“I Was Repulsed by Them”

The chapter engages the Holiness tradition’s characterization of ethnic foreigners (Leviticus 17–26). It argues that the stereotypes of ethnic foreigners deployed by the Holiness Code revolve around the social misbehavior of the former inhabitants of the land of Canaan, which contrasts with the focus on religious customs in the polemics against foreigners in Deuteronomistic texts. In the Holiness tradition, the people who previously inhabited the land of Canaan are characterized by extreme sexual deviancy and social injustice that includes incest, bestiality and child sacrifice. Ifurther argue that the Holiness tradition’s portrayal of the former inhabitants of the land of Canaan is a variation on a theme found in the Patriarchal Narratives of Genesis, which portrays the Canaanites as deviants who commit acts of sexual violence and humiliation.