Thomas Kazen's thorough study—Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity?—is explicitly rooted in the quest for the historical Jesus. This quest carries much significance for Christian faith, and its methods are familiar primarily to students of this specific New Testament (NT) discipline. Nonetheless, this erudite and comprehensive piece of scholarship offers an important contribution to our understanding of Jewish religion and culture in Palestine of the Second Temple period. In particular, Kazen lays the foundations for a much desired systematic discussion of purity and its essential role at the time. More than any other recent work in this emerging field, Jesus and Purity Halakhah points to the unifying role that purity discourse played within the complexities of society and in different social settings and ideological factions.

At the outset, Kazen states that his study “aims at an historical reconstruction of how a particular first-century Galilean Jew related to contemporary purity codes” (4), and progresses to find traces of unusual laxity. But this particular Jew, presumably integrated in his sociocultural milieu, also spurred extreme discomfort among his fellow countrymen. Consequently, any such historical reconstruction of Jesus as an individual, if not impossible (and I have not been convinced otherwise), requires much methodological reflection, and Part I of the book is dedicated to this end. By applying a moderate form of NT redaction criticism on the one hand, and by examining these traditions against contemporaneous halakhic practices on the other, Kazen reconstructs an attitude toward purity that is firmly rooted in Jesus' social context, while at the same time is deviant enough to create conflict. This method is at times quite shaky, and the results may be far from conclusive, but the author's commitment to unraveling the texture of the original sociocultural context produces refined readings of purity matters even outside NT literature. Noticeably, the second volume, Issues of Impurity in Early Judaism, includes (alongside some derivative work) essays that further develop his earlier readings and demonstrate this merit. Such is the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4 regarding the status of those with genital discharges, and the text includes innovative interpretations of Leviticus 15 and 4. Unfortunately, the Mishnah is not always as carefully interpreted.Footnote ¹

In Part II, Kazen closely investigates the various textual units that potentially reveal Jesus' practical attitude toward impurity. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the controversy with the Pharisees over hand-washing in Mark 7. Here, Kazen adopts the growing scholarly consensus, according to which the statement “Nothing outside a person can defile him by going into him” (Mark 7:15) does not suggest the abolition of dietary laws but comments on the transmission of impurity through defiled hands, foods, and liquids. This issue, Kazen argues, was of much concern to the popular “expansionist current” that advocated widespread implementation of purity regulations in daily life. It is indeed widely assumed that this dominant approach finds not only literal but also archaeological expression, as with the vast findings of miqva'ot and of stone vessels, unsusceptible to impurity. Consequently, Jesus' preference of interior purity—“Rather it is what comes out of the person that defiles him”—seems to reflect a somewhat dismissive approach toward the notion that impurity is contracted through physical contact. In Chapter 4, Kazen turns to a second set of sources, the miracle stories, that have the advantage of taking on purity matters from a nonpolemic perspective. Here, Jesus unreservedly comes in direct contact with sources of impurity, which were generally likely to be avoided. He touches a leper (Mark 1:40–45), is touched by a bleeding woman (Mark 5:25–34), and enters a house contaminated by a corpse (Mark 5:21–24; 35–43). Although the issue of impurity was of no concern for later redactors, according to Kazen it underlies all these traditions. Read against the expansion of purity practices at the time, these stories, too, retain a historical memory of Jesus as dismissive toward or at best unconcerned with purity matters.

Undoubtedly, Part 2 should be much commended for its detailed descriptions of purity practices and the noteworthy emphasis on the halakhic practices and mechanisms (such as first-day ablutions and grades of purity) that made purity practicable and impurity manageable. However, it seems to me that the actual contribution of this project, as a whole, is not to be found here, but rather is in the arguments presented in the following part (Part 3). In truth, no source discussed in Part 2 actually discloses Jesus' position on purity halakhah. In each of the cases in which Jesus expressly refutes purity regulations (hand-washing in Mark 7:15; purifying the outside of the cup in Matthew 23:25–26 and Luke 11:39–41), only specific Pharisaic practices are under attack. Furthermore, by employing prevailing anti-Pharisaic complaints, shared also by scrupulous priests and sectarians, Jesus does not reveal his own lax attitude, but rather participates in a familiar discourse over purity. Associating the impious character of the Pharisees with their distorted purity practices was commonplace. Neither do the miracle stories substantially prove Jesus' attitude; after all, healing a leper or resurrecting the dead requires some contact with them. Even a Pharisee would admit to that.

Nonetheless, as Kazen embarks upon his inquiry for alternative attitudes toward purity that Jesus represents, he powerfully makes the point that the Jesus traditions not only present different levels of halakhic rigor but also provide a set of possible competing conceptions of purity. Contrary to prior attempts to classify all purity systems on the basis of one dichotomy, ritual versus moral purity,Footnote ² Kazen offers a more subtle taxonomy.

Each of the three chapters in Part 3 offers one model for explaining the presence of an alternative attitude, which in a way infringed upon the prevailing “expansionist current.” The first of these models (in Chap. 5), and the most familiar, touches upon the inherent opposition between moral and ritual purity, but from a new perspective. Kazen emphasizes the close association of the two elements. According to the prevailing corporal anthropology in antiquity, moral actions depended on the body's vitality, and immorality reflected bodily decay of the inner organs. Thus, Kazen prefers the inner/outer purity distinction, which was presumably articulated by Jesus himself, rather than the moral/ritual contrast. This, I believe, also illuminates the contrast between the Qumran sectarians and John the Baptist. Both held a similar conception of sin as a source for corporal impurity, yet they arrived at opposite practices. The former granted the right for purification from all (outer) impurities only to those who repented, while the latter offered a single act of bodily purification for the forgiveness of sins, dismissing the need for further purification.

A second explanatory model, this time from a sociological standpoint, is offered in Chapter 6. Admittedly, the discussion here is somewhat speculative, as we know very little of the social setting in the Galilee of the time. However, Kazen most compellingly maps out various social factors that could have shaped the practices of those who were not associated with any of the known parties. Whereas it has long been suggested that Jesus be identified as a careless ‘am ha-'areẓ standing in opposition to the Pharisees, Kazen offers a more complex social picture based on additional factors: the contrast between two modes of tradition, the one dominated and developed by the elite (“great tradition”), and the other by local customs (“little tradition”); possible legal differences between Judaea and the Galilee, and—what seems to me the most warranted and important contribution to the discussion—the need for developed support systems in order to incorporate purity into daily life. It is suggested that Pharisaic solutions, such as the ḥavurot, were not available for inhabitants of the Galilee, although they were quite aware of the developments taking place in Jerusalem. Indeed, more than any other halakhic topic, purity is first and foremost a product of specific social settings and networks. Therefore, notwithstanding Jesus' involvement in intersectarian discourse, any investigation into the complexity of social reality that goes beyond the standard notion of ideological boundaries is most commendable.

Moving along from the relative rejection of purity in the first model, to social complexity in the second, we find in the third and final model an active battle against impurity. Second Temple literature in general attests to the vast development of demonology, and in the Qumran physical diseases and moral weaknesses were understood to be caused by demons, that is, impure spirits. Against this backdrop, Kazen claims that Jesus' activity as an exorcist represented an active battle against the spirits of impurity, to which he sent out his disciples as well. Furthermore, the banishment of these negative forces clearly expresses the eschatological appearance of God's kingdom. On the verge of the eschaton, an “active force of purity,” as Kazen coins it, comes to the fore. Jesus releases humanity from demonic impurity and danger, thus annulling the need to avoid any contact with sickness and death. I would indeed claim that the desire for such purity lies in the heart of the Jesus traditions, as reflected, for example, in the very commencement of Mark's gospel. John the Baptist can only offer purification through water, but he anticipates the coming of him who will baptize them in the Holy Spirit. Subsequently, Jesus' first act is to expel impure spirits and to show his authority over them, as he uproots the sources of impurity (Mark 1:21–27).

As we examine such sources, it becomes clear that the fundamental question is not whether Jesus was indifferent to purity halakhah, as the title of the book suggests, but rather, how can we best describe the disintegration of the shared concern for purity into discrete yet overlapping systems, which were somehow stringed together in a common social and discursive space. Kazen's most comprehensive survey and his admirable attempt to draw a rich picture of concepts and practices of purity and their significance in the age of Jesus is a substantial contribution to this end.