Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Leviticus 13-14 deals with three of the most obtuse passages found anywhere in the Tanakh. Since the time of the Septuagint, the Sages of Alexandria correctly identified the disease of   as λέπρα (lepra), which includes a group of infectious and inflammatory skin diseases. It was only historically much later, the English translator [1]  re-interpreted  λέπρα (lepra), to mean the disease we know today as  leprosy, i.e., Hanson’s Disease. ^[2]

Hanson’s disease is a chronic disease of man caused by the Mycobacterium leprae bacillus, a bacterium similar to the tuberculosis bacillus and is characterized by skin lesions and adversely affects the nerves’ ability to sense pain and leads to the loss of sensation. Combined with the loss of sensation, over time, the body experiences progressive tissue degeneration, resulting in the extremities of the body becoming deformed, eroded, and often falling off.  This dreaded disease, according to modern studies is poised to make a comeback within the next hundred years or more particularly in the third-world countries.

Modern historians note that there is no hard evidence that the  phenomena of clinical leprosy existed in the ancient Near East, until 332 B.C.E. and it is believed to have been introduced Alexander the Great’s soldiers after they returned from India.² There are several other reasons why the biblical disease was something other than leprosy:

*  None of the most prominent characteristics of Hansen’s disease are listed in the text, and the symptoms that are listed argue against a relationship to Hansen’s disease.

* Nowhere does the  Biblical depiction suggest that this condition was ever seen as contagious. Nor does the Torah describes this condition as affecting houses and clothes, Hanson’s disease only affects the body and nothing else.

* Leprosy is a slow developing disease takes many years to occur. The Biblical disease of  צָרָעַת  (tsra`at) appears to occur must more quickly and can disspate after a quarantine periods of seven days. ^[3] None of this  fits the modus operandi of leprosy.

*  Leprosy cannot be cured without medical treatment and drugs. The צָרָעַת indicate that a person may recover from the ailment without this kind of treatment.

*  Leprosy is a disease which attacks the nervous system, affecting the ability of the body to sense pain, this condition is nowhere intimated in Lev. 13-14, nor does the text address the physical disfigurement which  is associated with the advanced stages of leprosy.

* The white hairs listed in the biblical verses do not match the characteristics of modern leprosy. A white patch of skin is not characteristic of leprosy, nor is the scalp ordinarily affected.

Despite the limitations of the term “leprosy” most English translations use it in the broader sense to include a whole spectrum of infectious skin disorders,  e.g., psoriasis, eczema, seborrhea, or ringworm and type of skin cancer. ^[4] Based on what the Torah says regarding infected garments and houses, it appear that  צָרָעַת appears to have really been a scaly fungal disease. The most severest form of tum’ah affects not only people, but also clothing, bedding, tents, and even the stones of a house. With respect to this short piece, I will use the term  צָרָעַת in place of “leprosy.”

How do we make sense of this plague of antiquity? The brilliant 13th century rabbinic scholar and scientist, Levi Gersonides, correctly diagnosed this disease as scaly fungal disease. Although the terminology used in Lev. 13-14 is difficult to linguistically decipher with pure accuracy, nonetheless, biblical scholars by and large do have a general consensus as to what the skin lesions probably are.  E.V. Hulse has convincing argued that צָרָעַת a long-standing, patchy skin condition associated with peeling or flakiness (desquamation) with underlying redness of the skin.  If the acute skin conditions dissipated within seven days, they were not regarded as צָרָעַת are, therefore, left with chronic, patchy, and scaly conditions which are typical of psoriasis, fungal infections, seborrheic dermatitis

Notes:

^[1] This error was also perpetrated by the BDB Lexicon.

^[2] Hansen’s Disease was named after the physician Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen of Norway, who  identified the bacteria that cause leprosy in 1869. Consequently, medicine began referring to the condition as “Hansen’s disease” instead of “leprosy.”

^[3] “The disease seems to have been endemic in Egypt from at least the Old Kingdom period 2700–2400 B.C.E.  and if the term ukhedu in the Ebers Papyrus indicates a form of clinical leprosy, then the ailment would have been familiar to the Egyptians before 1500 B.C.E.” (ISBIE, s.v. Leprosy)

^[4] Lev 13:4, 5, 21, 26, 31, 33.