Breadcrumb: Holy doctors, Batman!

Lev. 13 talks about infectious skin diseases, particularly leprosy. It introduces a number of potential diseases that might or might not be leprous. However, the man who makes the diagnoses is not a doctor but a priest, guided as always by the Biblical text. Does this mean that there were no competent doctors in the Israelite camp? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Medicine was rarely effective until the last several hundred years. When it came to serious contagious diseases like leprosy, it seems the Hebrews were taking no chances.