CELIBACY AS HOLINESS
Consider the old Rabbinic tradition that Moses didn’t need sex after the revelation at the Burning Bush or after the revelation at Sinai. The tradition is in the Tannaitic midrashim in the oldest layers, but as far as I know, is not mentioned later on. The argument is that the Shechinah was enough. There is, however, another approach. As the High Priest had to be ritually clean on the Day of Atonement when officiating in the Holy of Holies, and as Moses when in the Tent of Meeting was officiating in the Heavenly Tabernacle, Moses had to be ritually clean at all times. You know that the reason for the celibacy of some Essenes and some of the Qumran sect (I decline to decide whether they are the same) was to be ritually clean at all times. The narrow meaning of the term “kadosh” (holy) in Mishnaic Hebrew when applied to a Priest or a Priest’s wife is being for the moment completely ritually clean and thus able to eat the meat of the Priest’s portion of the sacrifices, which itself is “kadosh”. When applied to a permanent state, as when someone is termed “so and so the kadosh”, the term means being perpetually in this state and presumably celibate. The editor of the Mishnah was called “Rabbenu ha-Kadosh” our teacher or master the holy”. “Rabbenu Mosheh” is the normal way of referring to Moses. The question now is, are those that make themselves eunuchs simply those that are perpetually kadosh? If so, are the defences to literal cocklessness a misunderstanding of initiatory terms, with Moses as the initiate’s model? Such misunderstanding would have been easy at the time, with so many very strange approaches to sex or the absence of it in the environment. The misunderstanding could have become institutionalised and then projected onto earlier historical figures.
# © 2006 by World Star International Inc. Marcus Julius Agrippa Jr. 
