I have been reading Philo's Special Laws I for my daily quiet time.
Philo of Alexandria was a first century C.E. Jewish thinker in
Alexandria, Egypt. He interpreted the Torah in light of Greek
philosophy.
Sometimes when I read ancient interpreters, I
wonder if their insights can inform modern biblical scholarship. I was
thinking this when I was reading Philo's comments in Special Laws I:159
about the cities of refuge.
The cities of
refuge were places where a person fled after committing manslaughter
(which is unintentional). There, he would be safe from any avengers of
blood who were from the victim's family and wanted to kill him. These
were cities that were given to the Levites for their habitation. In P,
Levites were assistants to the Aaronide priests. In Deuteronomy, the
Levites were priests themselves. The cities of refuge are discussed in Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19.
Philo states the following about the cities of refuge in Special Laws I:159:
"For
as it was not consistent with holiness for one who had by any means
whatever become the cause of death to any human being to come within the
sacred precincts, using the temple as a place of refuge and as an
asylum, Moses gave a sort of inferior sanctity to the cities above
mentioned, allowing them to give great security, by reason of the
privileges and honours conferred upon the inhabitants, who were to be
justified in protecting their suppliants if any superior power
endeavoured to bring force against them, not by warlike preparations,
but by rank, and dignity, and honour, which they had from the laws by
reason of the venerable character of the priesthood." (C.D. Yonge's
translation.)
In the ancient world, Temples
were often a place of asylum and refuge. A person could flee there and
be safe from apprehension. We see such a situation in II Kings 2:28.
General Joab supported Adonijah rather than Solomon to become king of
Israel. Solomon becomes king, and Joab is afraid that Solomon will kill
him. Joab, therefore, runs to the sanctuary and clings to the horns of
the altar.
Philo, however, seems to have
problems with this practice. For Philo, the Temple or sanctuary is too
holy of a place to be a place of refuge, even for someone who took a
person's life unintentionally. That, for Philo, is why there are cities
of refuge for people who did that. The cities of refuge could still be
a shadow, in some sense, of the ancient practice of fleeing to a
sanctuary for refuge. After all, the cities of refuge are Levitical
cities. Philo says that these cities have inferior sanctity, which
implies that they still have some sanctity. And Philo believes that
their priestly or Levitical association is significant: priests are
using their status and position within the community to protect those
seeking refuge from assailants. Under the laws in the Torah about the
cities of refuge, people can flee to somewhat holy cities for
protection. But they cannot go to the sanctuary for protection, for the
sanctuary is too holy of a place for that.
That's
Philo's opinion, but here's a question: Could this be the reason that
authors of the Torah came up with the cities of refuge in the first
place? The priestly author wanted to protect the sanctuary from ritual
contamination. Contact with a human corpse was a major source of such
contamination (see Leviticus 21; Numbers 19). Those closest to the
sanctuary, the priests, were to be especially insulated from corpse
contamination: they were subjected to heavier restrictions on touching a
corpse than the average Israelite. The idea could have been to affirm
that God was a God of life, and thus his realm was to be kept separate
from death.
Perhaps the authors of the Torah, such as P or H,
believed, like Philo, that the sanctuary was too holy of a place for one
who committed manslaughter to flee. Therefore, they invented the
cities of refuge. The cities of refuge were a shadow of the ancient
concept, but they were not identical with the ancient concept. P or H
would be transforming the ancient concept to protect the sanctity of the
sanctuary.
I think that we may see similar trends in the Torah. In my post here, I quote a passage from The Able Bodied: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies,
by atheist biblical scholar Hector Avalos, Sarah Melcher, and Jeremy
Schipper: "According to Johannes Renger, in ancient Mesopotamia people
afflicted with a disease or a disability would often end up working at
the temple, because their immediate family could no longer take care of
them" (page 81). In ancient Mesopotamia, people with disabilities or
diseases worked at the Temple. Such a practice would arguably be
abhorrent to certain authors of the Torah. Leviticus 21:17-24 prohibits
people with certain disabilities to approach the altar of God, while
allowing them to eat the bread of God.
Certain authors of the
Torah believed that God's sanctuary needed to be associated with
perfection (at least as much as possible). Due to this conviction, they
may have consciously rejected the practice at Mesopotamian Temples of
allowing people with disabilities to work there. Could we be seeing
something similar with the cities of refuge: the Torah authors
are rejecting the common ancient idea that Temples could be a place of
refuge, out of their convictions about the holiness of the sanctuary?
I should be careful, though. As I talk about in my post here,
we do see examples outside of Judaism or ancient Israelite religion of
people trying to protect their Temples from corpse contamination. I do
not have an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient rituals. Plus, maybe the
idea that I am shooting around here has already been discussed within
biblical scholarship. It's still a question to ask, though.