Insights from Cultural Anthropology

Karl Allen Kuhn

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781506400150
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506401096
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Each volume in the Insights series discusses discoveries and insights gained into biblical texts from a particular approach or perspective in current scholarship. Accessible and appealing to today's students, each Insight volume discusses:
-how this method, approach, or strategy was first developed and how its application has changed over time;
-what current questions arise from its use;
-what enduring insights it has produced; and
-what questions remain for future scholarship.

In this volume, Karl Allen Kuhn provides a description of what cultural anthropology is and how the discipline has impacted biblical studies. Looking at Scripture through the lens of cultural anthropology is related to social-scientific criticism, which refers to that phase of the exegetical task that analyzes the social and cultural dimensions of the text and its environmental context through the utilization of the perspectives, theories, models, and research of the social sciences.

Kuhn discusses general matters garnered from cultural-anthropology interpretation that would be relevant for the study of biblical texts. He analyzes several biblical specific texts from a cultural-anthropology perspective and provides conclusions, challenges, and considerations for the future of cultural anthropology and biblical interpretation.

5

Purity: Things in Their Proper Place

Luke relays this story of a “sinful” woman crashing a dinner party of Simon the Pharisee (7:36–50).

³⁶ One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. ³⁷ And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. ³⁸ She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. ³⁹ Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.” ⁴⁰ Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “speak.” ⁴¹ “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” ⁴³ Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” ⁴⁴ Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. ⁴⁵ You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. ⁴⁷ Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” ⁴⁸ Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” ⁴⁹ But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” ⁵⁰ And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Consider Luke’s description of the scene. His repeated mention of “Pharisees” / “Pharisee’s house” in the opening verses (vv. 36–37) reinforces the atmosphere of high decorum surrounding that space. Luke thus accentuates the scandalous nature of the uninvited guest’s trespass, as “a woman in the city, who was a sinner” enters a domain forbidden to all like her (v. 37). Even more disturbing, this trespasser and transgressor of decency begins fawning over Jesus. Here the narrative slows, as Luke encourages the recipient to attend to each of the woman’s acts of humble yet indecorous devotion: standing behind Jesus at his feet and weeping, she engages in the continuous activity (note the imperfect tense in Greek) of bathing his feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, kissing his feet, and anointing them with costly perfume (vv. 37–38). Although we do not know the reason why the woman is regarded as “sinful” by her community, the woman’s very presence and even more so her intimate actions in the context of a dinner gathering would be seen by nearly all in this culture as “out of place.” The woman’s devotion may also be seen as having an erotic edge, adding to the scandalous nature of her trespass. No wonder Simon the Pharisee is beside himself and doubts Jesus’s prophetic insight: “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner!” (v. 39).

Beyond the social transgressions embodied in the sinful woman’s presence and actions, several features of Luke’s account suggest that purity concerns are also in view. The setting of Simon’s home, with guests at table, establishes an atmosphere not only of high decorum and social prestige but one in which purity is closely guarded. The Pharisaic attention to purity was likely well known to Luke’s audience, and the surrounding narrative also establishes purity as one of the Pharisees’ central concerns (5:27–32; 6:1–11; 11:37–40). Meal settings were not only attentive to the honor and social location of those involved, but scrupulous Israelites in Jesus’s day refused to share table with Gentiles and other sinners due to the danger of “cross-contamination.” Note too Simon’s disgust that a woman such as this is touching Jesus. His words signal the emphasis Luke places on the woman’s physical interaction with Jesus, evident from the clear parallels between its initial description by Luke and then Jesus’s commendation of the woman’s devotion:

She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. (v. 38)

Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.” (vv. 44–46)

Thus, Luke’s casting of the setting and its characters suggests that this woman of ill-repute—at least from the perspective of Simon and his other guests (and perhaps many of Luke’s recipients!)—“comes into this scene like an alien, communicable disease.”^[1] She is a dirty woman. Worse still, she radiates dirt. But how does this perception of her character by Simon and his comrades—and Jesus’s regard for their perspective as a tragic misperception—contribute to the rhetorical edge and energy of Luke’s account? Isn’t it enough simply to realize that this here is a woman of ill-repute at the bottom of the social spectrum who acts in ways that flagrantly transgress social custom, while Simon and his tablemates are respected persons who act to protect the social boundaries guarding his house? Why, in other words, does her impurity matter?

Purity in Jesus’s Context:
Three Unresolved Questions

Many modern readers of Scripture, especially those within the Christian tradition, tend to associate purity concerns of ancient Israelites almost exclusively with the avoidance of certain physical substances or foods. This, I think, contributes to a second tendency among such readers: to regard the purity matters addressed or assumed in the Bible as peculiarities of a bygone era which are fortunately irrelevant for us today. For such readers, purity is a marginal, easily overlooked dimension of the biblical tradition.

Among scholars, however, purity has become a subject of much discussion and debate, while proving to be a complex and unwieldy topic. This has been especially the case with respect to the following questions emerging from the realm of NT studies: (1) the prevalence and type of purity practices among Israelite folk in the two centuries straddling the start of the Common Era (100 BCE–100 CE); (2) the role of the Pharisees in promoting purity practices in the first century CE; and (3) Jesus’s response to the Pharisees and their conceptions of purity as portrayed by the gospels. Scholars have sometimes turned to the insights and resources of cultural anthropology, and anthropology in general, to help them make sense of these challenging matters. We will use the following pages to explore some of their research and reflection. The previous chapters have each introduced and illustrated several insights that cultural anthropology has contributed to the study of the biblical traditions in general. This chapter will take a slightly different tack. It will continue to illustrate the potential benefits cultural anthropology offers to biblical interpretation, but here by focusing in on the tricky reality of purity, and these particular questions scholars have struggled to answer.

Contributions of Cultural Anthropology to Our Understanding of Purity

Prior to zeroing in on these three pernicious questions related to purity emerging from the study of the NT texts, it will be necessary for us to review the ways that cultural anthropology has shaped the study and perception of purity in general, and Israelite purity in particular. In this section I will identify and discuss four broader contributions cultural anthropology has made to our understanding of purity that are relevant to the exploration of these three questions.

1. Cultural anthropology provides a paradigm for understanding what purity is essentially about: symbolic enactments of an underlying system of order and purpose.

Purity and impurity, clean and unclean, is about dirty things and dirty people. But anthropologists have helped us to understand that purity concepts and practices are also about much more than dirt. Numerous anthropologists have contributed to this discussion, but chief among them is Mary Douglas, whose text Purity and Danger is regarded by many still today as an important touchstone for the study of purity.^[2] Douglas’s main contributions to our understanding of purity consist of the following:^[3]

a. Purity represents normality and wholeness—the way things should be.

b. Determinations of purity result not from objective physical reality but from the cultural understandings of a particular community.^[4] They are socially inscribed and are held in variant forms by different cultures.

c. Purity rules are symbols that express and reflect a broad array of social concerns. In a society with a highly developed purity system, these rules can also reflect its cosmology and understanding of the social order as a whole, including its members’ proper relationships with the divine, creation, one another, and other humans. The cultural distinction of “clean” and “unclean” “orders the complexity of reality by defining and imposing upon it internal as well as external boundaries.”^[5] In other words, as Douglas explains,

Where there is dirt, there is a system. Dirt is the product of a systemic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements. This idea of dirt takes us straight into the field of symbolism and promises a link-up with more obviously symbolic systems of purity.^[6]

Or, as Douglas states in a later work,

The idea of dirt implies a structure of idea. For us dirt is a kind of compendium category for all events which blur, smudge, contradict, or otherwise confuse accepted classifications. The underlying feeling is that a system of values which is habitually expressed in a given arrangement of things has been violated.^[7]

d. The body is a symbol for or a microcosm of the larger social body. Thus, the body is a locus where purity concerns are manifested. Concerns about things entering and exiting the body reflect concerns about the boundaries of society.

Some elements of Douglas’s theory on purity have come under criticism. Most notably, several scholars have questioned the extent to which all purity rules of a given society have a clear symbolic function. Some purity codes may have become part of a culture in a more ad hoc fashion due to outside influences, or a group’s interaction with its physical environment, or the idiosyncratic tendencies of certain leaders. And “even if we grant that pollution beliefs are somehow connected, at a very general level, with the delineation of boundaries in a given culture or social group, this does not automatically imply that all pollution beliefs may legitimately be viewed as cultural or religious symbols.”^[8] Relatedly, Douglas’s model assumes that purity rules develop in societies in order to express and validate already-existing divisions within a social group. Others, however, have argued that the relationship between social boundaries and the complex systems that evolve to frame and legitimate them is likely more dialectical and dynamic than Purity and Dan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• A Socially Sensitive Reading of the Biblical Texts
• The Political and Economic Tendencies of the Biblical Worlds
• The Social Tendencies of the Biblical Worlds
• Biblical Writings as Texts of Resistance and Conformity
• Purity: Things in Their Proper Place
• Bibliography