List of Appendices
5.4. Proclaiming the Year of the Lord’s Favour
5.6.3 Why were the Lepers at the border?
As we have seen the theory of Mary Douglas (1966 & 1970) on the body as a social map and that ‘dirt’ is a fundamental boundary marker for society, relates particularly to what is included and excluded in any social sphere. Douglas opines that social boundaries most often are marked out physically or in terms of dirt taboos on the body. Attitudes to boundaries will show forth as form, external boundaries, internal structure and boundaries. A society’s outward boundaries will be noticeable in the taboos relating to the physical body, especially the orifices, mouth, arms, sexual organs, hands, foot etc.
Israel, as a society shows a particular obsession with the bodily boundaries and also the Yoruba people of Nigeria. From the Old Testament through the New Testament, examples abound where lepers, are socially ostracized from the community, e.g. the lepers in I Samuel decided to go to the Assyrian camp because they will not be given food in the community due to their condition; this means they will starve to death.
Therefore they decided to go to the Assyrian camp in the belief that if they are spared they would live but if they were killed, death is in any case the ultimate end of every human being. In the Yoruba setting no one will publicly associate with lepers, epileptic persons, mentally deranged persons, people living with incurable or contagious diseases or those who break community taboos. In fact any one who breaks a community taboo will be sent out of the community.
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The question raised by this theory is: Why were the lepers outside the town? Why at the border? In the opinion of Passakos Demetrious (2002: 1- 4) one of the constitutive elements of the world was that every culture brings forth its own distinction between sacred and profane, and consequently between clean and unclean.
Uncleanness is perceived in its essence as disorder, a threat to social harmony and decency, an element tolerable only at the margins, but preferably completely beyond the borders maintained by a society. This standpoint sees uncleanness as everything that does not fit in the space, or even in the time, in which it is found, and thus belongs elsewhere.
Therefore, the location of the unclean indirectly defines the boundaries of a “cultural map”. This legislation is constituted by the Pentateuch’s “purity laws” (Leviticus 11 – 15), the “law of holiness” (Leviticus 17-26), and “code of laws” (Deuteronomy 14:1-21).
It is not out of place that the story in Luke 17:11 – 19 is located in the border area between Samaria and Galilee. It is not clear what “between Samaria and Galilee” means, but it could be inferred that it would be a “no-go zone” between the two regions. The Jewish historian Josephus stated that Jews under John Hyrcanus, the Maccabean priest and king from Jerusalem, had captured and destroyed Samaritan temple about 150 years before Jesus ministry and totally destroyed the city of Samaria (Jewish War 1. 61 – 63;
Antiquities 13. 249, 254-256 as quoted by Draper 2005). This over the years created hatred and suspicion between Jews and Samaritans (cf. Luke 9:51-56). Hence, the border area between Samaritan and Galilee would have been full of uncertainty and danger. The two communities would see it as “Impure” or “out of bounds” because neither could control it. Such an area is the refuge of the lepers who were regarded as outcasts by both communities.
The lepers also suffer from a disease viewed as incurable and contagious. People infected are driven out of the Community and such are regarded as socially unfit to mix up in the society. The setting of the story of the ten lepers showed why they gathered outside a village at a distance. Aware of their state of uncleanness and hopelessness, they call out to Jesus for help. Carl Kazmierki (1992:42) argued that it was only in great cities and walled towns that the restrictions seem to have been strictly observed, but everywhere lepers would have been driven out and shunned. Lepers were not only social outcasts, but were also religiously unclean, cut off from fellowship with God and his people; they were required to identify themselves by shouting ‘unclean, unclean’
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(Leviticus 13:45). It was the priest who could proclaim the completeness of a cure (Lev 13) and in earlier biblical times leprosy was regarded as resulting from sin, and later Judaism pinpointed specific sins like perjury and bloodshed. Hence, staying at a distance was in conformity with Torah requirement (Spence and Exell 1898:88; Henry 1708- 1710:766; Marshall 1978:208). This banishment from the society and the mainstream of everyday life shows that in this culture, sickness existed in relation to daily life; hence being pinpointed with a serious illness like leprosy meant segregation from others and you take a new status in the community. It also means separation from the spiritual life and possibly relationship with God.
Jean Comaroff (1982:51) in her work, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People, attempts to show this interconnection of knowledge symbol and ideology. She rightly points out that healing means human intervention in disorder. And she rightly states that illness calls into question particular cultural concepts and values. In this particular context here it is an intervention that calls for separation from everyday life until the sufferer is deemed fit according to the cultural norms set by this particular community for entry into the mainstream of everyday life.
Comaroff (1982:63) points out that illness also tests the system of relationship between the sufferer and his particular cultural system. It brings new meaning to the sufferer and to his/her cultural system. This is evident in this situation of leprosy. For leprosy had caused tensions among the people and had thus forced them to make boundaries separating each other even though the illness was not contagious. It brought about a change to their accepted system of socio-cultural relations.
This context also illustrates the point that healing does indeed play upon the relationship between the physical and the social and it forces human intervention and interaction. The physical body impacts on the social body in that what happens in the physical arena is acted out in society. And what happens in society is acted out on the physical arena is acted out in society. And what happens in society is acted out on the physical body so that the body becomes a “social map”. According to Douglas in her book Purity and Danger (1966), all margins are dangerous. Any structure is vulnerable at its margins this was also the case for the Israelite community. Thus, the orifices of the body symbolize its vulnerable points. Matter issuing from the body’s open skin is most
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obvious and leprosy as a skin disease displayed danger to the whole community. And more so for the Israelites to whom holiness meant wholeness and a person with leprosy posed a danger to the purity of the nation.