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Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism is unavailable, but you can change that!

Although most people acknowledge that Jesus was a first-century Jew, interpreters of the Gospels often present him as opposed to the Jewish law and customs—especially when considering his numerous encounters with the ritually impure. Matthew Thiessen corrects this popular misconception by placing Jesus within the Judaism of his day. Thiessen demonstrates that the Gospel writers depict Jesus...

in the world. In the realm of the profane, impurities can exist. There they can affect people without having immediate consequences. But Israel’s priests, at the instruction of their God, set up barriers to keep these impurities from entering where they must not—the Jerusalem temple, where Israel’s God dwells among humans. The various boundaries to the temple and the prohibitions regarding which people could not enter into sacred space were established in order to preserve God’s holy presence on
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