The Origins of Jewish Ritual Immersion

The present study aims to explore the origins of the millennia-old practice of Jewish ritual immersion. When does immersion first appear as a Jewish rite of purification and what are the reasons for this development specifically at this time? An analysis of the textual and archaeological evidence leads to the conclusion that Jewish ritual immersion made its first appearance by the first half of the first century BCE at the very latest. It is suggested that the practice of full-body immersion grew out of contemporary Hellenistic bathing practices which involved immersion of the lower portion of the body in a hip-bath. Through a process of ritualization, insistence upon full-body immersion emerged as a strategy for the differentiation of purificatory from profane bathing. By way of a subsequent process of ‘hyper-ritualization’, purificatory ablutions were further distinguished from profane bathing by some (the rabbis and their predecessors) by disallowing immersion in a pool into which ‘drawn water’ had been poured, and by legislating ritual impurity upon one who had merely bathed using ‘drawn water’. The emergence of Jewish ritual immersion is thus an enlightening example of ways in which Palestinian Jews found themselves compelled to negotiate between old religious practices and novel Hellenistic cultural norms.