Good and evil, clean and unclean, rich and poor, self and other. The nature and function of such binary oppositions have long intrigued scholars in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, classics, and anthropology. From the opening chapters of Genesis, in which God separates day from night, and Adam and Eve partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dyadic pairs proliferate throughout the Hebrew Bible. In this groundbreaking work melding critical exegesis and contemporary theory, Saul M. Olyan considers the prevalence of polarities in biblical discourse and expounds their significance for the social and religious institutions of ancient Israel. Extant biblical narrative and legal texts reveal a set of socially constructed and culturally privileged binary oppositions, Olyan argues, which instigate and perpetuate hierarchical social relations in ritual settings such as the sanctuary.
Focusing on four binary pairs--holy/common, Israelite/alien, clean/unclean, and whole/blemished--Olyan shows how these privileged oppositions were used to restrict access to cultic spaces, such as the temple or the Passover table. These ritual sites, therefore, became the primary contexts for creating and recreating unequal social relations. Olyan also uncovers a pattern of challenge to the established hierarchies by nonprivileged groups. Converging with contemporary issues of power, marginalization, and privileging, Olyan's painstaking yet lucid study abounds with implications for anthropology, classics, critical theory, and feminist studies.

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbretiations xi
Introduction 3
Status and Hierarchy 7
Cultic and Quasi-Cultic Settings 10
Rites and Rank 11
1. Foundational Discourse: The Opposition Holy/Common 15
Holiness and Privilege 27
Conclusion 35
2.Admission or Exclusion: The Binary Pairing Unclean/Clean 38
Sources of Impurity 40
Degrees of Pollution and the Requirements of Purification 50
The Hierarchical Dimensions of UncleanlClean 54
Conclusion 61
3.Generating "Self" and "Other"- The Polarity Israelite/Alien 63
Forms and Functions of the Polarity Israelite/Alien 64
Contesting Alien Exclusion from Israel and Its Cultic Life 90
Cultural Mechanisms of Alien Incorporation into Israel 93
Conclusion 99
4.The Qualified Body: The Dyad Whole/Blemished 103
Blemishes and Inequality 111
Conclusion 113
Conclusion 115
Appendix. The Idea of Holiness in the Holiness Source 121
Notes 123
Index of Authors 175
Index of Biblical Citations 179

Saul M. Olyan is Dorot Professor of Judaic Studies, Professor of Religious Studies, and Director of the Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University. He is the author of A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism and Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel.