The Female Body in Second Temple Literature

Aramaic Enochic writings found in Qumran relate the story of the fall of the two hundred heavenly Watchers who descended to the earth, begot children with earthly women, and taught them sorcery and spellbinding. The Watchers defile themselves with the blood of the women. The children born from these unions became giants and were the originators of the evil and the demonic, its main element being impurity. The biblical system of ritual purity is acknowledged with two kinds of impurities: physical impurities are non controllable, temporary and removable while ethical ones are controllable, premanent and non removeable. The impurity of the Watchers is of ethical nature, originating from the mixing of beings whose substances belong to two categories. The union of the eternal, heavenley and spiritual beings with human characterized by perishable flesh and blood results in impurity. The idea of the heavenly beings becoming impure through the contact with human blood lies in the concept of the female body, the female womb imagined as a vessel full of blood, as well as the concept of the female contribution to the development of the embyro, menstrual blood being a constituent of its development.