Università Roma Tre

Course title 2020-2021: Purity and pollution, guilt and sin, contamination and contagion in Ancient Christianity
Teaching articulation: 6 CFU
Semester: I

Course description:
Christians inherit from the Jewish world a corpus of Scriptures that they reinterpret in the light of Jesus' message: among them, a prescriptive book like Leviticus which, through a sophisticated classification system, regulates rites and behaviors. The detailed description of the sources of pollution (unclean animals, corpses of animals, blood, diseases such as leprosy, illicit sexual intercourse, etc.) and the rites necessary to restore the state of purity, acquires, in Christian reading, new and multiple meanings, expressions of different Christianities. These interpretations are rooted in specific conceptions of the relationships that must exist between God, the world and man and are often able to provide the faithful with answers to the questions raised by personal misfortune, natural disasters, illnesses; furthermore, they contribute to determine an alternative religious system to Judaism and the Greco-Roman religious world.
The course aims to focus attention on some texts - chosen as emblematic of different conceptions and practices - and to reconstruct their cultural assumptions through an appropriate historical contextualization.

Bibliography:
For attending students:
M.Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge, London 1966 ( and further editions)
Sources provided during the course
The attending studendts are expected to write a short paper on a chosen topic
For non attending students:
M.Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge, London 1966 (and further editions)
The non attending students are expected to read one of the following books:
P.Sacchi, Sacro/profano impuro/puro nella Bibbia e dintorni, Morcelliana, Brescia 2007.
A.Destro-M.Pesce, Antropologia delle origini cristiane, Laterza, Bari 1995.
F. Vecoli, Il sole e il fango. Puro e impuro tra i padri del deserto, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2007.
M.Poorthuis – J.Schwartz (eds.), Purity and Holiness. The Heritage of Leviticus, Brill,
Leiden 2000.