Is it true that 'A corpse does not defile'? On Ritual Contamination in Tannaitic Literature / האומנם 'לא המת מטמא'? לדיוקנה של הטומאה בספרות התנאים

This article seeks to clarify whether ritual impurity caused by a corpse, as it was understood and formed by the Tannaim, was grasped as an existing essence, a kind of force of nature, or as an abstract formal construct, devoid of any real existence. The investigation shows that the guiding principle of the Tannaitic laws of corpse impurity is actually the persistent attempt to formulate a coherent set of 'natural laws of impurity', at times in direct opposition to the simple meaning of the scripture. This realization of ritual impurity by the Sages, which defines it as a natural force subject to permanent laws, proves to be a sophisticated tool for refining it and cleansing it of all threat or mystery. But this is not the complete picture. Layered onto this system, as a secondary stratum, is a more subtle halakhic tapestry woven from a diametrically opposed perception. This view subjects the concept of impurity to human awareness and intention, severing it from reality and, in so doing, also stripping it of its 'natural' substance. It emerges that the second of the two layers already predates the Schools of Shammai and Hillel; in other words, it is an intellectual and legal development of no later than the first century B.C.E. Hence, we find that the complex system that sets the contours of corporeal impurity belongs to an even earlier inherited material. Since both facets of this creation are totally absent from Second Temple Jewish literature, it seems that this rich though ambivalent halakhic construct has developed solely within the boundaries of a certain pre-rabbinic Jewish circle of Jewish society during the Temple era, which ultimately bequeathed it to Tannaitic literature.