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This analysis deals with Old Testament law in the form of legal symbolic acts, defined as non-verbal acts which fulfil a legal function when performed under the proper circumstances and when the legal function is different from the physical result of the act. Legal symbolic acts belong to customary law. Since the customary law of ancient Israel is not as well-known as the codified law, these acts provide important information regarding the customary law of ancient Israel. Legal symbolic acts are also conventional, i.e., they are not so much dependent upon their performance for their meaning as upon the general agreement attached to the acts by those who form the surrounding socio-cultural context. This invites a contextual approach to the texts in which the acts are described. Such a contextual approach also restricts the use of comparative material to an illustrative function. Only when the literary context cannot be used to conclude whether it is a case of a legal symbolic act or not, will the comparative material be used in a further, explanatory sense. The analysis focuses on the three aspects of performance, legal function, and historical explanation, and includes the following acts: raising the hand, shaking the hand, putting the hand under the thigh, walking through a divided animal, sharing a meal, piercing the ear of a slave, anointing the head with oil, grasping the horns of the altar, transferring the mantle, covering a woman with the mantle, removing the sandal, and putting a child on the knees.

This study traces Jesus' attitude to impurity within the historical context at the end of the Second Temple period, when practices of ritual purity came to play an increasing role in Jewish society and an expansionist trend gained in influence and support. The traditional focus on sayings material and criteria of authenticity in historical Jesus-research is modified, narrative traditions with implicit purity issues are appealed to, and extra-canonical traditions are included. The main areas examined are the most important "fathers" of impurity: "leprosy" (skin diseases), genital discharges, and corpse-contamination. Jesus is found to have acted in ways that could have been understood by some of his contemporaries as indifference to these types of impurity. His behaviour is shown on several points to clash with current purity halakhah and dominant expansionist ideals. In an attempt to interpret his actions within the Jewish context and culture of the Second Temple period, three explanatory models are provided. Jesus' attitude can be seen as part of a moral trajectory in Judaism. It can be understood as a response to a regional, Galilean dilemma. It can be viewed in a power perspective as an expression of Jesus' eschatological struggle against demonic evil. The result is that Jesus may be understood as operating within the purity paradigm of his time, yet seemingly indifferent in the eyes of some, pushing it to the breaking point. Such a reconstruction makes subsequent developments intelligible, in which various Christian currents drew conflicting conclusions. Those looking to Jesus' behaviour for some sort of guidance today may perhaps find contemporary analogies.

The purpose of this study is to understand the symbolic acts that are performed by the prophets in the Old Testament. What do these characters intend with their various symbolic acts? Viberg attempts to show that these prophetic acts are part and parcel of their prophetic message, nonverbal communication that extends the rhetorical arsenal these prophets made use of in action, as they struggle to persuade. The task of this study is accomplished through an exhaustive exegetical analysis of the relevant texts, with a particular focus on the symbolism involved. The goal is to formulate the purpose and function of these acts, together with a description of the acts and how they have been construed by means of various forms of symbolism. The theoretical approach works on three levels: first, the text that describes the symbolic act; second, the performance of the act within the textual world; and third, the symbolic reference or representation of the act within the symbolic world of the act. These symbolic acts are also set in the larger contexts of nonverbal communication and the ancient Near East.