Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities

A recent book review on Bryn Mawr Classical Review may be of interest to Philonists and other students of Diaspora Judaism: Christine Hayes,
Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii, 309. ISBN 0-19-515120-8. $45.00.
Reviewed by Lily Vuong, McMaster University. Excerpts from the review: "In this important book, Christine Hayes explores how the impurities of Gentiles were understood in the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish literature. One of her main arguments is that the "didactic pair" of pure/impure was used both to describe Jewish culture and to inscribe socio-cultural boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. H. focuses on ancient debates over conversion and intermarriage. In her view, these debates reflect different ideas about Gentile impurity and were key factors in the formation of Jewish sects in the Second Temple period (536 BCE- 70CE) as well as in the separation of Christianity from what became Rabbinic Judaism."

". . . this book is a superb piece of scholarship. H. here offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of Jewish sectarianism in the Second Temple period, early Jewish self-identification, and Jewish relationships with non-Jews. At times H's halakhic discussions can be difficult to follow, yet, overall, her book is extremely well researched, skilfully argued, and articulately written. Particularly helpful are her detailed discussion of debates in the appendix and her accessible glossary. Readers interested in purity laws, Jewish and Christian self-definition, and relations between Jews and Gentiles will benefit greatly from H's careful study."

Philo is dealt with chapter 3-4: In chapters three and four, H. traces these ideas through a variety of Second Temple Jewish sources, including texts from the Apocrypha (Tobit, Wisdom of Ben Sira, Epistle of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees), Pseudepigrapha (1 Enoch, Jubilees, 3 Maccabees, 3rd and 5th Sibylline Oracles, Testament of Levi), the Dead Sea Scrolls (War Scroll, Community Rule, 4QFlorilegium, Miqtsat Ma'aseh haTorah), and the works of Josephus and Philo. H. holds that there is strong biblical influence on Second Temple literature; here too Gentile impurity is potentially moral but never ritual. In respect to genealogical impurity, H. argues for a distinction between different texts. Like the Pentateuch, Josephus and Philo seem not to see non-Jewish genealogy as an obstacle to conversion. By contrast, Jubilees and 4QFlorilegium build on Ezra's concept of "holy seed;" for their authors, true conversion of Gentiles is impossible and intermarriage unacceptable.