ABSTRACT
A comparative study of cultures and religions lays the basis for developing a general theory of purity ideas and purification practices because such ideas and practices appear in very many different cultures, usually reinforced by religious teachings. This chapter describes the authors' thesis about purity and pollution with a comparative study. The cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean were distinct yet also influenced one another over long periods of time. In the Mesopotamian region, very different cultures, languages, and religions mixed and interacted across three thousand years of turbulent history. Pharaonic Egypt had a centralized political system and a decentralized religious system. While the evidence of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek purity practices comes from a variety of ancient texts from various periods and provenances, the Israelite evidence comes only from the Hebrew Bible.
