Purity and impurity in Iron Age Israel

Faust focuses on the aspects of purity and impurity in the Iron Age Israel. Practically every culture distinguishes between clean and and unclean things, actions, and people. This is true for simple hygiene as well as for ritual or religious purity. Consequently, restrictions on menstruating women were imposed in a vast number of societies, both ancient and modern-including ancient Israel, where the Bible regarded all bodily emissions as defiling and women were regulated by the niddah laws. Throughout history, various societies have developed different ways of separating the pure and the impure, usually by imposing restrictions on the movement and behavior of the impure. The author along with Shlomo Bunimovitz offered insights on the access analysis of spatial configuration on the idea of impurity on the four-room house, the typical dwelling of Iron Age Israel.