Ritual (Im)purity – Old and/or New Testament, Real or Implied, Legitimate or “Established”?

Abstract

The material presented in this article should demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the issue of “ritual impurity“ in the Orthodox Christianity. The belief in the “impurity“ of men and women in circumstances involving sex and sexuality has been handed down from generation to generation as a universally accepted “established truth“ and has thus neither been questioned nor duly justified. Attempts to explain or justify the resulting “impurity“ restrictions and prohibitions are hampered by the drastic lack of studies on this “most difficult and sensitive subject to consider“, as indicated in the article. The cited source texts – biblical, canonical and patristic – reveal both the differences in the treatment of the Old Testament rules of the Mosaic Law throughout Christian history and the correct Orthodox approach to the issue, which is “little understood and often associated with a form of superstition that often passes for a teaching of the Orthodox Church“. The cited studies by theologians dealing with the issue make it clear that the question of ritual “impurity“, particularly of women, is not a sociocultural or “customary“ problem, but it concerns the most important issues of our Christian faith – the dogma of the Incarnation of the Son of God and His work of salvation. The presentation of the studies available in the already extensive but still little-known English and Russian‑ language literature on the subject is intended to encourage a wider debate on the subject and to prompt the publication of relevant studies on Orthodox rites marked by the troublesome burden of “impurity“.