Below is a portion of the text found at: http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/ancient-medicine.asp#location1 This article discusses ancient mideastern healing practices especially among the early Jews, including the practice of excluding someone from the temple. The authors thesis is that because there were so many outcast from the temple because of disability they group in small communities together to support one another. When Christ came he ministered to these and the Christian movement exploded. I feel that if we follow Christ's example, people will come, be healed, refreshed and made whole. The key is studying and then following the original blueprint.
"By the post-Exilic period (after the return of the Exiles from Babylon in the late sixth century B.C.E.), official concern over health had greatly expanded. The Priestly Code, exemplified mainly in the book of Leviticus and completed in the early post-Exilic era, contains the most complete health care policy in the Hebrew Bible. Its most notable provision is that persons stricken with tzaraath (usually translated as “leprosy”) were banned from the Temple and, indeed, from the community. Priests acted, in effect, as public health officers who diagnosed the condition and decided whether such persons merited expulsion from society.
“Leprosy,” as used by Leviticus, cannot be identified with any single disease known to modern medicine.g Its key involved chronic discoloration of the skin (or almost any surface, including the walls of houses!). Thus, any of a number of diseases that produce chronic changes in the skin was probably diagnosed as leprosy, including skin cancer, psoriasis and lupus erythematosus, if these diseases existed in any significant form at that time.
The “treatment” for this chronic illness was removal from the community for as long as the disease persisted. From Leviticus 13:45–46, we can deduce the following scenario after the diagnosis had been made:
1) The patient is to shout out “Impure, Impure”;
2) the patient shall live alone;
3) the patient shall live outside the camp community;
4) this exile lasts as long as the affliction.
Why this four-step process? The usual response is fear of impurity or contagion. But this is too simple. Recent anthropological studies show that the definitions of contagion and impurity are as much a matter of socio-economic status as they are expressions of the fear of contagion.8 In other words, socio-economic status, and not simply fear of contagion, plays a role in deciding who and what is declared impure by those who have the power to define impurity.
The priestly establishment may have sought to classify as “impure” those members of society who posed the greatest socio-economic burden. The blind and the lame (see 2 Samuel 5:8), for example, who should have posed no real threat of contamination or contagion, were excluded from the Temple. In effect, the Priestly Code advocated a health care policy by which the state unburdened itself completely of the care for at least some of the chronically ill. The eradication of chronic illness would be left for a future messianic utopia. Indeed, Ezekiel 47:12 attributes a possible therapeutic function to the future Temple and its garden:
“By the river on both banks (shall be) every type of tree fit for food. Their leaves shall not wither, and its fruit shall never cease. Every month it shall renew its fruit, for its waters spring from the Temple itself; And its fruit shall be fit to eat, and its leaves (shall serve as) medicine.”
The community responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls was even stricter toward the chronically ill. Certain patients were expressly forbidden to enter the sanctuary city, according to the Temple Scroll (11QT 45:12–13):9
“All blind persons shall not enter into it for their entire life, so that they might not defile the city within which I dwell.”
Concerning the “leper,” the Temple Scroll (11QT 45:17–18) states:
“Any ‘leper,’ or afflicted (person) shall not enter it [the holy city] until they are purified. Once he is purified, he shall offer. . .”
These policies, while no doubt causing emotional hardship to the families of the chronically ill, probably did check the spread of many contagious diseases. In contrast, Greek temples of Asclepius, which welcomed the chronically ill, including lepers, may have helped to spread disease by concentrating the sick in small spaces.
The Priestly Code’s hard-line attitude towards the chronically ill may have unwittingly served to provide a springboard for the rise of Christianity. The code was responsible for the growth of chronically ill populations with little access to the Temple. Since Jesus and his disciples appear to target these populations (Matthew 10:8; Mark 14:3), early Christianity can be seen, in part, as a critique of the Priestly health care system.
Early Christianity recognized that illness was not necessarily a sign of God’s disfavor or anger (Matthew 15:22; Luke 11:14; John 9:2). Christianity also emphasized that the cure for illness was available in this world. Yet, while criticizing the Priestly health care system, Christianity preserved many older Hebrew traditions regarding miraculous healings (Acts 5:16, 9:34) and collective health (James 5:16), though the influence of Hellenistic healing cults, including the Asclepius cult, also may be seen: For example, both Jesus and Asclepius were called soter (Greek for “savior”), both stressed the role of faith in healing and both used similar procedures, such as using spit to cure eye ailments. Further, many of the healing testimonies of Asclepius (particularly those written on a fourth-century B.C.E. inscription at a temple of Asclepius in Epidauros, Greece), like the healing stories related in Matthew 9:18–34, consist of a series of short healing stories that sometimes report the specific number of years that a patient has been afflicted.
In short, disagreements about the ideal health care system among Jewish sects may have been one of the prime factors in the development of Christianity."
If Chrisitianity is in decline today, what are we being short sighted about? This article has touched on some practices of exclusion we may consider when we attend worship on Sunday or any other day. It seems our ministry is done best in remote locations on mission trips. WHo are we excluding in our congregation, our neighborhood, our community. Who does not feel welcome to enter the temple for worship because they are "unclean?"
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