Dear Yoav,



To make things easier for the readers, I will first cite what is written in the letter and afterwards answer you:

Some of the contradictions in the Torah text even bear clear marks of different historical epochs in the ancient Near East. Thus, in Exodus 20:23 we read G-d’s command: “Do not ascend My altar by steps, so that your nakedness not be revealed on it.” The Torah is careful to ensure that priests serving before G-d not occasionally expose their genitals and therefore forbids building an altar to G-d with steps leading to it. However, this problem has yet another solution: demand that the priests wear pants when serving at the altar. And the Torah speaks of this, too: “Make for them [for the priests] linen pants to cover their nakedness, reaching from their waists to their thighs” (Exodus 28:42). But if the priests wear pants, what danger is there of an exposing priests’ nakedness?

Art historians note that pants first appeared in the Middle East in Achaemenid Persia in the 6th century BCE (S. David Sperling, The Original Torah, p. 116). Before that time people in the Middle East — both men and women — wore kiltlike garments, which made the occasional exposure of nakedness when ascending steps indeed possible. This seems to lead to the unavoidable conclusion that the author of Exodus 20:23 lived before pants were introduced by the Persians, while the author of Exodus 28:42 was already acquainted with the latest fashion — and we of course know that Jews were living under Persian rule only after the Babylonian exile.

Now to your answer:



First, what is being discussed is not a prohibition against building an altar with steps only when such a prohibition needed (or not needed) because the cohanim wear pants. Since there is no chance that their genitals will be seen when they ascend the steps if they are wearing pants, there is no reason or need to forbid building an altar with steps.

Second, the word michnasayim (in various grammatical forms) appears in the Tanach a total of five times, four of those in the Pentateuch: Exodus 28:2, Exodus 39:28, Leviticus 6:3, Leviticus 16:4. All these verses belong to what scholars call the “Priestly source” (though it is not so clear if this is a single source of a number of sources which belong to the same school). More interesting is the fifth verse which uses the word “pants,” Ezekiel 44:18, because according to what is described in the book of Ezekiel, that prophet lived at the start of the Babylonian exile, at the start of the sixth century BCE. Outside of the Scriptures pants (or, to be more accurate, people wearing pants) first appear in friezes of the Achaemenian Persian dynasty which took power over the Near East with the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BCE. (On this issue see S. David Sperling, “Pants, Persians and the Priestly Source,” in: Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine [ed. R. Chazan et al., Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999], pp. 373-385.) It is not clear how one should explain the phenomenon of the word “pants” in Ezekiel, but this might be a later part of the book, after the time of the prophet Ezekiel, or a later addition to a section which mainly belonged to the prophet Ezekiel. In any case, the verses in the Pentateuch which include the word “pants” were apparently not written before 539 BCE.

As for the additional proofs that parts of the Torah were written under Achaemenian Persian rule, we can cite the name Elitzafan the son of Parnach (Numbers 34:25). The name Parnach is the Persian name Farnaka, known to us from fifth century BCE sources. (See S. David Sperling, The Original Torah: The Political Intent of the Bible’s Writers [New York: New York University Press, 1998], p. 7.)



Naftali

Dear Omri,



You have asked a good question, and like all good questions, the answer is complex, though in this case, an unambiguous answer is possible.

Indeed, biblical Hebrew is, to a certain extent, different from modern Hebrew, and the difference relates, in part, to vocabulary and meaning. Therefore, we have four options to check the meaning of any specific word in a biblical verse.

1. Check the origin of the word: the root and its meaning in Hebrew, the meaning of the root in other Semitic languages, and the meaning of words with this root and vowelization or ones similar in other Semitic languages.

2. Check the context in which the word appears in the relevant Scriptural verse. If the other words in the verse are clear to us, we can guess, based on context, what meaning we should expect the word under discussion to have.

3. Check early translations of the Scriptures into Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. The known translations into Latin and Aramaic were made in the first centuries of the Christian calendar; the earliest Greek translation — the Septuagint — was made in the 1st-3rd centuries BCE. This is several centuries after the authorship of the Scriptures, but it can still be supposed that the translators knew the original meaning of some of the words we no longer fully understand.

4. Check the early commentators on the relevant verse and the word in question, particularly the literature of Chazal and the manuscripts of the Jewish authors who wrote in Greek, like Josephus Flavius. It may be supposed that the early commentators still knew the original meaning of some of the words we no longer understand.



In the ideal case, the findings received through all these methods will be the same and will point to a specific meaning of the word in question. But since reality is not always ideal, it is possible that in certain cases there will be contradictions between the findings obtained through the various means, and then each person will have to evaluate the issue and decide between the various methods. (For example, to decide if the early translators or commentators took the Scriptural verses out of context or whether the commentators were correct and the verse must be understood in a way other than what seem proper at first glance.) In any case, let us see what results from these methods when it comes to the word michnasayim.

1. It is relatively clear that the word in question comes from the root kaf nun samech, whose meaning is well known to us from the whole history of Hebrew (from the Scriptures to our days) and from other Semite languages. Though at first glance it is unclear what connection there is between kinus and clothing, see the next section.

2. You noted, quite correctly, that according to Ezikiel 44:18 michnasayim is a garment one wears upon the hips. It may even be added that according to Exodus 28:42 michnasayim are meant to cover the genital area — the penis and testicles — and then extended from the hips to the thighs. It could even be supposed that the tight pants gathered the penis and testicles to the body, and this is the kinus which is hinted at in their name, michnasayim.

3. In the Septuagint the word michnasayim is translated as periskelia, which dictionaries of ancient Greek translate to English as “drawers,” clothing for the lower half of the body, worn directly on the skin. In the Vulgate translation the word michnasayim is translated as feminalia, and Latin authors note that this word parallels the Greek word periskele^, which is an alternate form of periskelia.

4. In the works of Josephus Flavius (The Antiquities of the Jews, book three, chapter seven) a description of the priests’ garments mentioned in the Torah is brought including the michnasayim. The word michnasayim is brought by Jospehus in its Aramaic form and in Greek transliteration (machanase^n). Afterwards he explains, in Greek, that this is a garment one wears on the lower part of the body and on the penis. The meaning of the word michnasayim is explained as “something which fastens” (compare to #2 above). Similarly, Chazal, in the Babylonain Talmud, Tractate Niddah 13b, said: “To what were the breeches of the priests like? They were like the femilina of horsemen, reaching upwards to the loins and downwards to the thighs. They also had laces but had no padding either back or front.” Without getting into the question of the rest of the terminology used in this gemara, it is clear enough that the word femilina is only a mix-up of the Latin feminalia. On the matter of “the femilina of horsemen” it should be noted that wearing close-fitting garments on the lower body, with a separate “sleeve” for each leg, was the custom of horsemen in the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East from the time of the Persian Empire onward. (This is what S. David Sperling wrote in his essay, cited in our earlier answer on the issue of pants.)

All the methods which have been examined above lead to the conclusion that the michnasayim spoken of in the Bible were a close-fitting garment for the lower body, with a separate “sleeve” for each leg, which reached from the hips to the thighs — a garment which was customary for, amongst others, horsemen. The first testimonies to their existence are from the era of the Persian Empire. There are no findings which contradict this conclusion, and so there is no reason to doubt it — here we have an ideal case of clarifying a biblical word. If we were seeking a modern word for the biblical michnasayim, it would be something like “pantyhose” (which are not worn with underwear).



Sincerely,



Naftali