Nazirites are a well-documented phenomenon within the context of the Hebrew Bible. The bulk of research has focused mainly on the role of Samson as a life long Nazirite, but little has been done concerning the role of women within the context of the Nazirite Vow. The goal of this paper will be to examine the role of women within the Nazirite Vow, as well as examining the constraints that might arise when one takes into account the purity laws. The Nazirite Vow is the only vow within the Bible that explicitly mentions the inclusion of women. The question I am interested in addressing is, are there circumstances that might exclude the woman? The idea behind the Nazirite vow is that one is consecrating oneself to YHWH, or setting oneself apart. If one were setting oneself apart then these rules that they would have to follow would not supersede the purity laws. I would suggest that beyond the regular constraints, avoiding dead bodies, grape products, and cutting ones hair, one would still be responsible to keep the purity laws. Therefore, when one takes an issue like menstruation into account, this severely limits the amount of time a woman has to complete the Nazirite Vow. As I will detail in this paper, this leads to the conclusion that if the vow lasted for more than thirty days the only women who would be able to complete the Nazirite Vow successfully would be pregnant women or a woman who is postmenopausal. This could suggest a certain amount of restriction regarding the woman's ability to perform this vow and may suggest why the inclusion of women is made explicit within the context of Numbers 6. Furthermore, this could suggest that fertility might be an aspect of the Nazirite Vow. / Religion
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/1964 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Moulton, Vincent M. |
| Contributors | Schipper, Jeremy, Leuchter, Mark, Getz, Jim |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 42 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1946, Theses and Dissertations |
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