Hutz Limhitzato as Matter Out of Place: From Mary Douglas to the Stam

What is it about?

The Bible prohibitions the consumption of a tereifah, or a mauled animal, at Exodus 22:30. This prohibition is interpreted and expanded in a variety of ways in early Jewish biblical interpretation. This paper considers a heretofore mostly neglected approach that extrapolates from this prohibition a rule that "once X goes outside of its (proper) bounds it is prohibited," which it applies to a limb partially born, sacrificial flesh that exits the sacred bounds in a variety of scenarios, and several other cases. The paper demonstrates how, although some of these applications existed in earlier, Tannaitic material, they only became conceptualized and formalized as a rule in late, anonymous material of the Babylonian Talmud. The paper reconstructs the logic of extrapolating from the prohibition of a torn animal to the prohibition of items that have left their bounds on the basis of Mary Douglas' insight that "matter out of place" is often seen as transgressive and ruled out by ritual systems. The paper includes an excursus demonstrating that, although an apparent case of the conceptualized rule appears in an early, Tannaitic source, this passage actually stems from a medieval source that was incorrectly included in editions of the early source.

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