for healing on the Sabbath without having to violate the commandment to rest. ↩
• ^[53] For a more in-depth introduction to the ancient Jewish concept of ritual purity, see Joshua N. Tilton, “A Goy’s Guide to Ritual Purity,” Jerusalem Perspective (2014) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/12102/]. ↩