Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Adolf Būchler on Rabbinical Texts teaching the Gentiles Being Part of the "Serpent Seed" and psalm 82 and the Immortality of the Israelites

  

[with respect to] the use of the root זמה in its literal as well as its applied meanings in the answer given by R. Yoḥanan to the question addressed by his disciple R. iyya b. Abba to another disciple R. Assi, and answered by the master after the unsatisfactory reply of R. Assi, ‘Why are the Gentiles polluted? Because they eat abominable and creeping animals; R. Yoḥanan said, Because they stood not at Mountain Sinai; for when the serpent had carnal intercourse with Eve, it threw into her filth; this was removed from the Israelites, when they stood at Mount Sinai’. As the acceptance of the revelation by the Israelites purged away from Israel the filth common to all humanity, the impurity could not have been physical in the ordinary sense, so that the question of the teachers and their answers dealt with the religious and moral uncleanness of the Gentiles. And R. Assi’s account of it by their eating of creeping and other animals did not view levitical impurity conveyed by unclean food, but, in accordance with Lev. 11, 43.44; 20, 25, 26, a defilement of the soul, which is the reverse of holiness, unholiness. Similarly, R. Yoḥanan’s explanation by the semen of the serpent did not think of a merely physical contamination transmitted by Eve to her children and descendants, but of the low natural character of the beast with its manifestations in immorality, violence and Canaanite enormities. That the filth meant sin may also be inferred from the statement of R. Neḥemiah, of the middle of the second century, that the revelation freed the Israelites from the angel of death. So also his colleague R. Yosé expressed it. The Israelites stood at Mount Sinai in order to become free from the power of the angel of death, but by corrupting their actions (by the golden calf) they lost that privilege, Psalm 82, 6, 7; or at R. Eliezar, the son of R. Yosé the Galilean said, If the angel of death should complain to God that he was created for no use, God will answer him that he has power over all the nations except Israel, to whom He granted freedom from death, Psalm 82, 6, 7. (Adolf Būchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century [Library of Biblical Studies; New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1967], 317-18)