PANDEMICS: MEDICAL-BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL ASPECTS

Abstract

In this article, we consider pandemics in medical-biblical and historical aspects, through medical, social, and biblical-philosophical prisms. We analyze the level of health literacy of the population, the quarantine system, and disease warnings in the biblical text. It is stated that thanks to the rules of personal hygiene and the developed quarantine system, the ancient Israelites avoided mass diseases. A brief history of world pandemics, the medieval trio: Justinian’s plague, “Black Death”, syphilis and leprosy, as a result of which the population of Europe and the world has decreased by almost 50%, is considered. We have established that global pandemics usually broke out at a time when the state church abused its powers and led an anti-Christian lifestyle. It is shown that in the Middle Ages, the state church blamed the emergence and spread of diseases of the Jews, whose neighborhoods suffered less from pandemics due to the fact that they followed the biblical quarantine regulations. We briefly reviewed the Spanish flu and Covid-19 pandemics, with the result that they also erupted during crisis moments in human history. It is concluded that there is a causal relationship between pandemics and the moral level of society and its attitude to basic biblical values