Texts in Conversation
Leviticus describes the requirements for women after childbirth, comparing the impurity of childbirth to the impurity of menstruation. The Letter of Jeremiah ridicules idols whose sacrifices are touched by women in these impure states, using the priestly concern for purity as satire that highlights the worthlessness of foreign gods.
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Leviticus 12:2
Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 2 “Tell the Israelites, ‘When a woman produces offspring and bears a male child, she will be unclean seven days, as she is unclean during the days of her menstruation. 3 On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin must be circumcised. 4 Then she will remain thirty-three days in blood purity. She must not touch anything holy, and she must not enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Letter of Jeremiah 1:29
Deuterocanon
27 because, if any of these gods falls to the ground, they themselves must pick it up. If anyone sets it upright, it cannot move itself; and if it is tipped over, it cannot straighten itself. Gifts are placed before them just as before the dead. 28 The priests sell the sacrifices that are offered to these gods and use the money themselves. Likewise their wives preserve some of the meat with salt, but give none to the poor or helpless. 29 Sacrifices to them may even be touched by women in their periods or at childbirth. Since you know by these things that they are not gods, do not fear them. 30 For how can they be called gods? Women serve meals for gods of silver and gold and wood; 31 and in their temples the priests sit with their clothes torn, their heads and beards shaved, and their heads uncovered.
Date: 100-75 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... References to sexuality in this would-be letter of Jeremiah appear in association with its attack on idolatry (inspired by Jeremiah 10:1–16). Idols’ priests are corrupt thieves, who also benefit “the prostitutes on the terrace” (11), sitting along passages, burning bran incense, with cords around them (42–43). By breaking the cord, men chose a woman who then mocked her fellows as unattractive. Herodotus alleges a similar practice among Babylonian cult prostitutes, but with no reference to bran incense and claiming all women had to undergo this (Histories 1.199). Reference to Bel (42–43) may indicate the Marduk cult (compare Isaiah 46:1; Jeremiah 50:2; 51:44). Purity laws are ignored: Women menstruating or at childbirth may touch sacrifices (29). Cult prostitution, condemned in Deuteronomy 23:17–18, serves for the author to indicate a nexus between idolatry and sexual wrongdoing (compare Wisdom of Solomon 13–15, Romans 1) ..."
Loader, William
"Sexuality in the Apocrypha" in Oegema, Gerbern S. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha
(pp. 516-533) Oxford University Press, 2021
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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