Bible Study for Amateurs #72 – Elizabeth Shively’s “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,” part 6

Hey, everyone! I’m Ben – the Amateur Exegete, and this is episode seventy-two of Bible Study for Amateurs. Today’s episode is, “Elizabeth Shively’s ‘Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,’ part 6.”¹

In the last episode we looked at textual evidence pointing to the idea that purity regulations were a concern for Jews who lived in the time and place that Jesus did. (Recall that this is all in service to our examination of Elizabeth Shively’s 2020 piece “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark.”²) To do this, we used Yonatan Adler’s book The Origins of Judaism,³ specifically ch. 2’s subsection on first-century textual evidence.⁴ Now, again using Adler’s work, we turn to archaeological evidence to bolster our case. 

There are primarily two categories of evidence that, Adler writes, “are to be viewed as indicative of widespread contemporary Judean adherence to the ritual purity laws.”⁵ The first  is that of immersion pools.⁶ In her book Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit, archaeologist Jodi Magness writes that, the discovery of these baths (not to be confused with Greco-Roman baths)⁷ “attests to the observance of purity laws among various sectors of the population in the late Second Temple period.”⁸ Around 850 of these miqva’ot, the Hebrew name for them, have been found⁹ and they typically feature stairs that lead down into a pool that is covered in a waterproof plaster.¹⁰ In tandem with the textual evidence Adler offers, the reason for these pools’ existence becomes fairly obvious. He observes: 

On the one hand we know that Judeans regularly immersed in water in order to ritually purify themselves, and on the other hand we know that Judeans regularly constructed immersion pools. It stands to reason that the Judean immersion pools we find all over the country were being bult and used precisely to accommodate this practice of Judean ritual immersion.¹¹

An example of such pools comes from excavation work done near the ruins of el-Mejdel, a small village regarded by some to be the city of Magdala.¹² In the late aughts, a team of Franciscan archaeologists uncovered four pools complete with steps and that were in all likelihood miqva’ot.¹³ Adler notes that unlike other immersion pools, these at el-Mejdel lacked the waterproof plaster so common in others. This was perhaps due to the fact that they were built below the water table to permit water to seep into them.¹⁴ Additionally, two of the miqva’ot were in parts of the house that appear to have been devoted to the keeping of Jewish purity regulations.¹⁵

In addition to immersion pools, archaeologists also uncovered dinnerware made of chalk, phenomena that archaeologist James Riley Strange quips “are now ubiquitous finds in Galilean and Judean towns of the Roman period that had Jewish populations.”¹⁶ These chalk vessels are the second category of evidence Adler discusses regarding ritual purity concerns in first century Judea.¹⁷ But why chalk? 

Adler notes that there is a growing consensus that the reason so many vessels have been found that are made of stone is because it was a commonplace among Judeans that such vessels were not susceptible to ritual impurity.¹⁸ Chalk is, of course, a type of limestone, one that is relatively easy to quarry but seemingly impractical to use to produce wares fit for food consumption. This impracticality is the reason that during the early Roman period vessels made of clay or metal or glass or wood were common. But there is an exception. Adler writes, “Chalk remained a material completely passed over by local artisans – by all of them, that is, except for the Judean ones…. Chalk vessels are a Judean phenomenon, and a Judean phenomenon only.”¹⁹ Why only this specific group? Adler hypothesizes that it has to do with what the Torah says – or, better, doesn’t say – about vessels made of stone. 

Take, for example, Leviticus 11:32: “And anything upon which any of them falls when they are dead shall be unclean, whether an article of wood or cloth or leather or sackcloth, any article that is used for any purpose; it shall be dipped in water, and it shall be unclean until the evening, and then it shall be clean” (NRSVue).²⁰ There is no mention of “articles” of stone. Similarly, here is Leviticus 15:12: “Any clay vessel that the one with discharge touches shall be broken, and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water.” Again, no mention of stone. Or how about Numbers 31:20: “You shall purify every garment, every article of skin, everything made of goat’s hair, and every article of wood.” Yet again, no mention of stone. And a few verses later in Numbers 31:21-23: “This is the statute of the law that the LORD has commanded Moses: gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, and lead – everything that can withstand fire, you shall pass through fire, and it shall be clean. Nevertheless, it shall also be purified with the water for purification, and whatever cannot withstand fire, you shall pass through the water.” Here again, no explicit mention of stone. “I posit that ancient Judeans may well have reasoned that since stone is not listed at all among the materials that can become impure, this must mean that stone does not become impure at all!” writes Adler.²¹

But again, why chalk? Adler posits that it was an economical solution. He observes, 

In the ancient world, clay was by far the most common material used for producing tableware and storage vessels. But Pentateuchal law dictated that pottery which became impure – likely quite a common occurrence – was to be broken. Adherence to the purity rules relating to pottery would doubtless have been experienced as both irksome and costly. My suggestion is that once the purity laws had come to be widely observed among rank-and-file Judeans, the difficulty in observing these laws came to be increasingly felt.²²

As a consequence, chalk became an alternative because it is made of stone and therefore cannot become impure, was relatively easy to quarry, and could be used to make tableware.²³ 

Immersion pools and chalk vessels serve as evidence, along with textual data, of the concern for ritual purity in first-century Judea. Next, we turn to a related question about Jesus’s views of impurity as they are depicted in the Gospel of Mark. 

That’s all the time we’ve got this week. See you next time! And remember, in the words of Richard Elliot Friedman, “One does not need to deny what is troubling [about the Bible] in order to pay respect to what is heartening.”²⁴ Thanks for stopping by. 

---

1. Throughout the endnotes readers will find various abbreviations. For a list of what abbreviations I use and the works to which they refer, please see the page “Commonly Used Abbreviations.” ↩︎
2. Elizabeth E. Shively, “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,” JTS 71 part 1 (April 2020), 62-89.  ↩︎
3. Yonatan Adler, The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal, AYBRL (Yale University Press, 2022). ↩︎
4. See Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 53-61. ↩︎
5. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 61. ↩︎
6. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 61-66. ↩︎
7. See Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, third edition (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 104-105.  ↩︎
8. Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2011), 16. ↩︎
9. Stuart S. Miller, “Miqva’ot (Ritual Baths),” in T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism, edited by Daniel M. Gurtner and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (T&T Clark, 2020) 2:502.  ↩︎
10. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 61; Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit, 16. ↩︎
11. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 65. ↩︎
12. See, e.g., Richard Bauckham, “Magdala as We Now Know It: An Overview,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, edited by Richard Bauckham (Baylor University Press, 2018), 1-21.  ↩︎
13.  See James Riley Strange, Excavating the Land of Jesus: How Archaeologists Study the People of the Gospels (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2023), 47-48. For an extended overview of the miqva’ot found at el-Mejdel, see Ronny Reich and Marcela Zapata-Meza, “The Domestic Miqva’ot,” in Magdala of Galilee, 109-125. ↩︎
14. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 62. Normally, a miqveh was filled with rainwater or floodwater. ↩︎
15. Ronny Reich and Marcela Zapata-Meza, “The Domestic Miqva’ot,” in Magdala of Galilee, 122. Cf. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 65: “Most immersion pools are found within either houses or residential courtyards, which suggest use for everyday domestic purposes.” ↩︎
16. Strange, Excavating the Land of Jesus, 48.  ↩︎
17. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 66-71. ↩︎
18. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 66-67. Cf. Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit, 72-73. ↩︎
19. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 67. Emphasis author’s. ↩︎
20. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. ↩︎
21. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 69. Cf. Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit, 73. ↩︎
22. Adler, The Origins of Judaism, 69. ↩︎
23. Alder (The Origins of Judaism, 70) does note that it is unclear how vessels of chalk were used given that chalk tends to be porous and dusty. He hypothesizes that perhaps some kind of coating was used or that the stone was treated in some way. “As it stands today, we are still not completely sure how this was accomplished by the ancients,” he writes. ↩︎
24. Richard Elliot Friedman, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters (HarperOne, 2017), 214. ↩︎