A Lesson from Leviticus: Leprosy

Sufferers from leprosy have had to bera not only their affliction but often also bitters social rejection. The Bible played a part in this. I encountered a distant effect of it in New Guinea. It prompted this inquiry into why leprosy was singled out in Leviticus. The story of leprosy provides a more general lesson about cultural relativity and our selective blindness. It shows how words, concepts of sin, and responses to illness, may be confused and change with time. The influence of a written source is strong. In this instance time tangled up attitudes taken to taboo, pollution and sin. Robertson Smith's critical approach to the Bible explains the effects of political circumstances on the development of ethical concerns. In leprosy we find a shift from taboo to sin to disease. There was, I argue, a contrast between priest and leper, a contrast of type and anti-type, the opposition between holy and unclean. The principle at stake was the value set on life as against death. Connotations of sin came later. These have deflected people for a long time from the diagnostic criteria set out in Leviticus.