Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 06:2 (Fall 1985)
Article: Jesus And The Pharisees In Socio-Anthropological Perspective
Author: David Smith

TrinJ 6:2 (Fall 1985) p. 151

Jesus And The Pharisees In
Socio-Anthropological Perspective

David Smith

Aberdeen

In her book Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, anthropologist Mary Douglas attempts to apply her theory of the meaning of rules of purity in solving a long-standing hermeneutical puzzle in the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Generations of Old Testament scholars,Jewish and Christian, have been baffled by the so-called “abominations” of Leviticus, lists of “clean” and “unclean” animals in which various beasts are categorized under these headings for reasons that have remained obscure to commentators. Douglas suggests that all attempts to interpret these lists fall into one of two groups: either the rules are seen as meaningless, having a purely disciplinary intention; or they are understood allegorically as symbolizing certain virtures or vices. Surveying a wide range of Old Testament scholarship, Mary Douglas concludes that very many attempted interpretations merely “express bafflemerit in a learned way.”1 Indeed, one of the commentators she cites frankly acknowledges that Leviticus 11–15 are “the least attractive” chapters in the whole Bible. “To the modern reader there is much in them that is meaningless or repulsive. They are concerned with ritual ‘uncleaness’ in respect to animals … Of what interest can such subjects be except to the anthropologists? What can all this have to do with religion.”2

Clearly, these comments reveal both the author’s ethnocentric bias and his inclination to view religion within an evolutionary framework, belonging to a stage of human development in which concern with ritual purity is left far behind. Such a writer is fair game for Mary Douglas since her illuminating study of the concepts of pollution and taboo not only opens up a helpful way of understanding these concerns within “primitive” societies but compels us to question whether our ideas concerning “dirt” are quite what we assume them to be. Douglas makes some telling criticisms of those who posit a dichotomy between ritualist and primitive, on the one hand, and spiritual and:’advanced” on the other. Speaking of Sir James Frazer, who along with other Victorian anthropologists first applied evolutionary theory to the study of the history of religions, she says that it is difficult to forgive him “for his complacency and undisguised contempt of primitive society.”3 The same criticism obviously also applies to the

TrinJ 6:2 (Fall 1985) p. 152

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