1. See Bowersock, G. W., Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 59–72Google Scholar; Jackson, Ralph, Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 32–43Google Scholar; Perkins, Judith, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (New York: Routledge, 1995), 142–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luchner, Katharina, Philiatroi: Studien zum Thema der Krankenheit in der griechischen Literatur der Kaiserzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See Jaeger, Werner, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 3, trans. Highet, Gilbert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), 3–45Google Scholar; Luchner, Philiatroi, 23–98.

3. See Mattern, Susan P., Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 14–27Google Scholar.

4. See Riddle, John M., “High Medicine and Low Medicine in the Roman Empire,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37.1: Wissenschaften (Medizin und Biologie), ed. Haase, Wolfgang (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 102–20Google Scholar.

5. See Mattern, Susan P., “Physicians and the Roman Imperial Aristocracy: The Patronage of Therapeutics,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (1999): 1–18CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6. Foucault, Michel, The Care of the Self: Vol. 3 of the History of Sexuality, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York: Random House, 1986), 54–65Google Scholar; see also Foucault, Michel, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981–1982, trans. Burchell, Graham (New York: Picador, 2001), 96–99Google Scholar. While Foucault's treatment of classical antiquity has been harshly criticized for his failure to account for the complexity and multiplicity of voices and lifestyles in this period, his insights on the centrality of the body in the cultural discourse of the first centuries CE remain uncontested.

7. Perkins, The Suffering Self, 156–62.

8. On these terms, see Bowersock, Greek Sophists, 67; Baldwin, Barry, “Beyond the House Call: Doctors in Early Byzantine History and Politics,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984): 15–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scarborough, John, “Roman Medicine to Galen,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37.1: Wissenschaften (Medizin und Biologie), 3–48Google Scholar.

9. On the social standing of doctors in the early empire, see Jackson, Doctors and Diseases, 56–61; on doctors' prominence in aristocratic gatherings and in elite discourse, see Flemming, Rebecca, “The Physicians at the Feast: The Place of Medical Knowledge at Athenaeus's Dinner-Table,” in Athenaeus and His World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire, ed. Braund, David and Wilkins, John (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), 476–82Google Scholar.

10. The term Graeco-Roman medicine refers, in effect, to Greek medicine as appropriated by the Romans. The medical canon was distinctly Greek, and most of the practitioners of medicine in Rome were of Greek descent, with Galen of Pergamum (ca. 130–200 CE) the most famous among them. On the Roman appropriation of Greek medicine and on Greek physicians in Rome, see King, Helen, Greek and Roman Medicine (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2001), 32–43Google Scholar; Nutton, Vivian, Ancient Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2004), 157–71Google Scholar.

11. This was a prevalent theme already in the formative work of Preuss, Julius, Biblisch-Talmudische Medizin (Berlin: S. Karger Verlag, 1923)Google Scholar; for general overviews of the topic, see Prioreschi, Plinio, Roman Medicine (Omaha, NE: Horatius Press, 1998), 663–96Google Scholar; Kottek, Samuel S., “Medical Interest in Ancient Rabbinic Literature,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 2: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Languages of Rabbinic Literature, ed. Safrai, Shemuel, Tomson, Peter J., and Safrai, Zeev (Assen, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Van Gorcum, 2006), 485–96Google Scholar.

12. Fonrobert, Charlotte E., Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

13. Rosen-Zvi, Ishay, “Ha-guf ve-hamikdash: reshimat mume ha-kohanim ba-Mishnah u-mekomo shel ha-mikdash be-beit ha-midrash ha-tanna'i,” Maddaei ha-yahadut 43 (2006): 49–87Google Scholar.

14. For another example of a study that examines the interweaving of Graeco-Roman medical ideas into biblical-interpretive material, see Levinson, Joshua, “Cultural Androgyny in Rabbinic Literature,” in From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature, ed. Kottek, S. S. and Horstmanshoff, M. (Rotterdam: Erasmus, 2000), 119–41Google Scholar.

15. While these two chapters are unarguably identified as part of the Priestly source, Martin Noth argued that the initial core of this textual unit consists only of the laws pertaining to afflictions in humans and to their purification (Leviticus 13:1–47, 14:1–32), whereas the laws pertaining to afflictions in garments and houses (Leviticus 13:48–59, 14:33–57) are of secondary origin; see Noth, Martin, Leviticus, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 104Google Scholar. Jacob Milgrom makes a similar argument, but maintains that the unit on afflictions in houses is of different origin from the unit on garments, and is tertiary to the main bulk of the text that discusses afflictions in humans. See Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 1–16, The Anchor Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 886Google Scholar.

16. While most of the tractate is devoid of biblical quotations almost altogether, Chapters 12 and 14 of the tractate, which engage with the inspection of afflicted houses and with the purification ritual of the person with scale-disease respectively, are ample with biblical proof texts and are closely parallel to the corresponding passages in the Sifra.

17. See Harrington, Hannah K., The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 181Google Scholar; Neusner, Jacob, History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities (Leiden, 1977), XX, 277Google Scholar.

18. The close correspondence of tractate Nega‘im with the biblical text is immediately apparent on examination of the sequence of the topics discussed in the tractate vis-à-vis the sequence of the verses in Leviticus 13 and 14. The tractate can be delineated as follows: the appearances of skin afflictions (M. Nega‘im 1:1–4, corresponds to Leviticus 13:1–2); the inspection procedure (M. Nega‘im 1:4–3:2, corresponds to “and the Priest shall see,” Leviticus 13: 3); general introduction on the various sorts of afflictions (M. Nega‘im 3:3–8); the three impurity tokens of skin afflictions—white hair, quick-flesh, and the spreading of the affliction (M. Nega‘im, Chapters 4–7, corresponds to Leviticus 13:4–8); the purification of the one who turned entirely white (M. Nega‘im Chapter 8, corresponds to Leviticus 13:9–17); scabs and boils (M. Nega‘im Chapter 9, corresponds to Leviticus 13:18–28); afflictions of the head and the beard (M. Nega‘im Chapter 10, corresponds to Leviticus 13:29–45); afflictions in garments (M. Nega‘im Chapter 11, corresponds to Leviticus 13:47–59). Only the last two topics discussed in the Mishnah reverse the order of the biblical text: Afflictions in houses (M. Nega‘im Chapter 12–13, corresponds to Leviticus 14:33–57) are addressed in the Mishnah before the purification of the person with scale-disease (M. Nega‘im Chapter 14, corresponds to Leviticus 14:1–32).

19. The fact that the ritual diagnosis of skin-affliction in its biblical formation was emphatically not geared toward healing, but rather only for the determination of one's purity status, was highlighted by Martin Noth and Jacob Milgrom in their commentaries on the book of Leviticus; see Noth, Leviticus, 105; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 887–89. According to Milgrom, the fact that the dimension of healing is wholly absent from the biblical text can be understood in light of the fact that in Mesopotamian cults, the priests functioned as magician-physicians, and the rituals of purification were perceived as healing ceremonies. In contrast, the Priestly author shapes the diagnostic ritual so as to convey that only God functions as a healer, and the priest merely fills a clerical role.

20. On the rabbinic enterprise as distinctly hermeneutic, see Halbertal, Moshe, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. While the Mishnah itself is not manifestly an interpretive project, I believe it cannot be dissociated from the rabbis' broader self-presentation and self-understanding as experts in texts. Since the dominant rabbinic figures in the Mishnah are the same figures as those in the halakhic midrashim, and since these two literary genres are so closely interdependent, the rabbis' claim for legal expertise as it is made in the Mishnah must be understood as inherently dependent on their self-professed text-interpretive skills.

21. See Temkin, Oswei, Gallenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 33Google Scholar; Barton, Tamsyn, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 150–51Google Scholar.

22. See Lloyd, Geoffrey, “Scholarship, Authority and Argument in Galen's Quod animi mores,” reprinted in Lloyd, Principles and Practices in Ancient Greek and Chinese Science (London: Ashgate, 2006), 9–42Google Scholar.

23. Mattern, Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing, 149–56.

24. Perkins, The Suffering Self, 142–72.

25. On this point, see also Halberstam, Chaya, Law and Truth in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 17–32Google Scholar.

26. According to Milgrom, the indispensable role of the priest in the rituals pertaining to skin afflictions was emphasized because of the residues of pagan worship that these rituals entail. By positing the priest as the central supervisor and enabler of the diagnosis and purification of skin afflictions, the Priestly author legitimized those practices (Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 887–89). Other scholars have argued that the priest was simply seen to be an expert in this field, the owner of a body of knowledge necessary to discern the pure from the impure, and have dismissed the idea that the priest's knowledge was seen as oracular or divine; see Noth, Leviticus, 103; Gerstenberger, Edward S., Leviticus: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 158–60Google Scholar. While Halberstam does adopt the overall view that the priest was considered to be an expert (Law and Truth, 20–22), her discussion implies that she sees the priestly knowledge as divinely ordained (30).

27. The verb ra'a (to see) appears in Chapter 13 of Leviticus no less than thirty-three times.

28. The similarity between the priestly inspection and ancient accounts of medical examinations was noted by Gerstenberger, Leviticus, 159.

29. See Nutton, Vivian, “Galen at the Bedside: The Methods of a Medical Detective,” in Medicine and the Five Senses, ed. Bynum, William F. and Porter, Roy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 7–16Google Scholar.

30. The process in which bodily signs are turned into legible symptoms through the power of the clinical gaze was lucidly described by Foucault, Michel in The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception, trans. Smith, A. M. Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 88–123Google Scholar. However, Foucault identified the emphasis on visual epistemology as a quintessential characteristic of the emerging modern medicine of the eighteenth century and failed to see that it also stood at the heart of dominant trends in ancient medicine. Foucault asserts that post-Hippocratic medicine was “blind” because it was based on philosophy rather than on observation (56); he thus crudely ignores the empiricist and methodist doctrines in ancient medicine, as well as the intricate interrelations between philosophy and practice in Galen's works. Nonetheless, I see Foucault's insights on the mode of operation of the gaze in the production of medical knowledge as indispensable to understanding medicine—both ancient and modern—as a cultural phenomenon.

31. See also Halberstam, Law and Truth, 25–29.

32. Compare, for example, the Mishnah's guide for determining whether one's urine contains semen (thus rendering him impure) in M. Mikva'ot 8:2 with Galen's elaborate system of deciphering diseases through urine in De crisibus (85–101 = K.9.575–606); or compare the Mishnah's account on normal versus abnormal genital discharges (M. Zabim 2:2 and T. Zabim 2:2) with Aretaeus' description of the continuing genital flow in On the Causes and Signs of Chronic Diseases, II, 5 (see Moffat, John, Aretæus on the Causes, Symptoms and Cure of Acute and Chronic Diseases [London: 1875], 224–27Google Scholar). I hope to pursue these and similar parallels in greater detail in future work.

33. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 103–59. See also Fonrobert, Charlotte E., “The Human Body in Rabbinic Legal Discourse,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Fonrobert, Charlotte E. and Jaffee, Martin S. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 270–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Similarly, although not in regard to impurity laws, Ishay Rosen-Zvi argued that the mishnaic development of the sotah ritual is a manifestation of power and control over the woman's body, attained (among other things) by exposing it to be looked at; see his Ha-tekes she-lo haya: mikdash, midrash u-migdar be-masekhet Sotah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008), 226–35Google Scholar. On the social and political meaning of the gaze in ancient Rome, see Barton, Carlin, “Being in the Eyes: Shame and Sight in Ancient Rome,” in The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body, ed. Fredrick, David (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 216–35Google Scholar.

35. Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, 108.

36. The Tosefta (T. Nega‘im 1:5) also suggests a similar series of color similes in regard to the red and green shades in the afflictions of garments.

37. All translations of rabbinic sources are mine.

38. Cf. B. Shevu‘ot 5b–6a.

39. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 107–10. Halberstam argues against Fonrobert's claim that the rabbinic color expertise of menstrual blood was built on the template of the priestly color expertise of skin afflictions, and points out that in the tannaitic view, it is not the rabbis who are supposed to scrutinize the different colors of menstrual blood, but rather the women themselves (Law and Narrative, 28–29). While Halberstam is undoubtedly right in this observation, I doubt that her argument compromises Fonrobert's analysis. Even if the rabbis are not the ones actually performing the inspection of blood and bloodstains, they are nonetheless positing themselves as the bearers of authoritative knowledge on this topic—a fact that paves the way to the entrusting of the actual inspection of bloods to their hands in post-tannaitic halakhah. As Halberstam herself points out, the result of the rabbinic complication of the laws pertaining to menstrual blood is that “lay people must study in a rabbinic academy before they can recognize impure menstrual blood” (29).

40. See also Sifra, par. Nega‘im 2, per. 1:6 to Leviticus 13:4 (ed. Weiss 61a); B. Shevu‘ot 5b; Y. Shevu‘ot.1.1 (32d).

41. On Galen's use of rhetoric, see Pearcy, Lee T., “Medicine and Rhetoric in the Period of the Second Sophistic,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37.1: Wissenschaften (Medizin und Biologie), 445–56Google Scholar.

42. Barton, Power and Knowledge, 139–65.

43. On the Varieties of Pulses 618.14–619.5 (Barton's translation), quoted in Barton, Power and Knowledge, 159.

44. Barton, Power and Knowledge, 160.

45. This sentence is missing from all the Mishnah's manuscripts, and may have been added in the printed edition because of the influence of the Tosefta (T. Nega‘im 1:6) or the Sifra, par. Nega‘im 2, per. 2:6 to Leviticus 13:4 (ed. Weiss 61a).

46. See M. Mikva'ot 8:5; B. Hullin 72b; B. Niddah 41b.

47. Sifra, par. Nega‘im 3, per. 4:3 to Leviticus 13:12 (ed. Weiss 63a–b); cf. T. Nega‘im 1:9.

48. R. Shimshon of Sens (1150–1216) points out in his commentary on the Mishnah that one is not forced to go through such examination unless one is known to have an affliction, but once the affliction was spotted the examination must take place in full-body nakedness. In contrast, R. Asher (1250–1327) merely states that “he [the priest] should look at the man who is before him in his natural course of standing, and not make him bend himself and spread his limbs.” R. Asher's parsimonious rhetoric might derive from a certain discomfort with the blatant departure from the rules of modesty that such examination entails.

49. Peskowitz, Miriam, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender and History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 84–85Google Scholar.

50. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 142–47. Interestingly, nowhere do we find a problematization of the lack of modesty involved in the examination of skin afflictions, whereas in the case of puberty examinations, it is emphasized in several places. This fact might dissuade us from endorsing the commentators' assumption that the examination of skin afflictions should be understood as performed in the nude, but it could also be merely coincidental, particularly since no Talmudic tractate was redacted (or preserved) on tractate Nega‘im.

51. Fonrobert, “The Human Body,” 277–78.

52. As Katherine Young noted in her semiotic analysis of modern medical examinations, nothing marks the transition of the body from subject to object like the removal of clothes. See Young, Katherine, Presence in the Flesh: The Body in Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1997), 15–34Google Scholar.

53. Another way in which the Mishnah “rabbinizes” the inspection of skin afflictions is by referring to it in terms of a court session (M. Nega‘im 1:4, 2:5; cf. T. Nega‘im 1:7; Sifra, par. Nega‘im 1, per. 1:9–10 to Leviticus 13:2 [ed. Weiss 60a]).

54. Rosen-Zvi, “Ha-guf ve-hamikdash,” 66 (my translation). On the rabbinic claim for supremacy over the priests, see Cohen, Stuart A., The Three Crowns: Structures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 147–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a more refined argument, see Himmelfarb, Martha, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 165–70Google Scholar.

55. On this passage in the Damascus Document and the debate whether it should be attributed to a sectarian author/redactor or not, see Hempel, Charlotte, The Laws of the Damascus Document: Sources, Traditions, and Redaction (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 187–92Google Scholar; Werrett, Ian C., Ritual Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 98–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Fraade, Steven D., “Shifting from Priestly to Non-Priestly Legal Authority: A Comparison of the Damascus Document and the Midrash Sifra,” Dead Sea Discoveries 6.2 (1999): 109–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harrington, however, cogently suggests that the purpose of the passage in the Damascus Document is to stress that the priest is indispensable even if he needs to be instructed, whereas the purpose of the rabbinic passages is to downplay the role of the priest to the minimum; see Harrington, The Purity Systems, 80.

57. Harrington reads these restrictions on the inspection process as part of a more general attempt to limit the pronouncement of skin-affliction impurity to a bare minimum. She holds that because of the fact that after the destruction of the Temple there was no effective way of purifying the metzora, the rabbis tried to limit the incidence of the disease as much as possible. See Harrington, The Impurity Systems, 199–201.

58. Halberstam, Law and Truth, 39. Halberstam seems to maintain that in the context of skin afflictions the rabbis do not significantly deviate from the biblical model with the priest at its center, and that their innovations regarding rabbinic authority are manifested only in the context of genital discharges, which in the Bible do not have to be inspected by a priest at all. She thus misses the fact that the rabbinic mode of constructing authority through emphasis on complexity and doubt is also a quintessential part of the mishnaic discourse on skin afflictions.

59. The rabbis prescribe various procedures that one must follow in a case of doubt, thus suggesting that oftentimes the determination of the true nature of an affliction is impossible (e.g., M. Nega‘im 4:11, 5:1, 5:4); moreover, they acknowledge that sometimes the determination of one's purity status is based strictly on chance and timing (see M. Nega‘im 8:10). In this sense, the epistemology of skin afflictions in tractate Nega‘im is guided by the same uncertainly and tendency to resort to legal formalism that Chaya Halberstam identified in rabbinic literature as a whole (Halberstam, Law and Truth, 8–11). This does not mean, however, that the rabbis did not believe that the majority of skin afflictions could be diagnosed in terms of impurity with a significant amount of certainty, and that there is a (distinctly rabbinic) body of knowledge and a set of skills that are a prerequisite for any attempt to engage in questions of purity and impurity.

60. “In the hands of a priest” (bi-yedei kohen) is the version in the Mishnah's printed editions as well as in MS Parma 2596, MS Parma de Rossi 138, and MS Cambridge 470.1 (Lowe edition, p. 215b). In MS Kaufmann A50: mi-pi kohen (“from the mouth of a priest”).

61. See also Sifra, par. Nega‘im 1, per. 1:9 to Leviticus 13:2 (ed. Weiss 60a).

62. A similar pattern recurs in the Tosefta's account of the purification of the person with scale-disease: “All are fit to purify the person with scale-disease, even one made impure by a corpse, and in the same way that it is a miẓvah to purify them, it is a miẓvah to render them impure” (T. Nega‘im 8:1). The Sifra, on its part, emphasizes that for every action in the purification process which is not specified to be performed by the priest, any person may perform it, e.g. “The command [to slaughter the birds] is by the priest, but the slaughtering of the bird is by any person” (Sifra par. Meẓora 1, per. 1:1 to Leviticus 14:5 (ed. Weiss 70b).

63. See, for the most evident examples, M. Yoma 6:3; M. Sanhedrin 4:2; M. Menaḥot 9:8; M. Hullin 1:1; M. Bekhorot 5:5; M. Temurah 1:1.

64. Sifra, par. Nega‘im 5, per. 5:10 to Leviticus 14:35 (ed. Weiss 73a).

65. I thank the anonymous reader for this valuable observation.

66. In notable contrast to the Mishnah and to the Sifra, the Tosefta maintains that proficiency in skin afflictions is required of the priest himself, and not that it can be replaced by the proficiency of the sage: “A priest who is proficient in afflictions but not in scalls, in scalls but not in bald spots, in humans but not in garments, in garments but not in houses . . . should not inspect afflictions until he is proficient in all of them and in their names” (T. Nega‘im 1:2).

67. On the relations of the Mishnah and the Sifra, see Epstein, J. N., Mevo'ot le-sifrut ha-tanna'im: Mishnah, Tosefta, u-midrshei halakha (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1957), 645–702Google Scholar.

68. In the Babylonian Talmud (B. Arakhin 3a) it is explained that the word all in the Mishnah is meant to include those who are not proficient in skin afflictions and “their names,” as long as they can be taught.

69. Fraade, “Shifting,” 118.

70. Neusner, Jacob, History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities (Leiden: Brill, 1977), VIII, 254–55Google Scholar.

71. For example, in the end of his De symptomatum causis, Galen writes, “It is not, I think, difficult for each person trained in the many matters addressed in these treatises to discover such things himself” (De symptomatum causis III, XI.4 = K.VII.266K); quoted from Johnston, Ian, Galen: On Diseases and Symptoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 299Google Scholar.

72. See Barton, Power and Knowledge, 156; Perkins, The Suffering Self, 159–69.

73. See also a similar formulation in M. Zavim 2:1: “All contract the impurity of genital discharge, even the converts (gerim), even the slaves, whether freed or non-freed . . .” and T. Zavim 2:1: “The Gentile and the resident alien do not contract the impurity of genital discharge.”

74. Two classic works in this field are Büchler, Abraham, “The Levitical Impurity of the Gentile in Palestine before the Year 70,” Jewish Quarterly Review 17 (1926): 1–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Alon, Gedalyahu, “Tum'at Nokhrim” (Hebrew), Tarbitz 8 (1937): 137–61Google Scholar. More recently, see Klawans, Jonathan, “Notions of Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism,” AJS Review 20 (1995): 285–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hayes, Christine E., Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 107–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar. First published 1966 by Routledge & Kegan Paul.

76. It should be immediately mentioned that Gentiles are marked with impurity in the rabbinic system, as a rabbinic decree analogizes Gentiles with men and women with genital discharge (T. Zavim 2:1). However, while Gentiles are in effect categorically impure, their impurity is permanent and is entirely different in essence from the potential impurity of Jews, which is circumstantial in nature.

77. Noam, Vered, Mi-Qumran la-mahapekhah ha-tanna'it: hebetim bi-tefisat ha-tum'ah (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Press, 2010) 288–95Google Scholar.

78. On concepts of purity and impurity as markers of group-identity, see Fonrobert, Charlotte E., “Blood and Law: Uterine Fluids and Rabbinic Maps of Identity,” in Blood and the Boundaries of Jewish and Christian Identities in Late Antiquity, ed. Boustan, Ra'anan and Reed, Annette Yoshiko, special theme section of Henoch 30, no. 2 (2008): 243–66Google Scholar.

79. The version “the children of Israel” (bene Israel) appears only in the printed edition of the Mishnah. In all the Mishnah's manuscripts the version is beit Israel (the House of Israel).

80. For a detailed discussion on the meaning of the terms germani and kushi, see Goldenberg, David M., The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 96–128Google Scholar; Melamed, Abraham, The Image of the Black in Jewish Culture: A History of the Other, trans. Rozen, Betty Sigler (New York: Routledge, 2003), 60–62Google Scholar.

81. On the stereotypization of the different ethnic groups in the Roman Empire, see Isaac, Benjamin, The Invention of Racism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 55–168Google Scholar; specifically on Ethiopians and Germans, see pp. 80–86 and 427–39 respectively.

82. A remarkable example of this identification can be found in Bereshit Rabbah 86:3 (ed. Theodor-Albeck vol.2, 1055), where the sale of Joseph to the Egyptians by the Ishmaelites is referred to as a case of “a kushi selling a germani,” as opposed to the more common case of “a germani selling a kushi.” This midrashic passage suggests not only a complete association of Germans with whiteness and of Ethiopians with blackness, even when referring to persons who are of neither of those ethnic groups, but also a surprising self-identification of Jews with Germans in this color scheme.

83. See Martin, Dale, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 34–35Google Scholar; Melamed, The Image of the Black, 36, 66–68; Rosen-Zvi, “Ha-guf ve-hamikdash,” 70.

84. On these terms, see Cohen, Shaye J. D., The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 109–11Google Scholar.

85. It is important to note that the term pure (tahor) is used in this passage (as well as in all of order Tohorot) to denote both something of no consequence that need not be examined at all and something that had been examined and was found pure.

86. Moshe Lavee, Ger she-nitgayer ke-katan she-nolad: ha-bitui ve-hashlakhotav be-sifrut Hazal (PhD diss., Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2004), 151 (my translation).

87. Turner, Bryan S., The Body and Society (London: Sage Publications 1996), 42Google Scholar.

88. See also Lavee, Ger she-nitgayer, 267.