Jo Ann McNamara wrote:
> > Claire Sahlin wrote:
> > >
> > > What about women who died before they could be
> > > "purified" after childbirth? I once read that they
> > > were buried in unconsecrated ground.
> >
> I'm probably being rash to try to answer this but I am willing to be
> corrected.
snip
> I am not sure where
> the ceremony of churching came from or what its theological justification
> is but I can't believe that the church ever taught that women who did not
> live to go through such a ceremony were in a state of mortal sin and
> condemned to Hell.
I'm running the same risk as you here, but could this have grown from Old
Test. restrictions on women? It seems that the authors you cited (which I
have left out of this reply) may have been responding specifically those
aspects of the old law. I don't know how this stuff is supposed to have
survived into the Christian MA, but I think we're looking at two different
notions of impurity: blood, from many sources, could be "toevah" in the old
law, and the *interior* state of the unclean doesn't seem to matter much.
_Is_ this an example of ritual impurity vs. sin a la metanoia? This is
probably an oversimplification.
(cf. Lev. 12:1-8, esp. v.4; more blood-stuff in 15:19-30, 18:19)
If they can't touch anything that is holy, how can they be buried in
consecrated ground?
[for that matter, I just found an instance of what might be called "holy
abortion," or perhaps "ordeal by miscarriage," Num. 5:22-28, so you never
know what will turn up when you go poking through the Old Test. Perhaps this
relates to our other thread on the perceived dangers of vernacular Bibles?]
JS
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|