Take My Word, there is nothing like leather.
—Daniel Fenning, Universal Spelling Book, 1767Footnote 1For many NT commentators, the reference in Acts to Peter's temporary lodging in Joppa with a certain Simon, a tanner by profession (9.43; cf. 10.6, 32), points toward a dismissal of matters related to Jewish purity in the book of Acts. Those who embrace such a view incorporate this rather casual statement into a wider metanarrative that announces in Acts not only the end of the Jewish purity system but also the abrogation of Jewish food laws (i.e., kosher laws).Footnote 2 Thus, the reference to Simon Peter's stay in the house of Simon the Tanner would subtly pave the way in the narrative of Acts for announcing the end of Jewish purity and dietary regulations in the subsequent pericope reporting Peter's vision and his encounter with the Gentile Cornelius. Essential to this thesis is the claim that ancient Jews despised the occupation of tanning because of the ritual impurity allegedly contracted through this trade. Although Strack and Billerbeck did not declare that tanning was ritually defiling, their biased observations against Judaism indirectly led other scholars to think so, once they claimed that the reference to Peter's stay in the house of Simon the Tanner revealed his ‘inner freedom from Pharisaic regulations’.Footnote 3 In any case, many commentaries on Acts and entries in biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias describe the profession of the tanner as ritually defiling.Footnote 4 A recent commentary on Acts perpetuates this traditional understanding, claiming that Peter's stay in the residence of a Jewish tanner anticipates the ‘revolution’ about to occur in Cornelius's house: the end of all separations imposed by Jewish purity regulations in the Christian regime.Footnote 5 Talbert's comments on the matter will suffice to summarize this point of view before providing an alternative reading to the rabbinic passages cited by him:
On the other hand, that Peter resides ‘a long time in Joppa with Simon, a tanner’ (v. 43), is very significant. Because Lev 11:39–40 pronounces unclean anyone who touches the carcass of even a clean animal, a tanner (even a Jewish one) would be perpetually unclean.Footnote 6 Being a tanner, therefore, was one of the trades a father should not teach his son (m. Ketubim 7:10; b. Kiddushin 82a Bar.). The rabbis said that tanneries could not be within fifty cubits of a town (m. Baba Bathra 2:9); that even if a tanner's wife agreed before marriage to live with him, he must put her away if she could not stand her circumstances after marriage (m. Ketuboth 7:10); that a synagogue building could not be sold for use as a tannery (m. Megillah 3:2). If Peter lives with a Jewish tanner over a period of time, it means that he has already come to the position that the cleanliness laws do not apply to Jews and to those who associate with them.Footnote 7
A closer examination of the ancient Jewish sources and a proper understanding of the Jewish purity system, however, do not support this view. As long as a Jewish tanner could refrain from handling carcasses of kosher animals, contraction of ritual impurity—certainly no crime for ancient Jews—could be avoided.Footnote 8 The Mosaic Torah describes at least two types of carcass: the nevelah (often translated as ‘an animal that has died on its own’) and the terefah (an animal torn by a wild beast). Contact with such carcasses of kosher animals could transmit ritual impurity but contact with dead bodies of kosher animals that were ritually slaughtered would not transmit ritual impurity. Otherwise, as Miller points out, even priests would be more (ritually) impure than normal Jews because of their continual contact with slaughtered animals for the temple sacrifices!Footnote 9 But even with respect to the handling of carcasses of pure animals, rabbinic traditions, at least, maintain that only their flesh could transmit ritual impurity. Thus, Sifra Shemini Parashah 10.3–6 (cf. m. Hul. 9.1, 4), commenting on Lev 11.39 (‘If an animal of which you may eat dies, anyone who touches its carcass shall be unclean until the evening’),Footnote 10 states:
‘Its carcass’ (בנבלתה): Not the bones and not the sinews and not the horns and not the hooves… [These parts of the carcass do not convey impurity when they are detached from the carcass]
‘Its carcass’: Not hides (עור) that do not have on them flesh the size of an olive.Footnote 11
This Tannaitic text claims that bones, sinews, horns, and hooves, when detached from a carcass, do not convey ritual impurity. It then goes on to discuss the case of hides, claiming that as long as they do not contain flesh attached to them that exceeds the size of an olive, no carrion impurity is conveyed to the one handling them.Footnote 12 This rabbinic concession stems from the failure within the Mosaic Torah itself to tie in unequivocal terms the contraction of ritual impurity with the handling of carcasses of pure (i.e., kosher) animals.Footnote 13 In fact, certain rabbinic passages go as far as allowing Jews to handle the carcasses of non-kosher animals, provided this occurs not on a festival day when Jews would visit the temple.Footnote 14 Even a work such as the Temple Scroll, with its extreme concern for preserving ritual purity, recognizes the right of Jews to handle hides of kosher animals (ritually slaughtered). It only forbids Jews to bring hides of animals into Jerusalem that have not been slaughtered in the holy city: ‘If you slaughter it in my temple, it (the skin) will be clean for my temple; but if you will slaughter it in your cities, it will be clean for your cities’ (11QTa 47.15–17).Footnote 15
I have not come across one single rabbinic passage either from those cited in Strack–Billerbeck or from my own searches using the Bar Ilan Responsa database that views the profession of tanning as ritually defiling. Borrowing from the Greek language (βυρσεύς), rabbinic literature often employs the term בורסי for describing the trade, the same word that appears in Acts.Footnote 16 The term בורסקי (from βυρσική), which refers to the tannery itself, is also attested (e.g., m. Shabb. 1.2). A closer examination of the rabbinic evidence shows that the rabbis generally despise this occupation because of the filth and strong stench associated with the work. In other words, certain Jews found this vocation unattractive for hygienic reasons, because of its uncleanliness, that is, its filthiness or foul smell, not because of the ritual impurity allegedly involved. Perhaps, they also look down on this vocation because of its low social-economic standing. With these proper distinctions in mind, the reason for the rabbinic distaste toward tanning can be properly appreciated. When the rabbinic sages condemn tanning, they never point to ritual defilement as a reason for despising this trade.
For example, m. Ketub. 7.10 rules that Jews may compel a male tanner to divorce his wife if the latter can no longer endure living with her husband, not because of the ritual impurity associated with this trade, but because of the physical deformities (מומים) the husband acquires through his rough work.Footnote 17 Similarly, in b. Hag. 7b, tanners, along with scrapers and coppersmiths, are exempted from appearing at the temple during pilgrimage festivals, not because of their ritual impurity, but because, as the Gemara explicitly states, of their unpleasant odor, which prevents them from going up with other persons (forming a separate group to go up to the temple is forbidden according to rabbinic halakah). In both of these passages, when the rabbis discriminate against tanners, they explicitly justify their halakic prejudices independent from considerations concerning ritual impurity.
Elsewhere, the rabbis reveal a moral disdain for tanners. Thus, a baraita cited in b. Qidd. 82a forbids tanners from becoming a high priest or a king. But tanners are not the only workers singled out in this passage. Several other professionals do not qualify, including goldsmiths, carders, handmill cleaners, peddlers, wool-dressers, barbers, launderers, and bath attendants. In this same baraita, the rabbis place all of these professions under one common denominator: any man who engages in any of these trades supposedly possesses an immoral character because of his extensive interaction with women during work hours. Hence, the rabbis explicitly state that such people are exempt from serving as a high priest or king not because they are unfit (לא משום דפסילי), but because their vocations are demeaning, literally ‘worthless’ (זילי). In this passage, we learn about ancient patriarchal misogyny, not ritual impurity.
Regarding tanneries, one passage (m. Meg. 3.2) forbids a synagogue from being sold for use as a tannery. Once again, the concern here is not with ritual impurity but with the need to honor the sanctity of the synagogue. In other words, it would be demeaning to sell a synagogue if it were known that it would subsequently be transformed into a tannery. Such an act would reveal a lack of respect on the part of Jews for the synagogue.Footnote 18 Concerning the location of tanneries, some rabbis claim they should lie fifty cubits outside a city on its eastern side (e.g., m. B. Bat. 2.9) only because of the unpleasant smells emitted from such working places, not their inherent impurity.Footnote 19 In any case, references to tanneries lying outside cities also appear in non-Jewish literature. Thus, Artemidorus (c. second century CE; Oneirocritica 1.51) says that dreaming of tanning hides ‘is ill-omened for all. For the tanner handles dead bodies and lives outside the city.’Footnote 20
A passage like b. B. Bat. 21b does not view tanning as ritually defiling or even professionally reprehensible. In fact, this passage does not even concern itself with the halakic disrepute of tanners but with social-economic issues:
A man may open a shop next to another man's shop or a bath next to another man's bath, and the latter cannot object. Because he can say to him, ‘I do what I like in my property and you do what you like in yours?’—On this point there is a difference of opinion among Tannaim, as appears from the following Baraitha: ‘The residents of an alley can prevent one another from bringing in a tailor or a tanner or a teacher or any other craftsman, but one cannot prevent another [from setting up in opposition]’.
The baraita cited in this section of the Talmud allows local Jews to prevent tanners, or other craftsmen and professionals for that matter, from another town from moving into their neighborhoods in order to open businesses that already exist in the area. The preoccupation here seems to revolve around the social-economic unrest such commercial competition could bring to the local habitants. Nevertheless, the baraita and the ensuing discussion in the Gemara recognize the right for local residents to open up their businesses, including tanneries, even if such shops already exist in the neighborhoods they live in. This passage contains no negative pronouncement against the profession of tanning proper. If anything, it pragmatically recognizes the prevalence and need for tanners, given the useful and highly sought after products they manufacture.Footnote 21M. Shabbat 1.2 even assumes that Jews regularly enter tanneries without condemning them for undertaking such normal and necessary transactions.Footnote 22 Indeed, the positive contributions of tanners should not be underestimated. They produced leather, which in turn was necessary for the production of harnesses, sandals, and even straps for tefillin, certainly no profane object! Furthermore, the preparation of animal skin was also essential for the production of parchment, the very surface upon which Jewish scribes inscribed the sacred letters of the Torah.Footnote 23
Simon the Tanner, therefore, probably did not find himself more often in a state of ritual impurity than other ordinary Jews. In any case, acquiring occasional ritual impurity, in the event that Jewish tanners would sometimes use hides that may have had some flesh from carcasses (animals not ritually slaughtered) of kosher animals attached to them (hides from kosher animals that were ritually slaughtered would not convey impurity), would not have been viewed as a sinful act among many ancient Jews, especially since tanners belonged to the poorer strata of society and could have understandably committed such acts in order to earn their living.Footnote 24 A simple immersion in a body of fresh water would have sufficed to recover ritual purity. For Simon the Tanner, this would merely require a short walk out of his house for the occasional dip in the Mediterranean Sea, since he lived in the coastal city of Joppa.Footnote 25 Quite strikingly, t. Ohalot 18.2 views tanneries outside the land of Israel as potential shelters where purity can be more readily guaranteed because of their location near seas or rivers. Thus, R. Shimon states: ‘ “I can feed the priests pure food in the tannery of Sidon and those that are in the cities of Lebanon because they are near the sea or the river”.’Footnote 26 In light of this passage, Peter's stay at a house near the sea could almost be taken as evidence of the Jewish apostle's concern for maintaining ritual purity, the exact contrary of what has been affirmed by much of secondary scholarship!
But this is not the point the author of Acts seeks to make with this casual reference to Simon's profession. At best, the reference to Simon's vocation might show a willingness on the part of certain followers of Jesus to associate with people of a lower social standing.Footnote 27 At the redactional level, the reference to Simon the Tanner probably stems from tradition, as most NT commentators admit, the epithet, ‘tanner’, assisting in distinguishing one Simon from the other more significant Simon Peter.Footnote 28 Finally, in the post-70 era when the author of Acts composed his writings, all Jews lived in a perpetual state of ritual defilement, making the alleged ritual impurity ascribed by many NT scholars to tanners a matter of even less halakic and theological significance.
The insignificance, then, of Simon's profession is twofold: it tells us nothing about a laxity on the part of Peter or the author of Acts toward ritual purity, let alone kashrut. On the other hand, it might inform us about the insignificant social-economic standing of certain Jewish members who joined the Jesus movement.
