Ritual impurity and disease: reflections on biblical 'analogies' in the COVID era

This paper offers some initial reflections on the growing use of Leviticus and its laws concerning lepra in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is tempting to draw on the provocative discourse of ‘leprosy’ or lepra when reflecting on the novel coronavirus. Analogies between the two phenomena, however, are problematic at several levels, some sociological and others biblical. Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, continues to afflict persons around the world and remains distinct from both its metaphoric domain of meaning and the biblical skin affliction. The biblical skin affliction is a unique condition that is wrapped into a larger symbolic system disclosing qualitative theological realities to its practitioners and readers. Attention to these realities is a more profitable approach to reading biblical texts in the time of pandemic, and will steer the reader away from misleading conflations that ignore the contours of the divine disclosure and the imminent suffering of persons who will soon wage battle against both leprosy proper and COVID-19.