11-03-2008, 03:02 AM
Shlama Mike,
i've been on a road trip and only came back this evening and saw the responses.
although the passages in question don't explicitly refer to Yoseph as being defiled, if he indeed was, the idea of his defilement is easily reconciled in that the Torah does state that anyone who comes into contact with a woman during her state of menstrual impurity becomes impure, and this fact is echoed in that a post-partem woman also has this designation of impurity (Leviticus 12 goes into this). since it *appears* from the text that there was no midwife at Messiah's birth, then it is likely that Yoseph acted in her stead, as well as most likely attending to her during the oncoming days of her ritual impurity, which also would have prolonged any defilement he may have acquired. neither of the two scenarios involve any sin at all, but rather merely the erasing of impurity, and they would *explain* the Peshitta's usage of a plural instead of a singular.
Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy
i've been on a road trip and only came back this evening and saw the responses.
although the passages in question don't explicitly refer to Yoseph as being defiled, if he indeed was, the idea of his defilement is easily reconciled in that the Torah does state that anyone who comes into contact with a woman during her state of menstrual impurity becomes impure, and this fact is echoed in that a post-partem woman also has this designation of impurity (Leviticus 12 goes into this). since it *appears* from the text that there was no midwife at Messiah's birth, then it is likely that Yoseph acted in her stead, as well as most likely attending to her during the oncoming days of her ritual impurity, which also would have prolonged any defilement he may have acquired. neither of the two scenarios involve any sin at all, but rather merely the erasing of impurity, and they would *explain* the Peshitta's usage of a plural instead of a singular.
Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy