Five Golden Swellings: Pandemics in the Bible | The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 (2024)

Five Golden Swellings: Pandemics in the Bible | The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 (1) The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19

Jeremy Brown

Published:

2022

Online ISBN:

9780197607213

Print ISBN:

9780197607183

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Jeremy Brown

Jeremy Brown

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Pages

21–40

  • Published:

    July 2022

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Brown, Jeremy, 'Five Golden Swellings: Pandemics in the Bible', The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 (New York, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 15 Dec. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197607183.003.0003, accessed 30 June 2024.

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Abstract

Any discussion of Jews, Judaism, and pandemics must begin with the Bible. The Ten Plagues inflicted on the Egyptians are well known, but the Bible describes several other pandemics, including one that afflicted the Philistines after they captured the Ark of the Covenant. Based on its features as described in the Book of Samuel together with recent archaeological and scientific discoveries, this chapter identifies that outbreak as bubonic plague and explains why “five golden swellings” were pathognomonic for this deadly pandemic disease. This chapter ends with a discussion of the nineteenth-century satirical Hebrew work, the Leprosy Haggadah. While playfully adapting the Haggadah used on the night of Passover, it reveals how biblical descriptions of leprosy and plagues were interwoven with the reality of contemporary pandemic diseases in Europe.

Keywords: bubonic plague, Haggadah, Hebrew Bible, Jewish satire, Jews, pandemics, Passover

Subject

Judaism and Jewish Studies

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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