Femna

The central chapters of Leviticus treat men’s bodies as being at risk when they come into contact with women and with food prepared by women. Chapter 11 deals with what may not pass the lips of the mouth; chapter 12 with purification after childbirth (passage through other lips). An infant’s sex determines a woman’s degree of pollution: with a boy she is “unclean” for seven days and requires thirtythree days of purification; with a girl she is “unclean” for two weeks and needs sixty-six days of purification. Chapters 13 and 14 treat skin disease and bodily issues—leprosy and sexual and ulcerative discharges. Copulation is unclean, but the pollution lasts only a day and is purified by bathing. But menstrual discharge is contagious pollution, poisoning everything a woman touches. She must sacrifice to the priests during her period and for seven days beyond, contaminated for almost half of every month. These chapters conflate diseases like leprosy or running sores with ordinary conditions of womanhood—menstruation and childbirth. Sexual intercourse with menstruating women, men, or ani · 202 · mals is punished by exile from the community. Married women could not own property, sign contracts, act at law, testify, or inherit.

Women were defined as sexual servants. Both in overall perspective and in law, Israelite society denied women a voice. The perspective of the Bible places god within history and time, giving certain men significance as enactors of god’s will and purpose on earth. Man is a creature with free will whose task is to fulfill god’s will, with the enlightenment of scripture as interpreted by male priests. As Gerda Lerner writes, “Men . . . live and move through history.” Women are merely their adjuncts, sexually defined and regulated; only their degree of bondage differs with class.

Palestine had a tradition of goddess or fertility worship: its Iron Age sites yield many terracotta figurines showing the female upper body nude or seminude. Yahwism may have been the official religion, but many people went on worshipping goddesses. Re p roach of goddess-worshipping “backsliders” recurs throughout the Old Testament.