The lepers in Biblical hermeneutics
07
Oct
Exclusion is not well today, it is in all human history, is also the subject
of philosophers such as Hannah Arendt in “The Human Condition”, the homo saccer of Giorgio Agamben, the lumpenproletariat of Karl Marx, I prefer to simply call invisibility, the people simple human peripheries, the hillbillies of the backlands, the drug addicts, and in a way many ethnic groups present in global realities, now refugees.
In the Bible were lepers, now known by this name other leprosy is just a disease that has as having an infectious microbe, but in biblical times was someone summarily deleted were isolated whole families, should ring bells when approaching people, and only one daredevil would approach them, Jesus did.
Because of the ease of contagion through the air, and the absence of a treatment at the time of Jesus, this disease was common. Due to the leprosy healing treatment discovery, has now to be seen differently and less discrimination. The ancient Lazarettos that existed and isolating entire families, are now disabled.
The Gospel of Matthew (MT 8.1 to 4) recounts the healing of lepers, but also can be found in the Old Testament these stories, but these stories reveal.
This narrative answers the question that we still today for other types of exclusion: how did we get to this, will cure, but first what “being a leper.”
Fundamentalists say: if you want to have healing approaches Jesus, the Bible chronicles the reverse is Jesus who approaches them, which is not afraid of “contagion” that they can cause, it is sad to note that often closed circles exclude with more easily.
Hermeneutics, so is this, do not expect to “cure” or “purification” to approach the excluded, they want this approach, but were often rejected, insulted, disrespected as a human person, who has no power to ask for it it is curious that when they ask for healing Jesus are 10 in number (Lk 17.11 to 19), because a greater number may have had strength.
San Francisco said look for a leper to kiss him, as his exegesis, the world today no longer supports any kind of exclusion, this is say numerous social movements, but we will continue to exclude people, ethnic groups and social groups “unclean”
