This is my attempt to answer that question, in the form of a course description for a Fall Semester class at Cornell.
Women in the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible commands laws and tells stories about women as war leaders, lovers, prophetesses and prostitutes, as well as ordinary daughters and goddesses (possibly including God’s wife!). Formed in an ancient Near Eastern society, these laws and stories are still drawn on today to make religious rules, social roles and art. We will read these texts as factors in history: Who wrote them? What did these stories and laws say and do? What roles do they carve out and what realities do they reflect and create? The texts will be read in English translation, drawing on cultural anthropology, feminist theory, linguistics and archaeology to provide critical perspectives on ancient patriarchy and the state as well as modern secular-liberal notions of freedom and self.
We'll draw from:
Adele Berlin, ed. The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford U P, 2003)
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2004)
Alice Bach, Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader (Routledge, 1998)
Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Harvard University Press, 1993)
Mishael Maswari Caspi and Rachel Havrelock, Women on the Biblical Road (University Press of America, 1997)
And I'm actively seeking other suggestions and wisdom...
12 comments:
Seth L. Sanders:
If a course is being taught on "Women in the Hebrew Bible", it should include the women in the last 40 chapters of Genesis. Unlike your course description, the women in the Biblical account of the Patriarchs do not fit under the rubric of "war leaders, lovers, prophetesses and prostitutes, as well as ordinary daughters and goddesses (possibly including God’s wife!)." Tamar impersonates a prostitute, properly, but Tamar is not a prostitute.
Your course description neatly encapsulates the modern fear of the women in the last 40 chapters of Genesis, who are portrayed as acting basically the way women in the West do today.
I presume one of your main sources will be the second source you list, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2004). That is a very fine book, the best out there on the Biblical account of the Patriarchs generally. But Prof. Frymer-Kensky still clings desperately to the old party line that the Biblical account of the Patriarchs is "patriarchal", in which women knew their place, and a woman would never dare directly contradict her husband, especially in public. But even a brief look at the last 40 chapters of Genesis shows the complete and utter falsity of that view, even though it seems that no academic will ever challenge that traditional view.
Sarah IN PUBLIC orders her husband, Abraham, to do something that Abraham clearly does not want to do -- exile young, innocent Ishmael. The text expressly states that Abraham was "greatly distressed" about the matter. Yes, Abraham was distressed about having to exile his beloved blood son Ishmael, but Abraham must also have wondered about having himself, as the Patriarch of a huge group of people, being publicly ordered around by his wife. YHWH definitively resolves this situation in one of the most un-patriarchal sentences in all history, telling Abraham: "whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says". Genesis 21: 12 [All quotations JPS 1985.]
The second generation is more of the same. Isaac has his heart set on naming his favorite son, Esau, the firstborn twin son, as Patriarch #3. But Isaac's wife Rebekah will have none of that. In the famous story, Rebekah tells Jacob that he must dress up like his older twin brother, in order to induce Isaac into naming Jacob, rather than Esau, as Patriarch #3, which is exactly what happens. Rebekah here directly countermands the will of her husband, Isaac. And does Rebekah listen respectfully to her 27-year-old son Jacob's plaint that perhaps he should not be dressing up like his older brother to try to fool his father? Catch a load of this un-partriarchal edict from Rebekah: "'Just do as I say…." Genesis 27: 13
Richard Elliott Freedman, one of the most respected academic commentators out there, is so incensed by pushy Rebekah's un-patriarchal actions here that he asserts that Rebekah did the wrong thing, and that Esau should properly have been named Patriarch #3. YHWH either didn't hear that bit of advice from Richard Elliott Freedman, or else YHWH, being well aware of such masculine scruples, expressly ignored it, because approximately 36 hours or so after Rebekah uses trickery to induce her husband to name Jacob, rather than her husband's favorite son Esau, as Patriarch #3, this is what YHWH says to Jacob (with YHWH in effect thumbing his nose at Richard Elliott Freedman's line of analysis): "'[T]he ground on which you are lying [in Bethel] I will assign to you and to your offspring. Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants. Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Genesis 28: 13-15 If that ain't YHWH explicitly blessing Rebekah's audacious behavior, I'll eat my hat.
Modern males may have problems with the pushy women in the last 40 chapters of Genesis, but as we are clearly seeing, YHWH don't.
In the third generation it's laid between the lines a bit, but actions speak louder than words. Though pushy Leah's deathbed words to husband Jacob are not set forth in the text, we can imagine the words of a woman who was pushy enough to impersonate her own younger sister Rachel in order to become Jacob's main wife #1. Leah must have told Jacob on her deathbed that since Leah was Jacob's main wife #1, then Leah, but not Rachel, must be buried in the place of family honor at Hebron, and that a younger son of Leah, not a son of Rachel, must be selected to be the leading tribe of Israel. We know that Jacob loved Rachel and Rachel's sons more than he loved Leah or Leah's sons, but Jacob dutifully does exactly what his pushy wife #1 must have expressly told him: he buries only Leah at Hebron, and he selects as the leading tribe of Israel not his favorite son, heroic Joseph, who was a son of Rachel, but rather Judah, a younger son of Leah.
In the fourth and last generation, nothing is left to the imagination. Judah, the future leading tribe of Israel, gets off one great patriarchal line, exactly the type of thing that all the academics are desperately looking for in Genesis in trying, falsely, to portray the Biblical Patriachs in Genesis as being "patriachal". Judah imperiously, and wrongfully, orders his 14-year-old, pregnant, widowed daughter-in-law Tamar to be burned alive. "'Bring her out,' said Judah, 'and let her be burned.'" Genesis 38: 24 But that rare patriarchal moment don't last long, as a mere two verses later in the text Judah is promptly forced to publicly eat his own words, famously confessing to everyone: "'She is more in the right than I". Genesis 38: 26
No academic is permitted, in my experience, to talk about what is so obvious on its face in the last 40 chapters of Genesis. The Biblical Patriachs are not "patriarchal"! Yes, the rest of the Bible is patriarchal. But not the last 40 chapters of Genesis.
So even though all of your academic sources may SAY that the Biblical account of the Patriarchs in Genesis is patriarchal, anyone who actually reads the exquisite text can see that such scholarly pretense is false.
Where is this "modern", un-patriarchal mindset coming from in the last 40 chapters of Genesis? You see, it is precisely to prohibit that very question that all the academics I know insist that the Biblical account of the Patriarchs in Genesis is patriarchal. But it ain't. Facts is facts. Deal with it.
Jim Stinehart
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