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Leviticus 11 describes a two-part purification ritual with washing clothes and waiting until evening. The Greek Septuagint adds a third step of washing the body, likely to harmonize it with other rituals in Leviticus that require all three actions.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Leviticus 11:40
Hebrew Bible
39 “‘Now if an animal that you may eat dies, whoever touches its carcass will be unclean until the evening. 40 One who eats from its carcass must wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening, and whoever carries its carcass must wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening. 41 Every swarming thing that swarms on the land is detestable; it must not be eaten.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Leviticus 11:40
Septuagint
39 And if one of the cattle die, which it is lawful for you to eat, he that touches their carcasses shall be unclean till evening. 40 And he that eats of their carcasses shall wash his garments, and be unclean till evening; and he that carries any of their carcasses shall wash his garments, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean till evening. 41 And every reptile that creeps on the earth, this shall be an abomination to you; it shall not be eaten.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Some of the changes and pluses in the textual witnesses of Leviticus had halakhic implications and such instances have been analyzed by Zacharias Frankel and Leo Prijs in important studies on the LXX and by Andrew Teeter for all the textual witnesses in equally penetrating investigations. In principle, harmonizing pluses could likewise have been based on legalistic interpretations and in some instances this may indeed have been the case. However, as a rule, it was the mere formal similarity between verses that led a scribe to adapt one verse to another one and not halakhic reasoning. For example, in Leviticus, some verses describe a cleaning ritual of two elements (11:25, 28, 40). Other verses contain a slightly expanded ritual consisting of three elements (15:5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 21, 22, 27; 17:15). It was to be expected that some manuscripts with verses containing two elements would harmonistically add the third one, “and shall wash himself in water.” This is indeed the case in the LXX of Leviticus 11:40 ..."
Emanuel Tov, “Textual Harmonization in Leviticus,” in The Text of Leviticus: Proceedings of the Third International Colloquium of the Dominique Barthélemy Institute, ed. Innocent Himbaza (Leuven: Peeters, 2020), 13–38.
* 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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