“‘When a man is cleansed from his discharge, he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing; he must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean. – Leviticus 15:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 30, 2015): Leviticus 15

The first recorded outbreak of syphilis occurred among the French troops attacking Naples in 1494 near the beginning of the Italian War of 1494-98. And there are a couple of competing theories with regard to the origin of the disease. The first explanation is that the disease was part of the Columbian exchange – an exchange of diseases as well as plants, animals among other things between the Afro-Eurasian continents and the newly discovered Americas. The theory postulates that the crew of the ships involved in the Christopher Columbus voyage to the New World picked up the disease and brought it back to Europe. And there it spread like wild fire during the late 15^th and early 16^th centuries – especially among the soldiers fighting the various European wars of that era. But the competing theory is that syphilis had always been present within the European populations, but we just couldn’t diagnose the disease until this point in history.

But the reality is that whether or not syphilis existed on the Afro-Eurasian continents prior to the Columbus discovery of America, we do know that various Sexually Transmitted Diseases were present even in the ancient world and on the Afro-Eurasian continents. We can draw up a list of ancient people who we believe may have died from contracting a variety of Sexually Transmitted Diseases – even if the diseases did go undiagnosed.

Yet the Mosaic Law gives guidelines for those who had contracted just this kind of disease. And it is not surprising that the prescription is isolation. To be honest, it is still the best prescription to stop the spread of an STD. There are other precautions that we can take, but none of them have a %100 efficiency rate. That kind of a rate of protection is only available if abstinence is practiced. And so the law specifies that the man with an unusual discharge was to remain isolated (untouched) until the discharge stopped. If the discharge didn’t stop, then this was the only way to halt the spread of the disease from moving through the entire community. And if it did stop, then another week of isolation was required – just to make sure.

Critics will probably note the imperfections of this law with current medical knowledge that we possess, but for an ancient civilization, this instruction was nothing short of revolutionary.       

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Leviticus 16