Introduction
The difficulties with the red cow ritual have long exercised readers of the book of Numbers. The ritual in Num 19:1–22 describes how cleansing from corpse impurity is to be effected. A red cow is burned in a manner carefully prescribed in order to produce ash. Mixed with water, the ash is then sprinkled upon the corpse-impure individual on the third and seventh day of his or her impurity. To some of the rabbis and many subsequent interpreters, the automatic efficacy of the rite appears to be tantamount to pagan magic. In addition, it has long been observed that the red cow ritual has a number of anomalies when compared to other rituals in the Old Testament. The red cow is designated a “purification offering” 
Footnote 1 but is unlike the purification offerings described in Leviticus 4–5 or, indeed, any other sacrifice: the entire animal, including the blood, is burned outside the camp, and the goal of the ritual is the production of ash for the treatment of future and not past impurity.Footnote 2 Finally, there is what Jacob Milgrom describes as the “paradox of the red cow”: the red cow ritual makes the pure impure and the impure pure.Footnote 3
The standard way in which these unusual features have been treated in critical scholarship has been to assume that we have here an ancient, perhaps even pre-Israelite, rite that has been incorporated into the Israelite cult with greater or lesser success.Footnote 4 The rite, it is held, reflects a basic fear of human corpses. One of the earliest and most influential articulations of this approach is that of George Buchanan Gray in his magisterial International Critical Commentary on the book of Numbers.Footnote 5 Like William Robertson Smith, Gray is carefully attentive to the developing discipline of anthropology, and he employs it to particularly good effect in commenting on Numbers 19. Gray observes that “the belief on which it is based and the custom which it regulates are ancient and primitive.…a dead body is a source or cause of pollution; and this doctrine is both ancient and widespread.”Footnote 6 According to Gray, the significance of the ritual is to be religiously and theologically appraised by proper attention to the origins of the ritual and by observing how it was incorporated into the religion of Israel. As the ritual is transferred into its new context, it sheds its old meaning and is invested with new meaning. Rituals such as the red cow ritual “gradually exchanged their originally polytheistic for a monotheistic setting, and thus became a fit vehicle for the truths of the Hebrew religion.”Footnote 7
Although some of his turns of phrase now sound rather dated, and despite the implausibility of a ritual being stripped of meaning before being reinvested with new significance, Gray’s broad interpretive strategy has proved impressively resilient in an ever-changing scholarly discipline. In part, no doubt, this is due to the volume of comparative material to which he appeals, but it is also due to a widespread sense that the rituals are primitive.Footnote 8
Although this interpretive tradition is long established, there is reason to question whether it is, in fact, well grounded. There is a danger that uncritical accounts of magic or of Israel’s religious development might have been inadvertently smuggled into the interpretation of the text. Similarly, appeals to universal human customs may well be justified, but they require critical verification. It is at this point, however, that doubts arise. In his discussion of impurity in Israel and Mesopotamia, Karel van der Toorn observes that “the Mesopotamian texts hardly refer to the defilement incurred by the contact with a human corpse. The ideal of a swift and proper burial of the dead is apparently owing more to a concern for the welfare of the ghosts 
of the deceased than to a fear of contamination.”Footnote 9 Combining Van der Toorn’s observation with a careful historical assessment of the biblical evidence, Reinhard Achenbach argues that the impurity of the dead is only explicitly found in later, post-Redactional levels of the Pentateuch—namely, in the Holiness Code and in parts of the book of Numbers. In Achenbach’s view, the origins of this idea are to be found in the separation of the temple and its priesthood from the realm of the dead. This is reflected in 2 Kgs 11:15, where execution within the sanctuary is avoided.Footnote 10 It is only with the extension of sanctuary regulations to the entire Israelite camp in later parts of the Pentateuch that corpse impurity becomes a central concern.Footnote 11
Attention to the other cultic material in the book of Numbers provides further grounds to doubt the antiquity of the red cow ritual. Several passages in Numbers show a knowledge of other pentateuchal cultic texts. Detailed sacrificial practices are assumed (e.g., 6:1–21), existing ritual material is supplemented (e.g., 5:5–10; 9:1–14) or assembled for a particular purpose (e.g., 18:8–32), and previous instructions are enacted in narrative (e.g., 5:1–4; 8:1–4). In short, there is extensive evidence that many of the ritual texts in Numbers were composed at a relatively late stage in the composition of the Pentateuch. Rituals in the book of Numbers draw extensively on extant texts, most especially from Exodus and Leviticus. Might this not also be true of the red cow ritual?
In the most recent and extensive literary critical examination of the book of Numbers, Achenbach argues that Numbers 19 draws widely from pentateuchal materials attributable to Ps and D. Consequently, Achenbach assigns both chapters to his Theokratische Bearbeitung II, a post-redactional compositional level of the Pentateuch that shows particular concern for the protection of the wilderness camp’s sanctity.Footnote 12 In his judgment, the instructions in Numbers 19 are “ritualgeschichtlich junge, synthetische Anweisungen.”Footnote 13
In his investigations, Achenbach largely restricts himself to redaction-critical and religio-historical questions that are necessary to untangle the complex compositional history of the book of Numbers. In this essay, I wish to extend Achenbach’s analysis to show how a concern to relate the developing priestly corpus (Genesis–Leviticus) to other Israelite traditions, particularly those reflected in the book of Deuteronomy, generates the red cow ritual. Authorial creativity means that it is no longer possible to explain every detail of the text of Numbers 19 by appealing to prior textual material, but most of the anomalies in the ritual will be shown to be the result of an innovative hermeneutic and not due to the preservation of very ancient practices. In particular, I will argue that the author of Numbers 19 creates a new ritual in order to address a lacuna in the priestly purity regulations: the impurity caused by a human corpse. To do so, the author draws upon the rite for an unresolved murder in Deuteronomy 21 (or something very much like it), the priestly instructions for the purification offering (Leviticus 4–5), and the purity regulations (Leviticus 11–15). After exploring the ways in which Numbers 19 creates its novel ritual, I will ask what impact this had on the existing system of ritual purity regulated in Leviticus 11–15. I will argue that P’s notion of transmission of impurity by touch is transformed so that impurity can be transmitted at a distance. I will conclude with some more theoretical reflections on the process by which the ritual was created, which I suggest can be described as “the hermeneutics of ritual innovation.”
The Red Cow Ritual (Num 19:1–22)
Although Milgrom has argued that an anti-death symbolism undergirds the purity legislation in Leviticus 11–15, corpse impurity is a striking absence.Footnote 14 The Holiness Code is the earliest part of the Pentateuch to be explicit that corpses and participation in mourning rites cause impurity. The instructions for the priests and high priest in Leviticus 21 assume that the dead defile. The priests are to avoid defiling themselves with an exception for their closest kin; the high priest may not be defiled by any. The reason for the priests being set apart in this matter is their service in the sanctuary (Lev 21:6, 12). The graded holiness of the high priest, priests, and people, which corresponds to the graded holiness of sacred space, explains the differentiation between the types of defilement that are permissible. Defilement does not occur in the abstract but relates to the sanctuary as the locus of the divine presence. Consequently there are no instructions for the laity about corpse defilement. Nevertheless, the Holiness Code’s instructions for priests create a significant lacuna within the existing priestly purity legislation. If there are particular rituals for the cleansing of menstrual impurity or the purity of the leper, even guidance on impurity due to contact with an animal corpse, what rituals pertain for those contaminated by a human corpse? The Priestly Code offers no guidance.
It might not seem obvious for Deuteronomy to offer some guidance on this omission, for it is often overlooked that the last book of the Torah has its own, albeit understated, notion of purity and impurity.Footnote 15 The most distinctive departure from the priestly system of purity is in Deuteronomy’s association of violent death with impurity. In Deut 21:22–23 it is forbidden to leave the corpse of an executed malefactor hanging overnight, for to do so would bring impurity on the land 
Footnote 16 In Deut 17:8 the levitical priest makes judgment between different kinds of “blood,” which should most likely be understood as contagion resulting from a murder.Footnote 17 Deut 26:14 implies that corpses defile more generally. This verse is most naturally taken to imply that impurity is contracted through some contact with the dead or those mourning.Footnote 18 As part of this concern, Deut 21:1–9 describes a ritual to be performed upon the discovery of a murder victim where the murderer cannot be ascertained. The slaughter of a young cow at an uncultivated location is said to remove the stain of innocent blood (see 19:13).Footnote 19 This ritual provides atonement for the blood;Footnote 20 it is the only occasion on which the root 
occurs in the Deuteronomic law code.Footnote 21
I want to argue that the composer of Numbers 19 used his knowledge of the ritual of Deuteronomy 21 or a ritual very much like it as part of the basis for creating a new ritual to deal with a situation of impurity that had not been anticipated in the priestly purity regulations of Leviticus 11–15. For the composer of Numbers 19, it was not enough simply to appropriate the rite of Deuteronomy 21, not only because the Deuteronomic rite addresses another problem, but also because within the priestly system every rite of purification requires the sacrifice of a purification offering 
The ritual described in Deuteronomy 21 and the instructions about the purification offering in Leviticus 4–5, together with the priestly instructions about ritual impurity in Leviticus 11–15, provide the composer of Numbers 19 with the principal ingredients for creating his novel ritual.
At first blush, the priestly purification system and the ritual in Deuteronomy 21 are in an irresolvable tension with one another. In the priestly purity regulations, purification requires the offering of a 
and such offerings can only be made in the sanctuary. The ritual in Deuteronomy 21 is not a sacrifice: it takes place in open country and is dealt with in a manner unlike any sacrifice elsewhere in the Pentateuch.Footnote 22 The ritual of the red cow in Numbers 19 seeks to combine both, although it requires certain gymnastics to do so.Footnote 23 The setting in the country is the principal contribution of the rite in Deuteronomy 21, but this requires that certain parts of the purification sacrifice be adjusted. Most importantly, the sacrifice needs to be related to the sanctuary in ways similar to that of other purification sacrifices. The slaughter of the cow is described with the usual priestly language for sacrifice 
although the sacrifice is said to take place before Eleazer the priest. This unusual specification perhaps suggests that Eleazer, in some way, can be taken to be a representative of the sanctuary, since the sacrifices are usually to take place before the tent of meeting or YHWH (e.g., Lev 4:4).Footnote 24
The connection to the sanctuary is also maintained through the manipulation of the blood. In the case of the anointed priest and the congregation, the blood of the purification offering is sprinkled seven times before the curtain of the sanctuary (Lev 4:6, 17), as well as being applied to the horns of the altar and being poured out at the base of the altar (Lev 4:7, 18, 25, 30). In the red cow ritual, the blood is sprinkled in the direction of the sanctuary (Num 19:4). The rest of the blood is burned with the cow. The novelty of this requirement has often been observed.Footnote 25 In Milgrom’s opinion, “it is the blood of a 
a purification offering, which is the ritual detergent par excellence and which will remove the impurity from those contaminated by contact with corpses.”Footnote 26 This may be, but there is nothing in the text of Numbers 19 that confirms Milgrom’s supposition. The reason should rather be sought in the fact that without the altar, at the base of which the sacrificial blood is poured, the author of Numbers 19 could envisage no other appropriate means by which the blood should be disposed.Footnote 27 The fact that in the rite of Deuteronomy 21 the heifer is strangled, and so killed without shedding any blood, may well have influenced the author when reading the rite together with the instructions about the purification offering.Footnote 28 Less likely is the possibility that the instructions in Deut 12:27 to present the meat and the blood of the burnt offering on the altar influenced the author of Numbers 19.Footnote 29
The indebtedness of Numbers 19 to the textual instructions concerning the purification offering in Leviticus 4–5 is sufficient to explain 
(Num 19:9). Milgrom makes much of the Masoretes pointing the masculine pronoun of the consonantal text as a feminine. The consonantal text, Milgrom contends, must refer to the ashes, but the Masoretic pointing refers to the cow.Footnote 30 Milgrom is correct about the Masoretes’ actions; here as elsewhere the Masoretes’ decision to point 
as a masculine or feminine depends upon the material that constitutes the offering.Footnote 31 The consonantal text, however, reflects the almost consistent practice in Leviticus 1–7 of using 
in the summarizing statements about the various sacrifices. The suggestions that 
be rejected as a gloss,Footnote 32 or that it be translated differently since the cow cannot possibly be a sacrifice,
Footnote 33 fail to recognize the dependence of verse 9 upon its literary precursor in Leviticus 4–5.
It is natural to wonder why Num 19:2 specifies that a “cow” 
be used for the sacrifice.Footnote 34 Why do we not find here a “heifer” 
as in Deuteronomy 21? The difference can be attributed to the influence of the purification-offering legislation, which for an unintentional transgression of the people is a “bull” 
and not a “heifer” 
or a “young bull” (
as in Lev 4:14). Numbers 19 has a female animal as in the ritual of Deuteronomy 21 but adopts the language of Leviticus 4. In doing so, it is aided by the availability of the cow within Leviticus’s system of purification, since it had not been designated in Leviticus 4 for the purification of any group or individual (see chart).
The description of the animal as “perfect, in which there is no blemish” 
has been judged a “tautology.”Footnote 36 The apparent redundancy can be attributed to the use of priestly and Deuteronomic terminology. The adjective “perfect” 
is the standard description of the sacrificial animal in the priestly literature, never once occurring in Deuteronomy.Footnote 37 The language of “blemish” 
occurs in the Deuteronomic law code at Deut 15:21 and 17:1; it also occurs in the Holiness Code in Lev 22:20–25, perhaps influenced by Deuteronomy’s usage,Footnote 38 but not in the earliest priestly material. The final description of the red cow is that it must never have borne a yoke (
; Num 19:2). A similar requirement is made of the heifer in the Deuteronomy 21 rite, but the phrasing is different (
; v. 3). An exact parallel is found in 1 Sam 6:7, and it is possible that this narrative, rather than Deuteronomy 21, has influenced the phraseology. 1 Sam 6:7 also describes an elimination rite with the ark of the covenant borne back to Israelite territory on a cart drawn by two “milk cows that have never been yoked” 
Footnote 39
The ritual of the red cow in Numbers 19 draws not only upon Deuteronomy 21 and the 
regulations of Leviticus 4–5 but also, as we might expect, on the different purity regulations in Leviticus 11–16. This is most apparent in the utilization of cedar wood, crimson material, and hyssop in the red cow ritual. These three ingredients also appear in the ritual for the cleansing of the leper (Lev 14:6). In Leviticus 14 they are used to sprinkle the impure leper while in Numbers 19 they are burned together with the cow.
There are four other ways in which the red cow ritual appropriates the purity regulations. First, the concerns about touching a corpse and its contamination of open vessels (Num 19:14–16) are somewhat similar to the impurity contracted through contact with the corpse of a swarming land animal (
; Lev 11:29–38). As was the case with Deuteronomy 21, despite some thematic similarities, there are few verbal parallels.Footnote 40 If the author of Numbers 19 has been influenced by Leviticus 11, he has rephrased his material considerably. Second, the two-stage purification is an indication of the seriousness of the impurity contracted and is reminiscent of the two stages required for the parturient (Leviticus 12). Third, the contraction of impurity by those who enter the tent has its closest parallel in the instructions about the contaminated house (Lev 14:46). The level of impurity is seven days, as though the corpse had been touched. Fourth, the language of “fresh water” (
; Num 19:17) is relatively rare in the Old Testament but also occurs in Lev 14:5, 50–52; 15:13. In the purification rites for the leper and the house, the water is used together with the active element from the sacrifice, the blood. In the red cow ritual the water is used with ash as the active element. In both cases the resulting mixture is sprinkled on the unclean abode or the unclean people.
The thesis that Numbers 19 draws upon a ritual similar to that described in Deuteronomy 21 and the ritual instructions in Leviticus allows us to shed light on Milgrom’s paradox. He writes:
Whereas the ashes of the Red Cow purify those whom they sprinkle, they defile those who do the sprinkling (vv. 19, 21) and, indeed, anyone who handles them (v. 21) and is involved in preparing them (vv. 6–10). This paradox is neatly captured in the rabbinic apothegm: they purify the defiled and defile the pure.Footnote 41
The ritual ablutions in the red cow ritual can be understood if we view them as a combination of the ritual ablutions like those described in Deuteronomy 21 and the Yom Kippur ritual (Leviticus 16). In the ritual of Deuteronomy 21, the slaughter of the cow takes place outside the camp and part of that rite is the washing of all the participants’ hands over the body of the slain cow. This ritual act of washing removes bloodguilt and transfers it to the cow. In the ritual of Yom Kippur the person who burns the bull and goat of the purification offering needs to wash himself and his clothes before reentering the camp. This is usually understood as a rite of purification, but this interpretation is mistaken and is the result of reading Numbers 19 into Leviticus 16.Footnote 42 In Numbers 19 the purpose of the washing is for purification, since the one being washed is explicitly said to be unclean until evening (
in v. 7; see also vv. 8, 10, 21, and 22). In contrast, Leviticus 16 never specifies that the washing of bodies or clothes is necessary for purification or that the participants in the rite have become impure. Indeed, it is often observed that this cannot be the case for the high priest (Lev 16:24). In this case the washing has been described as a rite of transition,Footnote 43 and this description also fits well the washing undertaken by those responsible for the disposal of the 
on Yom Kippur.Footnote 44
The author of Numbers 19 includes washing to reenter the camp because the ritual described in Deuteronomy 21 has the rite take place outside the camp, and in Leviticus 16 those who dispose of the sacrificial carcasses outside the camp have to wash on reentering the camp. The hand-washing rite of Deuteronomy 21 has not been retained in Numbers 19, but the idea that washing removes some form of impurity has been. The rite of transition in Leviticus 16 is, thus, transformed into a purification rite in its reception in Numbers 19, and each of the participants is said to be impure until evening (Num 19:7–10). It is this hermeneutical transformation that generates the paradox that so perplexed the rabbis.
In conclusion, we have shown that the red cow ritual is a literary creation, the result of an extension of rituals found in the developing priestly corpus and in the book of Deuteronomy. The anomalies in Numbers 19 arise not because we have an ancient ritual preserved in a late priestly form, but because we have a creative coordination of other rituals or ritual texts to create a new ritual.Footnote 45 To state this in the starkest terms, the original Sitz im Leben of the red cow rite was nothing other than its Sitz im Text. To speak in this manner is to assert only that the ritual originated in the text rather than the text being a reflection of an existing ritual. This is not, of course, to suggest that the authors did not intend the ritual to be practiced or that it was not practiced. Nor is it to deny a historical context within which human corpses were now viewed as sources of a virulent impurity and as such were a threat to YHWH’s sanctuary. The Holiness Code is the first to show a concern with corpse impurity, but only as it applies to priests. The book of Numbers extends this to the camp and to all of the Israelites (Num 5:1–4). Thus, corpse impurity appears to have become a particular concern only in the Persian period, and may reflect the influence of Greek ideas about sanctuaries and the divine realm in the Levant.Footnote 46
The Transformation of the System of Ritual Purity
Under the influence of Milgrom, much recent work on ritual in the Old Testament has begun to consider priestly rituals as coherent systems rather than as chance deposits from a large cache of ancient priestly lore. The work of Milgrom and his students gives ample evidence of the value of approaching the ritual material in the Old Testament in this manner. The understanding of the red cow ritual offered here suggests that we might also need to think about such systems diachronically. The priestly system of ritual purity in Leviticus 11–16 did not originally include any measures for corpse impurity.Footnote 47 The red cow ritual is an attempt to expand the ritual system and close this lacuna. Yet, as we have already seen, the expansion of the ritual system through the incorporation of another ritual has consequences for the other existing rituals in the ritual system. Interpreted as part of a ritual system that includes Numbers 19, the rites of transition in Leviticus 16 are transformed into rites of purification. In other words, the Pentateuch has evidence that its ritual systems were not static. Modifications to a ritual system had authoritative force for subsequent readers, and the anomalies introduced by it created new interpretive pressures as readers attempted to understand the new ritual and its precursors as part of a coherent ritual system.Footnote 48
The addition of the red cow ritual to the existing ritual system had significant consequences for how the subsequent system was understood. Most obviously, by drawing extensively upon the existing system of ritual purity, the composer of Numbers 19 made the red cow ritual the sum of purity regulations and the corpse the most virulent form of impurity (see m. Kelim 1:1–5). It is also apparent why many scholars have discerned the theme of death throughout the purity regulations in Leviticus 11–15, for each form of ritual impurity has some relationship to Numbers 19.Footnote 49 From this perspective it is possible to appreciate the merits of Milgrom’s proposal as an account of how the purity rituals function as a canonical, synchronic whole.
An important case of transformation, with significant repercussions for our understanding of recent scholarship on the purity regulations, most especially Milgrom’s, is the question of how impurity was believed to be transmitted. It is to this subject that we will now turn.
The Transmission of Impurity and the Contamination of the Sanctuary
In his influential essay “Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’,” Milgrom expounded his view that impurity in Leviticus “was a physical substance, an aerial miasma which possessed magnetic attraction for the realm of the sacred.”Footnote 50 This miasma pollutes the sanctuary in different ways depending upon who commits the sin and whether the sin is wanton or inadvertent. The location of the sinful act does not affect the pollution; the sanctuary can be polluted even from a distance:
It is patently clear that these texts are grounded in the axiom, common to all ancient Near Eastern cultures, that impurity is the implacable foe of holiness wherever it exists; it assaults the sacred realm even from afar.Footnote 51
In his examination of Milgrom’s theory of ritual impurity, Roy Gane correctly observes that the crucial move in Milgrom’s argument is grounded in only a few biblical texts. On the basis of these specific cases, Milgrom extrapolates his general theory of an aerial miasma.Footnote 52 Thus, in the immediate context of the above quote, Milgrom writes,
Molech worship is forbidden because it contaminates “my sanctuary” (Lev., XX, 3). Whoever is contaminated by a corpse and fails to purify himself “has contaminated the Lord’s sanctuary” (Numb., XIX, 20, 13). Those afflicted with pelvic discharges also need purification “lest they die through their impurity by contaminating my tabernacle which is among them” (Lev., XV, 31). The two latter offenders are banished with the leper “that they do not contaminate the camp in whose midst I dwell” (Numb., V, 2b). True, the rabbis interpreted each these passages [sic] on the assumption that impurity came into direct contact with the holy, specifically that the offender while in an impure state entered the sanctuary or ate of sacred food. However, it is patently clear that these texts are grounded in the axiom, common to all ancient Near Eastern cultures, that impurity is the implacable foe of holiness wherever it exists; it assaults the sacred realm even from afar.Footnote 53
The two crucial texts for Milgrom’s argument are Lev 20:3 and Numbers 19. Both appear to suggest that the sanctuary can be polluted when certain sins are committed, even if this takes place outside the sanctuary.
Of these two texts, the most detailed, and consequently the most important for Milgrom’s understanding of impurity and the sanctuary, is Numbers 19. The red cow ritual presents a consistent picture of impurity as something that can be transmitted through space, and not only by touch. This is apparent in the instructions in Num 19:14–15. If someone dies in a tent or there is a corpse in the tent, anyone who enters the tent is contaminated and any open container is contaminated. Corpse impurity, it would seem, is envisaged as an invisible, gaseous substance that is contained by the tent and contaminates anything within. Transmission of impurity through space is also apparent in the case when an Israelite fails to cleanse himself with the ashes of the red cow. The sanctuary is defiled, despite the fact that the corpse-impure person has not ventured into the sanctuary (vv. 13, 20). But it is not only impurity that has an effect from a distance. In the preparation of the ashes, some of the cow’s blood is sprinkled towards the sanctuary. In the instructions for the 
in Leviticus 4–5, the blood is sprinkled before the curtain of the sanctuary, while in the red cow ritual it is sprinkled in the direction of the sanctuary. For the composer of Numbers 19, distance from the curtain is presumably not a problem, for the blood or the sanctuary can have the desired effect through space.
It is crucial to observe, however, that neither of the texts that form the basis of Milgrom’s understanding of impurity is to be found in the regulations for ritual purity in Leviticus 11–15. In other words, neither text belongs to the original priestly document. Lev 20:3 is part of the Holiness Code and, as we have seen, Numbers 19 reflects P and Deuteronomy, and must be redactional or post-redactional. How, then, is impurity transmitted according to the purity regulations in Leviticus 11–15? In Leviticus 11–15 transmission of impurity is detailed in the cases of animal carcasses, infected houses, and genital discharges.Footnote 54 In the case of the carcass of a land swarmer 
impurity is transmitted when it is touched or falls onto or into something (11:29–38). In the case of clean carcasses, impurity is transmitted by touch, ingestion, and carrying. In the latter two cases, a greater level of impurity is contracted, probably because of the more involved contact with the carcass. Not only is the person unclean until evening, but he or she must also launder his or her clothes (11:39–40).Footnote 55 In the case of the male suffering a discharge 
impurity is transmitted by touching the 
his spittle, or anything he has sat on (15:4–12). In the case of the man who has an emission of semen, any clothing that has been splashed is unclean and so is his sexual partner (15:16–18). In the case of the menstruant, impurity is transmitted by her touch or contact with anything she has sat or lain on; if she has intercourse, the man is made impure (15:19–24). In the case of the female suffering a discharge 
anything she sits on transmits impurity when touched. In each case we have a case of impurity that requires not only bathing, but also the laundering of clothes.
In every instance of impurity transmitted by animal carcasses or genital discharges, the purity regulations of Leviticus 11–15 are unequivocal: impurity is transmitted by physical contact. In some cases physical contact that is more involved than simple touch, such as by ingesting or carrying, can result in a greater impurity. A more difficult case is presented by the infected house. In the case of the infected house, impurity is contracted when someone enters the quarantined house (14:46). A greater level of impurity is contracted when a person eats in the house or sleeps in the house, for it is additionally specified that these people must launder their clothes (14:47). Milgrom argues that the infected house contaminates by overhang. Unsurprisingly the argument is made by appeal to Numbers 19.Footnote 56 However, if we were to read the ritual instructions without Numbers 19, together with the surrounding impurity regulations, it seems more likely that we should interpret this case also as an instance of physical contact. The person who becomes contaminated is someone who has gone into the house (
; 14:46). The house is what is entered through the door and impurity is contracted at that point. The house should not be thought of as the constituent framework—door, walls, roof—as though these enclose a space that is not to be identified with the house.
Evidence from elsewhere in the Old Testament provides support for the view that impurity was understood to be transferred by contact. It would appear that doorkeepers were installed at the temple gates in order to ensure that the unclean did not enter (2 Chr 23:19). Psalms 15 and 24 are usually characterized as “entrance liturgies”; they provide a brief list of those who are excluded from the temple for moral faults. The brief account of priestly instructions about purity and impurity in Hag 2:10–14 also evidences an idea of impurity transferred by touch.
Thus, we have a consistent picture in Leviticus 11–15 and elsewhere in the Old Testament: impurity is transmitted by touch. If our arguments about the influence of the ritual of Deuteronomy 21, or something very like it, are correct, it would appear that the priestly perspective on impurity has been altered by coming into contact with a rather different concept of a maleficent power: bloodguilt. Deuteronomy 21 is not the only biblical text that testifies to the virulent potency of shed blood. Blood is portrayed with its own voice crying for vengeance (Gen 4:10), it pollutes the land (Num 35:33–34), and it is transferred through the generations (2 Sam 3:29).Footnote 57 It may be that blood was thought to pollute the immediate location through contact with the ground (see Gen 4:10–12; Deut 21:1–9*Footnote 58), but this was later extended, particularly in the Deuteronomic tradition, to the whole land and the people (Deut 21:8, 23).
Although the idea of bloodguilt and its polluting power is particularly prom-inent in Deuteronomy,Footnote 59 it is not found in the earliest priestly writings of the Pentateuch.Footnote 60 Indeed, it is only found in the book of Numbers: 19:1–22; 31:19–24; and 35:33–34.Footnote 61 Since the term “impure” 
is used for pollution resulting from bloodshed, it is perhaps not surprising that bloodshed would at some point be brought into relationship with the priestly system of ritual purity.Footnote 62 The result was a more dynamic and virulent concept of impurity than the idea of impurity transmitted by touch.
The conflation of these different concepts of pollution would go some way to explaining the differences among interpreters about how to understand ritual impurity in the priestly literature. We shall consider first Milgrom’s conscious departure from the rabbis before turning to the disagreements between Milgrom and Maccoby.
First, Milgrom recognizes in his theory of miasma a departure from the rabbis’ view on impurity, for whom the primary transmission of impurity occurs through physical contact. Milgrom understands Leviticus 11–15 in light of Numbers 19, while the rabbis understand Leviticus 11–15 to provide the norm and Numbers 19 to be something of an exception. The rabbinic principle of “overhang” can be seen as an attempt to make sense of this contamination without physical contact. The principle was then applied to lacunae in the purity laws in Leviticus 11–15, such as how impurity was communicated by the scale-diseased or within an infected house. Both the rabbinic extension of “overhang” and Milgrom’s understanding of impurity as an “aerial miasma” can be seen as logical developments that result from the incorporation of the regulations about corpse impurity into the system of ritual purity in Leviticus 11–15. Nevertheless, it is helpful to recognize that these are both ways of reading the expanded system of ritual purity as a logical and coherent system. The diachronic analysis shows us that the earliest system of ritual purity, that is, Leviticus 11–15, made sufficient sense with the idea of physical contact.Footnote 63 Nevertheless, the addition of Numbers 19 has implications for how individual regulations and the purity system as a whole are understood.
Second, whether impurity is transmitted through touch or aerially has significant implications for how the summary of the purity laws in Lev 15:31 is understood: “You must keep the Israelites separate from their impurity, so that they do not die in their impurity by defiling my sanctuary that is in their midst.” Milgrom argues that “impurity can occur anywhere in the camp; it need not be brought into the sanctuary.”Footnote 64 In his view the sanctuary can be defiled despite distance from the tabernacle. In the context of Leviticus 11–15, however, Lev 15:31 should be understood as a warning that death will result if impurity is brought into contact with the sanctuary by the impure.Footnote 65 These different ways of understanding Lev 15:31 and the diachronic history that has given rise to them helps clarify the significant difference that exists between Milgrom and Maccoby. As we have seen for Milgrom, impurity always defiles the sanctuary by miasma. Consequently, it is imperative on all Israelites to cleanse themselves from impurity after they have acquired it. Maccoby, on the other hand, argues that “it is only when [most Jews] had to enter the Temple grounds, mainly at festival times, that they had to take care to remove their corpse impurity or other impurity by the prescribed purifications.”Footnote 66 For Maccoby the purity regulations are “a kind of palace protocol or etiquette, observed in the court of a monarch, but not required outside the confines of the palace.”Footnote 67 Outside the tabernacle or temple, purity is not a matter of concern. Maccoby’s theory functions well enough for Leviticus 11–15, but difficulties arise particularly with Num 19:13, 20. For both verses Maccoby has to argue unconvincingly that there is a textual ellipsis. Defilement of the tabernacle occurs only if the unclean person enters the sanctuary or unwittingly defiles a priest.Footnote 68 There is no need to choose between Milgrom’s and Maccoby’s solutions, for both have grasped aspects of the changing portrayal of impurity in Leviticus and Numbers. Maccoby correctly recognizes that in the purity regulations of Leviticus 11–15 transfer of defilement to the tabernacle only occurs through physical contact. Yet Milgrom’s objections to Maccoby draw attention to the fact that this could be seen to have been significantly altered as a result of the inclusion of Numbers 19 into the system of purity regulations.
The Dynamics of Ritual Innovation
In this essay I have raised serious doubts against the view that Numbers incorporates a very ancient ritual in chapter 19. Is it feasible, though, that the author of Numbers could have coined a new ritual? As Catherine Bell observes, such ideas do not fit well with our commonsense understanding of rituals:
Rituals tend to present themselves as the unchanging, time-honored customs of an enduring community. Even when no such claims are explicitly made within or outside the rite, a variety of cultural dynamics tend to make us take it for granted that rituals are old in some way; any suggestion that they may be rather recently minted can give rise to consternation and confusion. Indeed … part of what makes behavior ritual-like is the way in which such practices imply the legitimacy of age and tradition.Footnote 69
Such commonsense views of ritual have informed most analyses of ancient Israelite ritual and resonate well with the usual interpretation of Numbers 19.Footnote 70 On this understanding the priestly composer of these chapters felt compelled to preserve the rituals since they were traditional, even if they did not easily fit his own theological instincts and needed to be purged of magical elements. Nevertheless Bell, along with other ritual theorists, insists that rituals can change, and that they can even be invented.Footnote 71 Despite the apparent novelty of this proposal, there are plenty of examples in history of ritual invention. Indeed, there are cases in the biblical period, for ritual innovation took place in the creation of fasting days to mourn the fall of Jerusalem and in the creation of Purim.
Although not the case with all invented rituals (the fast days and Purim being good counterexamples), Bell argues that some invented rituals seek to conceal the fact of their own development.Footnote 72 One aspect of such concealment would be the attribution of the red cow ritual to the authoritative figures of Moses and Aaron. Interestingly, though, the ritual instructions are not portrayed as having been received at Sinai or Moab but in the wilderness. As well as serving to conceal the ritual’s recent origins, the appeal to traditional authority is important for the communal reception of the ritual. Another striking aspect of such concealment is what we might call the hermeneutics of ritual innovation. Similar to the hermeneutics of legal innovation that Bernard Levinson examines in Deuteronomy,Footnote 73 the hermeneutics of ritual innovation present new rituals as though in essential continuity with earlier rituals despite significant innovations. Unlike the hermeneutics of legal innovation in Deuteronomy, the hermeneutics of ritual innovation do not seek to displace existing rituals. Indeed, they depend on the other rituals to create a density of traditional ritual actions upon which they improvise. This improvisation is central to the new ritual’s effectiveness, for the new ritual seeks not to displace its ritual precursors but to take its place alongside them as part of an enlarged ritual system that imparts meaning to the ritual practitioners’ world. As a result, the intertextual strategy is more complicated than we meet in many cases of legal innovation. The new ritual must draw on previous materials so as to be sufficiently continuous with them but inventive enough to justify its own existence. Thus, the range of other texts or rituals that Numbers 19 draws upon is key to its success.
The literary nature of the rituals places in question the idea that the invented rituals were an attempt to address some issue in religious practice in the Persian period. The ritual seems to stem from a literary and canonical impulse with its own logic not necessarily related to ritual practice. That is, Numbers 19 is the result of a canonical imperative toward closing ritual lacunae, even if the perception of what were the significant lacunae in the Pentateuch is, as we have seen, dependent on historical and cultural location. In addition, some effort has been made to integrate the red cow ritual into its narrative context,Footnote 74 and the ritual makes a significant contribution to the theme of death that pervades the book of Numbers.Footnote 75 The red cow ritual does not belong only to the narrative of the book of Numbers. The reception of the rituals in Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism points to an active history of practice. It is here, though, in the reception history of Numbers that the history of the ritual, with all its attendant worries about magic, is to be sought. It is not to be found in the history “behind” the text, for while the ritual has a genealogy, it has no history before the book of Numbers.
as “purification offering,” see 
see 
is a ghost.
) is best explained as cases of scale disease (see Leviticus 13–14; ibid., 547).
is translated with 
in Numbers 19 rather than 
) the blood and sprinkles it (Num 19:4). In the purification offering, the priest “takes” (
) some of the blood, “dips” (
) his finger in and sprinkles it, and then puts some on the altar and disposes of the rest at the foot of the altar (Lev 4:5–7). The instructions in Leviticus presuppose a vessel to carry the blood, which is not the case in Numbers; see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 234. For a rabbinic discussion reflecting this, see Sipre 
on Num 19:4.
) against the altar)” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1895] 149). Veijola is probably correct, since the verse concludes that the blood from the other sacrifices is poured out at the base of the altar while the meat is consumed.
): Daß das vorliegende Ritual ein Sündenopfer sei, ist völlig aus der Luft gegriffen und hat im Text selbst keinen Anhalt, so daß dieser Versteil mit Sicherheit als sekundär abzutrennen ist” (Wefing, “Ritual mit der roten Kuh,” 354 [emphasis mine]).
states nothing about the age of the animal. The traditional rendering “heifer” is already found in 
is actually taken from a totally different, unrelated source (Exod 3:18)” (“The Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism,” HUCA 53 [1982] 29–43, at 38). This could provide a parallel to Numbers 19, which has similarities to Deuteronomy 21, but where the closest parallel—the description of the animal—is not to Deuteronomy 21, but to 1 Samuel 6.
is employed (Num 19:16; Lev 11:31), and everyone that is within a tent with a human corpse or everything in an earthenware pot with a 
corpse is unclean (
[Num 19:14]; 
[Lev 11:33]).
a purification offering, for anyone handling the 
becomes impure” (ibid.). The problem only arises when it is assumed that there is an actual ritual behind Numbers 19 that the biblical text is seeking to describe, rather than a literary construction that brings together a variety of different texts. This is not to say, of course, that the attempt to practice the ritual did not result in a need to fill gaps or give rise to a number of puzzling questions. Already in 4QMMT there are additional participants in the rite (4Q394 3–7 I 16b–19a); see 
of more recent origin. Thus, while the red cow ritual has parentage, it is its own distinct rite. This rite is not conceivable prior to the bringing together of the priestly purity rituals and Deuteronomy 21. Secondly, it is possible that the pre-Deuteronomic rite in Deuteronomy 21 is ancient but, unfortunately, we simply cannot tell. While concerns about bloodguilt can be found in the second millennium 
sacrifice removes impurity from the offerers. In his view impurity is transferred to the sanctuary awaiting the final removal on Yom Kippur. Thus, for Gane the removal of impurity is a two-stage process.
would appear to be a redactional addition to the dietary laws, perhaps included in order to improve the connection between Leviticus 11 and 12–15 in the original priestly purity regulations.
im Singular; vgl. Dtn 19,6.10.12f; 21,7–9; 27,25) und Blutschuld (formuliert mit 
im Plural; vgl. Dtn 19,10; 22,8, im Singular Dtn 17,8; 21,8b) von der Sache und auch vom Begriff her im Rechtskorpus eine wichtige Rolle spielt” (Dietrich, Kollektive Schuld, 197).
