Problema „necurăţiei“ femeii, privită în lumina legii evanghelice a Noului Testament

Abstract

The problem of impure woman during her period and the childbed after giving birth has been until today one of the most controversial ones among the ministers of the Orthodox Church, sometimes arousing bitter controversy.
The right attitude concerning this problem is conditioned by the understanding of the meanings that the terms ‘impure’ and ‘impurity’ in the Holy Scriptures and by our Jesus Christ’s attitude towards the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law on the impurity.
From the first chapters, the book of Genesis shows that dividing the clean and unclean creatures as other rules regarding the impurity, were the result of natural moral law of a traditional observation reflected in customary land as unwritten law and they expressed prophylactic sanitary. Only with Moses the impurity, which designed with some exceptions an estate of physical impurity, was given a religious character, in order to enforce the provisions of the Leviticus purity and washings.
From the first two books of the Pentateuch results very obviously that until Moses the problem of woman’s impurity “during her period” and after birth was not talked about.
From the Chapter XVIII of the book of Leviticus we understand that God ordained by Moses that the woman should be considered impure during her period and after birth in order to ban bodily companionship of men and women in these cases, as many other unnatural accompanying, to protect them from evil practices of the heathen.
The Hebrew term which denoted the state of impurity of woman, during her period or after giving birth, had the meaning of weakness of the flesh, not by sin or sin desired result of, and this weakness of the flesh made the woman not to be able to take part in the sacred area.
The emphasis has changed from the meaning of physical impurity on the moral one, that of soul impurity caused by sin, estate that alienates from God in Old Testament prophetic books.
Essential for understanding the problem of impurity are those events that sheds light the attitude of Jesus Christ, our Saviour, towards those who, according to the Mosaic Law, were considered impure from this category being part the leper, the woman during her blood flow or the dead person, their touching not cleaning until evening the one that made that act. Taking all these into consideration, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, touched a leper curing him (Mt.8,2-3), healed the woman with 12 year blood fl ow, after this one touched His coat (Mt.9, 20-22) and finally, He revived Iair’s daughter (Mt. 9, 25) and the widow from Nain’s son (Lc. 7, 14), touching their lifeless bodies. In none of these cases or in other circumstances is it mentioned in the Holy Scripture that Jesus Christ, our Saviour, would have followed the prescriptions of the Law regarding the impurity or that He would have considered any of the people impure.
Although, St. Paul preaches that ‘the end of Law is Christ, righteousness to those that have faith’ (Rm. 10, 4), and therefore considered state requirements concerning the impurity of woman during her period and after giving birth, in the Church’s liturgical practice were still retained some remnants of the old Mosaic provisions concerning the woman’s impurity. The existence in the Church Laws of such prayers for the nursing mother has the role to protect her in such delicate circumstances after birth and to strengthen her both physically and spiritually.
The conclusion that must eventually be imposed at the end is that woman is not impure and she must be considered as such neither during her childbed nor during her period.