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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Religious question
Message-ID: <1556@shark.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 03:16:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1556
Posted: Tue Oct  1 03:16:05 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 04:52:57 EDT
References: <144@graffiti.UUCP> <57@bbncc5.UUCP> <811@aluxe.UUCP> <1480@hammer.UUCP> <1531@shark.UUCP> <339@vaxwaller.UUCP>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 59
Summary: 

In article <339@vaxwaller.UUCP> susan@vaxwaller.UUCP (Susan Finkelman) writes:
>> 
>> Incidentally, I find the doctrine of Immaculate Conception to be
>> utterly unnecessary.  Mary, through her entire life, was a practicing,
>> sacrificing Jew, and her observance of the Covenant and concommitant
>> trust in the efficacy of the sacrifices held at the Temple would have
>> been sufficient to keep her ritually pure for the necessary period.
>> 
>What evidence is there for the above?  I really don't think that ritual
>purity was the issue addressed by the Immaculate Conception anyway.  
>I would be interested in hearing more about that concept if it is truely
>the origin of the doctrine.

The dispute here comes to a question of whether ritual impurity equates
with sinfulness.  I am not at all sure.  There are some indications that
it does in that things identified as sins often resulted in ritual impurity.

I personally think of it in terms of the Christian doctrine of the sacrifice
of Jesus; the fact is that Paul of Tarsus, among other (Christian) trained
students of Jewish doctrine of that time, taught that the sacrifice of Jesus
made the sacrifices of animals unnecessary for the cleansing of sin.

If we postulate that the "weight of inherited sin" is kept from passing
to Jesus from Mary, then the only question is that she is "touching"
a Holy Thing.  If that is the case, then only her maintaining ritual
purity is really required, and that more for her than for her child.

>> Part of the problem comes in the connection between "sin" and the
>> concept of ritual purity.  Apparently it was sufficient in the eyes
>> of G-d that one be ritually pure, to "handle" Holy things.
>> (Please correct me if I am mistaken in the following analysis.)
>> One could become ritually unclean by breaking the Law, or by touching
>> the wrong things.  As far as I can tell, Mary did neither thing, until
>> she gave birth; I seem to recall that there is a brief interval of ritual
>> impurity after giving birth because of the blood involved.  In any
>> case, it is not a sin to give birth or to be born, so the ritual impurity
>> would be alleviated in the usual fashion.
>> 
>She became unclean every time she had a period both before and after the
>birth of her kid.  I doubt if she stopped handling him because of that.

Actually, it is entirely possible that she DID, since touching an unclean
thing (at least in some instances) transfers that unclenliness; recall
that (at least during the Wandering) the women had to live apart from
the men during the unclean "period" (sorry, no pun intended).  There's
some possibility that, especially among the Essene sect, that women DID
live apart from the men during that time.

Besides, if the "burden of original sin" could be transmitted to any
child by any touch then the only way(s) to preserve Jesus from aquisition
of this burden would be by either miraculously arranging for Him to
never touch anyone, which is contradicted by the records, or by arranging
for every person He ever touched to be protected in the same way
that Mary was, which is also contradicted by the records.

It seems pretty clear that "Original Sin" is supposedly transmitted by
growing inside a sin-tainted human, anyway.

Hutch