There is a rule that when the Sages established their additional safeguards (out of the need to distance people from Torah violations), they used the same law structures as those found in the Torah, whenever possible. The result is that we can reason about their laws using the same deductions as in the Torah.
For example, there are a few cases in the Torah where one who carries an item indirectly, without touching it, nevertheless becomes ritually impure, such as meat of a non-kosher animal or a kosher one that was killed but not by slaughter. How do we know that the Sages applied the same law to one who carries an idol? – Explains Rabbi Akiva, since Isaiah says that in the future the Jews will “Cast the idols away as other objects that engender impurity, and you will say to them – Go!” – therefore we know that the Sages established ritual impurity for one who carries an idol.
What else can we learn from the comparison of an idol to, for example, a “zav” – man who had a special type of emission? – That just as his impurity does not apply to separate members of his body, so too it does not apply to pieces of an idol.
Art: Winslow Homer - Guide Carrying a Deer
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