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Correct. The New came up with a much more effective method. Pray. If it doesn't work, Pray some more until (hopefully) it does. If it still doesn't work, use the excuse someone didn't have enough faith/Sometimes God says No - whichever sounds least embarrassing.
This is pretty common ritualistic practice for curing infirmities in the Ancient Near East. Most cultures had a concept that a human - who was seen in varying degrees as being intrinsically unable to approach the gods - had to be ritually pure to approach the gods. Ritual impurity could accrue to humans in various ways (inherent from birth, accidental exposure to certain objects or persons, as a result of performing various rituals, breaking certain taboos, black magic from a sorcerer, an individual's sin, etc.), and thus methods were employed to bring one into a state of ritual purity. This was important, as one could not offer any sort of worship if one was in a state of ritual impurity.
ANE texts are full of medical texts that are quite bewildering by our modern standards ha ha! As for leprosy (which was probably not what we understand as leprosy today, but some sort of skin ailment), an Assyrian text reveals that they had the same misgivings concerning a "leper" and his/her ability to approach the gods:
May Sin [a moon god - Whoppers], the light of heaven and earth, cover you with leprosy and so prevent you going in to gods and kings;
(then) wander like a wild ass or gazelle through the fields!
(Curse Formula if one breaks a Vassal Treaty from ca. 680 BCE, Hartmut Schmokel - "Mesopotamian Texts", in Beyerlin, Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament, TOTL 1978, Eng., p. 130)
The Israelite ritual is extremely interesting in how it deals with the problem, and the symbolism being used. It is far too much to go into here, but one interesting feature is the ANE belief in the ability of certain animals and materials (cedar, etc.) to "banish" evil spirits from a sufferer. Though the Hebrew Bible does its best to distance itself from certain practices, many rituals in the Mosaic Code display this ancient religious belief system. It is especially apparent in the sin-expiation ritual in which the people's sins are "banished" into the desert using a scapegoat as a sacrifice to Azazel.
Though this may strike as extremely odd today, it was fairly common in the ancient world where medicine was not separated from religion as we are accustomed to today. Arequipa mentioned a hold-over from this practice with the use of prayer among Christians, which is no more effective than using a turtle-dove I imagine!
I would be far more interested in knowing why you think this was.
The answer "Bronze Age superstition" is way less interesting than watching someone rationalize it as the perfect instruction of an all-knowing super-being.
I would be far more interested in knowing why you think this was.
The answer "Bronze Age superstition" is way less interesting than watching someone rationalize it as the perfect instruction of an all-knowing super-being.
Please proceed.
Thanks.
There was a sacrificial system at the time. Blood was sacrificed for sins. Life was in the blood. That's why Jesus died on the cross--to shed his blood as an atonement. This was a picture of that, consistent with the sacrificial system.
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