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465 The Two-Bodied People, Their Cosmos, and the Origin of the Soul Ziony Zevit In 2001 I defined Israelite religions as “the varied, symbolic expressions of, and appropriate responses to the deities and powers that groups or communities deliberately affirmed as being of unrestricted value to them within their worldview.”1 In this definition, I expressed my assumption that religion, like culture in general, is formed, formulated, and expressed through organized groups of people. Both are expressed semiotically and mediated through external realities such as spoken and written language, arts, and ritual. Though some elements of both culture and religion are private and subjective, most are public and objective. In the Ancient Near East, as in many parts of the contemporary world, culture was embedded in religion so that there was no intelligible demarcation between the two. Pre-exilic biblical texts are expressions of Israelite culture and religion with their attendant values . Written by and for Israelites, earlier tales and texts in the J and E sources of the Torah influenced later productions in D, P, and the Deuteronomistic history because authors of the younger works were educated and education involved memorization, internalization, and repetition.2 By parsing these texts in order to answer certain questions, it is possible to gain some insights into Israelite cosmology and anthropology and to consider how these changed as a result of the destruction of Jerusalem and dismembering of Judah in the fifth century bce. Among the questions considered and addressed below with varying degrees of thoroughness are the following: In the Israelite perception of the cosmos, were people thought to be weak but charged with achieving perfection? Were people concerned with what might happen to them after death? Did they think whatever ill befell them was due to their not fulfilling divine commands? Did they conceive of the cosmos as filled with malevolent forces from which they had to seek protection? This study in honor of Zev Garber reflects his many interests in matters historical, historiosophical , and theological. It also skirts the mythological edge of a leitmotif informing much of his thinking, to wit: manifestations of evil in the world.3 Two-Bodied People When I compare pictures of myself from years ago with the individual looking out at me quizzically from the mirror, it is quite clear that whereas I have remained much the same, my body has changed. If, while cutting vegetables for a salad, I happen to cut myself, it is clear that my body did something that was not my intention. Should I engage in some act that brings a sense of pleasure and well-being to my body, I might feel guilty. I pamper my body, train it, trying to align its profile with what I decided it should look 466 ZIONY ZEVIT like. In other words, I perceive the “me” that is my mind as distinct from my body. The perception raises the question of what happens to the me of my mind when my fleshy body dies. Knowledge of the mindbody dichotomy is deeply rooted in Western cultural tradition and has been scrutinized by philosophers, anthropologists, theologians, and psychologists. In Western religious traditions, it has given rise to dichotomous conceptualizations such as mind and body, master and slave, reason and desire, order and chaos, which in turn evolved into profound metaphors affecting and justifying the organization and structure of society, and the allocation of political power.4 We are familiar with the saying from Matt. 26:41 and Mark 14:38 used often to explain away some unacceptable behaviors that occur despite ostensibly good intentions: “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Psychologically, this may be restated: desire and impulse are stronger than reason. Data collected by scholars of Eastern and non-Christian Western religions indicate clearly that comprehensions of the body and of how people explain and interpret body experiences and feelings differ from culture to culture, teaching, in effect, that they are socially constructed.5 Consequently, it is clear that our Western interpretation is not innate and does not refer to something objective in human biology or biochemistry and, as a consequence, should not be universalized. It is a matter of our culture and language. If so, in the absence of contradictory evidence and the presence of supporting data, I surmise that there was no mind-body dichotomy in the culture of ancient Israel.6 This surmise clarifies a persistent problem in the exegesis of a Levitical law. Leviticus 5:1...

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