THE CONCEPT OF “IMPURE BIRTH” IN 5TH CENTURY ATHENS AND JUDEA Lisbeth S. Fried It is a great honor for me to participate in this tribute of appreciation to my friend and mentor Tikva Frymer-Kensky. Tikva was instrumental in directing scholars’ attention to the roles and concerns of women both in antiquity and in the present, and it is fitting therefore that I dedicate this study of the notion of “impure birth” in 5th-century Athens and Judah to her memory. The book of Ezra records that at the time of Ezra’s arrival in Jerusalem, the people of Israel were mingling the “holy seed” with that of the “peoples of the lands.” After these things were finished, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands whose abominations are like those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons. Thus they mixed the holy seed with the peoples of the lands, and the hand of the officials and magistrates was first in this rebelliousness” (Ezra 9:1–2). The antidote to the problem was mass divorce: Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have rebelled and have caused foreign women to dwell with you, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now make confession to YHWH the God of your fathers, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign women.” Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “Yes; it is incumbent upon us to do according to your word.” (Ezra 10:10–12). 121 122 IN THE WAKE OF TIKVA FRYMER-KENSKY Many commentators have been uncomfortable with these texts. Williamson admits to finding this section “among the least attractive parts of Ezra–Nehemiah.”253 He and other commentators see ugly racial overtones.254 Mowinckel, for example, likens the attitude to Nazism. Janzen argued recently that foreign women were expelled because they were viewed as dangerous to the community, and that what resulted was a “witch-hunt,” a purification ritual.255 Yonina Dor finds the idea so reprehensible that she is driven to deny that the whole thing ever happened, it is pure fiction.256 Some commentators rationalize and explain that intermarrying with the “peoples of the lands” would imply adopting some of their religious practices.257 They argue that since the restored community was to be a religious one, it needed to establish strict criteria for membership in order for the distinctive elements of the Jewish faith to survive.258 The foreign women are emphasized because the mother teaches her beliefs to her offspring; those who grow up to follow Jewish practices are more likely to have had Jewish mothers.259 253 Hugh G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, Word Biblical Commentary, 16 (Waco: Word Books, 1985), 159. 254 Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 130–32; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra– Nehemiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 176; Sigmund Mowinckel, Die Ezrageschichte und das Gesetz Moses, Studien zu dem Buche Ezra–Nehemiah, III, Skrifter ut gitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-akademii Oslo II, Hist.-filos. Klasse ny serie, 7 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1965), 34–35. 255 David Janzen, Witch-Hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9–10, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement Series, 350 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). 256 Yonina Dor, Did They Really Divorce the Foreign Women? The Question of the Separation in the Days of the Second Temple (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006) (Hebrew). 257 Jacob M. Myers, Ezra–Nehemiah, Anchor Bible, 14 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 77. 258 E.g., Peter R. Ackroyd, I & II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Torch Bible Commentaries (London: SCM, 1973), 253; Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah: A Commentary, 176f.; F. Charles Fensham, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 125; Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 160. 259 Fredrick Carlson Holmgren, Israel Alive Again: A Commentary on the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 73. CONCEPT OF “IMPURE BIRTH” 123 Daniel Smith-Christopher takes a different approach to the intermarriage crisis by referring to modern sociological data.260 Research shows that the majority of inter-racial marriages in 20th- century America, for example, consisted of professional and educated black men “marrying-up” to non-professional women of the white higher status culture.261 Studies of intercaste marriages in India also predominantly involved a professional male of a lower caste and a non-professional woman of a higher caste.262 Data also show that Jewish-Gentile intermarriages in Europe between 1876 and 1933 consisted predominantly of Jewish males and Gentile females.263 Smith-Christopher suggests that the intermarriages in 5th- and 4th- century Judah consisted primarily of these lower caste Judean men attempting to marry up by marrying higher status non-Judean women. Smith-Christopher ventures that the prohibitions against these types of intermarriages indicate a concern by the lower status group for its own identity. This concern arises especially when minority groups within a larger dominant culture find themselves uprooted and isolated and faced with a strong pressure to conform to alien standards of behavior. They then instinctively fall back on the kinship network to defend against threats of extinction. A fourth group of exegetes see the opprobrium attached to “mingling the holy seed” as an exegetical elaboration of the older idea of Israel as a “holy people,” an idea frequent in both the Deuteronomic and in the Holiness materials (e.g., Exod 19:6; Lev 20:26; Deut 14:2).264 In Ezra’s reference to the eight forbidden Canaanite nations (Ezra 9:1), Fishbane sees a clear allusion to Deut 7: 260 Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 137–62. 261 Ibid., 153. He bases his findings on the research he cites in 152 n. 34, 153 n. 37. 262 Ibid., 154. 263 Ibid. 264 Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 114–29; Saul M. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 83; idem, “Purity Ideology in Ezra–Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 35 (2004): 1–16; Christine Elizabeth Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 19–59. 124 IN THE WAKE OF TIKVA FRYMER-KENSKY 1–6, where the prohibition against intermarriage is justified “because you are a holy people (M(a #$wOdqf).265 The addition of the Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites (probably to be read Edomites with 1 Esdras 8:66) is simply the addition of the four peoples prohibited from immediately entering the congregation of YHWH (Deut 23:3–8; cf. Neh 13:1–3). The antidote of divorce expels those who had entered the congregation of YHWH illegally. Since two of these peoples were forbidden even up to the tenth generation and the other two up to the third generation, it follows that their children are forbidden as well. It is the fear of defiling the land, and being expelled from it again, combined with their immersion in a sea of alien peoples, that leads the returnees not only to zealously follow Torah law but also to extend it to the new situation through exegesis.266 What this analysis misses, however, is that Ezra 9:1 should probably not be translated as most do: The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. This translation implies that only those eight nations are forbidden. Rather, it should most likely be translated: The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands whose abominations are like Mheyt'bo(jwOtk; the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. 265 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 115–16. 266 In contrast, Jonathan Klawans, “Notions of Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism,” Association of Jewish Studies Review 20 (1995): 285–312; idem, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 43–46, argues that the restoration community believed that the moral practices of the neighboring peoples defiles the land and that such defilement would lead to exile. Separating from the peoples of the land is a separation from such defiling practices. However, it cannot be fear of the practices which led to the mass divorce, or there would have been provision for conversion or for other demonstration of relinquishing foreign ways. As both Olyan and Hayes point out, an impermeable boundary is created independent of the behavior of the foreigner. CONCEPT OF “IMPURE BIRTH” 125 According to this reading, every foreigner is as the foreigner who is prohibited by Torah law, because every foreign people exhibits customs comparable in some way to the customs of the proscribed nations. The Philistine from Ashdod is as the Ammonite and Moabite (cf. Neh 13:23–25). Moreover, since the possibility of conversion does not exist in these texts, foreignness becomes a permanent, trans- generational attribute. In contrast to Torah literature, in Ezra- Nehemiah the foreign wife conveys foreignness to her offspring.