The Five Scrolls: Texts@Contexts 9780567678935, 9780567678959, 9780567678942

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction
Part I: Ruth
Ruling from their Graves? Reading Naomi within the African Religio-Cultural Context
The Boaz Solution: Reading Ruth in Light of Australian Asylum Seeker Discourse
Finding Korean Goose Mothers a Home: A Contextual Re-reading of Ruth
Boaz as ‘Sugar Daddy’: Re-reading Ruth in the Context of HIV in Southern Africa
Racial Melancholia and the Book of Ruth
Poor and Landless Women: An African Reading of Leviticus 25 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a Critical Tools
Part II: Song of Songs
A Womanist Reading of the Song of Songs in the Age of AIDS
Where Love and Death Meet: Reading the Old Testament in a Context of Gender Violence
Part III: Qoheleth
‘What Gain Have the Workers from their Toil?’: (Con)texting Ecclesiastes 3.9-13 in Pasifika
Hebel and Kong: A Cross-Textual Reading between Qoheleth and the Heart Sutra
Dealing with Death: Reading Qoheleth in Different Contexts
Part IV: Lamentations
Reading Daughter Zion and Lady Meng: Tears, Protest and Female Voices
Lamentations as Musical Performance, its Origins and Life Occasions: Some Reflections
Part V: Esther
Women’s Banquets and Gatherings in Text and Context: The Queens Banquets in Esther and Contemporary Women-Only Israeli/Jewish Ceremonies
Esther, Pious and Brave: Reading Children’s Bibles as Commentary on Twentieth-Century Afrikaner Culture
Index of References
Index of Authors

Citation preview

THE FIVE SCROLLS

Texts@Contexts, 6 Series Editors Athalya Brenner-Idan Archie C. C. Lee Gale A. Yee

THE FIVE SCROLLS

Texts@Contexts

Edited by Athalya Brenner-Idan, Gale A. Yee and Archie C. C. Lee

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain in 2009 by the Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd Reprinted by T&T Clark 2018 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © Athalya Brenner-Idan, Gale A. Yee and Archie C. C. Lee, 2018 Athalya Brenner-Idan, Gale A. Yee and Archie C. C. Lee have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-7893-5 PB: 978-0-5676-9001-2 ePDF: 978-0-5676-7894-2 Series: Texts@Contexts, volume 6 Typeset by Forthcoming Publications (www.forthpub.com) To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

C on t en t s List of Contributors

ix

Introduction Athalya Brenner-Idan

xi Part I Ruth

Ruling from their Graves?  Reading Naomi within the African Religio-Cultural Context Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele)

3

The Boaz Solution: Reading Ruth in Light of Australian Asylum Seeker Discourse Anthony Rees

15

Finding Korean Goose Mothers a Home: A Contextual Re-reading of Ruth Hyun Woo Kim

28

Boaz as ‘Sugar Daddy’: Re-reading Ruth in the Context of HIV in Southern Africa Gerald O. West and Beverley G. Haddad

39

Racial Melancholia and the Book of Ruth Gale A. Yee

61

Poor and Landless Women: An African Reading of Leviticus 25 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a Critical Tools Ndikho Mtshiselwa

71

Part II Song of Songs A Womanist Reading of the Song of Songs in the Age of AIDS Cheryl B. Anderson

89

vi Contents

Where Love and Death Meet: Reading the Old Testament in a Context of Gender Violence Mercedes L. García Bachmann

103

Part III Qoheleth ‘What Gain Have the Workers from their Toil?’: (Con)texting Ecclesiastes 3.9-13 in Pasifika Jione Havea

123

HeḆel and Kong: A Cross-Textual Reading between Qoheleth and the Heart Sūtra Huang Wei

134

Dealing with Death: Reading Qoheleth in Different Contexts Klaas Spronk

145

Part IV Lamentations Reading Daughter Zion and Lady Meng: Tears, Protest and Female Voices Archie C. C. Lee

159

Lamentations as Musical Performance, its Origins and Life Occasions: Some Reflections Athalya Brenner-Idan

174

Part V Esther Women’s Banquets and Gatherings in Text and Context: The Queens Banquets in Esther and Contemporary Women-Only Israeli/Jewish Ceremonies Ora Brison

189

Esther, Pious and Brave: Reading Children’s Bibles as Commentary on Twentieth-Century Afrikaner Culture Jaqueline S. du Toit

210

Index of References Index of Authors

221 226

L i s t of C on t r i butor s (in Order of Appearance in the Volume)

Ruth Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele) University of South Africa, South Africa Anthony Rees Charles Sturt University, Australia Hyun Woo Kim Emory University, USA Gerald O. West and Beverley G. Haddad University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa Gale A. Yee Episcopal Divinity School, USA Ndikho Mtshiselwa University of South Africa, South Africa Song of Songs Cheryl B. Anderson Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, USA Mercedes L. García Bachmann I.U. ISEDET, Argentina

viii

List of Contributors

Qoheleth Jione Havea Trinity Theological College, Auckland, New Zealand Huang Wei Shanghai University, China Klaas Spronk Protestantse Theologische Universiteit, The Netherlands Lamentations Archie C. C. Lee Shandong University, China Athalya Brenner-Idan Stellenbosch University, South Africa and Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands Esther Ora Brison Tel Aviv University, Israel Jaqueline S. du Toit University of the Free State, South Africa

I n t rod uct i on Athalya Brenner-Idan

In this collection, scholars from geographical locations as far away from each other as the Pacific islands from South Africa, or Argentina from Israel, revisit a cluster of five biblical texts: Ruth, Song of Songs, Qoheleth [Ecclesiastes], Lamentations and Esther. In the Christian bibles these short books are differently placed: Ruth and Esther in the historical books, Qoheleth and the Song of Songs within the wisdom books, and Lamentations in the prophetic section (as attributed to the prophet Jeremiah). In the Hebrew Bible they are grouped together in the Ketubim (Writings) section. They are known as The Five Scrolls because of their public liturgical use: each is performed in the synagogue on a certain Jewish festival and they are therefore kept in the synagogue in scroll form.1 Within this collection the books’ order, or rather the order of Ruth and the Song of Songs, varies. In the Aleppo Codex2 and most printed bibles the order is determined by the Jewish liturgical calendar (with the liturgical year starting on the month of Nisan, hence the Song of Songs which is recited on Passover opens the collection and Ruth comes second, then Lamentations, Qoheleth and Esther). In the Leningrad Codex and editions that rely on it (including Biblia Hebraica editions), the decisive factor is the individual book’s narrated chronology or traditionally endorsed time 1.  Esther is recited on Purim in all Jewish communities. In most Jewish communities Ruth is recited on Shavu’ot (Weeks); the Song of Songs on Passover; Lamentations on the ninth of Ab, traditionally the day both Jerusalem temples were destroyed; and Qoheleth on Sukkot (Feast of Booths). This liturgical tradition is probably why the five texts are grouped together. However, as is well known, apart from the Esther Scroll the tradition of reciting those texts annually on those festivals stems at the very least from the Middle Ages. 2.  The pages containing Qoheleth, Lamentations and Esther are missing from the Aleppo Codex due to damage or theft.

x Introduction

of composition. In this latter arrangement, Ruth appears first since its narrated time is ‘the times of the Judges’; Song of Songs and Qoheleth are next, being related to King Solomon; Lamentations, related to the Babylonian conquest Jerusalem and its first temple, comes next; and finally Esther, from the Persian period. In this volume we follow the ‘chronological’ Jewish arrangement, thus beginning with Ruth. As in this volume’s predecessors in the Texts@Contexts series, geography is a major factor of the contributors’ contexts but not the only one to influence their readings. Issues of society, culture and community, some of which are admittedly conditioned by geographical locations, are at the foreground for all contributors and their reading agendas. 1. Ruth Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele) and Ndikho Mtshiselwa are both from South Africa and both concerned with re-reading the plight of the Scroll’s two chief literary figures: Naomi and Ruth. In ‘Ruling from their Graves? Reading Naomi within the African ReligioCultural Context’, Masenya discusses features of treating the dead and the living in both the book of Ruth and in African culture. In ‘Poor and Landless Women: An African Reading of Leviticus 25 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a Critical Tools’, Mtshiselwa highlights Ruth and Naomi’s situation concerning landlessness, ethnicity and poverty while drawing on the Ruth Scroll and Leviticus 25 on the one hand, and the situation of black (especially rural) women in South Africa on the other hand, while using insights and exposures from Latino/a criticism. In ‘The Boaz Solution: Reading Ruth in Light of Australian Asylum Seeker Discourse’, Anthony Rees looks at Ruth the foreigner through the lens of refugee acceptance, or rather lack of acceptance, in contemporary Australia and its politics. The themes of ethnicity and practical considerations, present in both ancient and current situations, are mutually illuminating. The same themes are apparent in ‘Finding Korean Goose Mothers a Home: A Contextual Re-reading of Ruth’, where Hyun Woo Kim (South Korea and the United States) focuses on the plight of South Korean Mothers who go to the United States with their children in order to enable a better future for them, but are never fully accepted into the host culture – much like Ruth (ch. 4) after giving birth to a male child. In ‘Boaz as “Sugar Daddy”: Re-reading Ruth in the Context of HIV in Southern Africa’, Gerald O. West and Beverley G. Haddad tackle the intricate connections of pragmatic sexual relations between socially inferior poor, younger females (Ruth figures?) and socially superior, older

Introduction

xi

and moneyed males (Boaz figures?). In the contemporary South African contexts, such liaisons may foster the HIV pandemic. West and Haddad show how reading the biblical book of Ruth, in a community context, may help contemporary women to understand their positions and the risks they take. The topic of HIV in black communities, this time in the United States will be discussed again in Cheryl Anderson’s essay on the Song of Songs.3 In ‘Racial Melancholia and the Book of Ruth’, Gale A. Yee looks at Ruth once again as a model foreigner who nevertheless remains unaccepted into the host culture she joins, in this instance from an AsianAmerican perspective. ‘The book of Ruth depicts both Ruth and Naomi as racial/ethnic melancholics in a dialectical relationship with each other: Ruth as the melancholic object and Naomi as the melancholic subject’. Ruth is ultimately prevented from being fully assimilated into Judahite culture, while sustaining the loss of her original culture – much like Americans of Asian descent nowadays. 2. The Song of Songs In ‘A Womanist Reading of the Song of Songs in the Age of AIDS’, Cheryl B. Anderson proceeds from statistics: African Americans are 12% of the U.S. population but incur 44% of new cases of HIV annually, with 70% of those infected being gay or bisexual males. A key factor in battling this situation is education. Through a womanist analysis of the situation itself and ways to counter it, Anderson suggests a reinterpretation of the Song of Songs for African American Christian communities: in her words, this ‘could help us reclaim our bodies, address our realities and ultimately lower the rate of new HIV infections in our community’.

3.  West and Haddad begin their essay by quoting public ‘sugar daddy’ advertisements from local South African newspapers. Such advertisements are rife in contemporary Israeli papers as well. See for instance a news story from Ynet, July 2016 (http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4826804,00.html), or the Israeli Internet site Sugar Daddy, ‘where attractive women and rich men meet’, with a claim for over 25,000 registered members (https://sugardaddy.co.il/), and many more. While in Israel this phenomenon is not connected with HIV/AIDS (certainly there is no academic research to suggest this), the openness and public nature of the ‘sugar daddy’ dialogues justify re-reading Ruth in that light, even if we cannot be certain of Boaz’s older age (he is economically more established that Ruth, and that will be enough to make him an ideal ‘sugar daddy’).

xii Introduction

In ‘Where Love and Death Meet: Reading the Old Testament in a Context of Gender Violence’, Mercedes L. García Bachmann presents a perspective from Argentina. She begins by citing lyrics from Tango, which has love for a dead one as its topic, and continues to examine the connection between love and death. This connection is emphasized in Song 8.6b – ‘For love is fierce as death, passion is mighty as Sheol’ (JPS 1985). García Bachmann examines this text as well as others in the HB, in an attempt to clarify various ways of looking at this connection. 3. Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) In ‘“What Gain Have the Workers from their Toil?”: (Con)texting Ecclesiastes 3.9-13 in Pasifika’, Jione Havea asks: What does the celebration of toil (work, labor) entail for people suffering from climate change and the pain of occupation? This article offers a reading of Qoh. 3.9-13 in response to Genesis 2–3 and in the context of West Papua and of Kiribati and Tuvalu. Focusing on the question – ‘What gain have the workers from their toil?’ – and the two-part answer that Qoheleth proposes to his question, Havea concludes that the question offers more hope than the answer. In ‘Heḇel and Kong: A Cross-Textual Reading between Qoheleth and the Heart Sūtra’, Huang Wei examines the word heḇel (‫ )הבל‬which serves as the motto of Qoheleth (1.1) and concludes its main text (12.8). It appears, in the singular and in the plural, many times in the book.4 Scholars have been trying to understand and interpret this lexeme, and different translations have been suggested in commentaries and in many academic papers. In Qoheleth, heḇel questions wisdom, and the reality as it is experienced. heḇel is irrational, the opposite of reason. Huang reaches her conclusion by comparing heḇel in Qoheleth with the concept of kong in the Chinese version of the Buddhist Heart Sūtra, translated from the Sanskrit in the seventh century CE and very popular in China. In ‘Dealing with Death: Reading Qoheleth in Different Contexts, Klaas Spronk attempts to describe a number of readings from readers in different contexts, past and present, of Qoheleth texts on death, mainly ch. 9, in order to get a better, more critical readerly view of them. An important issue, according to Spronk, is not only to live well but also to 4.  Heḇel appears eighty-six times in the HB. This total includes the name of Cain’s brother (in Gen. 4), and the prophetic references to foreign, pagan gods in the plural. In the book of Qoheleth, the lexeme appears almost thirty times, thus about a third of its occurrences throughout the HB.

Introduction

xiii

die well. Going through a quick survey of ancient literature on the subject, and comparing it with views advanced by contemporary scholars, Spronk arrives at the inescapable conclusion: we read Qoheleth, and we understand life and death within the book and beyond, as conditioned by our own distinctive contexts. 4. Lamentations In ‘Reading Daughter Zion and Lady Meng: Tears, Protest and Female Voices’, Archie C. C. Lee reads the female voice of Daughter Zion in Lamentations together with the Chinese story of ‘Lady Meng’s Tears’, a many-versioned tale of a widow mourning her husband, a construction worker who died while building worker the Great Wall. Against a backdrop of catastrophe, the tale initiates reflections on obedience and its lack, punishment meted out by authoritarian units, the power of female protesting, mourning voices and issues of recovering faith and hope – all questions that loom large in Lamentations. In ‘Lamentations as Musical Performance, its Origins and Life Occasions: Some Reflections’, Athalya Brenner-Idan tries to link Psalm 137 and the book of Lamentations as a continuum; to argue for a (repeated) ritual performance of both in word and music; to relate the biblical book’s structure and form to the influence of Greek tragedy; and thereby also explain further the preponderance of female voices in it. 5. Esther In ‘Women’s Banquets and Gatherings in Text and Context: The Queens’ Banquets in Esther and Contemporary Women-Only Israeli/Jewish Ceremonies’, Ora Brison compares women-only communal gatherings in contemporary Jewish/Israeli society, such as Women of the (Western) Wall gatherings and the Dough (challah) Offering, with the banquets queens give in Esther: Vashti gives a women-only banquet, and Esther invites Ahasuerus and Haman to two banquets. An obvious difference is the private–domestic character of the biblical book’s female banquets as against the public–ritual character of the contemporary gatherings. Nevertheless, Brison claims, a line of development can be drawn from the one to the other. In ‘Esther, Pious and Brave: Reading Children’s Bibles as Commentary on Twentieth-century Afrikaner Culture’, Jaqueline S. du Toit explains how South African White identity of the previous century was largely shaped by the creation and re-imagination of nationhood in terms of

xiv Introduction

biblical origin myths. The bible and the consequences of a particular interpretation assured compliance by the general (white) population. In this context children’s bibles proved invaluable. Two representations of Esther in children’s books serve as case studies for illustrating this important cultural-political issue. As usual we, the editors of this Series, are aware that many more contextual viewpoints about each of the Scrolls could be presented. We hope that you, the readers, will be encouraged present your own.

Part I Ruth

R ul i n g f rom t h ei r G r ave s ?  R e a d i n g N a om i wi t h i n the A fr i can R el i g i o -C ult ur al C ont e xt Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele)

1. Introduction The book of Ruth, perhaps more than any other book in the Hebrew Bible, reveals some resemblances with Africa (Kanyoro 2002; Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2010). The worldview embedded in the book of Ruth would thus make perfect sense to an African reader of the tale. The religio-cultural worlds of the Judahite and the African contexts reveal that the whole is religious. The following examples can serve as cases in point. Yahweh has a share in the economy, as Yahweh is believed to bring food (1.8) and to care for widows by providing relevant laws (cf. Ruth 2; see the laws on gleaning [Lev. 19.9-10; 23.22 and Deut. 24.19-22]). Although Yahweh is hardly spoken about in the book, hidden behind the unfolding activities is the invisible hand of Yahweh, who exercises Yahweh’s ḥesed through some of the characters. Religion and politics appear to go hand in glove: the city gate elders could pronounce the blessing of progeny on Boaz and Ruth (4.11); Naomi could blame Yahweh for deaths in her family (1.20-21); and Yahweh’s hand is visible in providing a go’el (2.20) in Naomi’s family. Also, the child who would be born through Ruth would become the great grandfather of one who would become one of the great political leaders in Israel, that is, King David. The Northern Sotho proverb, letlalo la motho ga le bapolelwe fase,1 reveals something of the belief that death cannot just happen: forces within the supernatural realm are believed to be involved. One calamity after another in a family such as that of Elimelech may be accounted for by the belief that the ancestors (and the Sacred Other) have turned their backs on the victims. Also, the

1.  To translate, ‘the skin of a human being cannot be crucified on the ground’.

4

The Five Scrolls

fact that the traditional ruler’s inauguration cannot just happen without the invocation of the ancestral spirits reveals something of the perceived connection between religion and politics in Africa. For Naomi, just like for (traditional) Africans, the dead seem to have been alive (1.8; 2.20). The re-configured institution of levirate marriage around which the story of Ruth rotates, and the preoccupation with the male lineage, also point in the same direction. It is worth noting that the concept of levirate marriage, as it was practiced in ancient Israel, resonates with the practice commonly called ‘widow inheritance’ in various African contexts. Embedded in this practice could be the belief – in both worlds – not only of the important role of progeny for patriarchal families, but a perception about the dead who were/are believed to still have a share in the lives of the living. It thus becomes pertinent at this stage to pose the following questions: • In biblical Israel, were the dead perceived as really dead? Nürnberger would have responded to the preceding question in the affirmative. He argues: …the Old Testament faith was exceptionally realistic concerning the pervasiveness of sin and the finality of death. The metaphor of Sheol (= the place of the dead) had mythological connotations in the Ancient Near East, but for Israel it indicated a lifeless sphere. Once there, one could no longer enjoy life, or praise Yahweh (Job 7:7-10; Ps 6:5; Sir 17:27f). Forbears could do nothing for their offspring and their offspring could do nothing for them. Death was the end of all relationships (2007: 59, present author’s italics).

In light of these observations that the whole is religious in both contexts, Nürnberger’s response appears to be unconvincing. If, as Nürnberger would have it, the (male) dead were viewed as really dead in biblical Israel, how may an African reader2 of the Hebrew Bible explain the great store set by some of the narrators’ consistent references to the kings being 2. The consistent references to the dead by Naomi without excluding the institution of levirate marriage (albeit re-envisioned and/or reconstructed in the book of Ruth), an institution which forms the central pivot around which the story revolves, do not persuade one about Nürnberger’s claim that, in biblical Israel, death ended all relationships. Perhaps, even though the text could have had a broader political agenda –as it appears to have been the case with the book of Ruth – its canonical form has a lot to convey to the reader about the apparent close relationships between the Jews in post-exilic Yehud and the dead: if not concretely, at least at the level of their sub-consciousness.



Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele)  Ruling from their Graves?

5

gathered with their ancestors (fathers)?3 Was the practice of family graves in ancient Israel innocent in terms of the belief in the afterlife? Why was it significant that the bones of some patriarchs (Joseph’s, Exod. 13.39; cf. Jacob’s, Gen. 50.1-14) be taken along by their sons/family to their new relocation? In a more or less similar vein, it is not uncommon during a burial day to hear comments from African (Northern Sotho) people, especially the elders, encouraging the departed to travel safely in his/her journey to join the previously departed family members and to convey their greetings to them. • What are we to make of the Chronicler’s devotion to the listing of male genealogies (1 Chron. 1.1-42; 2; 3; 4.1-38, and so on)? If the dead in biblical Israel were perceived as really dead, why does the word ‫( המתים‬hammētîm,4 translated ‘the dead’) keep featuring in the words (or the sub-conscious minds?) of characters such as Naomi (Ruth 1.8-9; 2.20) and Boaz (4.5, 10)? Could this be a coincidence for an African reader who had fallen into an eisegetical trap, or could it be that Naomi believed that she had the responsibility of taking care of the needs of the dead even long after their departure from earth? If the forces of neo-colonialism and globalization have derailed many an African person from the belief that the dead continue to live even beyond the time of their physical absence from earth, why does it seem that Christianity, and particularly mainline Christianity, has basically succeeded in producing Christians who will follow Christ, as well as venerate the ancestors, whether overtly or covertly? In the case of African Independent churches, though, Christian adherents deliberately integrate the practice of the veneration of the ancestors within their Christian faith. The two belief systems are thus not viewed as being antagonistic to each other. The preceding discussion serves to reveal that in the religio-cultural worlds of both biblical Israel and (traditional) Africa (cf. the Northern Sotho South African context for the purposes of the present essay), the whole is religious. Given the patriarchal nature of both contexts, the dead,

3.  See in particular the numerous texts in the books of Kings as cases in point: 2 Kgs 10.35; 12.21; 13.9; 14.16. 4.  The word comes from the root m-w-t which means ‘to die’. ‫ מתים‬is a Qal participle masculine plural absolute (Bible Works). The participle form in which the absolute verb is cast would arrest African readers of the story. mēt can be translated literally as ‘being made to die’ (cf. the Qal participle masculine absolute) as in mēt ‘ādām (the man who is being made to die) or as in ešet-hammēt.

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The Five Scrolls

especially the male dead as the present essay will reveal, seem to have been perceived as continuing to impact both the decisions and the actions of those who – although physically not dead (read: the living) – patriarchy rendered ‘dead’ in many respects. In the following paragraphs, an attempt will be made to engage the concept of/discourse on the dead (hammētîm) especially in the context of Naomi’s speeches and/or thoughts. Where necessary, especially as it impacts on the character of Naomi, Boaz’s understanding of the role of hammētîm in the sphere of the living will also feature, albeit to a lesser extent. 2. An African Naomi’s Reflections on hammētîm (the Dead) in Selected Texts 2.1. Naomi, Ruth, Orpah, hammētîm and Yahweh as Actors within the Religious Whole And Naomi said unto her two daughters in law, Go, return each to her mother’s house: the LORD deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me (Ruth 1.8, KJV).

An African Naomi’s5 reading of the first chapter of Ruth leads her to perceive that the institution of heterosexual marriage seems to have been the norm especially for younger (widowed) women (?) like Ruth and Orpah. It thus makes sense that a more experienced/elderly woman like Naomi, who could no longer marry nor bear children, would encourage her daughters-in-law to go, not to their fathers’ houses, but to their mothers’ houses to get married. Within an African communal family setting, where the whole is religious, marriage does not only cement the living (cf. Ruth and Orpah’s natal and marital families); marriage connects the living, the dead (or the living-dead) and the yet-to-be-born. Marriage, including levirate marriage, is therefore viewed as a sacred institution. It thus makes sense that Mbiti could reason that a single person was deemed less human within our African contexts: ‘For African peoples, marriage is the focus of existence. It is the point where the members of a given community 5.  In the present essay, an African Naomi may be referred to as this ‘fictitious’ reader/interpreter who, by virtue of being an organic individual within the African religio-cultural world, enables this essay’s reader to get a glimpse of how, and this applies especially to traditional African readers of the Naomi-Ruth story, it would read when informed by their religio-cultural context(s), among others.



Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele)  Ruling from their Graves?

7

meet: the departed, the living and those yet to be born’ (Mbiti 1969: 130).6 Although an African Naomi would not have encouraged her daughters-inlaw to divorce the grave(s),7 she would have resonated with the (biblical) Naomi’s exhortation to her daughters-in-law to re-marry and thus immortalize male lineage. Unlike Naomi, who exhorted her daughters-in-law to seek husbands from their mothers’ houses, an African Naomi would have exhorted her daughters-in-law to seek husbands from within the family of their deceased husbands. The lineage to be kept alive would have been the lineage of their deceased husbands (read: Chilion and Mahlon). The question to be asked is: What did Naomi mean when she spoke of the kindness shown by Ruth and Orpah to the dead and herself (1.8)? Worthy of note is that the significance of hammētîm in the present text becomes more pointed as it appears before Naomi’s ‘with me’, before the one who represents the living. Was the kindness referred to in this text (‫חסד‬, ḥesed) shown only when the dead were still alive, or beyond their departure? Why does Naomi mention hammētîm in the context of the impending moment of her separation from the living widows? The dead remembered in Ruth 1.8-10 and in subsequent texts (2.20; 4.5, 10) are not the dead in general: they are the dead in Naomi’s life. In the African religio-cultural world, the ancestral cult is a family cult. One will usually venerate the ancestors belonging to one’s family, not an unfamiliar family. Does it then occasion any surprise that when a new 6.  Mbiti reasons that marriage constitutes life’s rhythm where all should participate. Otherwise, the non-participant runs the risk of being a curse in the community. ‘…he is a rebel and a law-breaker, he is not only abnormal but “under-human”’. According to Oduyoye, ‘The language of marriage proverbs indicates that a wife only reflects the stage of the marriage and a man’s competence as a husband… Society demands that she stays married, because a woman has no dignity outside marriage’ (Oduyoye 1995: 68, present author’s italics). 7.  Lebitla ga le hlalwe, literally ‘a [man’s] grave cannot be divorced’. At face value, the proverb might appear inclusive. Once uttered, though, even if there is no specificity regarding the grave to be divorced – thus sending a false message about inclusiveness – listeners/readers who are conversant with African cultures will know that the grave in question is a male grave (cf. Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2010). After his death (in case a husband predeceases her wife (cf. Ruth) the widow is expected to remain with the deceased’s family until her death. Her grave must ultimately be found at her marital home. In light of the tenor of the preceding proverb, for an African Naomi, Ruth’s words of commitment to her mother-in-law (1.16-17) will make perfect sense. The belief that the male grave could not be divorced, in my view, points to the connectedness between the living of African people and their dead.

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bride is ushered into a Northern Sotho family, for example, the ancestors of the host family would be introduced to her? Yet, the belief seems to be that marriage does not sever a married woman from her ancestors.8 The dead in the Ruth texts are not portrayed as spirits. Also, noteworthy is that the word mēt, as it occurs in those texts, is a verb Qal participle masculine singular (or appears as plural) absolute. An African Naomi may thus speculate that the hammētîm were the ‘living-dead’ who were in a kind of transitory state between the living and those who are believed to inhabit the spirit world. In Mbiti’s view, the dead in the preceding category, ‘…speak the language of men [sic], with whom they lived until “recently”; and they speak the language of the spirits and of God, to Whom they are drawing nearer ontologically’ (Mbiti 1969: 82). Phyllis Trible, though, foregrounds the activities of the females in the narrative, ‘The males die; they are non-persons; their presence in the story ceases (though their absence continues). The females live; they are persons; their presence in the story continues. Indeed, their life is the life of the story’ (Trible 1978: 168–9). An African Naomi would spot the fact that though the males are portrayed as dead, the male presence (and not their absence, as according to Trible9), continues to be felt in the narrative, especially in Naomi’s words. For a reader who is influenced by the African religio-cultural worldview, the deceased males’ physical absence appears to speak as loud as their physical presence. Though the females’ (physical) lives are more important to the story, the physically absent males appear to thoroughly impact female actions in the story. The system that legitimated male authority thus ensured and continues to ensure that male persons will rule (in women’s lives) even from their graves! In the African religio-cultural context, the age and the status of the dead to be venerated counted to a greater extent. Not so in the book of Ruth, though: the dead (male) who calls the shots in Naomi’s life is not Elimelech, the older man, but Mahlon, Naomi’s son and the younger man.

8.  The preceding observation as well as the androcentric nature of the Northern Sotho society became glaring when, at a funeral of a deceased female relative, the dead who were given prominent attention as the corpse was lowered down the grave were those of her deceased husband; hers were mentioned in passing at the end, as though it was an afterthought. 9.  In the view of an African reader, the persistence of using the term hammētîm to refer to diseased men will persuade her/him that though dead, the men remain present in the story. Their (physical) absence seems to speak as loud as their physical presence.



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For (traditional) Africans, the living dead are the immediate link between the living family members and the spirit world. They are thus bilingual according to Mbiti, as they speak the language of humans with whom they have been until recently. They also speak the language of God, whom they are approaching. These are the ‘spirits’ with which African peoples are most concerned; it is through the living-dead that the spirit world becomes personal to men [sic]. They are still part of their human families and people have personal memories of them (Mbiti 1969: 82).

An African Naomi’s interaction with Naomi’s narrative would cause her to wonder if, for the biblical Naomi, ‫( המתים‬hammētîm) were also perceived as very real. Or could Naomi’s frequent mention of hammētîm be an indication that she was still overwhelmed by grief from the loss of significant male stakeholders in her life? Brenner portrays the imaginary Naomi as follows: I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t feel love toward her (Ruth), or toward anybody else living or present. I was a bereaved wife and mother and played the part maximally (Brenner 2005: 115; brackets and italics by present author).

As noted earlier on, in Ruth 1.8 hammētîm in question were possibly her sons, Chilion and Mahlon (cf. the MEV rendering, ‘deceased husbands’). Given the corporeal nature of biblical Israel, though, and reading in line with the grain of the text, the ‫( בית אב‬bêt ’āb) of Naomi’s household was neither Chilion’s nor Mahlon’s but Elimelech’s (1.1-5). Therefore, the generic rendering of ‘the dead’ for hammētîm in these texts seems appropriate. Both Yahweh and hammētîm are mentioned in the same textual context (so also in 2.20). However, notes an African Naomi, the biblical Naomi’s invocation of the blessing of ḥesed on Ruth and Orpah (1.8) is not directed at hammētîm. The ḥesed which was to be extended to Naomi’s daughters-in-law did not come from the ancestors, the (living) dead, as would have been believed to be the case within the African religio-cultural context. It came from Yahweh. In the texts under discussion, the (living) dead are neither portrayed as mediators between Naomi and Yahweh nor are they portrayed, as is the case within many an African religio-cultural context, as the final authority to which peoples’ concerns were to be mediated.10 10.  Nürnberger (2007: 33) avers, ‘Ancestors are not normally requested to carry the sacrifices, prayers or petitions of their offspring upwards to higher ancestral authorities, and finally to the Supreme Being. Nor do the ancestors speak in the name

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In the book of Ruth the dead, at least with regard to their relationship with Yahweh, appear to have occupied the same place as did live human beings (read: Naomi and her daughters-in-law). In the preceding context, the order which was/is believed to have been established by Yahweh and/or the ancestors (Masenya 1989) had been disturbed not only by male deaths, but also by barrenness. Those inhabiting such a religious whole believed that once the order became disturbed, it had to be rectified. Perhaps Elimelech’s family could have somehow been cursed. Brenner’s words (in the name of a fictitious Naomi) might have made sense to Naomi and her daughters-in-law, depending on how steeped they might have been then in the Judahite worldview. Embedded within the preceding worldview was the belief that calamities could not just occur without reason. Deviation from the established order by human beings was believed to have caused such calamities. The fictitious Naomi could thus speculate: ‘I was beginning to suspect that this was divine retribution for leaving our land, that our god, the god famous for interfering with women’s wombs, closing them and opening them at will, was punishing us in the worst possible manner’ (Brenner 2005: 113). For an African Naomi, such calamities could easily be attributed to witchcraft and/or the wrath of the ancestors, hence the women of Bware in Kenya could speculate: Perhaps Naomi realized that all these deaths had come to them because they had neglected their own customs and adopted foreign customs… It is quite clear that there was a curse on the family, since Naomi never gave birth to any other children while they were in the Moabite country. Also, their sons were married for ten years and they never left any children. Somebody in the family of Elimelech pronounced words of a curse before they left (Kanyoro 2002: 41).

That the memories of hammētîm continued to haunt Naomi is evident from her bitter response to a company of the women of Bethlehem. Her identity with regard to her poverty status seems to have been closely linked to the lack of men (husband and sons) in her life. Hence the bitter and sorrowful Naomi could confess that while she left her hometown full, she returned empty (1.21, KJV).

of the Supreme Being when they make their intention or their displeasure known. In practical terms, they are themselves the authorities with whom one relates, the original authors of their messages, blessings and punishments and the final recipients of gifts and prayers.’



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If Naomi’s preoccupation was not with hammētîm, why would she have claimed to have returned to Bethlehem empty-handed while her committed daughter-in-law was with her? Ironically, Naomi claimed to have been empty in the presence of the one whose name also meant ‘fullness’. Argues Lee, ‘And with Ruth (meaning “saturation”, “refreshment”, or “fullness”) resolutely standing by her, she pronounces herself utterly “empty”’ (Lee 2012: 145). If Naomi’s claim to have left Bethlehem being full (1.21) had nothing to do with her possession of men who were then physically present, but everything to do with economics, why did Elimelech’s family leave Bethlehem in the first instance (1.1)? The returning Naomi’s identity is linked both to the physical absence of hammētîm and to the affliction which in her view was inflicted upon her by Yahweh. Unlike within the African religio-cultural context, hammētîm are not portrayed as either blessing or cursing Naomi: it is Yahweh who is portrayed as inflicting pain in Naomi’s life. Naomi’s identity as Pleasant/ Sweet One is linked to the physical presence of a husband and sons in her life. In the view of the biblical Naomi, her identity as one connected to the (living) dead could only bring emptiness and bitterness. From an African religio-cultural lens, Naomi who once held the position of a mother would have fared better than a woman who had never had children. In cultures which set great store by children, ones in which the performance of motherhood is viewed as a sacred duty, for a woman or a man to have never mothered or fathered a child is tantamount to being cursed (cf. also Oduyoye 1999). The biblical Naomi is so far portrayed as wishing the ḥesed of Yahweh upon her daughters-in-law as she bids them farewell. In the following text (2.20) Naomi, who has previously been bitter against Yahweh, confirms that she also is among the living (and the dead) who participate in Yahweh’s acts of ḥesed. To the latter text we now turn. 2.2. The ḥesed of Yahweh among haggoyîm and hammētîm And Naomi said unto her daughter in law, Blessed be he of the LORD who have not left his kindness to the living and the dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next of kin (2.20; KJV).

Within the African religio-cultural context, the ancestors are believed to be able to punish and reward people in line with their actions. From the preceding text (1.21), it would appear that Naomi viewed Yahweh in the same way. From 2.20, an African Naomi spots the religious whole in which hammētîm and haggoyîm are revealed as experiencing Yahweh’s ḥesed corporately. This observation warrants a question: If the dead were

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viewed as indeed dead in Naomi’s religio-cultural world, why did she make mention of hammētîm in her moment of excitement? Two reasons may be suggested here. First, as we have already observed, hammētîm seemed to have formed, whether consciously or not, an integral part of Naomi’s life, thus impacting her life in one way or another. Second, in their patriarchal context (cf. also in the African Naomi’s context), whatever bright future the two widows (read: Naomi and Ruth) may have hoped for, it would have been linked with institutions in which males (whether among the living or the dead) would be central. Levirate marriage in the case of Naomi, or widow inheritance in the case of an African Naomi, was one such institutions. Even before the scene at the onset of ch. 3 (3.1), where Naomi would reveal her desire to seek security for Ruth, and 3.9, where Ruth would propose marriage to Boaz, an African reader who is aware of the importance of heterosexual marriage, of sons as guarantors of male immortality,11 one who is also aware of institutions set in place to perpetuate male immortality, can already speculate that the future looked bright for both Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth. When Yahweh, who had not forsaken the living and the dead, would later on show Yahweh’s ḥesed through the marriage union between Ruth and Boaz and the provision of the heir to hammētîm, not to the living Boaz,12 the future would not only be secured for the living, that is, Naomi and Ruth, it would particularly be secured for hammētîm. Phiri holds a different view by reasoning, ‘God is seen to be on the side of the living and not the dead by making Naomi full again’ (Phiri 2006: 324). She bases her argument on 4.13, where the women of Bethlehem gave the child a name, proclaiming that a son is born to Naomi. However, 11.  Mbiti (1969: 130) reasons that ‘Biologically both husband and wife are reproduced in their children, thus perpetuating the chain of humanity. In some societies it is believed that the living-dead are reincarnated in part, so that aspects of their personalities or physical characteristics are “re-born” in their descendants. A person who, therefore, has no descendants in effect quenches the fire of life, and becomes forever dead since his line of physical continuation is blocked if he does not get married and bear children.’ 12.  ‘Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance…’ (4.5, KJV); ‘Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day’ (4.10, KJV, present author’s italics).



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taking into account the communal family setting portrayed in the text, and the feminine space in which the child was named, the women’s proclamation makes perfect sense, if the naming of the child is understood in the context of the whole narrative. Also, the words of Boaz, the kinsman’s redeemer in 4.5 and 10, allow us to safely conclude that according to Naomi, the granting of the blessing of a son was an indication that God had not forsaken both the dead and the living. An African Naomi is thus persuaded that like in the African religio-cultural world, as well as in the religio-cultural world in which the book of Ruth was produced, males reigned even from the realm of the dead. At the end of the narrative, the once-afflicted Naomi is now celebrated by fellow Bethlehemite women, who could initially not recognize her. For them, Yahweh had replaced the dead son by the provision of a grandchild (read: a sign of immortality). The grandson would restore Naomi and care for her in her old age like Mahlon would have done, had he still been alive. However, because the levirate union from which the grandchild would be born was effected in honour of hammēt, and Boaz’s confession that the name to be immortalized was Mahlon’s, it can be concluded that hammēt was actually the driving force behind the blessings that Naomi had now started to enjoy. 3. Conclusion The biblical Naomi, just like the African Naomi, seems to have inhabited a world in which the whole was religious. Within such a religious whole the supernatural Other – be it Yahweh or the Sacred Other – and the ancestors were believed to direct the course of events in people’s lives. Individuals were thus called to cooperate with the supernatural Other in order not to incur their wrath. The biblical Naomi, for example, believed that blessings and curses came from Yahweh. In the African Naomi’s view of things, people had to make sure that they submitted to the established order set by God and the ancestors lest they incur the wrath of the ancestors who, though viewed as mediators of prayers to the Sacred Other, were also believed to be the final authority in determining what would and would not happen to people. In both worlds, which were basically patriarchal, the males, both the living and the dead, seemed to have directed the course of female lives. Through the institution of levirate marriage, re-envisioned as it is in the book of Ruth, this essay has hopefully revealed that even beyond their period of stay here on earth and even in death, the males in the case of Naomi’s story appear to have called the shots. The following question may be asked though: Despite the growing phenomenon of single

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female households in varying African contexts, should widow inheritance (read: levirate marriage) be opted for as an alternative marriage option in contexts that continue to idolise heterosexual marriage? If a levirate union (read: widow inheritance) was found appropriate both in the biblical past and in our African past (and present), should it be clung to, at all costs, even if it had proved to be life-denying in our day? References Brenner, A. (2005), I Am…Biblical Women Tell their Own Stories, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Kanyoro, M. R. A. (2002), Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Perspective, New York: Pilgrim Press. Lee, E. P. (2012), ‘Ruth’, in C. A. Newsom, S. H. Ringe and J. E. Lapsley (eds), The Women’s Bible Commentary, 142–9, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Masenya, M. J. (1989), ‘In the School of Wisdom: An Interpretation of Some Old Testament Proverbs in a Northern Sotho Setting’, MA diss., University of South Africa, Pretoria. Masenya, M. (2010), ‘Is Ruth the ’ēšet ḥayil for Real? An Exploration of Womanhood from African Proverbs and the Threshing Floor (Ruth 1:1-13)’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 36: 253–72. Mbiti, J. S. (1969), African Religions and Philosophy, London: Heinemann. Nürnberger, K. (2007), The Living Dead and the Living God: Christ and the Ancestors in a Changing Africa’, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster; CP Powell Bible Centre: Pretoria. Oduyoye, M. A. (1995), Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Oduyoye, M. A. (1999), ‘A Coming Home to Myself: The Childless Woman in the West African Space’, in M. A. Farley and S. Jones (eds), Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty M. Russell, 105–20, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Phiri, I. A. (2006), ‘Ruth’, in T. Adeyemo (ed.), Africa Bible Commentary, 319–24, Zondervan: WordAlive Publishers. Trible, P. (1978), God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

T h e B oa z S ol uti on : R e a di n g R ut h i n L i g h t of A ust r ali an A s y l um S eek er D i scour se * Anthony Rees

Prologue: Initial Problems In an earlier contribution to this series (Rees 2013) I situated the story of Phinehas, Cozbi and Zimri (Numbers 25), as well as Psalm 137 and Deuteronomy 22, in the context of Australian colonial history. The biblical text was read alongside stories of violence against indigenous Australians during the settlement period. Not intended as a sequel, but covering familiar ground, this article moves forward to the present day and current debates in Australia about immigration and the rights of asylum seekers. Like in other parts of the world, the phenomenon of immigration – forced and otherwise – has polarised Australian society and remains a key political battleground. The discussion is taking place in the midst of a crisis in Australian identity. Increasingly, Australia is aligning itself with Asia, simultaneously moving away from our neighbours in the Pacific.1 To whom do we belong? Why? And How? Or is it enough just to be Australian? If we are part of Asia, we are certainly on the margins, geographically. But the push towards Asia suggests a desire to be more central, a recognition that being isolated is a disadvantage. Political manoeuvring towards Asia seems to be a way of overcoming our distance from the centre, our dissatisfaction with marginalization, our anxiety with our identity. But this creates a further problem: what is Asia? Asia is a hugely diverse space, incorporating a richness of people, culture and language far beyond our experience. It is in some sense reductionist and essentialist *  The present article is a revision of a previously published work (Rees 2015). 1.  One must wonder what will happen when environmental factors force a wave of Pacific Islanders to our shores.

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to talk of ‘Asia’, as Edward Said has warned us (Said 2003). What draws Manila and Mumbai together? Doha and Dhaka? Colombo and Kyoto? Or to push a little further, Hobart and Ho Chi Minh City, Perth and Peshawar, Canberra and Kabul? To understand Asia in a singular fashion is to make the same mistake that is commonly made about the world’s most invisible region, our natural neighbours, the Pacific. And how does Australia share this imaginary Asian experience? Whom do we imagine when we talk of ‘Asians’? Is it the woman who writes my prescriptions, or the girl that is offered to me as I walk the streets in Asian cities? Is it the young man in the fancy suit and car carving out a career in the court house, or the boy making my shirts in Bangladesh? Are the doctor and the lawyer Asian? Or Australian? Identity issues again surface. None of this is to make an argument for or against Australia’s position in Asia. But rather, it establishes that Asia’s boundaries are fluid, both in terms of geography and of identity. This fluidity invites this discussion of Australia’s place, or belonging, in Asia. It is true to say that Asia has a strong presence in Australia. There are suburbs in Sydney where shop signs are written in Chinese, and where a person who speaks English is hard to find. Migration, both forced and voluntary, has altered the shape of our communities, and indeed, continues to do so. As this Asian presence has increased in Australia, perhaps it has been a natural thing for us to explore our relationship with Asia, to perhaps even become ‘Asian’ in some sense. There is a ‘migration’ taking place, away from our Pacific family to the bigger, brighter opportunities offered by Asia. This is not a forced migration but, rather, a migration of force, of expediency. Having highlighted problems of identity, but offered few solutions, I have prepared the way for my offering which follows. It picks up these very themes, engaging Australia’s own recent policies regarding those who have sought refuge in Australia. It then turns to the story of Ruth, where these issues also emerge. I hope that it does not do what I fear Australia’s Asian turn does: assume superiority. More Problems, and Attempted Solutions In September 2001, the Australian Parliament passed into law a piece of legislation commonly referred to as the ‘Pacific Solution’. The Pacific Solution emerged from a particular problem: the arrival in Australian waters of boats carrying asylum seekers. In simple terms, boats departing from Indonesia that were intercepted by Australian Navy vessels would be redirected to third countries, where they were held while the applications



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for asylum were processed. These centres were in Nauru, Christmas Island2 and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.3 The legislation passed with the support of both major parties. The bill came quickly after the ‘Tampa Affair’ in which a Norwegian ship that had come to the aid of a distress signal was denied access to Australian waters despite carrying over four hundred asylum seekers, some suffering acute medical conditions. The ship’s captain eventually disregarded the instruction, and entered Australian territorial waters.4 Australian soldiers intercepted the vessel and ordered the Captain to return to international waters, a request he denied. Eventually the asylum seekers, found by medical staff to be dehydrated and suffering from a range of ailments, were loaded onto an Australian Naval vessel and transported to Nauru. Just weeks later, the ‘children overboard’ scandal took place.5 The issue of asylum seeking was front-and-centre in Australia’s public life. The Pacific Solution became a case of good timing for the John Howard-led conservative government. The border control issue and the government’s strong stance gained popular support. Launching the 2001 election campaign, Howard declared, ‘[W]e will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ (Clarke 2011). The line was repeated in television advertisements in the lead up to the polls, and the conservative government won the election with an increased majority. The Pacific Solution was intended to be a deterrent to those seeking asylum, the assumption being that if it were perceived by asylum seekers that one would not reach Australia, but instead be ferried off to another location, then Australia would no longer be such an attractive target.

2.  Christmas Island differs slightly from the others in this list, insofar as it is a non-self-governing territory of Australia. 3.  Discussions also took place with Kiribati, Tonga, Tuvalu, Palau, East Timor and France (in relation to the possible use of French Polynesia): Phillips 2012. 4.  The ship’s captain, Arne Rinnan, demonized by the Australian government, was later awarded Norway’s highest civic honour. The crew of his ship were awarded the Nansen Refugee award by UNHCR for their efforts to follow internationally agreed principles for aiding people in distress at sea. 5.  In the lead up to the 2001 election, Howard Government ministers claimed that asylum seekers arriving by boat had thrown their children into the water as a way of securing passage to Australia. A later Parliamentary enquiry confirmed that this was a fabrication used to heighten the electorates’ anxiety regarding asylum seekers and boat people.

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Without question, there was a slowing of arrivals in Australian waters in the subsequent years. However, this is not necessarily to be attributed to the policy of the Howard government. This was a period of decreased migration and, notably, the time in which the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, one of the primary sources of refugees, was overthrown. In late 2007, Kevin Rudd led the Australian Labor Party to power. In the years since the implementation of the Pacific Solution, increased anxiety about the state of the detention facilities and the psychological impact of the detention experience on refugees had created a certain discomfort with the arrangements. Refugee advocates agitated for change, pointing to the lack of sanitation, water and electricity for the harshly housed detainees (Phillips 2012). A 2007 report outlined the mental health issues confronted by, in particular, women and children, and highlighted the instances of food strike and other forms of self-harm. By February 2008, the Pacific Solution was cut adrift by the new Government, to the praise of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The new immigration minister, Chris Evans, described the Pacific Solution as a ‘cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise’ (AAP 2008). Within a few years, boat arrivals into Australian waters had again become a significant political issue. Pressure mounted, but Prime Minister Rudd declared that he would not ‘lurch to the right’ on the asylum seeker issue, a move which proved costly to him (Coorey 2012). Deputy leader Julia Gillard, with the support of factional leaders, moved on Rudd, displacing him as Prime Minister. Initially, Gillard’s team continued the policies of Rudd; but, under the increasing pressure of boat arrivals, a new idea was born: the ill-fated ‘Malaysia Solution’ of May 2011. The Malaysia solution was intended to be a ‘swap’ between Australia and Malaysia. Eight hundred people who had attempted to reach Australia by boat would be deported to Malaysia. In return, Australia would accept four thousand people from Malaysia who had been found to be genuine refugees over a four-year period (AAP 2011). The plan attracted the ire of refugee advocates, and the legislation was challenged and declared unlawful in the High Court. Despite attempts to make necessary amendments to the bill, the opposition parties refused to support the changes, and the Malaysian solution was dead in the water (Walker 2011). Opposition leader Tony Abbott was by this stage gaining great popular support through his three-word sloganeering, most commonly declaring his capacity to ‘stop the boats’. With pressure continuing to mount on the Gillard government, and calls coming from all quarters for the reinstitution of the Pacific Solution, centres on Nauru and Manus Island reopened in August 2012. However, as Gillard’s popularity continued to



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wane and the opposition’s ‘stop the boats’ mantra intensified, Kevin Rudd returned to the Prime Minister’s office in June 2013, with the hope that his popular appeal could turn the fortunes of the Labor party ahead of the impending election. Despite his earlier comment that he would never lurch to the right on asylum seeker policy, less than a month after returning to office Rudd signed an agreement with the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Peter O’Neill. Under the agreement, Rudd declared: From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. Asylum seekers taken to Christmas Island will be sent to Manus and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea for assessment of their refugee status. If they are found to be genuine refugees they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea… If they are found not to be genuine refugees they may be repatriated to their country of origin or be sent to a safe third country other than Australia. These arrangements are contained within the Regional Resettlement Arrangement signed by myself and the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea just now (Pacific Solution 2013).

It was widely agreed that the ‘Regional Resettlement Plan’ signed with Papua New Guinea was an even more harsh arrangement than the Pacific Solution, no more than a cynical political move (Shanahan 2013). The opposition, with their hard-line ‘stop the boats’ rhetoric, could hardly raise an objection, and so this gave the struggling government some breathing space. But the heavy lurch to the right also served to anger the Greens, refugee advocates, human rights groups and the element of Australian society that was already angered by the cruelty of the off-shore detention processes. During the final years of this tumultuous time, the de-humanization of asylum seekers and the coarse political rhetoric about them were widely noted. Current immigration minister Scott Morrison has defended his department’s use of the term ‘illegal arrival’ (Griffiths 2013) to describe those arriving by boat. The national broadcaster, the ABC, countered by refusing to allow their journalists to use the expression. Morrison reiterated that he was aware that seeking asylum was not illegal, and that his term referenced the mode of arrival. Of course, the logic of this is faulty. One seeks asylum in the way that one can. Singling out those who arrive on boats is simply playing a political game. Further, people the reality that the reduction of humans to labels, or categories, was a political attempt to suppress the natural emotion this issue carries: ‘illegal arrivals’, ‘boat people’ and ‘asylum seekers’ are categories that in some

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way attempt to mask the humanity of those seeking refuge. In doing so it is forgotten that these people, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, young and old, are all in situations of great vulnerability. It is forgotten that many of them have left in traumatic circumstances, leaving loved ones behind in the hope of grasping a hold on life while there is still a chance. Instead, their actions are incorrectly labelled illegal and their humanity reduced to a ‘problem’. What has not been addressed adequately is the nomenclature of this suite of legislative instruments created to address the situation. The persistent use of the term ‘solution’ implies the recognition of a ‘problem’, and also serves as a dehumanizing element. Perhaps worse, it leaves the ‘problem’, the actual humans involved, out of the descriptor. Instead, the recipient of the problem is placed at the centre. This is an unfortunate circumstance, especially given that those who take on Australia’s ‘problem’ are nations which lack Australia’s immense financial and natural resources. One of the great ironies of the arrangement with Papua New Guinea was Prime Minister O’Neill’s comment that Papua New Guinea had a lot of uninhabited regions, and so had plenty of space to accommodate the refugees! Nonetheless, this notion of problem-solution with regard to humans is not a new one, particularly with regard to migration. I propose a reading of Ruth which engages this unfortunate terminology. While the application of the Australian situation to the biblical narrative is far from precise, as will be seen, it is still instructive, and creates a new way of understanding Naomi’s actions as well as the dynamics of power in the real-life situation confronting asylum seekers. A Problem Called Ruth The book of Ruth begins with a story of refugees. A man, Elimelech, takes his wife and two sons from their home in Judah to the country of Moab on account of a famine which had beset their homeland. The narrator places the story ‘in the days when the judges ruled’ (Ruth 1.1) which, readers of the bible know, were times of great instability in the political sphere.6 Given the literary interplay, it is no surprise that famine in a time of civic unrest may be a factor in a family seeking refuge elsewhere.

6.  This is not to argue this date for the provenance of the work. Scholars are generally agreed that the text lies somewhere in the late-exilic to post-exilic period (Lee 2009).



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However, as is often the case, the immigration of Elimelech and his family is not a smooth one. Rather than happily settling in their new home, Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi a widow and his sons fatherless. Soon, it seems, both sons marry Moabite women. One can hardly be surprised at this. We might imagine that Naomi is happy for her sons to have found wives and be able to forge lives for themselves, a pride and hope common to parents everywhere. However, the family is overwhelmed by tragedy (Lee 2009: 865). In the space of ten years, Naomi is left without husband and without child, a fate shared by her two Moabite daughters-in-law. Driven again by both desperation and opportunity, Naomi seeks to return home, having heard of the Lord’s provision for the people of Judah (1.6). She sets out with her daughters-in-law, but at some point in the journey urges them to return home. This is an unusual event. There is no indication of any discussion prior to this, just an indication that the three widows are travelling together. The NRSV highlights this sudden change by translating the waw-consecutive of ‫ותאמר‬, wa-to’mer (beginning of v. 8, meaning in Hebrew mostly ‘and’ [said]) as ‘but’, though there is no compelling grammatical reason for this choice. Bush notes that Naomi ‘frontally attack[s] the problem’ (Bush 1996: 85), while Holmstedt mentions the ‘economy of the narrative’ (Holmstedt 2010: 71). Bush simply translates the verb in the past tense, while Holmstedt uses the sequential ‘then’. In any case, the introduction of the conversation between the three women comes as a shock, particularly given Naomi’s timing. Holmstedt rightly points out that the suggested parting is the sensible option. The widowed younger women stand a better chance at finding husbands in their own land, and can find provision amongst their own kin (Holmstedt 2010: 72), which Naomi points out. ‘Turn back’, she urges them. She reminds them of her inability to provide husbands for them, her inability to provide any meaningful provision (Rashkow 1993: 30). Why bring the women this far, and then implore them to leave, with the emotional drain of tearing away from home already done? Trible highlights two things which are relevant to our discussion. First, Naomi has been stripped of all identity. Without husband and child, she is alone; and so, too, her daughters-in-law. Secondly, despite their ‘oneness’, there is still a power dynamic at play: age commands youth (Trible 1978: 169). Orpah eventually bends to Naomi’s will and does what is ‘sane and reasonable…sound, sensible and secure’ (Trible 1978: 171). Ruth, however, chooses to resist and consciously determines to abandon her national identity, her religious identity and the possibility of a future husband and family. Indeed, there is a sense in which having come this

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far, she has already left these things behind, already broken away from humanly constructed realities. A return may well be impossible for Ruth (Rashkow 1993: 32). Ruth’s language is ambiguous. Holmstedt (2010: 67) translates Ruth 1.16, ‘Do not press me to abandon you, to turn from going after you’. The word ‘abandon’ (‫עזב‬, ‘-z-b Qal) is an interesting one. It is Naomi who is departing, the one who is leaving things behind. Naomi paints Ruth’s possible journey with her as a type of abandonment: Ruth would be leaving the possibility of a good future behind were she to continue with her. And there appears to have been no attempt made by Ruth and Orpah to dissuade Naomi from taking this journey, so it seems they were confident in her ability to last the distance. Certainly there appears to be a sincerity in the daughters-in-law’s affection for Naomi, demonstrated in 1.14. But they are under no obligation to her. So why then does Ruth speak against abandoning Naomi? Why is she so determined to follow? Why, in the face of Naomi’s almost overpowering authority, does she have the courage to issue a command of her own: ‘Do not press me to abandon you’ (Rashkow 1993: 30)? As Elizabeth Cady Stanton noted, Naomi has a ‘peculiar magnetic attraction’ for Ruth (Stanton 1993: 21). To use the contemporary language of migration, Naomi seems to represent a ‘pull factor’. Against Naomi’s insistence that Ruth returns, Ruth counters that where Naomi goes, she too will go. Is this determination due to her sense of allegiance to Naomi? Or might Naomi represent some other thing? Is it Naomi whom Ruth fears abandoning, or something else? We know already that Naomi’s return is motivated by a report that the land of Judah is flourishing again, so much so that it compels Naomi to undertake a journey home. This might suggest to us that food is not so easy to come by in Moab, that survival has been difficult. We must assume that Ruth too is aware of this change in circumstances in Judah and likewise, as a widow, we must assume that life was difficult also for her. After all, it appears that she is willing to leave her past behind to travel with Naomi. So perhaps we might imagine that Ruth is dreaming of something else: a better place, a brighter future, a fresh beginning. So it is possible that when Ruth speaks of abandoning Naomi, she is actually more concerned with abandoning a future she has dreamt of for herself. The person of Naomi represents Ruth’s opportunity to escape the tragedy and difficulty of her own life: a childless widow in a difficult land. Push and pull factors come together. Ruth understands the truths of Naomi’s reasoning, but imagines another outcome.



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It is possible that Naomi is aware of this possibility, and it could well be that this lies behind her efforts to dissuade Ruth and Orpah. She understands that Ruth and Orpah represent a burden to her that she would rather do without (Linafelt 1999: 15), insofar as they are outsiders to the Bethlehem community. That is to say, they are a problem for her, and convincing them to stay behind is a legitimate solution. But she hasn’t counted on Ruth’s stubborn resilience. Ruth’s determination to create a new future for herself is witnessed in her initiative and industry (Stanton 1993: 21). Not waiting for Naomi’s guidance, she resolves to go and work in the fields, both a method of provision but also of assimilation into society. Brenner notes that the language of ‘love’ that Ruth uses in 1.16-17 implies a legal contract. That is, Ruth is committing to take care of Naomi (Brenner 1999: 159), though this contractual agreement does not appear to find an expression in the story. We see no pressure from Naomi for Ruth to go out and care for her. Indeed, as we will see, it seems that even as Ruth goes out to work, Naomi persists in pondering a possible solution (Fischer 1999: 29). Ruth seems aware of her legal right as a foreigner to engage in this behaviour, and so she goes to the field to glean (Fischer 1999: 28). Unwittingly (‘As it happened’, 2.3) she finds herself in the field of Naomi’s relative, who is at first unaware of her presence in his field or of her identity (2.5). Ruth has impressed all with her determination (Rashkow 1993: 34). It makes her visible, even while highlighting the desperation and poverty of her circumstances.7 When approached by Boaz she throws herself before him, her language again highlighting her vulnerability. Boaz, like Naomi, positions himself as the powerful figure but, unlike Naomi, displays his capacity to protect and provide for her. A Solution Emerges, but for Whom? Returning home that evening to Naomi, Ruth speaks of Boaz, and Naomi reveals the nature of their kinship (2.20). Seeing an unexpected opportunity, and one that has only arisen on account of Ruth’s industry, Naomi endorses the things Boaz has said, and urges Ruth to stay close to the young women in the field so as not to be ‘bothered’. Then, after an unspecified amount of time, Naomi engages the ‘Boaz Solution’.

7.  As Brenner (1999: 160) notes, foreign workers are invisible to the dominant culture, and the only way to become visible is by trying harder, by exceeding the efforts of the local workers.

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At the beginning of ch. 3, Naomi instructs Ruth to go and approach Boaz. This is done in order to seek security for her. To be clear, Naomi is sending a vulnerable, foreign woman, washed, anointed and welldressed to a place full of drinking men. This hardly seems to be a strategy concerned with Ruth’s safety. Naomi is aware that Boaz represents a major opportunity, not only for Ruth but also for herself; indeed, for Naomi even more so. She can have her field redeemed and move Ruth on, gaining security for herself and ridding herself of a burden. It is not only the field which could be redeemed, but Naomi as well (Brenner 1993a: 71). In short, this way Ruth will become someone else’s problem. Ruth plays her role beautifully, surpassing what Naomi has asked of her. Her charged, seductive language to Boaz again highlights her vulnerability; and Boaz – perhaps flattered by the attentions of the young foreign woman – commits to assist, sending her home with a very generous amount of supply, and promising to resolve the matters urgently. Boaz expresses his admiration at Ruth’s devotion (3.10). Brenner notes that such devotion, like hard work, is a way by which the foreigner can become noticed, but that it is only by marriage that full assimilation can be achieved (Brenner 1999: 160). Ruth, the problem, becomes objectified. She becomes the object of Naomi’s plan and of Boaz’s desire. Naomi’s plan is continuing in a fashion she could scarcely have imagined. The great success of the Boaz solution is evidenced in the great boon that it is for Naomi. The marriage of Ruth and Boaz is blessed by the city elders, and results in the birth of a boy. The women celebrate the restoration of Naomi’s line through the boy, and Naomi takes the child to her own breast and nurses him. The women continue to sing: ‘A child is born to Naomi!’ What’s more, the boy, Obed, becomes the grandfather of Israel’s greatest king, David (ch. 4). Perhaps not surprisingly, the problem, Ruth, and the solution, Boaz, disappear. They lose subjectivity (Brenner 1993b: 141). Indeed, as Brenner suggests elsewhere (1999: 159), throughout this whole story Ruth may have had far less choice than we fondly imagine. Naomi, in some sense the architect of the whole story, retains hers, and emerges as the real beneficiary of the solution. An Ending As mentioned previously, it is not reasonable to expect to see a ‘like-forlike’ relationship between these two texts: the text of Ruth and the text of contemporary Australian immigration discourse. And yet, read together, the subtle playing of power is highlighted in both. Ultimately, it is the



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one who designs the solution that stands to gain most. Australian governments have been quick to talk up the great benefits to the host countries that have been engaged through the various solutions that have been concocted. But are those gains substantial enough, given that they are a pay-off for dealing with Australia’s problem? In the book of Ruth, Boaz is the solution. What does he gain for taking on Naomi’s problem? The son born to him appears to become Naomi’s child. And as he explains to the other kinsman in 4.3-5, marrying Ruth brings with it a host of other responsibilities, which are beyond the willingness of the rightful redeemer. The latter was unwilling to be the solution, for the cost was too great (4.6). The invisibility of the migrant has also been highlighted. Invisibility acts as a synonym here for powerlessness. Ruth is invisible on her arrival in Bethlehem (1.19-21) and has to struggle to find favour. Even then, she is the object of others: obeying the commands of her mother-in-law, and making herself vulnerable to a stranger she hopes might be able to help her. Ruth’s speech also points to this: ‘I am a foreigner’ (2.10); ‘May I continue to find favour in your sight’ (2.13); ‘All that you tell me to do I will do’ (3.5); ‘I am Ruth, your handmaid’ (3.9). Even at the moment of her acceptance into her new culture she disappears, and the powerful figure of Naomi continues to dominate the story. This invisibility is seen in the contemporary debates around asylum seekers by the reduction of humanity to categories: boat-people, illegal entries and so on. The asylum seeker, the refugee, instead of being seen as a person, a subject, becomes an object, a problem. Abstracted, refugees become invisible. Ironically, it is their humanity which is the real problem. The solution has been dehumanization or, in other words, suppression of the problem. The question, in the Australian context, is: How long can this dehumanization persist? Our televisions and computer screens remind us daily of the terror that people run from, and none would deny the horror of that reality. But there has been no softening of Australia’s heart on these matters. Indeed, as ‘acts of terror’ are committed on Australian streets and police continually break up suspected terror cells in Australian suburbs, it seems that the resistance to immigration continues. And as described, a wave of Pacific migrants, forced from their homes by the ever-encroaching ocean, is looming large on the horizon. Will we dehumanize those whom we have leant on for support? Or will they be another sort of problem, requiring another sort of solution? And so the question of identity remains unanswered. What is Australia? Who is Australian? Who belongs to us, and to whom do we belong?

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References AAP (2008), ‘Flight from Nauru Ends Pacific Solution’, Sydney Morning Herald. 8 February. Online: http://news.smh.com.au/national/flight-from-nauru-ends-pacificsolution-20080208-1qww.html (accessed 7 February 2014). AAP (2011), ‘Gillard Announces Malaysian Solution’, Sydney Morning Herald. 7 May. Online: www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-announces-malaysian-solution20110507-1ed0h.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/ gillard-on-the-front-foot-lurches-to-right-but-team-rudd-not-beaten-20120819-24gf0. html (accessed 14 February 2014). Brenner, Athalya (1993a), ‘Naomi and Ruth’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth, 70–84, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Brenner, Athalya (1993b), ‘Naomi and Ruth: Further Reflections’, in A. Brenner (ed), Feminist Companion to Ruth, 140–4, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Brenner, Athalya (1999), ‘Ruth as Foreign Worker and the Politics of Exogamy’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth and Esther: Second Series, 158–62, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Bush, Frederic William (1996), Ruth, Esther, Waco: Word Books. Clarke, Sarah (2011), ‘Liberals Accused of Trying to Rewrite History’. Online: http:// www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2001/s422692.htm (accessed 14 February 2014). Coorey, Phillip (2012), ‘Gillard on the Front Foot, Lurches to Right, but Team Rudd Not Beaten’, Sydney Morning Herald. Online: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ political-opinion/gillard-on-the-front-foot-lurches-to-right-but-team-rudd-not-beaten20120819-24gf0.html (accessed 14 February 2014). Fischer, Imtraud (1999), ‘The Book of Ruth: A “Feminist” Commentary to the Torah?’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth and Esther: Second Series, 24–49, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Griffiths, Emma (2013), ‘Immigration Minister Scott Morrison Defends Use of Term “Illegal Arrivals”, Plays Down PNG Police Incident’. Online: http://www. abc.net.au/news/2013-10-21/immigration-minister-scott-morrison-defends-use-ofillegals-term/5035552 (accessed 14 February 2014). Holmstedt, Robert D. (2010), Ruth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text, Waco: Baylor University Press. Lee, Eunny (2009), ‘Ruth, Book of’, in K. D. Sakenfeld (ed.), The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 4:865–8, Nashville: Abingdon Press. Linafelt, Tod (1999), Ruth, Collegeville: Liturgical Press. Pacific Solution (2013). Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution. Phillips, Janet (2012), ‘The “Pacific Solution” Revisited: A Statistical Guide to the Asylum Seeker Caseloads on Nauru and Manus Island’. Online: http://www.aph.gov.au/ About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/20122013/PacificSolution (accessed 7 February 2014). Rashkow, Ilona (1993), ‘Ruth: The Discourse of Power and the Power of Discourse’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth, 26–41, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Rees, Anthony (2013), ‘Numbers 25 and Beyond: Phinehas and Other Detestable Practice(r)s’, in A. Brenner and Archie C. C. Lee (eds), Texts@Contexts: Leviticus and Numbers, 163–78, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.



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Rees, Anthony (2015), ‘The Boaz Solution: Reading Ruth in Light of Australian Asylum Seeker Discourse’, in J. Havea and P. Lau (eds), Reading Ruth in Asia, 99–110, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Said, Edward W. (2003), Orientalism, London: Penguin Books. Shanahan, Dennis (2013), ‘PM Lurches in Bid to Right Labor’s Ship’, The Australian, 20 July. Online: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/pm-lurches-inbid-to-right-labors-ship/story-e6frg75f-1226682255779# (accessed 14 February 2014). Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (repr. 1993, originally 1895), ‘The Book of Ruth’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth, 20–5, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Trible, Phyllis (1978), God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Walker, Ting (2011), ‘The High Court Decision on the Malaysian Solution’, ABC Canberra, 25 November 2011. Online: http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/11/23/3374312. htm (accessed 14 February 2014).

F i ndi ng K orea n G oos e M ot he r s a H ome : A C on t ex t ua l R e - r ea d ing of R ut h * Hyun Woo Kim

The Contextual Turn: Postcolonial Biblical Criticism The two very, if not most, essential entities that create meanings of the Bible seem to be texts and readers. On an interpretive spectrum from a text to a reader, contextual biblical interpretation can be comprehended as a more reader-sensitive biblical interpretation. While historical criticism pays attention to one meaning in the text, author, and its pre-literary stages (texts), contextual biblical interpretation underscores multiple meanings of biblical texts from their afterlife-association with readers’ hermeneutic situations (contexts). In brief, this reader-sensitive reading of the Bible attempts to sustain various reading communities of biblical texts as recognized and engaged in the interpretative process. As one contextual turn of biblical criticism, Postcolonial Biblical Criticism (PBC) seeks a particular way of reading biblical texts to take the colonized (i.e. marginalized and silenced) reading communities into account. To recognize the muted reading communities in their hermeneutic association with the biblical texts, this manner of criticism aims to increase a postcolonial awareness around the Bible as well as the social location of marginalized readers. First, PBC investigates ways in which the Bible is used to support colonial discourses. Secondly, in attempts to upsurge self-awareness of muted readerly selves, PBC aims to empower their interpretive voice through employing an ideological (hermeneutic of) resistance. *  I would like to thank Carolyn Sharp for her insightful feedback on earlier versions of this project. Any errors remain my own. This paper was originally presented during the 2016 SBL International Meeting in Seoul. Furthermore, when referring to Korean in this article, I specifically mean South Korean.



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Just as the theoretical founders (Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak) of postcolonial criticism have raised self-reflective con­cerns by reading the Western texts from their social location, R. S. Sugirtharajah has taken his relegated social position as the point of departure for PBC. As a contemporary application of these above concerns, Sugirtharajah focuses the centrality of postcolonial hermeneutic (within the canonized text and life-text) into the life of uprooted diasporic communities by highlighting its nature of hybridity (Sugirtharajah 2002: 179–99). Whereas this diasporic identity can be seen as a consequence of colonial projects (e.g. forced migration, refugees and economic immigrants), diasporic individuals can still go on a resistant journey against the colonial forces of uniformity due to their multi-layered identity (i.e. hybridity). In defining the hybridity of a diasporic personality as the postcolonial identity, Sugirtharajah (2002: 179–99) suggests a Hermeneutics of the Diaspora (HD) as a valid theoretical practice of PBC. By taking readers’ own social location of in-betweenness into the act of reading the Bible and interpreting it, this interpretive framework moves its focus from the (canonized) text-scrutiny to the (once-colonized) identity-reconstruction. Fernando Segovia explains how HD achieves the bipartite axles of PBC in its solidarity to the subaltern. Segovia recognizes the fundamental purpose of HD as reading ‘the biblical text as an other – not to be overwhelmed or overridden, but acknowledged, respected, and engaged in its very otherness’ (Segovia 1995: 59). Attending to one’s diasporic otherness (hyphenated, hybridized, liminal, marginal and subaltern social location) as the hermeneutical framework, HD opposes any hermeneutic attempt to assimilate or overwhelm the other, to turn the other into an other. This ideological resistance of HD also aims at attacking impartial, universal, and objective claims of the canonized text as well as implicitly or overtly hegemonic methods of interpretation. By resisting any master and controlling (way of) interpretation, a capability for postcolonial imagination is opened. Through this imagination, HD opts for diversity and humanization because it seeks to ‘acknowledge, respect, and engage the other’ (Segovia 1995: 72). In brief, diaspora hermeneutic extends such a process from ‘the realm of theory and methodology into the realm of human diversity’ (Segovia 1995: 59). Upon this methodological ground, I, as a Korean sojourner, would like to re-read the Israelite identity politics in the book of Ruth in light of the North-American identity politics where my Korean diasporic community resides. Although current biblical studies engage voices of minoritized

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groups (i.e. of race, ethnicity and gender) as part of an interpretative lens, I nevertheless feel ‘unhomely’ in presenting my own voice for this project, as I have almost always excluded my social location and voice when looking at biblical texts. However, as HD seeks to make a dynamic relationship between the text and the text’s reader by allowing the margin ‘to speak on their own, to create their own narrative, and to define their own identity’ (Segovia 1995: 69), it is my goal to re-read the book of Ruth contextually, in an attempt to enable my silenced social location among the Korean landless-sojourning community on foreign soil as a participating interpretive element. The Liminality of Korean Diaspora in a Condition of Marginalization I am a ‘resident alien’1 in the United States. As an outsider (alien) living in the United States, I discovered that the way the Korean immigrant community and I are perceived in this country is heavily dependent on the question of who the insiders and genuine Americans are. Of course, my legal status as an alien in the United States, within the national discourse, may not carry any discrimination in itself. However, in being perceived as an other to real American subjectivity, my liminal social location entails marginalization. Furthermore, within this national discourse of genuine, American insidedness, diasporic communities and hyphenated identity groups are not only racialized (i.e. otherized), but are also recognized as ‘non-real’, partial Americans, or outsiders. This border-thinking and dichotomy are continually present as motivation for identity politics in America, so that the majority group maintains their status quo as the ‘real’ Americans. For example, President Donald J. Trump’s ‘10 Point Plan to Put America First’, unveiled two days after his election in 2016, explicitly demonstrates this insider superiority or genuine American-ness and its consequential marginalization of outsiders. Among others, Trump’s two main points on the issue of immigration are to ‘Prioritize the jobs, wages and security of the American people’ and to ‘Establish new immigration controls to boost wages and to ensure that open jobs are offered to American workers first’.2 When such a boundary 1.  ‘Resident Alien’, according to the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) regulations, is the term applied to non-U.S. citizens currently residing in the United States: see http://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/resident-alien (accessed November 2016). 2.  ‘Immigration’, Donald J. Trump’s Vision, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/ policies/immigration/ (accessed November 2016).



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is reinforced and used to deter some people (i.e. non-Americans, marginalized people and resident aliens) from gaining equal rights and access, this boundary becomes a tool of coercion, a violent line from which divisions and discriminations are born. Regardless of this unambiguous and seemingly influential expression of American supremacy, the more impactful concerns for marginalized groups are the implicit yet prevailing conceptions of dichotomy modeled around Western, White civilization. To be more specific, one may encounter terms or categories such as ‘White and Colored’ and the ‘West and the East’ (or the Rest), but not phrases like ‘Colored or non-Colored’ nor the ‘East and the Rest’. Such Euro-American-centered dichotomy and otherization explicitly reveals my condition of marginalized social location as a member of the Korean diaspora within the United States. Finding Korean Goose Mothers a Home: A Diasporic Reading of Ruth Identity Politics in Biblical Israel and in Contemporary North America Regarding this liminality of the U.S. Korean diasporic community, I would like to place the ‘goose family’, a particular type of Korean immigrant unit in the United States, in dialogue with Ruth’s family. The ‘goose’ in this phrase refers to the annual phenomenon of geese migration. Just as geese travel thousands of miles to reunite with separated families, some Korean families encounter similar situations. Accompanied by their mothers (‘goose mothers’), children are brought abroad to attend educational institutions in English-speaking countries, while the fathers remain in Korea to support them. In order to reunite, the families travel thousands of miles, like geese, and are thus known as kirogi Kajok (           ̛Ԝ̛ɼ࣐) in Korean or ‘goose families’ in English. A person with postcolonial concerns can easily recognize the diasporic otherness (foreignness, as a resident alien) of Ruth. While Ruth is frequently identified as ‘the Moabite’ (Ruth 1.22; 2.2, 21; 4.5, 10), goose mothers are referred to as ‘the Asian’ (to be more precise, ‘the Korean’; yet, more frequently, they are mislabeled as Chinese, due to the large Chinese population in the States). This constant identification in the narrative of Ruth as a foreign immigrant is a process of purification, to borrow Uriah Kim’s term, which provokes her otherness within the Israelite community (Kim 2008: 23). As Orientalism does for the West, so does this otherization of Ruth aim at building Israel’s coherent and superior subjectivity.

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In his postcolonial reading of national narrative in the Bible, Kim recognizes the two antithetical forces within the identity politics of the nation Israel: hybridization and purification (2008: 23). When I apply this concept to the case of Ruth, the process of hybridization mixes two distinct peoples: the Moabite Ruth and the resident in Israel Ruth, who thus becomes a ‘resident alien’. However, the process of purification, in pursuit of ethnocentric nationalism, keeps Ruth apart as a permanent foreigner. Likewise, the processes of hybridization3 and purification4 were used simultaneously to turn Asian-Americans (or Asians in America) into hybrids who are considered as one of us but always only a step away from being considered as one of them. The Unhomely Journey of Ruth and Korean Goose Mothers Korean goose mothers come to the United States with their children, for the sake of their children, while leaving their husbands in Korea. They cannot always work: not all goose mothers are able to acquire a work visa.5 Following Sugirtharajah’s definition of diaspora, Korean goose mothers and Ruth share similar diasporic features: they are on the social margin (i.e. gender-wise, ethnically and from a cultural minority); they are resident aliens (temporal and permanent); function as widows; and are displaced from their social location. Within this similar setting, both goose mothers and Ruth have their unhomely journey as the point of departure. Ruth’s and goose mothers’ sojourning begins with the story of leaving their homeland (Ruth 1.6). Loss of homeland security foreshadows the coming instability and hardships of their sojourning. This is a journey of silencing, because goose mothers and Ruth lose their own voice as subjects in their own society. Not only do they leave their homeland, where they feel safer and protected, but they also lose (Ruth) or leave (goose mothers) their husband, which challenges the societal and economic stability of their lives. Ruth loses her customary claim to redeem her property (cf. the levirate marriage obligation, Gen. 38.8; Lev. 25.25; Deut. 25.5-10). Similarly, Korean goose mothers, as foreigners, are legitimately muted 3.  ‘The Value of Citizenship’, USCIS: ‘The United States has a long history of welcoming immigrants from all parts of the world. America values the contributions of immigrants who continue to enrich this country and preserve its legacy as a land of freedom and opportunity’. http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship (accessed November 2016). 4.  Notably President Trump’s ‘America First’ campaign. 5.  Certain visa status definitions (R, J, or H) prohibit visa holders from working in the United States.



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from the loss of their legal rights to reside permanently and to participate in societal decision-making processes. To overcome social instability and financial hardships, such women take on roles which used to be those of their husbands. Living on foreign soil as single mothers, financial hardships make Ruth and goose mothers endure any type of discrimination and exploitation that is closely related to their inability to work legally. In a postcolonial reading of Ruth, Boaz’s munificence to Ruth, in instructing her not to work in another man’s field (2.8), may be interpreted as an economic concern rather than personal interest or divine intervention. She continues to toil in Boaz’s field ‘until the end of the barley and wheat harvests’ (2.23).6 Roland Boer sees this as ‘hardly benevolence, but more like pure exploitation’ toward a socially marginalized person, Ruth (Boer 2003: 83). Similarly, goose mothers’ legal restriction to work as resident aliens often causes them to have unequal as well as illegal work contracts, to be discriminated against, and to be endangered without any insurance. In this diasporic reading of Ruth, another point which provokes readers’ postcolonial imagination is Ruth’s intermarriage. When we regard the high divorce rate of goose families as a result of their difficulties,7 unhomely sojourning goose widows’ searches for American citizens to marry have much in common with Ruth’s search for Boaz (Ruth 3). Regarding Ruth 3, Tod Linafelt interprets the narrative setting of the midnight meeting as a time of ambivalent destiny, a blend of threat and promise (in Linafelt and Beal 1999: 52). At this crucial scene at the threshing floor, where Ruth and Boaz become one, Ruth achieves her pseudo-subjectivity (only valid through her nuptial relationship with Boaz) within society by being identified as ‘a worthy woman’ (3.11). As Ruth receives financial support (3.15) and social security through this intermarriage (4.10), many goose mothers try to regain their voice through seeking an American version of Boaz, because their intermarriage will secure their legal right to stay or claim their rights in the United States. On the other hand, many goose widows or divorcees who refuse or fail to intermarry are involved in prostitution as a strategy of life survival. In January 2014, Asian Wave Escorts, one of the biggest prostitution rings in the United States, was exposed by New York City Police Department and its personnel were arrested. The operating women were mostly Korean goose mothers aged 26 to 43.8 The reason for those women’s 6.  Translations from the Hebrew Text in this article are from the NRSV. 7.  See Appendix to this article for details and reasons. 8.  ‘One-stop shopping drug and prostitution ring, Asian Wave Escorts, busted ahead of Super Bowl’ – NY Daily News, 30 January 2014: ‘The arrested prostitutes

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participation in this criminal business seemed to be mainly due to the lack of legal opportunities to earn money for their living. Ruth faces a situation similar to that of Korean goose mothers, where there exists no alternative option in the life of resident aliens. In Ruth 3.7, Linafelt recognizes that ‘sexual allusions’ (in Linafelt and Beal 1999: 59) are centered around the crucial instruction of Naomi and the scene at the threshing floor, where Ruth ‘uncovered his feet, and lay down’ next to Boaz. By extension, Gale Yee’s postcolonial reading of Ruth sheds light on how the Moabite woman’s foreignness reminds readers of ‘a long biblical tradition of erotic allure and sexual insatiability’ (Yee 2009: 132). Correspondingly, as the otherness of diasporic women increases the sexual fantasies of and their exotization by white men, their high involvement in the American sex industry can be seen as the side effect of American purification, to return to Uriah Kim’s term (Kim 2008: 23). The Israelite and the American Dream Kwok Pui-lan recognizes a strong tie between the issues of marriage and the powerful propaganda of the ‘American dream’: ‘In the case of the United States, gender, sexuality, and marriage have been much tied with the powerful propaganda of the “American dream” and the national narrative of the United States as an immigrant country open to all’ (Kwok 2005: 101). Similarly, Ruth shows an analogous national narrative in ancient Israel. In both diasporic accounts of Ruth and of the goose mothers, it is their offspring that functions as the narratological climax of their unhomely journey (Ruth 4.13-17). After ‘Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife…, she bore a son’ (4.13). While some may proclaim this as divine favor, the public ascribes this divine blessing to Naomi rather than to the biological mother, Ruth: ‘Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the LORD (v. 14)… A son has been born to Naomi”’ (v. 17, emphasis mine). According to Laura Donaldson, the narrative silencing of Ruth after bearing a son into ‘the household of Boaz, and the legacy of the future king David closes the door upon her story’; she further recognizes this silencing as the assimilation of Ruth, which has been completed ‘through Obed’s transfer to Naomi, the proper Jewish woman, and to Boaz, the Israelite husband’ (Donaldson 2006: 164). In v. 16, ‘Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse’. For some were identified as: Young Mi Lee, 40, Jung Hee Jang, 43, Haiming Quan, 41, Nina Kim, 31, Hada Jang, 26, He Jung Chern, 42, Ji Young Moon, 40 and Janice Lee, 40’. Online: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/bust-takes-operatorsmultimillion-dollar-drug-prostitution-ring-article-1.1596332 (accessed November 2016).



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indigenous people under colonization, disappearing into the dominant imperial culture becomes a cherished goal, so that they are indistinguishable from those who hold the power – it is safer, quite literally, than standing out as an ‘Other’. Although Ruth seems to speak on her own (as a subject) as ‘a woman of worth’ in her relationship with Boaz, her assimilation (as an object) into the national discourse of Israel (Judahite society, then Davidic kingdom) was crucially important for the well-being of Obed. This diasporic reading of Obed’s birth, or Ruth’s childbearing, account reveals how goose mothers have behaved in a self-sacrificial manner for the welfare of their children. The sole motivation for the unhomely journey of goose families is the American dream for their child, a better educational opportunity for his or her successful life. With goose mothers’ (either willful or unavoidable) muteness and ‘disappearance’, goose children can enter prestigious American universities, become members of American society and play a noteworthy role by speaking in their own voice. The Diasporic Practice of Jeong-ful Life Gale Yee rereads Ruth with postcolonial concerns not only to recognize Ruth, ‘the Perpetual Foreigner’, but also to identify Ruth as ‘a Model Minority’ (Yee 2009: 124). Likewise, in this postcolonial/diasporic reading of Ruth, these two diasporic groups – goose mothers and Ruth – reveal that a virtuous foreigner can enrich the understanding of non-alien American readers. In this regard, the practice of Jeong, which can be defined as the family loyalty demonstrated by Ruth and by Korean goose mothers, gives insightful lessons. ࢽ a Korean term, meaning full-hearted On the narrative level, Jeong (  , affection and kind conduct) roughly means the radical ḥesed that Ruth embodies in her overwhelming dedication to her family, her readiness to support Naomi by gleaning in a strange man’s field, not resting ‘even for a moment’ (2.7), her transference of loyalty to another God whom Naomi follows and ultimately in her maternal sacrifice. Likewise, the life of Korean goose mothers educates Others – in their own voice so to speak, on how to be Jeong-ful minorities who know their place in a foreign society – as well as Americans Whites (Subjects), on how to appreciate minorities’ hardships, sacrifice and their contribution to the next generation of this nation. There are many hybrid Americans in the United States, and their identity politics about policing white (‘our’) borders, which define some majority group as ‘real’ Americans, cannot be sustained. American national discourse and identity politics need to consider this seriously by

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engaging with the subaltern in the space of liminality. From the beginning, all European colonizers were landless immigrants themselves in this country. The forcible and horrifically violent erasure of native peoples’ indigenous claims and cultural identity lies inescapably at the heart of Euro-North American subjectivity. One possible solution, that of searching for the subaltern, shares a goal with that of diasporic hermeneutics to ‘acknowledge, respect, and engage the other’ (Segovia 1995: 72). Just as Ruth’s radical ḥesed fully functions in her relationship with others, Jeong works in the postcolonial relationship with others. According to Wonhee Joh, Jeong forges its occurrence in the interval between the Self and the Other. ‘It thus blurs the sharply constructed boundary between the Self and the Other while allowing one to move beyond the edges of the Self into the Other and vice versa. Jeong is a supplement that comes into the interstitial site of relationality’ (Joh 2006: 153). Just as Jeong is particularly capable of transgressing boundaries while creating mutuality in human relations, it is my American dream that the American Whites have Jeong to acknowledge, respect and engage diasporic others. Conclusion: The Contextual Turn Reconsidered Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, a contextual turn of biblical criticism, sees that Ruth’s story thrives on ambiguity, even ambivalence, rather than on univocality or fixity. Thus, this understanding of the Bible ‘opens up the possibility of other narratives of the people and their difference’ (Bhabha 1990: 300). On the hermeneutical level, PBC does not encourage readers to read the Bible ‘everywhere and always as moral literature in which every character is a potential model for the reader’s behavior’; rather, it pursues ideological resistance as the Bible has the potential to colonize or suppress (Linafelt in Linafelt and Beal 1999: xvi). Because of this hybridity, PBC asks readers to have self-reflexivity on their reading of the Bible as well as on themselves, as their own social location and voice need to be engaged in their interpretation. This criticism strengthens the voices of once-colonized (silenced) groups9 as well as those of marginalized Bible scholars. However, this very nature of PBC produces radical readings of Scripture by heavily focusing on colonialism. Its special concern for certain groups, in my opinion, may cause the danger of particularity. And yet, it still seems to be a crucial hermeneutic approach to the Bible by allowing the postcolonial imagination of the silenced, 9.  This includes Third World citizens, people of hyphenated cultures, females and subaltern readers of the Bible.



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urging self-reflexivity toward triumphalism, attacking the exclusivity of biblical faith and increasing the political responsibility of readers. Appendix The divorce rate in goose families is exceptionally high due to goose parents’ difficulties and depression. Just as goose mothers are in difficulties, other difficulties are also experienced by goose fathers. According to a 2012 Korea Department of Education survey, there were in that year 500,000 families living apart for the sake of their children’s education (20,000 new goose families a year were added from 2004 to 2011).10 In his interview with Reuters, Choi Chang-young, a forty-five-year-old goose father, narrates his life as a goose father: ‘I feel a deep sense of loneliness since neither my wife nor my kids are waiting for me. There is only total darkness.’11 A former goose father, Park describes his goosefather experience as being a money supplying machine: ‘It wasn’t the life of a human being, I don’t even want to think about it. I was practically a money supplying machine.’12 However, they suffer not only with financial and psychological hardship, but also physical health and depression issues.13 A painful example is the case of a goose father in his fifties who, because of severe depression caused by the family separation, committed suicide in his house in 2014.14 10.  ‘Wild Goose Fathers Increasing, 70% Depressed, Malnourished’, 19 Novem­ber 2013. Online: http://www.koreabang.com/2013/stories/wild-goose-fathersincreasing-70-depressed-malnourished.html, original news article from The Kyungh­ yang Shinmun. Online: http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid= 201311102243195&code=940202 (accessed November 2016). 11.  ‘S. Korean “Goose Fathers” so Lonely They Keep Flies’, 17 May 2012. Online: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/17/us-korea-goosefathers-idUSBRE84G0IZ20120517 (accessed November 2016). 12.  ‘Families Separate for Overseas Education’, Korean Herald, 22 January 2014. Online: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20140122000609 (accessed November 2016). 13.  ‘Wild Goose Fathers’ Increasing, 70% Depressed, Malnourished’. Joon Hee Cha, a professor of nursing at Suwon University, emphasizes, ‘the high depression rates, lack of physical exercise, and lack of consumption of nutritious food is related to the amount of contact the fathers have with their families overseas… We need to prioritize treatment for depression, which is the biggest factor in the health and quality of life for goose fathers.’ 14.  ‘Families Separate for Overseas Education’, Korean Herald, 22 January 2014, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20140122000609 (accessed November 2016).

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References Bhabha, Homi K. (1990), Nation and Narration, New York: Routledge. Boer, Roland (2003), ‘Terry Eagleton: The Class Struggles of Ruth’, in Marxist Criticism of the Bible, 65–6, London: Sheffield Academic Press. Donaldson, Laura E. (2006), ‘The Sign of Orpah: Reading Ruth through Native Eyes’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Postcolonial Biblical Reader, 159–70, Oxford: Blackwell. (An earlier version [1999] of this essay appeared in A. Brenner [ed.], A Feminist Companion to Ruth and Esther: Second Series, 130–44, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.) Joh, Wonhee (2006), ‘The Transgressive Power of Jeong: A Postcolonial Hybridization of Christology’, in Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds), Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire, 149–63, St Louis: Chalice Press. Kim, Uriah Yong-Hwan (2008), Identity and Loyalty in the David Story: A Postcolonial Reading, Hebrew Bible Monographs, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Kwok, Pui-lan (2005), Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Linafelt, Tod, and Timothy K. Beal (1999), Ruth and Esther, Berit Olam, Collegeville: Liturgical Press. Segovia, Fernando F. (1995), ‘Toward a Hermeneutics of the Diaspora: A Hermeneutics of Otherness and Engagement’, in Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (eds), Reading from This Place, 57–73, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Sugirtharajah, R. S. (2002), Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, New York: Oxford University Press. Yee, Gale A. (2009), ‘“She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn”: Ruth, the Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority’, in Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia (eds), They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, 119–40, Atlanta: SBL.

B oa z a s ‘S ug ar D addy ’: R e - r e a d i n g R u t h i n t h e C onte xt of HI V i n S ou t h ern A fr i ca * Gerald O. West and Beverley G. Haddad

Introduction In the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, newspapers, both formal and informal, carry advertisements, every day, for ‘sugar daddy’ relationships:1 Serious Sugar Daddy Mature (56) Sugar Daddy (White, wealthy, fit, presentable, professional businessman) living in the Upper Highway area in Durban, looking for a permanent & regular sex companion who should be slim, attractive, intelligent and very broad-minded. Must be ultra hygienic, discreet, independent and have a wicked sense of humour and most importantly understand that quality sex is a lot more than just intercourse. The right person should understand that any relationship that develops will take on a long term view and the sugar will be provided in many different forms. I am not into sleaze, don’t enjoy money grabbing wham bam quickie ladies. If you are desperate for money, I sympathise, but please don’t contact me - I will reply to all messages Sugar daddy seeking sugar baby to spoil! 42 year old div prof male finding myself somewhat at a loose end seeks a sexy young sugar baby to spoil!! Who will of course spoil me in return. I am healthy, D/D free and will make it more than worth your while in every way possible. Contact me and lets go from there! *  An earlier version of this essay was published as West and Haddad 2016. 1. These advertisements were taken from the following website (line-spacing, grammar, punctuation and spelling is kept as is): http://kwazulu-natal.locanto.co.za/ Personals/P/?query=sugar+daddy&geo_cid=13&dist=0, accessed 4 June 2015. Other similar advertisements are to be found in local newspapers.

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The Five Scrolls Looking 4 slim sexy DUT [Durban University of Technology] female student..to help U with your fees Are you a slim sexy female student at DUT? Want some help with paying off your fees or other expenses. Well look no further. Slim, sexy sugar daddy available to help you out. All you need to do is help me out in kind. The requirements are you must be a slim, sexy female student at DUT. Race is not important. So don’t stress anymore, write to me and you will be taken care off. SEXY SUGAR DADDY…HALLA AT ME I’m a single 24yr old law student looking for a discrete, wealthy, intelligent, good looking black/coloured or white NSA (pref a bachelor) who holds a professional career. Must be sweet, gentle and charming, neat no more than size 36 waist (Im a 28waist, with a beautiful body). between 25-40yrs. Some who can wine and dine me, have fun, expect a lot of tlc and love, if you are that special debonair, that gentleman, halla at me, don’t have time for something serious right now, so u will be the only one Im seeing and kicking it with, let me treat you like the king that you are. NOTE: Im not looking for a mere sexmate! looking for a stable sugar Daddy Looking for a man preferably Indian but not restricted. Must be between 40-50. Age will be checked using your license when we meet. Must be able to host and have time during weekdays. Sometimes on weekends there may be meetings but not many. No sleeping over will be taking place. Can be married or not. Must be able to be a gentleman when we aren’t busy. Must provide a safe environment. Must not be sleeping around with any other woman except your wife if you have one. Looking between 7k-10k a month. Can be negotiated. Some sort of bank statement or salary slip will be required to check if you can provide. Preferably in the Umhlanga or durban north area. I have my own transport No time wasters. Be my Sugar Daddy I’m a young sexy-23yr old, I’m hoping to connect with a mature man 39 yrs & abov en need him to be well established, groomed& true gentle man, sophisticated in his own right, should be willing to spend time & see to all my needs as a daddy would to her baby girl..forward details & please add pictures (no time wasters)



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Such ‘advertisements’ are a common feature of newspapers in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa (and across South Africa more generally). This essay begins with this reality and reflects, using a religious resource, on how this reality affects young African women. The religious resource is the Contextual Bible Study (CBS) methodology of the Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research, located within the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (West 2011a, b, 2013c). The young women are those within various kinds of support groups with which the Ujamaa Centre has worked over many years on a range of contextual issues, including gender-based violence and HIV. Within the overall cycle of praxis, CBS (as a particular methodology within liberation hermeneutics) operates within the See-Judge-Act framework. See-Judge-Act is a process formed in the worker-priest movement in Europe in the 1930–40s (Cochrane 2001: 76–7; West 1995: 188–93), which was taken up and elaborated in the liberation struggles of South Africa, Latin America and the Philippines (among other contexts of struggle). The ‘See’ moment of this process focuses on social analysis, drawing both on the knowledge of the marginalized sector/s concerned and on the social sciences (Frostin 1988: 6–9). In this essay we analyse or ‘See’ the reality of age-disparate sexual relationships in the context of HIV. We then go on to ‘Judge’ or engage with this reality from the prophetic trajectories of the Bible, using the biblical book of Ruth as a resource. And finally we formulate preliminary forms of action (‘Act’) that emerge from the ‘See’ and ‘Judge’ moments. This essay too follows the See-Judge-Act format. We begin with South Africa’s HIV reality. HIV in South Africa In 2013 South Africa accounted for 18% of the 35 million people living with HIV globally, the highest number in any one single country (UNAIDS 2014: 17). Statistics show that AIDS deaths continue largely as a result of tuberculosis (UNAIDS 2014: 20). This remains true for South Africa, even though it has one of the largest treatment programmes in the world. While new infections have declined across all age groups by 33% since 2001, there were 2.1 million new infections, with South Africa yet again showing the highest number and accounting for 16% of these new infections (UNAIDS 2014: 18). UNAIDS has indicated that young women and adolescent girls are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV.

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The Five Scrolls There are almost 380 000 [340 000–440 000] new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women (10–24 years old) around the world every year. Globally, 15% of all women living with HIV aged 15 years or older are young women 15-24 years old. Of these, 80% live in sub-Saharan Africa. In this region, women acquire HIV infection at least 5–7 years earlier than men (UNAIDS 2014: 20).

Since the onset of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, data from antenatal records and population surveys have shown high levels of HIV incidence in teenage women, while infection rates remain low in men until their mid-to-late 20s (Gregson et al. 2002: 1896). As early as 2003, research in South Africa indicated that young women were four times more likely to be infected with HIV than young men (15.5% vs. 4.8%) (Pettifor et al. 2005: 1531). Research at this time in other parts of Africa indicated a similar trend (Pettifor et al. 2005; Leclerc-Madlala 2008). As indicated earlier, despite a decline in new HIV infections in the general population, young women remain particularly vulnerable. HIV prevalence trends in South Africa, monitored by the Department of Health through their ante-natal clinics – as well as research carried out by the Centre for AIDS Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) in rural Vulindlela, KwaZuluNatal, the Province in which we live and work – reveal an increase in prevalence among young women below the age of 20 (Kharsany et al. 2012: 1). ‘The overall HIV prevalence in this age group increased from 16.6% in 2006 to 20.8% in 2008’ (Kharsany et al. 2012: 1). A study conducted by CAPRISA researchers between 2010 and 2011 among high school learners showed consistently higher prevalence rates among adolescent girls as compared to adolescent boys (Kharsany et al. 2012: 4). Adolescent girls in the 15–19 age group ‘acquire HIV at least 5–7 years earlier than their male peers and have a 3- to 4-fold higher incidence rate’ (Kharsany et al. 2014: 957). These recent statistics of increasing new infections among young women are mirrored across the continent. For example, in Mozambique adolescent girls ‘had an HIV prevalence of 7%, which doubled to 15% by the time they were 25 years of age while in Lesotho, an HIV prevalence of 4% was recorded among adolescent girls, which increased to 24% among young women aged 20–24 years’ (UNAIDS 2014: 32). In trying to understand the higher rate of infection in young women as compared to their male peers, studies have increasingly confirmed that age-disparate relationships play an important role in HIV vulnerability. Age-disparate relationships, argues Leclerc-Madlala, ‘generally refer to those in which the age gap between partners is 5 years or



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more. Intergenerational or cross-generation relationships usually refer to relationships with a 10-year or more age disparity between the partners’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S18). Age-Disparate Relationships In a landmark study conducted in Zimbabwe, researchers concluded that younger women’s having relationships with older men contributes to the spread of HIV infection (Gregson et al. 2002).2 While this had long been suspected, this study was the first to show this empirically to be the case. Since then, the evidence has continued to mount across sub-Saharan Africa (Luke 2005; Nkosana and Rosenthal 207; Leclerc-Madlala 2008; Hawkings, Price and Mussá 2009; Nobelius et al. 2011). The 2003 South African study on the sexual behaviour of young people similarly identified the fact that while the age difference of sexual partners for boys was one year or younger, for girls the age of sexual partners was at least four years older (Pettifor et al. 2005: 1528). Given the ‘aggregating prevalence of HIV with increasing age…a young girl engaging in a sexual relationship with an older man is at much higher risk of HIV acquisition compared to a young girl engaging with a male peer’ (Dellar, Dlamini and Abdool Karim 2015: 66). Research over the past decade has consistently shown that age-disparate relationships increase the risk of HIV infection among young women.3 The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa conducts a National HIV Survey every three to four years, and has been tracking HIV prevalence in relation to age-disparate relationships among adolescents. The report of the latest National Survey (2012) asserts: ‘The percentages of young females who have had sex with partners who are 5 years and older than them has increased over the period of the [past] four surveys, reaching a high rate of one-third (33.6%) of young females aged 15–19 years in 2012. At the same time low percentages of young males (4.1%) engaged in similar behavior’ (HSRC 2012: 116). 2. The focus of this essay is older men/younger women; though less prevalent, older women/younger men and age disparate same-sex relationships also deserve research attention. 3. The findings of a recent study conducted by researchers of the Africa Centre, Hlabisa, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa has disputed this arguing that age-disparate relationships pose no additional risk of infection. However, this study is regarded as contentious in some scholarly circles and still needs to be verified by the wider scientific community (Harling et al. 2014).

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This is confirmed by the study conducted by CAPRISA among high school students in the Vulindlela region of KwaZulu-Natal. Their research shows that there is a substantial discrepancy in prevalence levels between male and female high school students, particularly from the age of 16 years upwards. There is ‘an almost three times greater HIV risk in adolescent girls compared to their male peers’ (Kharsany et al. 2014: 962). These observed differences in age-stratified HIV prevalence between men and women are not fully understood but ‘it is thought that a complex interplay of biological, socio-behavioural, and epidemiological factors is responsible for the observed differences in age-stratified HIV prevalence between men and women’ (Beauclair and Delva 2013). Age-disparate relationships play a large part in the greater vulnerability of young women to HIV infection (Pettifor et al. 2005). The vulnerability in these relationships is related to a number of factors. Studies have shown that there is decreased condom use in age-disparate relationships (Gregson et al. 2002; Luke 2005; Pettifor et al. 2009). Men who are making an economic investment in the relationship ‘wish to avoid extra expense, and feel there is less need because young women are free of HIV’ (Gregson et al. 2002: 1900). Young women are not in a position to insist on the use of condoms ‘as they stand to lose the economic benefits’ (Gregson et al. 2002: 1900). Furthermore, research indicates that early sexual debut increases HIV vulnerability.4 Young women whose first partner was an older man ‘are more likely than their peers to have had first sex at an early age’, thus increasing their vulnerability (Pettifor et al. 2009: 86). Given the biological vulnerability of young girls to HIV, violent sex increases this vulnerability. Again, studies have shown that young girls in relationships with older men are limited in their ability to negotiate the nature of the sexual act, often leading to coerced and forced sex (Pettifor et al. 2009).5 Yet young girls seek out relationships with older men, often referred to as ‘sugar daddies’ as the advertisements at the beginning of the essay suggest, and there are many older men willing to oblige. While there is no standard definition of a ‘sugar daddy’, ‘most agree that sugar daddy relationships entail large age and economic asymmetries between partners’ (Luke 2005: 8). However, just how widespread these relationships are in 4. Early sexual debut is defined as ‘having had vaginal sex for the first time at age 14 years or younger’ (Pettifor et al. 2009: 83). 5. Though not the focus of this essay, the very terminology of ‘sugar daddy’ should be interrogated for ways in which such terminology participates in age disparate sexual abuse and incest. The recent shift in terminology for related realities from ‘sugar daddy’ to ‘blesser’ also requires further research.



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areas of high HIV prevalence in adolescent girls is contested. Nancy Luke conducted a study in Kisumu, Kenya, among nearly 3000 men and found that age-disparate relationships were common. However, she argues that the term ‘sugar daddy’ is misleading and has limited scientific usefulness as relatively poor men also play the role of sugar daddy (cited in LeclercMadlala 2008: S18). Similarly, South African research also suggested that the ‘sugar daddy’ phenomenon was not as widespread as expected among South African young women (Pettifor et al. 2009). But, clearly, more recent studies are identifying distinct patterns of transactional sex between young women and older men (HSRC 2012; Kharsany et al. 2014). This led to the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government launching an ‘Anti-Sugar Daddy Campaign’ in 2012, and placing more than 89 billboards across the Province warning against the dangers of cross-generational sex.6 The campaign used radio and visual media to promote awareness and discussion about cross-generational sex and its impact in the Province. In the same year, a women’s empowerment organisation, ZAZI,7 launched a similar campaign urging young women to stay away from sugar daddies through national television advertisements. In trying to understand why young women get involved in relationships with older men, Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala has suggested that there are large differences between urban and rural settings. Through a systematic review of the literature, she argues that in poor rural settings ‘the lack of access to education, health services, employment and a weak economy, associated with poverty, often pushed women and girls into age disparate sexual partnerships with potential economic benefits’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). The money obtained was used to ‘pay for education as well as to buy clothes and simple luxuries such as soaps, body lotions and snacks’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). Some studies revealed that, in these poor settings, there was sometimes pressure from parents on young daughters to have a relationship with an older employed man, ‘both as a means for getting money and household necessities, as well as to marry and bring in bridewealth’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). Studies conducted by the HSRC have shown that ‘at times some mothers turn a blind eye to sugar daddies or actively encourage their daughters to go out “bayophanda” [seek rich partners and exchange sex for survival]’ (HSRC 2012: 120). These studies, as well as that conducted by CAPRISA (Kharsany et al. 2012; Kharsany et al. 2014), indicate 6. http://www.kznhealth.gov.za/sugardaddy.htm. Accessed 27 May 2015. 7. An isiZulu word meaning ‘know yourself’. http://www.zazi.org.za. Accessed 27 May 2015.

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that young girls growing up without a father are particularly vulnerable to HIV since they engage in transactional sex for survival. This also accounts for the higher HIV prevalence among orphans (HSRC 2012: 120). Leclerc-Madlala also suggests that studies across Africa (in both rural and urban settings) indicate that socio-economic security was often associated with marriage and subsequent motherhood: ‘[O]lder men played an important role in providing resources that helped young women to attract and maintain relationships with younger men with the hope that this might lead to marriage’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). Furthermore, studies have shown that in rural settings, young women were ‘more directly subjected to traditional rules that guided relations between men and women. Young women were often expected to be obedient, dutiful, and otherwise act in ways that demonstrated “respect” towards older men’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). This results in these young women being especially vulnerable ‘to coercive attempts by older men such as teachers to engage in sex’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). Within the urban setting, material gain also played a large part in the reason why young girls entered into relationships with older men. However, the focus is not so much on meeting subsistence needs as is the case in the rural setting, but rather on boosting their status in the eyes of their peers (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). Urban young women were interested in the ‘fun’ associated with the glamour of the lifestyle brought about by having material goods (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). But in addition to material gain brought about through the transactional sex, studies have also revealed that there are other symbolic and emotional reasons why young women enter into sexual relations with older men (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). Particularly in the urban setting, young women are not necessarily victims, but active agents in these relationships. Studies in Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa indicate that young women ‘are mindful of the factors constraining future goals (i.e. lack of employment opportunities and access to education, corruption, low wages), and so they see relationships with older men as the easiest and natural way to acquire a better life’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S19). While they are often powerless regarding safer sex negotiations in relationships with older men, ‘they often have a high degree of control over partnership formation and [in] choosing the number and types of partners with whom they become involved’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S23). A recent qualitative study conducted in Cape Town, South Africa, has shown that many young women choose a relationship with an older man because they believe that gender violence is less likely to take place. Respondents in this study viewed same-age relationships or those



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with younger men as being ‘disrespectful and abusive’ (Beauclair and Delva 2013). While financial and material gain was the overwhelming motivation for relationships with older men, young women envisaged that older men potentially provided psycho-social support through protection from abuse and violence. Furthermore, a related finding of that study indicated that women participants ‘did not perceive age-disparate relationships to pose risks of any kind’ (Beauclair and Delva 2013). The few women who did perceive some risk in having sexual relations with older men ‘did not necessarily make the connection between those risks and HIV/STI acquisition’. Indeed, the study results seem to suggest quite the opposite. Young women associate risk with same age partnerships which are deemed likely to be more abusive (Beauclair and Delva 2013). As already indicated, various studies have shown that women in violent relationships are more afraid to insist on condom use, or to ask their partners to refrain from concurrent relationships (cited in Beauclair and Delva 2013). However, it is unclear if the women in this Cape Town study were aware of the connection between HIV and gender violence. But it does seem that ‘the immediate threat of [intimate partner violence] has a stronger influence on relationship decisions among these women than inconspicuous and more distant risk of HIV infection and other STIs (Beauclair and Delva 2013). Leclerc-Madlala points to studies which show that even when knowledge of HIV is high, ‘the benefits from these relationships often outweigh the cost of contracting HIV’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S20). Against the considerable material as well as psycho-social and emotional benefits, ‘any perceived risk of HIV is often pushed aside in an effort to add meaning to often (but not always) difficult and uncertain lives and to create at least the illusion of romance’ (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S21–S22). As Leclerc-Madlala goes on to argue, there are also cultural antecedents that lie behind the practice. Leclerc-Madlala has argued that in Southern Africa there is no historic or ethnographic evidence to suggest that social taboos against age-disparate relationships existed. In fact, to the contrary, young girls are encouraged to seek out older men for greater marital stability and thus same-age marital relationships are discouraged. Furthermore, men favour marrying younger, presumably more fertile, women: Older accounts of courtship and marriage alert us to the idea that what we refer to now as age-disparate relationships as well as transactional sex and multiple concurrent partnerships, all have antecedents in older practices that have long played a part in defining the nature of social life and the particular values and norms associated with sexuality (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S22).

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Leclerc-Madlala goes onto argue that age disparate sex which assumes a ‘reciprocal/transactional element is maintained by two interlinked enduring cultural prescriptions: One prescribes for men to redistribute wealth on a scale appropriate to their standing and demonstrate love, commitment or appreciation for sex through material giving. The other prescribes for women to expect and receive a material compensation for sexual favours as a validation of their worth and as a sign of a partner’s love, commitment or appreciation (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S23).

The benefits (both real and perceived) derived from engaging in sexual relations with older men in a context of poverty and survival, as well as these enduring cultural prescriptions, pose a huge challenge in mitigating the incidence of HIV in young women. In the next section of our essay we reflect on a religious resource that demonstrates signs of enabling deeper discussion among those affected. Heterotopic Religious Resources This analysis of age disparate sex from a range of social sciences includes, in some of the studies, the voices of African young women themselves. It is this vulnerable sector that is the focus of our CBS (Contextual Bible Study). CBS is a religious resource that enables the voices of this vulnerable sector to become even more evident. Alongside social scientific analysis, the processes of CBS offer a potential safe socio-religious space in which young African women – initially and foundationally – might construct their own discourse, including a theological component, concerning age disparate sexual relationships. A theological component has become particularly significant given a recent shift in terminology, with the term ‘blesser’ now being used of some ‘sugar daddies’.8 Contextual Bible Study offers a heterotopic space in which organized groups of young women can construct their own discourse about age disparate sexual relationships. Michel Foucault identifies a heterotopia as a ‘counter-site’, but in an unusual sense. For Foucault a heterotopic

8. The term ‘blesser’ is too recent to have generated detailed research, but initial indications are that the term has made its way from the prosperity theology terrain into ordinary discourse to signify that one has received a significant ‘gift’ or ‘blessing’. The difference between a ‘sugar daddy’ and a ‘blesser’ is one of scale; the financial benefits of a ‘blesser’ are more abundant; see the following documentary: http://www.enca.com/south-africa/checkpoint-are-they-truly-blessed.



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site is ‘counter’ to a utopian site. ‘Utopias’, argues Foucault, reflecting perhaps on notions of ‘utopia’ prevalent in liberation theologies in the 1970s (Bonino 1975: 132–53), ‘are sites with no real place’ (Foucault 1967: 4). But, continues Foucault, there are also ‘real places – places that do exist… – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ (Foucault 1967: 4). CBS participates in and contributes to the construction of such heterotopic sites (West 2015a). The Ujamaa Centre’s theory of knowledge production and change is founded on the foundational tenet of liberation theology: the epistemological privilege of the poor (Frostin 1988: 6). The knowledge of the poor is vital to any project of social transformation. Faith, and faith-based resources like the Bible, are potential assets which marginalized sectors can deploy in projects of social transformation. So in engaging with age disparate sexual relationships, it is the presence and participation and knowledge of young African women that provides the starting point of social transformation. Their epistemology is fundamental to an analysis of age disparate sexual relationships and their epistemology provides the necessary ‘logic’ for the forms of action that they might choose to take as part of a transformative project. For these reasons the Ujamaa Centre privileges organized groups of young African women. The use of the term ‘organized’ is deliberate. By being ‘organised’ groups have already constructed their own safe and sequestered sites, and have already begun to assemble their own discourse concerning their realities. They have already forged a vocabulary for talking about their realities (including their bodies), and they are in (partial) control of their own space. Here the Ujamaa Centre’s praxis is informed by the work of James Scott. The organized marginalized have ‘a shared interest in jointly creating a discourse of dignity, of negation, and of justice’. ‘They have, in addition’, Scott continues, ‘a shared interest in concealing a social site apart from domination where such a hidden transcript can be elaborated in comparative safety’ (Scott 1990: 114). As Scott indicates, a safe social site enables an articulation. Put differently, the question posed by Gayatri Spivak, of whether or not the subaltern can speak (Spivak 1988), should be recast as a question which takes space seriously. A more appropriate question would be: ‘Where can the subaltern speak?’ For as Scott so eloquently argues, subordinate classes are less constrained at the level of thought and ideology than they are at the level of political action and struggle ‘since they can in secluded settings speak with comparative safety’ (Scott 1990: 91). Human dignity, even in the most damaged and

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denigrated subaltern, demands some form of ‘speaking’ (West 2011b, 2015b). How the subaltern speaks depends almost entirely on local ‘sectoral’ control of space. This is why women’s faith-based support groups are significant sites for engaging with age disparate sexual relationships. These are sites that have already been established by women in the face of patriarchy, with particular faith-based symbols and rituals playing a significant role in securing these sites (Haddad 2004). CBS work only takes place in such sites when and if the Ujamaa Centre is invited by those who control particular sites to enter their site and to collaborate with them. CBS processes are part of the infrastructure of such heterotopic space (West 2015c, a). CBS processes provide the scaffolding within which a common embodied vocabulary can be constructed, drawing both on the embodied knowledge of those participating and resonances between these local knowledges and a particular biblical narrative. James Scott offers us a useful account of how marginalized sectors construct their own discourse among themselves, describing how the first articulation by a member of the group has the potential to set in motion a ‘crystallization’ whereby the other members of the group recognize ‘close relatives’ of their own experience, connecting them to a ‘single power grid’ (Scott 1990: 223–4). James Cochrane makes a similar argument, but uses theological language, when he describes the ‘incipient theology’ of marginalized sectors as residing in the continuum between the conscious and the unconscious, ‘the realm of partial recognition, of inchoate awareness, of ambiguous perception, and, sometimes of creative tension: that liminal space of human experience in which people discern acts and facts but cannot or do not order them into narrative descriptions or even into articulate conceptions of the world’ (Cochrane 1999: 88, citing Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: 29). ‘Through a long process of self-constitution that depends upon a history of growing consciousness through communicative action’, Cochrane goes on to argue, organized groups have the capacity to develop ‘a foregrounded subjectivity’, with the capacity both to speak to one another and to speak to others outside the community (Cochrane 1999: 111). What we will address in the next section of this essay, as we move from ‘See’ to ‘Judge’, is the capacity of a biblical narrative like the book of Ruth to offer resources within such heterotopic sites – to offer an extended vocabulary with which to articulate embodied knowledge and the potential to provide a narrative shape with which to voice and validate such embodied knowledge.



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Re-reading (Once Again) Ruth For many African readers of the Bible, and we suspect for (faithful) readers of the Bible in general, there is an immediacy of encounter with the Bible. CBS works with this interpretive immediacy, but places alongside it a more critically ‘distanced’ engagement with the biblical text. Alongside the ‘community consciousness’ that already inhabits a heterotopic site, CBS offers forms of ‘critical consciousness’ with respect to the biblical text. CBS does this by asking literary-type questions of the biblical text, facilitating a re-reading of the text, and slowing down the process of engagement with the text (West 2013a; Riches et al. 2010: 41). Through distantiation (to use Paul Ricoeur’s term for ‘critical’; Ricoeur 1973) the text becomes (more) ‘other’, and therefore has the potential to become a heterotopic site in its own terms. Slow re-readings of biblical narrative open up the heterotopic potential of the biblical text. As Foucault observes, heterotopias have the capacity to connect sites across both time and space (though he is less sure about the former; Foucault 1967: 3, 8). The biblical text as sacred text has the capacity to sanctify both time and space, enabling believing Bible readers to connect their contexts with biblical narrative contexts, across both time and space, finding and forging lines of connection between their own contexts and the narrative world of the biblical text. In this case we chose the biblical book of Ruth. African biblical scholarship, particularly work done by African women,9 has regularly turned and returned to the biblical book of Ruth. The socio-geographical setting of the book (West 2003) as well as a range of African context-resonant themes, such as communal notions of marriage (Kanyoro 1997), ethnicity (Dube 1999), economic vulnerability (Haddad 2000: 311–12), women’s agency (Nadar 2001), the limits on women’s agency (Maluleke 2001), postcolonial relationships (Dube 2001), HIV (van Dyk and van Dyk 2002; Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2007, 2009), resistance to patriarchy (Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2004a), the vulnerability of women’s bodies (Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2004b), alternative constructions of female space (Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2010) and singleness (Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2013), have generated many African re-readings. 9.  The examples which follow focus on Africans living and working on the African continent. There is, of course, a vast range of biblical scholarship on the book of Ruth, including work by other Africans, but the focus of our essay is the African context. For resonances between the work done in this essay and work within African American contexts see the work of Cheryl Anderson (2009, 2015, and in this volume).

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So it was not strange that we turned to the book of Ruth in the context of age disparate sexual relationships, recognizing its ‘surplus of meaning’ (Ricoeur 1976) in African contexts and drawing on a literary analysis of the narrative, both in terms of the ‘constructive’ and ‘deconstructive’ dimensions of literary analysis (Olson 2010). The narrative features of the text that invited our re-reading included the foregrounding of Boaz’s identity as ‘a prominent rich man’ (2.1), the initiative of Boaz in identifying Ruth as a foreigner who ‘belongs’ not to a man but to a woman (2.14-16),10 and the initiative of Boaz in offering Ruth his resources and advising her to remain within his fields (2.18-19). Was Boaz, we wondered, advertising himself as a potential ‘sugar daddy’? We used this provocative question in an Ujamaa Centre training workshop (in February 2015), inviting the participants, who were from a number of Southern African contexts, to work together in small groups through the See-Judge-Act process, with respect to ‘sugar daddies’ and how the book of Ruth might be used to construct a safe heterotopic site in which to talk about age disparate sexual relationships. We encouraged participants to transgress the bounds of ‘decent’ theology and to enter the terrain of what Marcella Althaus-Reid refers to as ‘indecent theology’ (Althaus-Reid 2000). What follows draws on the work done at this workshop. We envisaged an opening question – for CBS is driven by a series of directed questions that move the process from ‘See’ to ‘Judge’ to ‘Act’ – that enabled a re-telling of the narrative as a whole, based on African art images or a participant-led drama. So, the first CBS question took the following forms, opening up space for forms of community knowledge (‘community consciousness’). Question 1: Using the African art images of the story of Ruth, re-tell the story in your small groups. What ‘scenes’ are missing? Draw your own picture of one missing scene.

Moving into ‘critical consciousness’, the interpretive process is then slowed down as the narrative detail of the text is probed for the resources it may bring, on its own terms, to the CBS. There is much in the story that resonates with African contexts, which is why this biblical book has had such a rich reception history in African contexts. But because our focus in this CBS is on age disparate sexual relationships, and assuming that economic struggle is an element in the risks young African woman take 10.  The references throughout are to the NRSV (1989).



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in entering into age disparate sexual relationships, we chose to re-read Ruth 2.11-16 more carefully and slowly, probing the economic realities of Ruth and her initial encounter with Boaz. Question 2: Re-read Ruth 2.11-16 in small groups. What is the first thing Ruth does when she arrives in her mother-in-laws’ context, and why does she make this her first priority? Question 3: It seems that it is Boaz who first notices Ruth. What do we know about Boaz, and what questions does he ask about her? What does he say to her? What do you think his motives are when he talks to her and offers her food? Question 4: How does Ruth respond to Boaz? What do you think her motives are when she talks to him?

Each of these questions assumes the generative contextual theme of age disparate sexual relationships, but the questions remain focused on the literary world of the text, inviting the participants to enter into this world, whether following the narrator’s point of view or ignoring it and reading against the grain of the text (as it has been received in communities of faith). We envisaged that these questions could be considered together as a set of questions, with each small group then reporting back to the others about their discussion, using their own ‘newsprint’ (West 2011b) summary as a resource to reflect the corporate responses to each question. The narrative suggests that there is an age difference between Ruth and Boaz, though it is not clear what the age difference is.11 The information in 1.4, that Naomi and her sons ‘had lived there [in Moab] for about ten years’, does not indicate clearly how long each of the sons had been married, nor does it explain the absence of children from these marriages. Ruth may be a very young woman at this time, recently married, or a slightly older young woman, having been married for some years. What is clear, later on in the narrative, is that Boaz emphasises their age difference, when he commends her, on her coming to him, on ‘not going after young men’ (3.10). At the outset of the narrative Boaz refers to her as ‘this young woman’ (2.5), and later twice as ‘my daughter’ (2.8; 3.10). Though ch. 2 of the narrative begins with Boaz, we began with Ruth, recognizing her agency in the task of survival, and giving the agency (by analogy) to the young African women participating in the CBS.

11.  Wendy Doniger argues that Naomi is the more appropriate age-mate for Boaz (Doniger 2000).

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The next question, discussed on its own in small groups, shifts to the relationship between Ruth and Naomi, probing what participants in the Ujamaa Centre workshop believed was a growing trend whereby older women, often from within the family, are ‘grooming’ younger women for sex with older men in order to secure resources for them both (see also Gafney 2009). Question 5: Re-read Ruth 2.17–3.18 in small groups. What is the role of Naomi in encouraging Ruth to have a sexual relationship with Boaz (verse 3.3-4)? Why does Naomi push Ruth into a sexual relationship with Boaz?

This question is directive, avoiding any ambiguity in the interpretation of what happens on the threshing floor. There is strong biblical (Hos. 9.1) and scholarly support for sex on the threshing floor (Landy 2001: 232; LaCocque 2004: 94–5), and this question enters this terrain directly, inviting talk about sex. Questions 2, 3, 4 and 5 each focus ‘on-the-text’, facilitating regular re-readings of the narrative in some detail. Our experience with this and other CBS work is that participants will have already begun to bring their own contexts to bear on the biblical text as they engage with the textual questions. The next set of questions therefore moves from ‘critical consciousness’ back into ‘community consciousness’, while remaining within the ‘Judge’ moment, bringing context into direct dialogue with the detail of the biblical text. Question 6: What things would Ruth be worried about as she walks in the night to visit Boaz? What things would Ruth be worried about as she enters into a sexual relationship with Boaz? What does Ruth report back to Naomi after she has left Boaz? Question 7: In what ways is the relationship between Boaz and Ruth a ‘sugar daddy’ relationship? Question 8: What are the characteristics of a ‘sugar daddy’ relationship in your context? Question 9: What are the risks and what are the benefits for a young woman in a ‘sugar daddy’ relationship?

Question 6 is a useful transitional question, bridging as it does the world of the text and the world of the participants. Questions 7, 8 and 9 invoke directly the complex realities that are incorporated in the notion of ‘sugar daddy’. This is deliberate, as we do not presume to understand



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the realities young women are traversing. Indeed, the major purpose of this CBS is to enable a safe space in which young African women can talk among themselves about these realities, perhaps even doing indecent theology together (see Ipsen 2009). Question 9 is another transitional question, moving the CBS towards the ‘Act’ moment. Parts of the biblical story of Ruth have been used thus far to ‘Judge’ or interrogate the lived reality of young African women. The final movement in CBS is towards some form of social transformation. We have decided, given the complexity of age disparate sexual relationships, to offer an open final ‘Act’ question: Question 10: What social and theological structures must we engage with in order to address the ‘sugar daddy’ situation? What from your perspective needs to change?

The emphasis on social and theological ‘structures’ is an emphasis from liberation theology, recognizing that structures require transformation if individuals are to participate in transformation (West 2013b). After ‘Act’ This Contextual Bible Study is a work in progress, as part of the Ujamaa Centre’s liberatory praxis, as we continue to work with young African women as a key marginalized sector in our context. As we work with and reformulate this particular CBS through ‘work with’ this marginalized sector, we would be open to returning to the book of Ruth to explore other literary or socio-historical elements that might offer other resources with which to work within the context of ‘sugar daddy’ realities. Social science research has indicated a range of possible areas of intervention. For example, research has shown that there are a number of HIV prevention programmes that target young people in schools throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Those that are most successful are context specific, integrate HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health into the curriculum, and are facilitated by trained facilitators. ‘In contrast, abstinence-only and peer-led interventions tend to be ineffective’. A recent strategy that has emerged includes conditional cash transfers to young people to ‘incentivise safer behaviour’ (Dellar, Dlamini and Abdool Karim 2015: 67). Studies have employed different incentives such as school attendance and school completion to HIV testing and negative pregnancy tests (Pettifor et al. 2012: 1731). Results from these studies are limited but promising (Dellar, Dlamini and Abdool Karim 2015: 67). In the current South African context, where there is a system of social

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grants, a longitudinal study was conducted between 2009 and 2012 to ascertain whether the grant system reduces the risk of HIV infection among teenagers. It was concluded that in households that received a child care grant or foster care grant, there was a reduced likelihood that resident teenage girls would engage in their first transactional sexual relationship or have sex with a boyfriend that was five or more years older than them (Cluver et al. 2013: e366). All of the above suggests that material interventions play a role in reducing HIV incidence in young women by mitigating against the need to engage in transactional sexual relationships. But it seems that there is also a role for community-level interventions, and this may be where CBS could play an ongoing part. Social science research has suggested that evaluations of such interventions have shown they had a ‘largely positive impact on knowledge and attitudes to HIV’, though the effectiveness of these community-level interventions on reducing HIV incidence is still to be ascertained (Dellar, Dlamini and Abdool Karim 2015: 67). CBS could be used programmatically to address a number of the issues of vulnerability already raised. Questions of culture, issues of sexual and reproductive health, delaying sexual debut and empowerment through the completion of high school education can all be addressed contextually through the CBS process. Furthermore, as Leclerc-Madlala has argued, little work has been done with men as active partners on the issue of age-disparate relationships (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S24), so the Ujamaa Centre could make older men an overt part of the process, as it has done with gender-based violence (West 2013a). It has been recognized that older peers as mentors are potentially useful in discouraging younger women from engaging in sexual relations with older men as well as in other risky sexual behaviours (Leclerc-Madlala 2008: S24). CBS heterotopic sites provide the places and CBS provides the processes within which such mentoring might take place, enabling young women to share their experiences with others, as well as to invite other older women (and men) to participate in their space. Conclusion Which of these areas of work we might engage in further depends on our work with young African women, our primary dialogue partners, whose epistemology will guide us. What is clear at present is that the Contextual Bible Study outlined above is making a significant impact in Southern African contexts. There is no hesitation at all in re-reading Ruth as a story



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about ‘sugar daddies’. More importantly, CBS generates a wide-ranging discourse on age disparate sexual relationships, within a sacred and safe heterotopic site. References Althaus-Reid, Marcella (2000), Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics, London and New York: Routledge. Anderson, Cheryl B. (2009), Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies: The Need for Inclusive Biblical Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Cheryl B. (2015), ‘The Song of Songs: Redeeming Gender Constructions in the Age of AIDS’, Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting, Buenos Aires (in this volume, pp. 89–102). Beauclair, Roxanne, and Wim Delva (2013), ‘Is Younger Really Safer? A Qualitative Study of Perceived Risks and Benefits of Age Disparate Relationships among Women in Cape Town, South Africa’, PLOS One 8 (11). Online: https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0081748. Bonino, Jose Miguez (1975), Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Cluver, Lucie, Mark Boyes, Mark Orkin, Marija Pantelic, Thembela Molwena and Lorraine Sherr (2013), ‘Child-focused State Cash Transfers and Adolescent Risk of HIV Infection in South Africa: A Propensity-score-matched Case-control Study’, The Lancet, 1 (6): e362–e370. Cochrane, James R. (1999), Circles of Dignity: Community Wisdom and Theological Reflection, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Cochrane, James R. (2001), ‘Questioning Contextual Theology’, in McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann (eds), Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, 67–86, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff (1991), Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dellar, Rachel, Sarah Dlamini, and Quarraisha Abdool Karim (2015), ‘Adolescent Girls and Young Women: Key Populations for HIV Epidemic Control’, Journal of the International AIDS Society, 18 (Supplement 1): 64–70. Doniger, Wendy (2000), The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Dube, Musa W. (1999), ‘The Unpublished Letters of Orpah to Ruth’, in Athalya Brenner (ed.), Ruth and Esther: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, 145–50, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Foucault, Michel (1967), ‘Of Other Spaces: Heterotopias’. Online http://foucault.info/ documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (accessed 19 March 2008). Frostin, Per (1988), Liberation Theology in Tanzania and South Africa: A First World Interpretation, Lund: Lund University Press. Gafney, Wilda C. (2009), ‘Mother Knows Best: Messianic Surrogacy and Sexploitation in Ruth’, in Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan and Tina Pippin (eds), Mother Goose, Mother Jones, Mommie Dearest: Biblical Mothers and their Children, 23–36, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

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Gregson, Simon, Constance Nyamukapa, Geoffrey Garnett, Peter Mason, Tom Zhuwau, Michel Caraël, Stephen Chandiwana and Roy Anderson (2002), ‘Sexual Mixing Patterns and Sex-differentials in Teenage Exposure to HIV Infection in Rural Zimbabwe’, The Lancet, 359: 1896–903. Haddad, Beverley G. (2000), ‘African Women’s Theologies of Survival: Intersecting Faith, Feminisms, and Development’, PhD diss., School of Theology, University of Natal. Haddad, Beverley G. (2004), ‘The Manyano Movement in South Africa: Site of Struggle, Survival, and Resistance’, Agenda, 61: 4–13. Harling, Guy, Marie-Louise Newell, Frank Tanser, Ichiro Kawachi, S. V. Subramanian and Bärnighausen Till (2014), ‘Do Age-disparate Relationships Drive HIV Incidence in Young Women? Evidence from a Population Cohort in Rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 66 (4): 443–51. Hawkings, K., N. Price and F. Mussá (2009), ‘Milking the Cow: Young Women’s Construction of Identity and Risk in Age-disparate Transactional Sexual Relationships in Maputo, Mozambique’, Global Public Health, 4 (2): 169–82. HSRC (2012), South African National HIV Incidence, Prevalence and Behaviour Survey, 2012, Pretoria: HSRC. Ipsen, Avaren (2009), Sex Working and the Bible, London: Equinox. Kanyoro, Musimbi R. A. (1997), ‘Biblical Hermeneutics: Ancient Palestine and the Contemporary World’, Review and Expositor: A Quarterly Baptist Theological Journal, 94 (3): 363–78. Kharsany, Ayesha B. M., Mukelisiwe Mlotshwa, Janet A. Frohlich, Nonhlanhla Zuma Yende, Natasha Samsunder, Salim Safurdeen Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim (2012), ‘HIV Prevalence among High School Learners – Opportunities for Schools-based HIV Testing Programmes and Sexual Reproductive Health Services’, BMC Public Health, 12 (231): 1–6. Kharsany, Ayesha B. M., Thulasizwe Buthelezi, Janet A. Frohlich, Nonhlanhla Yende Zuma, Natasha Samsunder, Gethwana Mahlase, Carolyn Williamson, Simon A. Travers, Jinny C. Marais, Rachael Dellar, Salim Safurdeen Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim (2014), ‘HIV Infection in High School Students in Rural South Africa: Role of Transmissions among Students’, AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 30 (10): 956–65. LaCocque, André (2004), Ruth: A Continental Commentary, trans. K. C. Hanson, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Landy, Francis (2001), Beauty and the Enigma: And Other Essays on the Hebrew Bible, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Leclerc-Madlala, Suzanne (2008), ‘Age-disparate Relationship and Inter-generational Sex in Southern Africa: The Dynamics of Hypervulnerablity’, AIDS, 22 (Supp. 4): S17–S25. Luke, Nancy (2005), ‘Confronting the “Sugar Daddy” Stereotype: Age and Economic Asymmetries and Risky Sexual Behaviour in Urban Kenya’, International Family Planning Perspectives, 31 (1): 6–14. Maluleke, Tinyiko S. (2001), ‘African “Ruths”, Ruthless Africas: Reflections of an African “Mordecai”’, in Musa W. Dube (ed.), Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible, 237–51, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, Geneva: WCC Publications. Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), Madipoane (2004a), ‘Ruth’, in Daniel Patte et al. (eds), The Global Bible Commentary, 86–91. Nashville: Abingdon Press.



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Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), Madipoane (2004b), ‘Struggling with Poverty/Emptiness: Rereading the Naomi-Ruth Story in African-South Africa’, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 120: 46–59. Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), Madipoane J. (2007), ‘Seeking Security through Marriage: Ruth 1:6-18 Placed under an African Woman’s HIV and AIDS Lens’, Journal of Constructive Theology, 13 (2): 57–70. Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), Madipoane (2009), ‘Impoverished on Harvesting Ground: Ruth 3 and African Women in an HIV-Positive South Africa’, in D. N Hopkins and M. Lewis (eds), Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples, 135–41, London: Equinox. Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), Madipoane (2010), ‘Is Ruth the ’ēšet ḥayil for Real? An Exploration of Womanhood from African Proverbs and the Threshing Floor (Ruth 3:1-13)’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 36 (Supplement): 253–72. Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), Madipoane (2013), ‘Engaging with the Book of Ruth as Single, African Christian Women: One African Woman’s Reflection’, Verbum et Ecclesia, 34 (1): 1–9. Nadar, Sarojini (2001), ‘A South African Indian Womanist Reading of the Character of Ruth’, in Musa W. Dube (ed.), Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible, 159-75, Atlanta and Geneva: Society of Biblical Literature and WCC Publications. Nkosana, Josephine, and Doreen Rosenthal (2007), ‘The Dynamics of Intergenerational Sexual Relationships: The Experience of Schoolgirls in Botswana’, Sexual Health, 4 (3): 181–7. Nobelius, Ann-Maree, Bessie Kalina, Robert Pool, Jimmy Whitworth, Janice Chesters and Robert Power (2011), ‘Sexual Partner Types and Related Sexual Health Risk among Out-of-school Adolescents in Rural South-West Uganda’, AIDS Care, 23 (2): 252–9. Olson, Dennis T. (2010), ‘Literary and Rhetorical Criticism’, in Thomas B. Dozeman (ed.), Methods for Exodus, 13–54, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pettifor, Audrey, Helen Rees, Immo Kleinschmidt, Annie Steffenson, Catherine MacPhail, Lindiwe Hlongwa-Madikizela, Kerry Vermaak and Nancy Padian (2005), ‘Young People’s Sexual Health in South Africa: HIV Prevalence and Sexual Behaviours from a Nationally Representative Household Survey’, AIDS, 19: 1525–34. Pettifor, Audrey, Katie O’Brien, Catherine MacPhail, William C. Miller and Helen Rees (2009), ‘Early Coital Debut and Associated HIV Risk Factors among Young Women and Men in South Africa’, International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 35 (2): 82–9. Pettifor, Audrey, Catherine Macphail, Nadia Nguyen and Molly Rosenberg (2012), ‘Can Money Prevent the Spread of HIV? A Review of Cash Payments for HIV Prevention’, AIDS Behaviour, 16 (7): 1729–38. Riches, John, Helen Ball, Roy Henderson, Craig Lancaster, Leslie Milton and Maureen Russell (2010), What Is Contextual Bible Study? A Practical Guide with Group Studies for Advent and Lent, London: SPCK. Ricoeur, Paul (1973), ‘The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation’, Philosophy Today, 17 (2): 129–41. Ricoeur, Paul (1976), Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press. Scott, James C. (1990), Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

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Spivak, Gayatri C. (1988), ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Gary Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 271–313, London: Macmillan. UNAIDS (2014), The GAP Report. Accessed 8 June 2015. van Dyk, Alta C., and Peet J. van Dyk (2002), ‘HIV/AIDS in Africa: Suffering Women and the Theology of the Book of Ruth’, Old Testament Essays, 15 (1): 209–24. West, Gerald O. (1995), Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context, 2nd edn, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. West, Gerald O. (2003), ‘Ruth’, in James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson (eds), Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, 208–12, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. West, Gerald O. (2011a), ‘Do Two Walk Together? Walking with the Other Through Contextual Bible Study’, Anglican Theological Review 93 (3): 431–49. West, Gerald O. (2011b), ‘Newsprint Theology: Bible in the Context of HIV and AIDS’, in Jione Havea and Clive Pearson (eds), Out of Place: Doing Theology on the Crosscultural Brink, 161–86, London: Equinox. West, Gerald O. (2013a), ‘Deploying the Literary Detail of a Biblical Text (2 Samuel 13:1-22) in Search of Redemptive Masculinities’, in James K. Aitken, Jeremy M. S. Clines and Christl M. Maier (eds), Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines, 297–312, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. West, Gerald O. (2013b), ‘Liberation Hermeneutics’, in Steven L. McKenzie (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 507–15, Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, Gerald O. (2013c), ‘The School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics: Doing Contextual Theology in Africa in the University of KwaZulu-Natal’, in Isabel Apawo Phiri and Dietrich Werner (eds), Handbook of Theological Education in Africa, 919–26, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. West, Gerald O. (2015a), ‘The Biblical Text as a Heterotopic Intercultural Site: In Search of Redemptive Masculinities’, in Hans De Wit and Janet Dyk (eds), Bible and Transformation: The Promise of Intercultural Bible Reading, 241–57, Atlanta: SBL Press. West, Gerald O. (2015b), ‘Contending for Dignity in the Bible and the Post-Apartheid South African Public Realm’, in L. Juliana Claassens and Bruce C. Birch (eds), Restorative Readings: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Human Dignity, 101–24, Eugene: Pickwick. West, Gerald O. (2015c), ‘Reading the Bible with the Marginalised: The Value/s of Contextual Bible Reading’, Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 1 (2): 235–61. West, Gerald O., and Beverley G. Haddad (2016), ‘Boaz as “Sugar Daddy”: Re-reading Ruth in the Context of HIV’, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 155 (Special issue: Sexuality in Africa): 137–56.

R a c i a l M el a n c holi a a n d t h e B ook of R ut h* Gale A. Yee

Asian Americans have come to occupy a peculiar place in the North American racial imaginary, signifying approbation and revulsion in the Janus-like stereotype of the ‘model minority’ and the ‘perpetual foreigner’. This essay continues my work on Ruth as a model minority and perpetual foreigner (Yee 2009), and explores the psychic dimensions of her perpetual foreignness through the lens of racial melancholia. Freud describes melancholia as a psychic condition of loss, the state or feeling of grief when deprived of someone or something of value. In melancholia, that loss cannot be named and thus cannot be mourned properly (Freud 1953: 245). Unlike mourning, in which one is eventually able to relinquish or ‘let go of’ the lost person, value or object, in melancholia one is unable to ‘get over’ the loss and invest energies in new persons or objects. Instead, that loss becomes incorporated into one’s ego or sense of self, and that self becomes haunted by it (cf. Cheng 1997: 50–3). ‘The melancholic assumes the emptiness of the lost object or ideal, identifies with this emptiness, and thus participates in his or her own self-denigration and ruination of self-esteem’ (Eng and Han 2002: 343–6). In analyzing the tangled psychical webs of Asian American racialization, Asian American cultural critics have applied the notion of racial melancholia (J. Chang 2004; Cheng 2001; Parikh 2002; Shiu 2006). Racial melancholia is the psychic condition of loss experienced by racialized groups living in a white dominant society. This condition implicates both white and racialized entities, though in different ways. According to Cheng,

*  A shorter version of this paper was read at the 2016 International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Seoul, Korea.

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In other words, white culture unconsciously defines itself against the racial other while, simultaneously, denying any substantive social links with that other. The racial other, in turn, is unconsciously unable to ‘get over’ the lost and unobtainable ideal of whiteness in the process of assimilation. This phenomenon can be compared to the postcolonial concept of mimicry, in which the colonizer desires a ‘reformed recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite’ (Bhabha 1994: 122, italics in original; see also Eng and Han 2002: 349; Cheng 2001: 79–80). Asian Americans become almost, but not quite ‘white’ in U.S. society: the model minority but also the perpetual foreigner. The etiology of racial melancholia for Asian Americans can be traced to historical forms of institutionalized racism and economic exploitation by white America, and the attempts of Asian American subjects to negotiate the conflicted histories of Asian immigration and assimilation in the United States (I. Chang 2003; Takaki 1998). Because of these histories, racial melancholia is not simply an individual condition of loss, but one that characterizes Asian American ethnic groups because of institutionalized racist exclusions by white society. Such psychic racial melancholia arises from a discernible political and material base (Eng and Han 2002: 355–6). White society incurs a ‘loss’ when it demeans the racial other and internalizes this demeaned object. It can then split off these problematic aspects of its racist self and project them upon the racial other. Such splitting allows white society to project an idealized image of itself, and use its location in networks of power to make this idealization appear real 1.  Cf. the studies of white melancholia by Hübinette 2013; Hübinette and Lundström 2014; Hübinette and Räterlinck 2014.



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(Flax 2004: 916). This white melancholia will take the form of a misremembering of this history of legalized racial exclusions. Because the American history of exclusions, imperialism, and colonization runs so diametrically opposed to the equally and particularly American narrative of liberty and individualism, cultural memory in America poses a continuously vexing problem: how to remember those transgressions without impeding the ethos of progress? How to bury the remnants of denigration and disgust created in the name of progress and the formation of an ‘American identity’? (Cheng 1997: 50–1).

This white misremembering is evident in the famous pictures of white men posing at the completion of the transcontinental railroad with not a Chinese face in sight,2 even though this great national achievement was built by cheap Chinese labor (I. Chang 2003: 53–4). The book of Ruth depicts both Ruth and Naomi as racial/ethnic melancholics in a dialectical relationship with each other: Ruth as the melancholic object and Naomi as the melancholic subject. Ruth is described as a melancholic object by the nineteenth-century English Romantic poet, John Keats, in the penultimate stanza of his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Keats imagines that the nightingale’s immortal soothing song, even ‘found a path/through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,/She stood in tears amid the alien corn’ (v. 65).3 In the biblical text, the person of Ruth the Moabite experiences many losses. First of all, there is the loss of her Judean husband in Moab. We are not even told the name of her husband (Mahlon) until the very last chapter (4.10). There is the loss of her father-in-law Elimelech and that of her brother-in-law Chilion. There is the permanent loss of her homeland Moab, her nationality, her citizenship and her native language. There is the loss of ‘her people’ in order to become part of Naomi’s people. There is the loss of her native deity, probably Chemosh, in favor of Naomi’s God (1.14-16). There is her anguished parting from her sister-in-law Orpah who, according to Honig (1999: 71), embodies all that Moab represents for Ruth. And the final culmination of her losses: the relinquishment of her newborn son Obed over to Naomi (4.17). Although there are expressions of sorrow and weeping by Naomi, Ruth and Orpah at their leave-taking (1.9, 14), 2.  Online: http://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/transcontinental-railroad-inunited-states and http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/missoulian.com/ content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/2/28/22825e1b-5eef-5a97-87b5-732d7eec4d3d/ 22825e1b-5eef-5a97-87b5-732d7eec4d3d.image.jpg 3.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_a_Nightingale for lyrics.

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the narrative expresses Ruth’s grieving or mourning in none of the other losses just described.4 As instances of racial melancholia, these losses are inferred in the text, but are not named and therefore not mourned properly. They become a living list of inarticulated grief in the story, and are a constituent part of her racial/ethnic identity as a Moabite immigrant. This internalized grief and the ambivalence in the narrative regarding Ruth’s Moabite status and its and her disappearance at the end of the book can be argued as an example of what Asian American critics deem as racial melancholia, experienced in the negotiation and assimilation of foreign immigrants into another society. According to Frymer-Kensky, the book of Ruth answers three questions (Frymer-Kensky 2002: 255; Koosed 2011: 13). When I read these questions, the Marxist literary critic in me automatically interprets them ideologically, assuming ‘If the text of Ruth was the answer, what was/ were the question/s?’ What were the social problems, contradictions, conflicts, etc. that the text was trying to re/solve (cf. Yee 2003: 25–6)? The narrative’s ‘answers’ provides the ideological solutions to these questions: • ‘Should the returnees from Babylon be able to recuperate their former lands?’ (Yes, property should revert to the original owners.) • ‘What is the status of foreigners, especially foreign spouses, accompanying the returnees?’ (They should be welcomed and assimilated into the community.) • ‘What should be the relationship between the returnees and those who remained in the land?’ (Along with the assimilated foreigners, the returnees and the remainees should strive together to insure a prosperous future for Israel.) Indeed, the story of Naomi the returnee, Ruth the foreigner and Boaz (the kinsman already in the land) seems to be an allegory of the larger Israelite narrative of exile, return and restoration (Frymer-Kensky 2002: 254). The story makes use of the traditions of the female ancestors of Israel’s past (Rachel, Leah and Tamar; 4.11-12), and male genealogies leading up to David (4.17-22), in such a way that ‘the ancestry story and the genealogy of the great king of Israel’s past point the way toward the nation’s glorious future’ (Frymer-Kensky 2002: 256).

4.  According to Hawkins, the tearful scene of Ruth in the fields of ‘alien corn’ envisaged by Keats is nowhere to be found in the biblical text. He also notes that these verses are the only two times Ruth is said to weep in the book (Hawkins 2006: 76).



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This positive interpretation of the book belies the fact that relations among the returnees, remainees and foreigners during the Persian period were quite conflicted (Yee 2003: 140–6). Koosed and Schipper argue that, if not read alongside select passages in Genesis, Numbers and Deuteronomy, reading Ruth alone fails to present the negative assessment of Moabites as foreigners (Koosed 2011: 106; Schipper 2016: 38). However, the materialist and ideological critic in me cannot ignore the general and literary modes of production that produced the book of Ruth (Yee 2003: 18–28). At its deeper level, the book can be considered an ideological misremembering of the conflicted relations among the returnees, the remainees and foreigners during the Persian period, in order (1) to anchor the present golah community in the past great traditions of the patriarchs and matriarchs and their God YHWH (Ruth 1.16; 4.11-12; (2) to legitimate the recovery of their lost land and restore their privileged position within it; and (3) to provide a rationale for the fact that the ancestress of Judah’s greatest king happens to be one of those ‘difficult’ foreigners, a Moabite (1.4, 22; 2.2, 6, 21; 4.5, 10). What is Israelite in this text cannot simultaneously escape its double: What is Moabite? The Hebrew Bible frequently depicts Moab as Israel’s enemy.5 Moreover, the sexual relations and intermarriages between Israelite men and Moabite women has led Israel into idolatry,6 and has influenced scholars to read the book of Ruth against the background of these foreign alliances particularly during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xviii–xix; LaCocque 2004: 20–7). Complicating matters is the fact that the biblical traditions describe Israel and Moab as sharing a patrilineal closeness in that the Moabites are the descendants of Abraham’s nephew Lot, according to Gen. 19.30-37. That the birth of Moab was the result of incest between Lot and his daughter should not be regarded as a disparagement of his descendants in Genesis 19. There is no condemnation of Moab’s mother for her action. Indeed, believing with her sister that there were no men left in the world, she had sex with her father ‘to preserve offspring through our father’ (Gen. 19.32). Her unconventional sexual efforts thus insured the continued lineage of Abraham’s brother Haran and his father Terah (Eskenazi and FrymerKensky 2011: 259–60; Schipper 2016: 41). The danger of Ruth lies not in her as the ‘foreign’ Other but in her alterity as the ‘familiar’ Other ‘with its 5.  Num. 22−24 and Deut. 23.3-6; Judg. 3.12-30; 2 Sam. 8.2; 2 Kgs 3.4-27; 13.20, 24.2; 1 Chron. 18.2; the Mesha Inscription, ANET 320-21; Isa. 11.14; 15.1–16.14; Jer. 9.25; 48.1-47; Amos 2.1-3. Regarding Ps. 60.8, see Gillingham 2013. 6.  Num. 25.1-5; 1 Kgs 11.1-2, 7-8; Ezra 9.1-2; Neh. 13.23-27.

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threat of assimilation’ (Routledge 2004: 42). ‘Unlike the trope of radical difference, common to racist, nationalist, and colonial discourse of the modern era, the Bible is concerned with drawing contrasts across a field of acknowledged similarity’ (Routledge 2004: 44).7 Differing from the struggles within the binary of the white/racialized minority in the United States, the conflicted relations between the Israelites and Moabites were among blood relatives (Brenner 2011: 85–6). Submerged and misremembered in the book of Ruth is this history of conflicted Israelite and Moabite familial relations. Racial melancholia in Ruth results from an ever-deferred assimilation process arising from her alterity as a threatening familial Other. This alterity prevents her from being fully assimilated as Israelite. Her melancholia is the loss of ultimately becoming a true Israelite, which is reflected in the textual ambivalence already noted by scholars in the repeated references to her Moabite identity (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xlviii; Maldonado 1995: 101). If she is integrated into Judean society, it will only be as ‘alien-kin’. Although not explicitly described as a gēr, Ruth qualifies as a gēr, as a resident alien who works under the authority of a wealthier clan member for wages, like Jacob under Laban (Gen. 32.5). Moreover, as one who has also married into a Judahite clan, she is thus an ‘alienkinswoman’, a wage-earning laborer, a slave ‘in all but name’ (Schipper 2016: 48–9). A number of scholars, including yours truly, have already interpreted Ruth as an exploited worker (Yee 2009: 130–2; Brenner 1999: 158; Boer 2003: 65). Racial melancholia and class become compounded with gender when one considers Ruth as an exploited female worker. Ruth thus becomes both a female Other as well as a familial Other. With memories of the Moabites as the product of incest (Gen. 19.30-38) and the seduction of the Israelites away from YHWH by their women (Num. 25.1-5; 1 Kgs 11.1-8; Ezra 9.1-2; Neh. 13.23-27), non-normative sexuality clings to Ruth the Moabite, along with her class status and racialization.8 This can be seen in Boaz and Naomi’s concern that as a Moabite woman Ruth might be molested in the fields, if she does not stick close to the female reapers (Ruth 2.9, 22) (Shepherd 2001; Linafelt and Beal 1999: 34–5; Carasik 1995; Fewell and Gunn 1990: 76, 122 n. 11). Non-normative sexuality is also evident in Ruth’s unconventional seduction of Boaz on the threshing floor (ch. 3). Intertextual parallels of irregular sexual relations in the stories of Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19) and Tamar (Genesis 38) heighten 7.  Cf. also the critique of such postcolonial readings of Ruth by Koosed 2011: 28–9, 40–1. 8.  Cf. the ‘orientalization’ of Asian women (Uchida 1998).



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sexuality in the encounter between Ruth and Boaz (Yee 2009: 132–3). Ruth’s racial melancholia thus becomes doubly apparent in Ruth as both a Moabite familial Other and a female Other, which prevents her full assimilation in Judean society. Ruth neither achieves full Israelite identity nor recovers from a distorted and distorting racial/ethnic/sexual stereotype. The price of Ruth’s integration in the ideology of the book is the denigration and loss, in her psychic self, of her Moabite ethnicity and identity. Ruth’s disappearance after she gives birth to Obed is the final consequence of being a racial melancholic object in the book (Brenner 2011: 84; Levine 1998: 90). Although not intended to be a remark on the psychic self-denigration that occurs in racial melancholia in the text’s ideology, André LaCocque’s statement is quite apt: ‘While the community around Ruth will not forget her Moabite identity, Ruth is willing to erase not only her ethnic roots, but also her very self’ (LaCocque 2006: 23). This psychic erasure of herself is revealed in her expurgation from the narrative. In order to better understand Ruth as a melancholic object, let us now compare her with Naomi, the melancholic subject. Israelite identity and its authority, embodied in the person of Naomi, is ensured through the melancholic introjection of Ruth the Moabite foreigner, which it cannot ‘fully relinquish and whose ghostly presence nonetheless guarantees its centrality’ (Cheng 2001: xi). White racial melancholia also experiences ‘loss’, because teetering between the known and the unknown, the seen and the deliberately unseen, the racial other constitutes an oversight that is consciously made unconscious – naturalized over time as absence, as complementary negative space (Cheng 2001: 16, italics added.)

The biblical narrative reflects an unconscious incorporation into its own psychic world of the racialized characteristics of Ruth as ‘absence, as complementary negative space’. This is especially evident when she disappears at the book’s closure. The narrative defines Israelite identity against the Moabite Other but, in an entangled sense, cannot deny that they are linked as kin. Israelite identity cannot escape that the Moabites are the ‘familiar’ Other. Inasmuch as it tries to assimilate Ruth into the community, the narrative cannot shake off her Moabite-ness, which hovers in the text as a phantom in the multiple references to her ethnicity. Israelite identity cannot fully expunge the ‘familiar’ Other. What it does, however, is constrain and maintain that Other within existing structures that subordinate it. For Ruth, this means a triple subjection in terms of

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her gender, ethnicity and class, as an ‘alien-kinswoman’ within Israelite society. Naomi also suffers the loss of homeland in her sojourn to Moab because of the famine in Judah. She too loses her husband and two sons, just as Ruth loses her own husband, her father-in-law and her brotherin-law. However, in contrast to Ruth, Naomi the melancholic subject is given full expression of her grief in 1.20-21, blaming God for her losses: ‘I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty’ (v. 21a, NRSV). Moreover, unlike Ruth, Naomi is able to ‘get over’ her losses. She is reinstated in her homeland, and is able to recover her husband’s property and become incorporated back into her Israelite kin-group by taking Ruth’s son into her own bosom and becoming his caregiver (4.16). The Moabite ancestry of their most famous monarch, David, presented a conundrum to the returning exiles. Because of the conflicted state of Israelite/Moabite relations, the narrative’s depiction of its melancholic subject, Naomi, could not unproblematically present an optimistic picture of exiled elites returning to the land. Ruth therefore must be downgraded. Even though she is the agent of Naomi’s restoration in Judah, Ruth herself does not obtain this full assimilation. As a racial melancholic object, Ruth’s psychic self is split off, remaining the perpetual foreigner unable to ‘get over’ the loss of full integration into Israelite society. Conclusion Racial melancholia is the psychic condition of unarticulated loss, experienced by racialized groups living in a dominant culture. Racialized objects are unable to ‘get over’ the fact that they cannot be fully assimilated into that dominant culture because of institutionalized racism. The melancholic object identifies with this loss and internalizes this degraded racial sense of self, projected by this racism. This essay argues that Ruth’s unarticulated grief, suffered from her numerous losses, is internalized as racial melancholia in the book. The book is a Persian period misremembering of the Israelite conflicts with the Moabites as the familial Other, their alien kin. The ideological purposes of the book are to secure the returning exiles in the traditions of the ancestors, to legitimate the recovery of their lost lands and privilege and to reckon with the Moabite ethnicity of David’s great-ancestress. Although Ruth is the principal agent through whom the exiled Naomi is restored in the land and in her clan, her ideological status as both the familial and female Other makes it impossible for her to become fully Israelite herself. The internalized grief from this loss of Israelite identity is reflected in the narrative’s ambivalence regarding her Moabite status, and can be argued



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as an example of what Asian American critics identify as racial melancholia experienced by Asian immigrants in their attempts to assimilate in the United States. References ANET = James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edn, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994), The Location of Culture: With a New Preface by the Author, London and New York: Routledge. Boer, Roland (2003), ‘Terry Eagleton: The Class Struggles of Ruth’, in Marxist Criticism of the Bible, 65–86, London and New York: T&T Clark/Continuum. Brenner, Athalya (1999), ‘Ruth as a Foreign Worker and the Politics of Exogamy’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth and Esther: Second Series, 158–62, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Brenner, Athalya (2011), ‘Ruth: The Art of Memorizing Territory and Religion’, in David J. A. Clines and Ellen van Wolde (eds), A Critical Engagement: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of J. Cheryl Exum, 82–9, Hebrew Bible Monographs 38, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Carasik, Michael (1995), ‘Ruth 2,7: Why the Overseer Was Embarrassed’, Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 107: 493–4. Chang, Iris (2003), The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, New York: Viking. Chang, Juliana (2004), ‘“I Cannot Find Her”: The Oriental Feminine, Racial Melan­ cholia, and Kimiko Hahn’s The Unbearable Heart’, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 4 (2): 239–60. Cheng, Anne Anlin (1997), ‘The Melancholy of Race’, The Kenyon Review, 19 (1): 49–61. Cheng, Anne Anlin (2001), The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief, New York: Oxford University Press. Eng, David L., and Shinhee Han (2002), ‘A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia’, in David L. Eng and David Kazanjian (eds), Loss: The Politics of Mourning, 343–71. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Eskenazi, Tamara Cohn, and Tikva Frymer-Kensky (2011), Ruth: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation and Commentary, Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society. Fewell, Danna Nolan, and D. M. Gunn (1990), Compromising Redemption: Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth, Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Flax, Jane (2004), ‘What Is the Subject? Review Essay on Psychoanalysis and Feminism in Postcolonial Time’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 29 (3): 905–23. Freud, Sigmund (1953), ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, XIV:243–58, London and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis: The Hogarth Press. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva (2002), Reading the Women of the Bible, New York: Schocken Books. Gillingham, Susan (2013), “‘Moab Is My Washpot” (Ps 60:8 [MT 10]): Another Look at the MLF (Moabite Liberation Front)’, in James K. Aitken, Jeremy M. S. Clines and Christl M. Maier (eds), Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines, 61–71, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

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Hawkins, Peter S. (2006), ‘Ruth Amid the Gentiles’, in Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg (eds), Scrolls of Love: Ruth and the Song of Songs, 75–85, New York: Fordham University Press. Honig, Bonnie (1999), ‘Ruth, the Model Emigrée: Mourning and the Symbolic Politics of Immigration’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth and Esther, Second Series, 50–74, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Hübinette, Tobias (2013), ‘Swedish Antiracism and White Melancholia: Racial Words in a Post-Racial Society’, Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World: A Review Journal, 4 (1): 24–33. Hübinette, Tobias, and Catrin Lundström (2014), ‘Three Phases of Hegemonic Whiteness: Understanding Racial Temporalities in Sweden’, Social Identities, 20 (6): 423–37. Hübinette, Tobias, and Lennart E. H. Räterlinck (2014), ‘Race Performativity and Melancholic Whiteness in Contemporary Sweden’, Social Identities, 20 (6): 501–14. Koosed, Jennifer L. (2011), Gleaning Ruth: A Biblical Heroine and Her Afterlives, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. LaCocque, André C. (2004), Ruth: A Continental Commentary, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. LaCocque, André C. (2006), ‘Subverting the Biblical World: Sociology and Politics in the Book of Ruth’, in Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg (eds), Scrolls of Love: Ruth and the Song of Songs, 20–30. New York: Fordham University Press. Levine, Amy-Jill (1998), ‘Ruth’, in Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (eds), The Women’s Bible Commentary, exp. edn, 84–90, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Linafelt, Tod, and Timothy K. Beal (1999), Ruth and Esther, Berit Olam, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press. Maldonado, Robert D. (1995), ‘Reading Malinche Reading Ruth: Toward a Hermeneutics of Betrayal’, Semeia, 72: 91–109. Parikh, Crystal (2002), ‘Blue Hawaii: Asian Hawaiian Cultural Production and Racial Melancholia’, Journal of Asian American Studies, 5 (3): 199–216. Routledge, Bruce (2004), Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schipper, Jeremy (2016), Ruth: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 7D, New Haven: Yale University Press. Shepherd, David (2001), ‘Violence in the Fields? Translating, Reading, and Revising in Ruth 2’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 63: 444–63. Shiu, Anthony Sze-Fai (2006), ‘On Loss: Anticipating a Future for Asian American Studies’, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 31 (1): 3–33. Takaki, Ronald (1998), Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, updated and rev., New York: Back Bay Books. Uchida, Aki (1998), ‘The Orientalization of Asian Women in America’, Women’s Studies International Forum 21: 161–74. Yee, Gale A. (2003), Poor Banished Children of Eve: Woman as Evil in the Hebrew Bible, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Yee, Gale A. (2009), ‘“She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn”: Ruth, the Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority’, in Randall C. Bailey, Tat-Siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia (eds), They Were All Together in One Place: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, 119–40, Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature.

P oor a n d L a n d l es s W om en : A n A fr i can R e a di ng of L ev i t i c us 25 a nd R ut h 4 wi th L at i n o / a C ri t i ca l T ools * Ndikho Mtshiselwa

Introduction Leviticus 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 contain statements on land and socioeconomic justice. This essay sets out to explore the topic of women and land rights in the economy of ancient Israel as well as in the South African context. It is therefore cardinal that one locates the texts under investigation within their socio-historical context. Milgrom (1999) and Knohl (1995: 213, 223), among others, date the work of the Holiness Code composer (H, to which Leviticus 25 belongs) to the pre-exilic period, whilst Schwartz (1996: 15), Grünwaldt (1999: 375–81), Otto (1999: 134; 2009: 139) and Meyer (2010; 2014: 508) propose a postexilic date. With regards to Ruth 4, a text that is related to Lev. 25.8-55, various dates have been proposed. Although an earlier date for the composition of Ruth cannot be ruled out entirely, it is widely accepted that the Ruth Scroll dates to the postexilic period, specifically in the fifth century BCE.1 In light of the proposed date of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4, it is argued in this study that the issue of women and land rights was also a bone of contention among the addressees of these texts. The concerns about the landlessness and poverty of some Judeans probably form part of the original intention of the texts under consideration. Furthermore, since this study attempts to offer an African reading of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a critical tools, it is argued that the issue of women and land *  This essay is a continuation of my work on Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 as well as on the African reading of biblical texts with Latino/a critical tools. (Cf. Mtshiselwa 2016a and 2016b.) 1.  Cf. De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 1; Zenger 1986: 27; Frevel 1992: 29; Zakovitch 1999: 62; Köhlmoos 2010: xvi; Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xv.

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rights reflected in these texts bears some resemblance to the situation of women in South Africa. In the end, and more importantly, the present essay poses the question: What implications would Latino/a biblical criticism have for the reading of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 in South Africa? An explanation for why I chose South American liberation theology for critiquing the South African situation, as well as on how Latino/a biblical criticism differs from the traditional bible criticism, is in order. Although Latino/a biblical criticism was not initially a project of biblical scholars per se, but of theologians, it is applicable to the interpretation of biblical texts. Latino/a biblical criticism grew out of liberation theologies which, in turn, became context bound with a particular focus on Christianity, the Catholic church in South America, Spanish and Portuguese languages as well as on the Southern Hemisphere (cf. Segovia 2014: 17–20; Pilarski 2014: 233). Also, it was greatly influenced by Marxist theories and concerns, as much as by prevailing inequality and economic conditions in countries under dictatorships and especially in communities of faith (Botta 2014: 109). Latino/a biblical criticism is therefore applicable to the South African context, especially the Christian context which contains Catholicism and Protestantism. South African biblical hermeneutics developed in three phases: first, with a focus on cultural and religious issues in the reading of the Bible;2 and second with an interest in the struggle of black people against racist, patriarchal, political and economic oppression.3 The third phase marks the reappraisal of culture and a re-focus on issues of class, race and economic injustices (Nzimande 2008; Mtshiselwa 2015; Ramantswana 2016). Importantly, there has been less interest in the intersection of racial/ethnic, sexual, gender and class identities in South African biblical scholarship. Thus, the interest of this essay lies in consulting Latino/a biblical criticism, a trajectory that moves in the direction of placing emphasis on this intersection, especially since the intersection of ethnic, gender and class identities seems to be at play in Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4. According to Agosto (2010), a forerunner for ‘reading through Latino/a eyes’, the context of the Bible’s reader becomes the critical object of inquiry, alongside the biblical texts and their contexts, in Latino/a biblical criticism (cf. Segovia 2014: 12). Thus, the text is brought to bear on the modern context, subsequently leading to the affirmation – and 2.  Cf. Mosala 1989; Maluleke 1998: 133; De Gruchy and De Gruchy 2005: 146; West 2016: 341–2. 3.  See Motlhabi 1973; Maluleke 1998: 133; Kee 2006: 87; Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2013a; West 2016: 341.



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at times the negative reception – of the ancient text. Gonzalez (2010), a Latino/a pioneer of a ‘reading with the Latino/a community’, calls for a distinctive reading of ancient biblical texts that is different from traditional biblical criticism in the way it ‘moves from one optic of marginalisation to another – from ethnic-racial, to economic, to gender, and so on’ (cf. Segovia 2014: 19). What this means is that the readers’ roles and their contexts become a key tool in the interpretation of the biblical texts.4 The basic premise of Latino/a biblical criticism is recognizing a state of injustice/oppression, and sets out to establish the identities and contexts of modern Bible readers as a tool of interpretation. It calls for an intersectionality of racial/ethnic, sexual, gender and class identities in the interpretation of biblical texts, and thus is worthy of an inquiry in the South African context. To that end, we now turn to Latino/a biblical hermeneutics. Latino/a Biblical Criticism On the hermeneutical level, Latino/a approaches in biblical criticism ‘posit the community as the foundation, optic, and objective of interpretation – imbued by an overriding awareness of marginalisation, a clarion call for solidarity and liberation, and an unwavering appeal to ideals of social justice’ (Segovia 2014: 37; cf. Segovia 1995: 324). A hermeneutic enthused by Latino/a biblical criticism, particularly in the study of the Hebrew Bible (HB), therefore teases out concerns for social justice in both the ancient and modern contexts. In other words, Latino/a biblical criticism places the modern context at the heart of biblical interpretation, and more importantly, it teases out the ideals of social justice in both the HB and modern contexts (Segovia 2014: 37; Mtshiselwa 2016a: 143). Behind the exercise of Latino/a biblical criticism is a ‘desire for self-assertion and self-introjection, in the light of the practices of marginalization and erasure that govern their reality and experience in society and culture’ (Segovia 2014: 3). Furthermore, Latino/a biblical criticism is critical of the ideological contestations that are embedded in ancient texts (Carroll 2013: 9–10). Thus, teasing out both the oppressive and liberating ideologies of the authors and redactors of ancient texts becomes important for a Latino/a biblical critic. Put differently, a Latino/a biblical critic highlights the oppressive ideologies of the dominant social class at the time of the 4.  Cf. Pilarski 2014; Lozada Jr 2014: 369; Segovia 2014: 2; Mtshiselwa 2016a; West 2016.

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production of ancient texts. It also focuses on the theological and socioeconomic ideologies, among other ideological factors, that influenced the composition and redaction of biblical texts. Segovia’s and Carroll’s contributions to Latino/a biblical criticism are significant. However, Botta’s (2014: 116) illustration of the way the HB may be approached holistically with Latino/a critical tools adds a curious dimension to the concerns of this essay. For instance, Botta prefers to read the statement, ‘…the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed’ (Isa. 61.1; NRSV) as an allusion to the good news that is meant for ‘the social class comprising the materially oppressed only and never for the social class of the oppressors’. Such a reading shows that Latino/a biblical critics are mindful of the social class dynamics that are embedded in biblical texts. Based on the contributions by Segovia, Carroll and Botta, an African reading of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a critical tools offers an interpretation that is imbued by an overriding awareness of marginalization. Such a reading highlights the concerns for social justice in Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 as well as in the South African context. It is worth noting that Latino/a biblical criticism is consistent with the contextual approach employed by the South African scholars Mosala (1989) and West. Worthy of note is West’s call for a dialogue between the modern context and the biblical text (West 2010: 30). Concurring with West (2010: 30), before the ancient biblical text can be brought into dialogue with the modern context, it must be given its own voice, by locating it within its socio-historical context. Poor and Landless Women in Leviticus 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 The HB is a religious document that is not without difficulties. If not read with the aim of highlighting how women are oppressed in ancient texts, aspects of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 have the potential of being interpreted as oppressive to modern readers. It is critical therefore that we probe whether some women were landless and poor in the context from which these texts emerged. Dating Leviticus 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 In his study of Lev. 25.8-55, Meyer (2005: 221–55) argues in favour of a postexilic dating of the final form of Leviticus 25. For him (Meyer 2010: 1-6; 2014: 508) attempts at dating the text back to the pre-exilic period are unconvincing, thus refuting Milgrom’s claim (Milgrom 1999) that the origins of H lie in the eighth century BCE. Meyer (2005: 252–3) further



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engages with Joosten and with Knohl, who argue for a preexilic dating of H based on the view that the exile mentioned in Leviticus 26 was to Assyria and not to Babylonia (Knohl 1995: 213, 223). Knohl’s claim is not convincing because he ignores the possibility that both Leviticus 25 and Leviticus 26 could refer to the Babylonian exile, even though the text refers to a liberated people (cf. Joosten 1996: 203–7). One cannot completely rule out the possibility of a late exilic dating for H (second half of the sixth century BCE), because H seems to have used earlier traditions such as Priestly material (P), the Covenant Code (CC) and the deuteronomistic source (D) (Schwartz 1996: 15; Grünwaldt 1999: 375–81; Otto 1999: 134). This means that a late exilic or postexilic dating would be plausible if H were indeed familiar with earlier exilic sources. In addition, addressing the Judeans as people who have already been delivered (Lev. 26.13), probably from the Babylonian exile, makes a postexilic dating for H plausible (Grünwaldt 1999: 380–1; Meyer 2005: 224, 228). The fifty years of the Jubilee cycle, which may be interpreted as an attempt by the élites to counter the loss of land and to reclaim it after their liberation from the Babylonian exile, points in the same direction (Grünwaldt 1999: 380–1; Meyer 2005: 224, 227). Although Leviticus 25 and Ruth 4 seem to have been composed roughly at the same time, Ruth 4 appears to be slightly later than Leviticus 25. Several scholars date Ruth to the postexilic period, in the fifth century BCE, although a reflection of an earlier period cannot be ruled out entirely.5 The book of Ruth could also reflect the time of King David, whose Moabite part-ancestry was a point of conflict.6 Nonetheless, the usage of the phrase ‘took wives’ (Ruth 1.4), a phrase essentially limited to the postexilic period (as in Ezra 9.2, 12; 10.44; Neh. 13.25) establishes a connection between the Ruth Scroll and a reliable postexilic text (Ezra), and in turn supports a postexilic dating for Ruth (Bush 1996: 19–30; cf. Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xviii). Furthermore, the author of Ruth must have been well acquainted with the narrative texts as well as the legislation in the Torah (LaCocque 2004: 1; Fischer 2006: 3; De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 5). Ruth 4.1-10 evokes Genesis 38 and 5.  Cf. Zenger 1986: 27; Frevel 1992: 29; Zakovitch 1999: 62; Spangenberg 2000: 190; Fischer 2001: 34; Grätz 2007: 277–84; Köhlmoos 2010: xvi; Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xvi; De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 1. 6.  King David’s genealogy seems to have served the purpose of encouraging ‘the Israelites of the postexilic community to accept foreigners in their midst’ (De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 3; cf. Hubbard 1988: 37–42; Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xix).

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Deut. 25.5-10 as well as Leviticus 25 (Hubbard 1988: 33; Zevit 2005; Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xviii).7 Furthermore, if Ruth ‘was written as a narrative critique against the community law of Deut. 23.3-4, which prohibits the presence of Moabites and Ammonites in the community of YHWH’, this supports a postexilic dating as well (De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 1; cf. Fischer 2001: 34; Korpel 2001: 233; LaCocque 2004: 1; Matthews 2004: 212; Cook 2015: 170). Ultimately, in my view, as based on linguistic considerations, intertextual analysis and the legal features of the Ruth Scroll, a postexilic date (probably in the fifth or fourth century BCE) is more plausible. Given Brenner’s (2013: 309) convincing argument that beyond romance, much of Ruth is about land and land ownership, one wonders whether it is also about women and land rights, particularly in the postexilic context. Poverty and Landlessness in Leviticus 25.8-55 An interesting feature of H that appears frequently in Lev. 25.8-55 is the concern for social justice (vv. 12, 14-15, 25, 28, 35-37, 47 and 53) which, in turn, triggers the question of whether the addressees were faced with issues of socio-economic injustice. The negative command, ‘You shall not oppress one another’ (v. 14; NKJV), is presented in the context of agricultural activity relating to the use of land. Therefore, there is a strong indication for some degree of injustice in the handling of land. Verse 25 suggests that there was poverty among the addressees, as expressed in the conditional statement, ‘If your brother becomes poor’. This statement gives us a clue that while some people used land productively, for example by farming, others experienced poverty. A more nuanced understanding of the postexilic social class dynamics that reflects the social context for both Leviticus 25 and Ruth 4 is articulated in Ezra–Nehemiah (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xix). On the socio-economic realities in postexilic Yehud that are implied in both Nehemiah 5 and Lev. 25.8-55, Nihan (2011: 131) remarks: The economic situation described in Lev. 25 has its closest parallel in the account of Neh. 5.1-13 – where Judean landowners are forced to sell their ancestral estate and, ultimately, become indentured slaves working on the estate of other, wealthy Judeans (Neh. 5.8).

7.  See the mention of Rachel and Leah as well as Judah and Tamar in Ruth 4.11-12 (cf. Davies 1981; Bush 1996: 19; Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: xviii).



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It is therefore reasonable to deduce that the addressees of the Israelite Jubilee in the postexilic period, specifically in the fifth and the fourth centuries BCE, experienced socio-economic injustice which widened the gap between the poor and the wealthy. However, Nehemiah 5 is not the only text that throws light on the life of the postexilic Judeans, who probably were the addressees of H. Ruth 4, for instance, also contains statements on land and poverty (and cf. also Deut. 15 and Jer. 32). The evidence for land redemption and poverty in the book of Ruth links Leviticus 25 to Ruth 4 too (Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2004; 2010: 269). These texts sustain the view that, in the postexilic period, the Judeans were faced with the challenge of poverty and landlessness. The situation locates a Sitz im Leben for the H addressees in the postexilic period and invokes a necessity to call for socio-economic justice. A critical question is: Who owned productive land and who was eligible to inherit property in postexilic Yehud? Although Lev. 25.25-28 suggests that in ancient Israel women were alienated from this means of production, namely the land, some women could inherit property (Eskenazi 1992; Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2013b: 146; Mtshiselwa 2016b: 3). The case of the Shunammite woman, who had lost and then regained her land, supports this (2 Kgs 8.1-6).8 However, the Shunammite woman’s narrative not only confirms the loss of land by women, but also suggests that – in the Judeans’ history – some women were landless and experienced poverty. In a context where some women could own productive land, it is strange that Lev. 25.8-55 is silent about women’s poverty and landlessness. It is clear that the text addresses men’s poverty and landlessness exclusively. For H, only males could make claims to land (Meyer 2005: 282). Although Lev. 25.8-55 contains statements on land and social justice, the exclusion of women in the Israelite Jubilee legislation thus suggests gender-bias on the part of H. From a Latino/a biblical critical perspective, the omission of women from Lev. 25.8-55 indicates that women were by and large marginalized from means of production, specifically land. As mentioned earlier, the redemption of land and the depiction of poverty in the book of Ruth relate Leviticus 25 to Ruth 4 (Fischer 1999: 39; Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2004; 2010: 269). Based on this relation, as well as on the view that in the postexilic period some women were both poor and landless, we now turn to Ruth 4, a text which is younger than Lev. 25.8-55. 8.  For detailed studies on women owning productive land see Eskenazi 1992: 25–43; Olojede 2013: 767–8; and Mtshiselwa 2015: 314.

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Women, Poverty and Land Rights in Ruth 4 It is widely accepted that Ruth recalls ideologies of both exclusion and inclusion. Like Jonah, Judith and Isa. 56.1-8, Ruth argues for an inclusive community (Scharper 2011: 31–3; De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 2). Because of Ruth’s Moabite ancestry, the book is clearly sympathetic to foreigners as it calls for inclusivity (De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 2). Although it opens with the words: ‘In the days that the judges judged…’ it was written in the postexilic period in order to ‘propose an inclusive community and an execution of the Torah in terms of ‫ חסד‬and to tell of YHWH who is far greater than his Torah’ (De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 3, 5). This is an alternative to the ideology of exclusivity in the Torah and the understanding of the Torah (‘the book’) in Ezra and Nehemiah (De Villiers and Le Roux 2016: 5). Ruth undoubtedly contains both elements, inclusivity and exclusivity, particularly in the context of mixed marriages, identity of ‘Israel’ and YHWH worship. A worship context is cardinal for ideologies of exclusion and inclusion; nevertheless, the mention of land in scenes with Boaz, Ruth and Naomi is as intriguing. It seems that notions of inclusion and exclusion were transferred from the debate on mixed marriages, identity and worship to the discourse on women and land rights. The issue of land, specifically the statement that Naomi is selling the land, seems odd: suddenly she is no longer extremely poor, but apparently possesses a field. Since Ruth, the Moabite woman, is present in the scene when Naomi sells the land one may further ask whether at issue is women’s landlessness or just ‘foreign’ women’s connections to the land. Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky question the late mention of land in Boaz’s discussion of the redemption: ‘Why is the land the subject now, when earlier (3.10-13) Boaz apparently spoke only about redeeming Ruth?’ (2011: 73). Answering this question is not an easy task. However, some remarks on the entitlement to land, or rather on Naomi, Ruth and land rights, are in order here. Although the usage of ‫ גאל‬Qal, ‘redeem’ in Ruth 3.13 suggests that Boaz speaks only about redeeming a person, Ruth, the same verb and other forms of the root in 4.4, 6-7 indicate that the redemption is about land. As the story unfolds, it becomes evident that the negotiation about the land is a means to redeem Ruth: that is, not only to secure her social and economic position, but also to rescue her and Naomi from poverty (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: 74). Regaining the land would safeguard the economic well-being of both women. It is thus reasonable to argue that the book is at least partly about women’s poverty and landlessness.



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Bush (1996: 215) observed: ‘Naomi as the wife of the deceased has the right to the usufruct of the field of Elimelech and, hence, the right to redeem it, i.e., buy it back from whoever now is in possession of it’. It therefore makes sense to argue that the Ruth Scroll is partly concerned with women and land rights. Interestingly, not only does Boaz’s invitation to the near-redeemer to buy back Elimelech’s field suggest that Naomi does not have the means to do so, it equally shows that the land is not actually in Naomi’s possession (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: 73). The Scroll may thus be viewed as exhibiting the case of a woman, Naomi, who no longer possesses a man’s land (Elimelech’s) even though she is still entitled to its usufruct. Interestingly, the omission of the land’s price suggests that the narrator’s focus is on the human drama, which involves Ruth’s Moabite status, not the land per se (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: 75). Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky’s insinuation that the narrator’s focus is probably not the land is beside the point. Rather, at issue is the point that Ruth, the Moabite woman, is somehow brought into the discussion of the right to the usufruct of Elimelech’s field. Ruth’s Moabite ancestry comes with the idea of foreigners’ exclusion. Drawing Ruth into the issue of usufruct rights from land introduces the ideology of inclusivity to the debate about land. Much like Naomi’s entitlement to the land, Ruth’s rights to the land are obscure. However, as Mahlon’s widow, even though a Moabite, she does have a share in the inheritance of the land now under Naomi’s jurisdiction (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: 75). Thus, the Ruth Scroll shows evidence of ‘foreign’ women’s access to the land. Against ancient Israel’s ideology of excluding foreigners from social life, Boaz’s inclusion of Ruth in the debate about productive land supports an ideology of inclusion. While the idea of linking ‘foreign’ women to land as well as the view that the Ruth Scroll is also about women and land rights is justified, the idea of exclusivity in respect to land allocation is still worth noting. The majority of reapers in Boaz’s field (2.4-7) are females who do not possess productive land, whereas the male minority, such as Boaz (4.3 onwards), has access to more land (Masenya [Ngwan’a Mphahlele] 2013a: 1; Mtshiselwa 2016b: 2). The necessity to transfer ownership of productive land to a husband or son confirms the idea that legitimate access to land was exclusive to men. It was crucial that a woman produced a son (4.7). It also seems that women were excluded from negotiations about land. It is puzzling that, even though Naomi had the right to the usufruct of Elimelech’s field, being a widow of the deceased man, Boaz is

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the one to look for a buyer and is at the forefront of the negotiations (Bush 1996: 215). Verses 4.5 and 9 do suggest that the land was under Naomi’s jurisdiction (Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky 2011: 75). Nevertheless, a man (Boaz) negotiates, serving not only as a hero helping to restore the land to Naomi, but also as a person who occupies a position superior to Naomi’s. Why does Ruth 4 present Boaz as having the authority to negotiate on Naomi’s behalf? That Naomi has left Judah with her deceased husband and has to be re-introduced to Judahite society by Boaz who, in turn, possesses the knowledge of what happened to Elimelech’s field and who is active in the agricultural economy of the time, may account for Boaz’s position of authority. Nonetheless, Ruth 4 presents the picture of a woman who has no voice in land negotiations. The silencing of Naomi by the narrator and by Boaz, which may be viewed as a form of exclusion, is a depiction of regular patriarchal practice. Reading Leviticus 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 in South Africa A reading of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a critical tools demands that one pay attention to the struggles of the marginalized, the oppressed and the poor in the South African context. In South Africa, the issues of poverty, food security, access to land and agrarian reform are intertwined (Modise and Mtshiselwa 2013). Recent statistics reveal that black women here are the most affected by socio-economic injustice. Within the 56 percent of poor women in South Africa, 63.8 percent are black women (Stats SA 2012: 71; Mtshiselwa 2016b: 1). Many women are ‘denied inheritance right to parents’ land and are evicted from the marital home after divorce or being widowed…’ (Odeny 2013: 7; Bob, Bassa and Munien 2013: 142). Cultural norms which are rooted in patriarchy place women on the margins in the agricultural sector. Instead of owning productive land, black women are employees of the male owners. Clearly, ‘the patriarchal society of South Africa has created out of women a wage class with nothing but their labour power to sell’ (Mtshiselwa 2016b: 2). There are striking similarities between the experiences of women in South Africa and in the texts under investigation. Not only is patriarchy evident in Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 as well as in South Africa: in both, women are landless and poor. They are relegated to the level of labourers without productive land whilst men, who are the minority of the general population, have access to land. A modern reader of the HB, one who draws on Latino/a biblical criticism, may find the texts of Lev. 25.8-55



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and Ruth 4 oppressive because of women’s location on the margins of society, with no productive land. It may therefore be argued that these texts do not offer liberating possibilities that would address the challenge of women’s landlessness and poverty in South Africa. However, when the patriarchal and oppressive nature of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 is highlighted, as in the present essay, a step towards a liberative reading of such texts would have been taken. Conclusion Although the authors of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 articulate the concerns for social justice in the statements on land, a reading informed by Latino/a biblical criticism reveals the unresolved issue of women and land rights. An inquiry into the composition date of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4, as well as the possible socio-historical context of the texts’ addressees, shows that women experienced a patriarchy which, in turn, perpetuated their landlessness and poverty. Even though there is compelling evidence that some women owned land in ancient Israel (2 Kgs 8.1-6), H excludes women from the Israelite Jubilee legislation, intended to address the concerns for social justice in postexilic Yehud. Ruth 4, a text that is both related to and younger than Lev. 25.8-55, equally reflects women’s experience of landlessness and poverty. Whilst Naomi and Ruth have a right to productive land because of their marriages to Elimelech and Mahlon, respectively, the text alienates them from this means of production. An African reading of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 with the Latino/a critical tools also reveals striking similarities between the postexilic context and the contemporary South African context. In both contexts, patriarchy rears its ugly head. Not only are women landless and poor, but they are also relegated to the level of labourers in fields owned by a male population minority. Based on the apparent resemblance between the situation of the addressees of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 on the one hand, and of women in South Africa on the other hand, this essay submits that aspects of these texts, if not read with the aim of teasing out how women are oppressed in them, have the potential of being interpreted as oppressive. However, informed by Latino/a biblical criticism, it is argued that an attempt at highlighting the patriarchal and oppressive nature of Lev. 25.8-55 and Ruth 4 constitutes a positive step towards a liberative reading of these texts in the South African context.

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References Agosto, E. (2010), ‘Latino/a Hermeneutics’, in J. B. Green (ed.), Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, 350–71, 2nd edn, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Bob, U., H. Bassa and S. Munien (2013), ‘Qualitative Approaches to Unpack Gendered Land Relations and Power Dynamics in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal’, Alternation, 20 (2): 121–46. Botta, A. F. (2014), ‘What Does It Mean to Be a Latino Biblical Critic? A Brief Essay’, in F. Lozada Jr and F. F. Segovia (eds), Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies, 107–20, Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press. Brenner, A. (2013), ‘Ruth: The Art of Memorizing Past Enemies, Ambiguously’, in D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi (eds), Remembering Biblical Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: Social Memory and Imagination, 306–10, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bush, F. W. (1996), Ruth, Esther, Word Biblical Commentary 9, Dallas, TX: Word Books. Carroll R., M. D. (2013), ‘Reading the Bible through Other Lenses: New Vistas from a Hispanic Diaspora Perspective’, in C. S. Keener and R. M. D. Carroll (eds), Global Voices: Reading the Bible in the Majority World, 5–26, Peabody: Hendrickson. Cook, L. S. (2015), Reading Deuteronomy: A Literary and Theological Commentary, Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys. Davies, E. (1981), ‘Inheritance Rights and the Hebrew Levirate Marriage. Part 2’, Vetus Testamentum, 31 (3): 257–68. De Villiers, G., and J. Le Roux (2016), ‘The Book of Ruth in the Time of the Judges and Ruth, the Moabites’, Verbum et Ecclesia, 37 (1): 1–6. De Gruchy, J., and S. De Gruchy (2005), The Church Struggle in South Africa, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Eskenazi, T. C. (1992), ‘Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in the Postexilic Era’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 54: 25–43. Eskenazi, T. C., and T. S. Frymer-Kensky (2011), The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth, Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society. Fischer, I. (1999), ‘The Book of Ruth: A “Feminist” Commentary to the Torah?’, in A. Brenner (ed.), Ruth and Esther: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, 24–49, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Fischer, I. (2001), Rut, Freiburg im Bresgau: Herder. Fischer, I. (2006), ‘Das Buch Rut Als Exegetische Literatur’, Bibel Forum, 1–7. http://www.haus-ohrbeck.de/download/VortragIrmtraudFischerdeutsch.pdf (accessed 30 Septem­ber 2014). Frevel, C. (1992), Das Buch Rut, Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk. Gonzalez, J. (2010), ‘A Latino Perspective’, in J. B. Green (ed.), Methods in Biblical Interpretation, 113–43, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grätz, S. (2007), ‘Second Temple and the Legal Status of the Torah: The Hermeneutics of the Torah in the Books of Ruth and Ezra’, in G. N. Knoppers and B. M. Levinson (eds), The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding its Promulgation and Acceptance, 273–87, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Grünwaldt, K. (1999), Das Heiligkeitsgesetz Leviticus 17–26: ursprüngliche Gestalt, Tradition und Theologie (The Holiness Code of Leviticus 17–26: Original form, Tradition and Theology), Berlin: W. de Gruyter.



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Hubbard R. L., Jr (1988), The Book of Ruth, The New International Commentary of the Old Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Joosten, J. (1996), People and Land in the Holiness Code: An Exegetical Study of the Ideational Framework of the Law in Leviticus 17–26, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 67, Leiden: Brill. Kee, A. (2006), The Rise and Demise of Black Theology, Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate. Knohl, I. (1995), The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Köhlmoos, M. (2010), Ruth, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Korpel, M. C. A. (2001), The Structure of the Book of Ruth, Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum. LaCocque, A. (2004), Ruth, trans. K. C. Hanson, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Lozada, F. Jr (2014), ‘Latino/a Biblical Interpretation: A Question of Being and/or Practice?’, in F. Lozada Jr and F. F. Segovia (eds), Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies, 365–70, Atlanta: SBL Press. Maluleke, T. (1998), ‘African Traditional Religions in Christian Mission and Christian Scholarship: Re-opening a Debate that Never Started’, Religion and Theology, 5: 121–37. Masenya, M. (Ngwan’a Mphahlele) (2004), ‘Struggling with Poverty/Emptiness: Rereading the Naomi–Ruth Story in African-South Africa’, Journal of Theology in Southern Africa, 120: 46–59. Masenya, M. (Ngwan’a Mphahlele) (2010), ‘Is Ruth the ’ēšet ḥayil for Real? An Exploration of Womanhood from African Proverbs and the Threshing Floor (Ruth 3:1-13)’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 36: 253–72. Masenya, M. (Ngwan’a Mphahlele) (2013a), ‘Engaging with the Book of Ruth as Single, African Christian Women: One African Woman’s Reflection’, Verbum et Ecclesia, 34 (1): 1–9. Masenya, M. (Ngwan’a Mphahlele) (2013b), ‘The Dissolution of the Monarchy, the Collapse of the Temple and the “Elevation” of Women in the Post-exilic Period: Any Relevance for African Women’s Theologies’, Old Testament Essays, 26 (1): 137–53. Matthews, V. (2004), Judges and Ruth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meyer, E. E. (2005), The Jubilee in Leviticus 25: A Theological Ethical Interpretation from a South African Perspective, Münster: LIT Verlag. Meyer, E. E. (2010), ‘Dating the Priestly Text in the Pre-exilic Period: Some Remarks about Anachronistic Slips and Other Obstacles’, Verbum et Ecclesia, 31 (1): 1–6. Meyer, E. E. (2014), ‘Returning to an Empty Land: Revisiting my Old Argument about Jubilee’, Old Testament Essays, 27 (2): 502–19. Milgrom, J. (1999), ‘The Antiquity of the Priestly Source: A Reply to Joseph Blenkinsopp’, Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 111 (1): 10–22. Modise L., and N. Mtshiselwa (2013), ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913 Engineered the Poverty of Black South Africans: A Historico-ecclesiastical Perspective’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 39 (2): 359–78. Motlhabi, M. B. G. (1973), ‘Black Theology and Authority’, in B. Moore (ed.), Black Theology: The South African Voice, 119–29, London: C. Hurst & Co. Mtshiselwa, V. N. N. (2015), ‘Re-reading the Israelite Jubilee in Leviticus 25:8-55 in the Context of Land Redistribution and Socio-economic Justice in South Africa: An African Liberationist Perspective’, PhD thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria.

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Mtshiselwa, N. (2016a), ‘Mind the Working-class People! An African Reading of Leviticus 25:8-55 with Latino/a Critical Tools’, Old Testament Essays, 29 (1): 133–50. Mtshiselwa, N. (2016b), ‘Reading Ruth 4 and Leviticus 25:8-55 in the Light of the Landless and Poor Women in South Africa: A Conversation with Fernando F. Segovia and Ernesto “Che” Guevara’, HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 72 (1): 1–5. Mosala, I. J. (1989), Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Nihan, C. (2011), ‘Resident Aliens and Natives in the Holiness Legislation’, in R. Achenbach., R. Albertz and J. Wöhrle (eds), The Foreign and the Law: Perspectives from the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, 111–34, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Nzimande, M. K. (2008), ‘Reconfiguring Jezebel: A Post Colonial Imbokodo Reading of the Story of Naboth’s Vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-16)’, in H. De Wit and G. O. West (eds), African and European Readers of the Bible in Dialogue: In Quest of a Shared Meaning, 223–58, Leiden/London: Brill. Odeny, M. (2013), ‘Improving Access to Land and Strengthening Women’s Land Rights in Africa’, Paper presented at the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, 8–11, Washington, DC: The World Bank, April. Olojede, F. O. (2013), ‘Women and the Cry for Justice in Old Testament Court Narratives: An African Reflection’, Old Testament Essays, 26 (3): 761–72. Otto, E. (1999), ‘Innerbiblische Exegese im Heiligkeitsgesetz Levitikus 17–26’, in H. J. Fabry and H. W. Jüngling (eds), Levitikus als Buch, 125–96, Berlin: Bonner Biblische Beiträge. Pilarski, A. C. (2014), ‘A Latina Biblical Critic and Intellectual: At the Intersection of Ethnicity, Gender, Hermeneutics, and Faith’, in F. Lozada Jr and F. F. Segovia (eds), Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies, 231–48, Atlanta: SBL Press. Ramantswana, H. (2016), ‘Decolonising Biblical Hermeneutics in the (South) African Context’, Acta Theologica, Suppl 24: 178–203. Scharper, J., 2011, ‘Torah and Identity in the Persian Period’, in O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers and M. Oeming (eds), Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, 27–38, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Schwartz, B. J. (1996), ‘“Profane” Slaughter and the Integrity of the Priestly Code’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 67: 15–42. Segovia, F. F. (1995), ‘Towards Intercultural Criticism: A Reading Strategy from the Diaspora’, in F. F. Segovia and M. A. Tolbert (eds), Reading from This Place. Vol. 2, Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective, 303–30, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. Segovia, F. F. (2014), ‘Introduction: Approaching Latino/a Biblical Criticism: A Trajectory of Visions and Missions’, in F. Lozada Jr and F. F. Segovia (eds), Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies, 1–39, Atlanta: SBL Press. Spangenberg, I. (2000), ‘The Literature of the Persian Period (539–333 BCE)’, in W. Boshoff., E. Scheffler and I. Spangenberg (eds), Ancient Israelite Literature in Context, 168–98, Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis. Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). (2012), Social Profile of Vulnerable Groups in South Africa 2002–2011, Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.



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West, G. O. (2010), ‘Biblical Hermeneutics in Africa’, in D. B. Stinton (ed.), African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations, 21–31, London: SPCK. West, G. O. (2016), The Stolen Bible: From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon, Boston: Brill. Zakovitch, Y. (1999), Das Buch Rut: Ein Jüdischer Kommentar, Stuttgart: Katholisches Biblewerk. Zenger, E. (1986), Das Buch Ruth, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Zevit, Z. (2005), ‘Dating Ruth: Legal, Linguistic and Historical Observations’, Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 117 (4): 574–600.

Part II S on g of S ongs

A W omanist R eading of the S ong of S ongs in the A ge of AIDS* Cheryl B. Anderson

Introduction The statistics concerning HIV infections in the African American community are shocking. As the reports on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website reveal (www.cdc.gov), African Americans, who are only 12 percent of the population in the United States, represent 44 percent of all new cases annually, and we are nearly half of all persons currently living with HIV in the United States. In 2010, about 70 percent of new infections in the black community were found in men who were gay or bisexual; and black women, infected primarily through heterosexual transmission, were close to 30 percent of those with new infections. To help us understand these statistics, some comparisons are helpful. Young African American gay and bisexual men between the ages of 13 and 24 accounted for more than twice as many new infections as either young white or Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men. Similarly, young black females between the ages of 13 and 24 have infection rates that are five times as high as that of young Hispanic females and twenty times that of young white females. At these rates – the CDC projects – unless the course of the epidemic changes, one in 16 black males and one in 32 black females will be diagnosed with HIV infection at some point in their lifetimes.

* This essay is modified from my essay, ‘The Song of Songs: Redeeming Gender Construction in the Age of AIDS’, in Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace (eds), Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse, 73–92, Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016. Permission to reprint this version was granted by SBL Press and is gratefully acknowledged.

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African Americans are overwhelmingly Christian, deeply committed to their faith and our churches have historically taken strong social and political stances to improve the well-being of the community. Since that well-being is undermined by the spread of HIV, why have black churches failed to take such stances to prevent new infections in our community? To be clear, I am not arguing that black churches have been inactive. To the contrary: black churches have initiated testing programs in their communities and supported those who are HIV positive in multiple ways. Instead, my concern focuses on prevention. After more than thirty years of the global pandemic of HIV and AIDS, we know that it is possible to prevent new infections. The issue is whether black churches can have the conversations and do the advocacy needed to get to zero new infections. Without such actions, there will continue to be about 50,000 new infections each year, and we know that almost half of them will be in the African American community. African American scholars have identified two main reasons for the relative lack of leadership by black churches concerning the pandemic. First, black leadership has tended to focus on race as its primary concern and, in effect, has only addressed the interests of the black middle class. Since those African Americans who were disproportionately affected by HIV tended to be poor, there was less motivation to advance their cause (Cohen 1999). Second, the virus is primarily spread through sexual contact – whether heterosexual or homosexual – and sexual expression is a taboo topic in black churches. That taboo is based in large part on the traditional readings of the Bible concerning gender and sexuality that these churches uphold (Brown Douglas 1999). From such traditional readings, Genesis 2–3 becomes the basis on which homosexuality is condemned (‘God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’), women are to be subordinate to men (‘He shall rule over you’) and, correspondingly, the notion is that sex should be within marriage and primarily for reproduction. My basic premise here is that this hierarchical gender construction, along with its emphasis on heterosexuality and procreation, are deeply problematic in the context of HIV and AIDS. As a womanist biblical scholar who seeks the well-being of the whole African American community, my purpose in writing this essay is to suggest that a different gender and sexuality paradigm can be found in the Song of Songs. As a result, African American Christians can continue to use the Bible as a source of inspiration and direction, but we can choose alternative biblical paradigms concerning the construction of gender, the issue of homosexuality and the question of sexual desire that will enhance rather than undermine our lives.



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Challenging Traditional Gender Paradigms Without a doubt, Genesis 2–3 has been interpreted in ways that consider women to be ‘inferior’ and suggest they should be ‘subordinate’ to men (Trible 1978: 73). In other words, the traditional heteronormative gender paradigm is that men should be dominant and that women should be subordinate. Such a hierarchical understanding of masculine and feminine roles appears to be reinforced by very selective readings of particular New Testament texts such as: ‘Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Jesus is the head of the church’ (Eph. 5.22-23 NRSV), and ‘Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says’ (1 Cor. 14.34). Taken together, these texts appear to ‘proclaim male superiority and female inferiority as the will of God’, just as Trible contends. A fuller discussion – and fairer analysis – of these texts can be found elsewhere (Martin 2006; Williams 2004). For the purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on the harm caused by that male dominance/female subordination gender paradigm in the context of the AIDS pandemic. Globally, more than two-thirds of all persons living with HIV are found in sub-Saharan Africa, and it is on this continent that women theologians and biblical scholars of different faiths have come together and published an extensive body of literature on the connection between traditional gender paradigms and the high rates of HIV infection in women (i.e., Dube and Kanyoro 2004; Phiri, Haddad and Masenya 2003). For example, cultural patterns favor male privilege and condone husbands having access to women outside of marriage, yet the wife’s subordinate status prevents her from negotiating safer sex practices when her husband is at home. As a result of these and other factors, there are more women who are HIV-positive in sub-Saharan Africa and, globally, heterosexual marriage puts women at risk for contracting the virus. Another significant harm associated with the traditional gender paradigm is gender-based violence. There is a connection between violence against women in all forms – including rape and intimate partner violence – and the male dominant gender paradigm. It simply stands to reason that if manhood is defined as control over women, violence will be used to maintain or re-establish control (Anderson 2004: 101–17). As Kelly Brown Douglas explains (2012: 178), black women are disproportionately impacted by intimate partner violence, yet black churches have often failed to address the issue. She finds that, in effect, black women are thought of as ‘temptresses’, ‘blamed for the attack on their bodies’ and

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consequently ‘black women are compelled to “sit in silence” regarding their abuse, since they are very aware that they will not be fairly heard’. Compared to that in Genesis 2–3, the construction of gender in the Song is refreshing. As described by Phyllis Trible, this is a redeemed male and female relationship where ‘There is no male dominance, no female subordination, and no stereotyping of either sex’ (Trible 1978: 161). Rather than requiring her silence, the Song of Songs offers ‘the only unmediated female voice in all of Scripture’, and ‘unlike many women in the Bible, she is assertive, uninhibited, and unabashed about her sexual desires’ (Weems 1997: 364). Many aspects of this non-traditional gender paradigm can be seen in just one pericope – Song 3.1-5. Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. ‘I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves’. I sought him, but found him not. The sentinels found me, as they went about in the city. ‘Have you seen him whom my soul loves?’ Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does: do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready! (NRSV)

In the woman’s voice, this pericope shows her to be active rather than passive and, since she is responding to her lover having sought her in 2.8-17, the mutuality of the relationship is shown. Furthermore, this search for her lover can be contrasted with that of the woman in Proverbs 7; whereas the woman is depicted as a ‘villain’ in Proverbs 7, the woman in the Song is depicted as a ‘heroine’. This difference, it may be argued, shows that ‘the Song offers an alternative image of a woman searching the city for her lover and insists on a more complex and spacious view of female desire than Proverbs offers’ (Cox and Paulsell 2012: 219–22).



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It must be mentioned that not all scholars see the Song as literature that supports gender mutuality and female empowerment unequivocally (Clines 1995; Sasson 1987; Moore and Burrus 2010). Nevertheless, the Song of Songs calls us to find new ways of loving that go beyond our traditional boundaries and limitations. In her reflection on 3.1-5, Renita Weems writes: ‘Love encourages us to stretch beyond our boundaries, beyond our narrow self-interests, beyond our comfort zones. Love encourages us to take risks, to embrace other ways of thinking, other ways of being, and other ways of doing’ (Weems 1997: 398). Finding such new ways to love ourselves, each other and our communities is imperative for African Americans in the context of the AIDS pandemic. Going Beyond Heteronormativity: The Question of Homosexuality Traditionally, churches have condemned homosexuality, affirming that heterosexuality is the only acceptable form of sexual expression for Christian believers, and black churches are no exception. Such positions are ostensibly based on biblical texts such as Lev. 18.18 and Rom. 1.26-27 that are deemed to be, as is often heard, ‘crystal clear’. Since the AIDS pandemic in the United States disproportionately affects men who have sex with men (MSM), intravenous drug users (IDU) and those presumed to have engaged in sexual activity outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage, HIV-positive status has sometimes been viewed as the consequence of bad behavior and may explain why black churches were initially reluctant to address the issue publicly. Some leaders may have thought that addressing the issue would be misconstrued as their ‘implicitly condoning behaviors that the Church considers immoral’ (Harris 2010: 49). In spite of very vocal opposition to the greater acceptance of LGBTQ persons in the life of black churches, there has also been a growing recognition of their presence in and contributions to those same faith communities. As a result, a kind of theological compromise has developed in the form of ‘Love the sinner but hate the sin’. Such a statement permits homosexual expression to still be considered a sin – but it also allows traditional Christians to be more welcoming and to become more engaged with measures to combat the pandemic. However, the negative consequences of continuing the staunch opposition to the greater inclusion of LGBTQ persons remain profound.

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One consequence is that the condemnation of homosexuality and the initial association of the pandemic with homosexual men have created a stigma, and that stigma can deter persons from getting tested or beginning treatment. Any activity concerning HIV diagnosis or treatment is feared, because it could identify persons as ‘gay’ or mark them as involved in questionable behavior. As a result, rates for HIV testing tend to be lower than they should be in the African American community, and individuals who have tested positive enter treatment later than they should. In addition, the condemnation of homosexuality impacts black LGBTQ youths who are rendered homeless when they are forced out of their homes after disclosing their gender identity or sexual orientation to their parents, or they leave because they would face abuse if they remained in the home. When these youths end up on the streets, they all too often have to use transactional sex to meet the basic human needs of food, clothing and shelter – and those encounters put them at a higher risk of contracting the virus. Finally, there is a dynamic referred to in the popular media as the ‘down low’, where men present themselves as heterosexuals, have girlfriends or even marry a woman, but they also have sex with men. It is thought that these men prefer to appear to comply with traditional patriarchal norms rather than face the condemnation of the black community. Furthermore, men who identify as heterosexual may engage in same-sex activity while incarcerated. However, these forms of closeted behavior put the men, as well as the women with whom they are involved, at risk for infection. Because of the three negative consequences described here, it is not an exaggeration to conclude that the condemnation of homosexuality by black churches continues to put black persons – and the black community – at risk. Given the church’s ability to shape the community’s values, this exclusionary policy must end if we are to effectively prevent new HIV infections. It is noteworthy that the same black church tradition that was able to see beyond biblical mandates for ‘slaves to be obedient to their masters’, fails to interrogate the biblical witness with respect to either women or homosexuals. In fact, some black scholars have actually questioned why heteronormativity is so strongly upheld. Brown Douglas (1999: 67–8) posits that, because the white culture labeled black sexuality as deviant, the black community has sought to distance itself from any non-normative behavior that would seem to justify imposed stereotypes. Others suggest that heterosexual privilege may be the only privilege that black men and women have, and to give up that privilege appears to be anathema (Harris 2010: 57–8).



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In the final analysis, Christian believers claim that their opposition to homosexuality is solely based on the apparent biblical proscriptions. However, little to no attention is ever paid to the ancient cultural values that shaped those proscriptions. For example, the same traditional gender paradigm that requires males to be dominant and females to be subordinate undergirds, in part, the condemnation of homosexuality in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Since the male is to be dominant (the one who penetrates), the possibility of a male who is penetrated is unacceptable. Furthermore, in the Hebrew Bible, based on an ancient understanding of human biology, the male’s seed was not to be wasted, and so male-to-male sexual relationships were suspect; but female–female relationships that did not involve male seed were not addressed (Fewell and Gunn 1993: 106–9). My intention here is not to offer an exhaustive analysis of the wellknown ‘clobber passages’ that are usually cited to support the church’s condemnation of homosexuality. That kind of analysis can be found elsewhere (Rogers 2009; Martin 2006). Instead, I simply want to point out that the biblical condemnation of same-sex relationships rests on two different ancient cultural assumptions: a hierarchical gender paradigm is required; and sex should only be for procreation since, based on an antiquated and inaccurate concept of the human reproductive process, male seed must not be wasted. Since these underlying rationales are countered in the Song, it becomes a helpful resource to move us towards readings of the Bible that will help us prevent new HIV infections. As mentioned in the previous section, the usual hierarchical gender paradigm is challenged in the Song: the female lover is active, not passive, and the relationship of the two lovers is mutual rather than one of dominance/submission. Yet these are not the only significant differences in the gender paradigm described in the Song. In addition, the lovers are not married, and procreation is not the purpose of their encounters. In fact, Athalya Brenner writes that ‘quite a number of the plants repeatedly mentioned in the Song of Songs have been used as female contraceptives and abortifacients throughout the Mediterranean world for, quite literally, ages’, and she includes pomegranates, dates, myrrh, cinnamon and mixed wine, among others, as examples (Brenner 1997: 72–89). More pointedly, she finds that some of the exchanges between the lovers, thought to demonstrate their mutuality, also communicated messages about the availability of contraceptives, given the types of plants and liquids mentioned.

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The Five Scrolls In such a social context, it is imperative for a woman not to become illicitly pregnant (…), not to seem to have lost her virginity. Therefore, for instance, a seductive male voice in 4.9–5.1 may be reassuring his lover through his recital of a list of aromatic plants which double as contraceptives that no consequences will have to be suffered. Or, a female invitation for a male lover to come to her mother’s house, so that ‘I will let you drink mingled wine, pomegranate juice’ (8.2b) might be read as a reminder of contraception, too – at least on a supplementary level (1997: 88).

Since the traditional patriarchal values concerning marriage and reproduction are not the main lesson to learn from the lovers’ longings, another message can emerge in the Song. The text then becomes one in which the lovers are able to model ‘a genuine self-offering in which each belongs fully to the other’. In his queer analysis of the Song of Songs, Christopher King notes the reciprocity that occurs in 2.16 and 6.3: ‘My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures his flock among the lilies’ (2.16) and ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he pastures his flock among the lilies’ (6.3). He then argues that such mutual and full self-giving in erotic love requires the freedom to develop a true identity that, in turn, will allow persons to ‘follow where Eros leads’ without having to pledge ‘obedience to iron-clad laws of natural morality’ (King 2006: 364). On this basis, King can assert that ‘it is this liberty to love as one wills that queer people of faith must finally claim as a fundamental principle of human well-being and, truly, of salvation itself’ (2006: 364–5). For King, then, the Song is a text that ‘celebrates socially transgressive Eros’ (2006: 370). That Eros is transgressive because it transcends biblical traditional norms – thought to require marriage before having sex and then limiting sex to procreation – and touches on a universal human need for deep connection. In this way, a queer analysis of the Song is helpful to all human beings and not just to the LGBTQ community. Learning to Affirm Sexual Desire and the Erotic Whenever the topic of homosexuality and the African American faith community comes up in a conversation, if one person says that we have difficulty talking about homosexuality, the other person inevitably responds with ‘But we have difficulty talking about sex in general’. In all honesty, these topics are probably addressed quite frequently in church circles, but we know what is said: ‘Women should be subordinate to men’ (or stated in a different way: ‘Husbands should be heads of the



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household’), ‘Homosexuality is a sin’ and ‘Sex should only be for procreation or, at the very least, within marriage’. Clearly these are frequently heard messages that any traditional Christian would find both comfortable and definitive. The problem is that, in the context of HIV, these messages are counterproductive and contribute to the spread of the virus rather than its eradication. Here are some basic statistics: • On average, American teens start having sex at age 17, but they do not marry until the middle to late 20s. As a result, there is almost a decade when they have sex before marriage – yet ‘abstinenceonly’ education programs in schools and churches may leave youths uninformed and more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases and to have unplanned pregnancies (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ FB-ATSRH.html). • About 40 percent of all babies born in the United States today are born to unwed women, and the rates for African American women are nearly twice as high. Obviously, then, women are having children before they get married – illustrating, once again, that more comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education is needed as a means of HIV prevention (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/13/birthrate-for-unmarried-women-declining-for-first-time-in-decades/ and http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=births-to-unmarried-women). • As mentioned earlier, marriage is not even the ‘safe zone’ in the AIDS pandemic that traditionalists want it to be. Marriage is a risk factor for HIV infections because, for example, infidelity can occur within marriage (some cultures may even expect the husband to have relationships outside of marriage). Then there are also the possibilities of hidden or previous intravenous drug use by a spouse, or the phenomenon of apparently heterosexual men who are married but also have sex with men on the ‘down low’. In spite of these developments in the United States, the only approach to HIV prevention that has been acceptable to conservative Christians is ‘Abstain (until marriage), Be faithful in marriage, and, if necessary use a Condom (“ABC”)’. Such a program is consistent with the ‘abstinenceonly’ programs used in schools, and its use was a condition for funding under President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program (Zimmerman 2013: 137–45). Yet ABC is not an adequate prevention strategy in the United States – especially since it ignores same-sex partners who until recently were not able to marry, and who constitute about 70 percent of new HIV

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infections among men in the African American community. However, my concern here is not the (in)effectiveness of ABC as a prevention strategy. Instead, my concern is that abstinence-only sex education programs in schools, and ABC as a prevention strategy in the context of the AIDS pandemic, reflect and are consistent with compulsory heterosexuality as already outlined: women should be subordinate to men, homosexuality is condemned and sex should only be within marriage and, ideally, for procreation. Given the current realities of sexual expression in the United States, an effective HIV prevention program must be one that affirms (or at least acknowledges) sexual desire as part of human nature and that functions independently of marital status and procreation. Once again, Trible’s reading of the Song can be instructive. For her, the Song does not speak ‘to the issues of marriage and procreation ‘…(l)ove for the sake of love is its message’ (Trible 1978: 162). Another scholar writes that the Song, ‘perhaps more than any other biblical book, refuses to be limited by common notions of “family values”. Instead, this book celebrates pleasure for pleasure’s sake’ (Knust 2011: 25). Still another scholar finds that the Song ‘depicts the joys of love unconnected with marriage or procreation’ (Ostriker 2000: 44). In his book, A Lily among the Thorns: Imagining a New Christian Sexuality, Miguel A. De La Torre refers to the Song as unique for two reasons. First, the text ‘vividly describes sexual yearning’ and so refutes the ‘prevalent fear of sexual desire’ that has featured so prominently in the development of Christianity. Second, he finds that the descriptions of sex go beyond references to a particular act, ‘but encompass the pleasure and passion that build toward a final release’ (De La Torre 2007: 59). De La Torre, whose field is Christian Ethics, uses the work of the biblical scholar Carey Ellen Walsh in his analysis of the Song. Walsh’s book, Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs, manages to communicate in very accessible language the metaphorical references that are difficult for contemporary readers to understand. Just a few examples of her analysis are warranted here and will have to suffice. Walsh writes that wine is associated with sexual pleasure as seen in ‘your love is better than wine’ (1.2; 4.10), ‘let us be drunk with love’ (5.1) and finally, ‘in the woman’s imagined seduction with pomegranate wine’ (8.2). According to Walsh, ‘wine and sexual pleasure are linked by their sweetness and by their intoxicating properties’. Similarly, the predominance of fruit imagery in the text can be explained by the analogous properties of fruit to a woman: ‘it has taut, delicate skin, pulpy and yielding flesh, and pungent, fresh scents and tastes’ (Walsh 2000: 118–19).



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Furthermore, Walsh notes that there are also passages in the Song, such as 5.2-6, where no explanation is needed and the ‘poetry is palpably erotic’ (2000: 111–12). I slept, but my heart was awake. Listen, my lover is knocking, ‘Open to me, my sister, my love, for my head is wet with dew…’ My lover thrust his hand into the hole, and my insides yearned for him, I arose to open to my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my lover, but he was gone (5.2-6, Walsh’s translation).

Such erotic poetry in the Song is important because it unequivocally describes and affirms sexual desire. According to James Nelson and Sandra Longfellow, sexuality includes procreation, but, more fundamentally, it is ‘the basic Eros of our humanness that urges, invites, and lures us out of our loneliness into intimate communication and communion with God and our world’ (Nelson and Longfellow 1994: xiv). Consequently, erotic desire expressed in the Song is not limited to heterosexual couples – it reflects the humanity of any person, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. David Carr, in his work on the Song, finds that the erotic, the desire for connectedness, enables us to bring spirituality and sexuality together. In his book, The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible, Carr finds that the Song provides us with three levels of understanding the erotic. One level describes ‘our attachments to loved ones, nature, and other things’; a second level focuses on ‘sensuous connection with another person, a poem, a piece of nature, the world’; and yet another level ‘opens us to experiencing God loving us in and through those things’. For Carr, it is very important to accept the fact that ‘God lies beyond even our best erotic connections’; otherwise, we may be tempted to ‘love those things as if they were God’. As a Hebrew Bible scholar, Carr’s analysis is grounded in the biblical witness – our having been made in ‘God’s bodily image’ (Gen. 1.26-27) and that we are to love God and other human beings (Deut. 6.5) (2003: 17, 148–9).

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In bringing together our spirituality and our sexuality in this way, Carr (2003: 148) is reminding us of our embodiment – and that God deems it ‘very good’ (Gen. 1.31). However, as Brown Douglas (2012: 169) contends, an anti-body narrative has had a particularly destructive effect on black bodies in a white supremacist culture that labels our bodies as ‘out of control’. In the white collective consciousness the black body represented all that had to be overcome, it was a body fueled with passions and desire – it was a body out of control. As we have seen, in an effort to escape the caricature of being an out-of-control body people, the black community fostered a body denying/body phobic narrative of civility to match that of white culture.

The ‘body denying/body phobic narrative’ that Brown Douglas describes helps us to understand why African American communities, in general, and our churches, in particular, have supported the ABC approach to HIV prevention, promoted by white conservative evangelicals. In such a context, for African Americans to reject abstinence-based measures runs the risk of re-inscribing white racist caricatures of our community. At the same time, in the context of the AIDS pandemic, adopting the ABC approach means the behaviors that put our people at risk are ignored and consequently not addressed sufficiently in any prevention efforts. Rather than denying our bodies and the power of the erotic, we need to embrace our bodies and the power of the erotic within them. As Audre Lorde has written, the power of the ‘erotic’ ‘is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling’ (Lorde 1984: 53). Furthermore, she writes that the power of the erotic is the connection to the capacity to feel joy and that connection to the deep feeling of joy can help us to live our lives more authentically (1984: 56–7). According to Lorde, our sense of the erotic becomes the basis on which we can evaluate all dynamics in our lives. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe (1984: 57).



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Applying Lorde’s analysis to the current context, it is undeniable that we in the African American community are settling for ‘the conventionally expected’ and ‘the merely safe’ when it comes to strategies for HIV prevention. If we are to end the pandemic, we must begin to embrace our bodies, our inherent need for connection and joy, and fashion prevention strategies that are consistent with our multifaceted realities. As mentioned earlier, this analysis of the Song offers those of us who are black and Christian a way to remain biblically based, yet better able to address the realities in our lives. Since those realities are now unaddressed, effective prevention strategies such as comprehensive sex education are not fully utilized, and the well-being of our community remains in jeopardy. In contrast, this womanist reading of the Song could help us reclaim our bodies, address our realities and ultimately lower the rate of new HIV infections in our community. References Anderson, Cheryl B. (2004), Women, Ideology, and Violence: Critical Theory and the Construction of Gender in the Book of the Covenant and Deuteronomic Law, London: T&T Clark. Brenner, Athalya (1997), The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and ‘Sexuality’ in the Hebrew Bible, Leiden: Brill. Brown Douglas, Kelly (1999), Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Brown Douglas, Kelly (2012), Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Carr, David M. (2003), The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible, New York: Oxford University Press. Clines, David J. A. (1995), Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers in the Hebrew Bible, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Cohen, Cathy J. (1999), The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cox, Harvey, and Stephanie Paulsell (2012), Lamentations and the Song of Songs: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, Louisville: Westminster Press. De La Torre, Miguel A. (2007), A Lily among the Thorns: Imagining a New Christian Sexuality, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Dube, Musa W., and Musimbi Kanyoro (2004), Grant Me Justice!: HIV/AIDS & Gender Readings of the Bible, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Fewell, Danna Nolan, and David M. Gunn (1993), Gender, Power and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story, Nashville: Abingdon Press. Harris, Angelique (2010), AIDS, Sexuality, and the Black Church: Making the Wounded Whole, New York: Peter Lang. King, Christopher (2006), ‘Song of Songs’, in Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache (eds), The Queer Bible Commentary, 356–70, London: SCM Press.

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Knust, Jennifer Wright (2011), Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire, New York: HarperCollins. Lorde, Audre (1984), Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Freedom, CA: Crossing Press. Martin, Dale B. (2006), Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation, Louisville: Westminster Press. Moore, Stephen D., and Virginia Burrus (2010), ‘Unsafe Sex: Feminism, Pornography, and the Song of Songs’, in Stephen D. Moore (ed.), in The Bible in Theory: Critical and Postcritical Essays, 247–72, Atlanta: SBL. Nelson, James B., and Sandra P. Longfellow (1994), ‘Introduction’, in Nelson and Longfellow (eds), Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection, xiii– xviii, Louisville: Westminster Press. Ostriker, Alicia (2000), ‘A Holy of Holies: The Song of Songs as Countertext’, in Athalya Brenner and Carole R. Fontaine (eds), The Song of Songs: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, Second Series, 36–54, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Phiri, Isabel Apawo, Beverley Haddad and Madipoane Masenya (ngwana’ Mphahlele) (eds), (2003), African Women, HIV/AIDS and Faith Communities, Pietermartizburg, South Africa: Cluster Publications. Rogers, Jack (2009), Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church, rev. and exp. edn, Louisville: Westminster Press. Sasson, Jack M. (1987), ‘A Major Contribution to Song of Songs Scholarship’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 107: 733–9. Trible, Phyllis (1978), God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Walsh, Carey Ellen (2000), Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Weems, Renita J. (1997), Song of Songs, in vol. 5 of Leander E. Keck (ed.), The New Interpreters Bible, 361–434. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Williams, Demetrius K. (2004), An End to This Strife: The Politics of Gender in African American Churches, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Zimmerman, Yvonne C. (2013), Other Dreams of Freedom: Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking, New York: Oxford University Press.

W h ere L ov e a n d D eat h M e e t : R ea d i n g t h e O l d T e stame nt i n a C on t ex t of G en d er V i ole nce * Mercedes L. García Bachmann

Introduction: ‘A Shadow Stronger Than Death’ For some time now I have wanted to explore possible relationships between the Bible and tango lyrics, two sources of patriarchal affirmation and two loves of mine as well. Tango origins are still debated. Tango is basically a dance, which originated from a mixture of European and African rhythms and which flourished on both shores of the River Plate, in the area of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in Uruguay. Its first recorded lyrics date from the 1920s. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, large numbers of European immigrants, mostly male Italians and Spaniards, came to Buenos Aires and some other areas. Several factors combined to generate frustration and home-sickness in them – and music was one of their means of comfort. Home-sickness (especially for mothers and wives, who had remained in Europe), frustration due to poor living conditions encountered in their new land (partly due to having been allured to America with false promises) and social change are some reasons for tango’s melancholic character.1 Homero Manzi, a great poet who lived in Buenos Aires in the first half of the last century, wrote a tango entitled Después (‘Afterwards’). The singer speaks of his feelings after his beloved died, tired of fighting sickness. Remembrance of her is likened to bits and pieces returning from * An early and longer version of this paper was orally presented at the IOSOT international conference (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, 8 September 2016). This is a modified version, excluding much of the original paper, which appeared (2017) in L. Jonker, G. Kotzé and C. Maier (eds), Congress Volume Stellenbosch 2016 (Leiden: Brill). 1.  See Espasande (n.d.); Salamone (n.d.); Palomino 2007; Stewart (n.d.).

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the past or falling into the past as into an abyss.2 He likens his recollection of her to a shadow stronger than death, an outcry getting lost by being forgotten. While oblivion goes against his outcry, the shadow represents what may remain of her. The shadow may represent what remains of him as well, once she is gone: still alive, yet only a shadow of his very self. As I marvelled at this poet’s mastery of images, I could not help relate this poetry to that other great one in the Song of Songs. Can death be jeopardized? Can love be jeopardized? Death may be jeopardized by love and love may be jeopardized by several factors, including gender violence. One might say love and death are bedfellows, not only in romantic literature but in other areas as well. Gender violence, femicide and violence against children are too present everywhere. Wrong feelings of ‘love’ by the aggressor are actually something else – control, low self-esteem, jealousy, hate. Misunderstood love becomes death. Gender is a lens I will be using here in order to look at some biblical narratives where love and death come together. Death Since both the tango referred to and Song 8.6 use death as a measuring stick, I wondered what other elements were likened to death in the Hebrew Bible. I am looking at death as a relational term. There are five biblical instances where ‫ מות‬is part of a comparison. To die the common death of every human is set in Num. 16.29 as a parameter against an extraordinary death (which, in that narrative, will happen by means of the land opening up and swallowing the culprits). A second text is part of Qoheleth’s philosophical reflection in Qoheleth 3, where he likens beasts and humans: ‘as one dies, so dies the other’, he observes (3.19, NRSV). The other three instances of the noun ‫ מות‬with the comparative ‫ כ‬include the article. The first one of these occurs in Lam. 1.20. The pertinent verse corresponds to the letter reš in the acrostic first chapter:

2.  ‘…sombra más fuerte que la muerte//grito perdido en el olvido…’ Music: Hugo Gutiérrez, ©1944. Online: http://www.todotango.com/musica/tema/275/Despues (accessed 1 August 2016). Although there is nothing explicitly female in the depiction of the deceased, nor are the singer’s sentiments specifically male, I guess the speaker is male and the dead one is a woman (in classical tango, romantic love is heterosexual). Expressions such as ‘your skin as if made of snow’ or ‘your eyes, so absent, crying without pain’ seem to be more gender-ascribed to a woman, while ‘I will pretend to laugh’ seems to be more related to discouraging male exhibition of feelings of weakness, such as pain or longing for someone.



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Look, YHWH! for I am distressed, my bowels turn, my heart revolts inside; for I have grievously rebelled. In the street the sword bereaves; at home it is like death (‫)בבית כמות‬.3

The context here is, of course, very different from that of the Song. Here there is lament and sorrow, rather than celebration or commitment to the beloved one. Furthermore, if Morla Asensio is right in identifying here a literary device consisting of the use of ‘generic consideration of distress (v. 20a-d) followed by a concrete, material case (v. 20e-f)’, which he identifies with hunger, there is here a key difference with the Song’s abundance (2004: 137). The last comparison (‫ )כמות‬appears in Hab. 2.5, a notoriously difficult text. The verse is part of YHWH’s answer to the prophet’s complaint in Hab. 1.12-17. There are translation and structuring difficulties (Emerton 1977). For instance, Robert Haak (1992: 25) joins v. 5 to the beginning of v. 6 rather than to v. 4; and he opts for ‘mire’ (‫ )יון‬instead of ‘wine’ (‫ )יין‬because of its use in Pss. 40.3 and 69.3 in relation to watery chaos. Still other scholars keep the meaning of ‘wine’ and strong drinking as compared to ‘death’ here. In summary, use of ‘death’ with the comparative occurs only five times in the Hebrew Bible, while a few other texts may liken ‘death’ to some other entity without using to the pertinent ‫ כ‬particle. Perhaps death, being not only a deity but also an inescapable and frightening reality, was better not invoked too often. This avenue – comparison to death – has not produced an abundant harvest. And now we turn from death to love. Love I understand love as ‘a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person’, which might or might not include sexual desire.4 I am aware that ancient Near Eastern treatises imposed love upon conquered peoples – and what they felt for the conqueror was far from affection. There are 3.  Translations from the Hebrew are my own, unless otherwise stated. 4.  The Merriam Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus online includes a second rendering: ‘attraction that includes sexual desire’. Seco Reymundo, Puente and Ramos González (1999: 285–6) choose as first meaning of amor: ‘Attraction based on sex toward a person with whom one expects to achieve physical and affective union’. Particularly interesting is the Diccionario de la lengua española (2014), which starts from one’s feelings of insufficiency: ‘Sentimiento intenso del ser humano que, partiendo de su propia insuficiencia, necesita y busca el encuentro y unión con otro ser’.

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biblical texts, however, where love seems to be love, if you know what I mean. We find, in the Hebrew Bible, several relationships permeated by fondness, commitment, faithfulness and, in some, physical attraction leading to sex. We find men who love women and women who love men, men who love men and women who love women. We also find a people expected to love their neighbors, and slaves who would love their masters so much as to remain enslaved to them forever (Exod. 21.1-6). On a more collective level, there is love from Israel to God (Josh. 22.5) and love from God to Israel (Deut. 23.6). All of these are examples where the verb ‫ אהב‬appears.5 Love is not to be confused with eroticism. Either of them can survive without the other, but there is a plus when they are joined together. Eroticism’s presence is undeniable in the Song, even in an allegorical reading of it.6 I am also compelled by Carey Walsh’s claim that the Song is about desire and what desire does to two lovers, to their immediate context (her brothers, the chorus, the women of Jerusalem, the guardians of the city and perhaps the narrator) and to readers of all times. Because they may be read literally, these songs can also tell us much about other longings, for and by God and any individual or group of believers.7 While I recognize the Song’s potential for pornographic readings (it is within the hermeneutical wealth of any text to be read in very diverse ways), as well as difficulties with hetero-normative readings of it, I do not wish to enter those discussions at this point (see Burrus and Moore 2003: 24–34). Love and Wisdom On another hermeneutical key, the location of this little book within Wisdom literature by its attribution to Solomon indicates that, at some point in its history, it was deemed worthy of teaching some truth, either religious or secular, or both. I am convinced that one should not deal with our statement on love in Song 8.5b-7 without considering its relationship

5.  Wallis 1977; Thompson 1974; Ackroyd 1975. Lipiński (2004: 165) asserts, following Prov. 25.17, that ‘[h]atred leads to separation’. 6.  I perceive how little the text says directly and how much one may imagine about literal love: that is good literature! I believe when he or she says ‘my beloved is mine and I am my beloved’s’ (6.3), or ‘I am struck by love’ (2.5; 5.8), these are real affirmations of love, meant to be taken literally. 7.  I have remained with desire or longing rather than love, since that is what Walsh (2000: 55) deals with. For instance, under ‘Types of language about love’ she writes about ‘three major types of discourse about desire in the Song’.



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to wisdom, particularly given the connections to the woman’s exhortation at the end of Proverbs 8.8 Some Biblical Encounters of Love and Death Research on the relationship of love with death (or death with love) in the Hebrew Bible is too broad to be encompassed in one single presentation. Thus, I made a start by looking only at verses in which both the roots ‫ אהב‬and ‫ מות‬appear together. There turned out to be only a few examples (thus it may be necessary in the future to broaden the scope of the quest): a combination of ‫ אהב‬and ‫ מות‬gives four relevant texts, to wit: Gen. 44.20, 2 Sam. 19.6 (MT 19.7), Prov. 8.36 and Song 8.6.9 Love for and Death (Peril) of Children Genesis 44.20 is part of Joseph’s brothers’ recalling an earlier explanation, at the Egyptian court, of their family situation at home: ‘We have an old father, and a child of his old age, a small one. His brother is dead; he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him.’ Although here ‘love’ and ‘death’ have different subjects, they are related. Jacob’s love for Benjamin is related to two deaths, having left the latter as the only remaining child of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. In a patriarchal world where descent is so important, it is telling that the youngest of all sons would be identified as beloved because of his brother’s and mother’s death. (Earlier in the story, in Genesis 37, we read that Jacob loved Joseph over all other brothers). Genesis 44.20 joins a few stories about fathers who are torn between love for a child and his (or her) death. Genesis 22.2 is the first such text, in which Abraham is ordered to take ‘your son, your only one, whom

8.  ‘It is a sapiential, not a prophetic book’ (Barbiero 2011: 507). Sparks (2008: 278) proposes that the Song ‘originated as a wisdom composition, as a collection of love songs edited to teach young Jewish women propriety in matters of love and sex’; likewise: ‘If the Song of Songs is not a wisdom book, then it will be the only one associated with Solomon’s name that is not such a composition. For this reason we have good warrant for considering the possibility that the Song is a wisdom text’ (2008: 284). 9.  Also Gen. 27.4 (Isaac asks Esau to prepare his favorite dish before his death), and Jer. 20.6 (Pashhur and those who love him will die). Upon consideration of all these texts, I finally left out Proverbs 8 because, unlike all other examples, it does nor refer to love between humans, but toward W/wisdom and, through her, toward YHWH.

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you love, Isaac, and go unto the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering…’ This is the very first reference one encounters in searching the verb ‫ אהב‬in a concordance (see Lisowsky 1958: 28). Other children sacrificed by their fathers come to mind: Jephthah’s daughter coming out to meet him (Judges 11), and a Moabite king sacrificing his first-born upon the wall of his city to save it from the Israelites (2 Kgs 3.27). The narratives do not tell us whether they loved their children, aside from counting on them to have descent; but the texts do tell us that children were at times the currency for victory in war. Another story has a different spin. Absalom’s revolt against David ends up in his execution, after which David mourns him openly and is rebuked by his commander Joab: Then Joab came into the house to the king, and said, ‘Today you have covered with shame the faces of all your officers who have saved your life today, and the lives of your sons and your daughters, and the lives of your wives and your concubines, for love of those who hate you and for hatred of those who love you. You have made it clear today that commanders and officers are nothing to you; for I perceive that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased’ (2 Sam. 19.5-6, NRSV (Heb. 19.6-7)).

David is accused of loving his dead son over his servants, who killed Absalom (no longer an infant) to save the remaining royal family. In Joab’s perspective, David would want the living and the dead, the beloved and the hated to interchange. These are stories of love and death (or peril of death) involving a father and a child. Mothers are totally absent from these narratives, so we have no access whatsoever to their feelings or possible reactions to the situation, in the event that they knew about the father’s actions.10 There are, however, two stories in which the verb ‫ אהב‬is not chosen, but which involve two mothers, each claiming one living child over against one dead child (1 Kgs 3.16-28; 2 Kgs 6.26-31). War is the context of the second one, but unlike the stories of Jephthah and the Moabite king, here the mother wins nothing.

10.  Joseph’s mother no longer lives (Gen. 48.7); Sarah’s death comes in the chapter following his binding. Jephthah’s daughter’s mother is totally absent from the Bible; and in the case of Absalom’s mother, Maacah daughter of King Talmai of Geshur, there are no other references to her aside from 2 Sam. 3.3.



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Song of Songs 8.5b-7 I will briefly lay down here my presuppositions about the Song and about the specific pericope. I see the Song as a composition of diverse poems collected, from different authors, by an editor with a purpose in mind. I accept that there is some sort of internal organization, be it either a Prologue, Poem proper – divided into parts I and II – and Epilogue (Barbiero 2011: 20); a cycle of speeches by the woman and the man, plus some dialogues (Exum 2005: vi); a game in two sets (Tamez 1985: ii–iii); or some other detected structure (Luzurraga 2005: 118; Gordis 1961(5721): 16–18). Since I take the poems to be a collection, I am not bound to presuppose that the words by an ‘I’ persona to a masculine ‘you’ in Song 8.5b-7 imply a female speaker (‘the woman’ or ‘the Shulammite’), because there is no hint one way or the other in our text. Just as in my tango, a patriarchal setting assumes heterosexuality as the norm(al); this makes it highly likely that the Song’s speaker here is a woman.11 I distinguish between desire and love because they move in opposite directions: while it is in the nature of desire to die once satisfied, it is in the nature of love to want to grow closer to the ‘significant other’. However, the Song blurs such a distinction, since three times the daughters of Jerusalem are enjoined not to stir up or awaken love (2.7; 3.5; see 8.4-5, where the adjuration is immediately followed by the statement ‘I awakened you’), while expressions of endearment, intimate encounters, longing and love occur well before 8.5. Delimitation of the Pericope: Song 8.5b-7 Since opinions vary so much as to the Song’s internal coherence and possible structure, they similarly vary as to its message(s).12 This divergence results in several proposals concerning the extent of our pericope. 11.  King (2006) and Hanks (2014: 43–66) note the freedom – particularly but not exclusively from marriage constraints – of the Song, thus opening up a hermeneutical path for other configurations of love. 12.  As mentioned, I lean toward considering the Song as several independent poems, woven together into a loose whole by literary devices such as word repetition, refrains and alternation of speeches by several voices. For instance, Barbiero (2011: 20) notes common elements between the preface and the epilogue (two speeches by the woman and two by the man, and vocabulary unique to these). Added to this list, Luzurraga (2005: 119) includes covenant formulae, recurring themes and places such as garden, vineyard and love sickness; and mutual compliments and descriptions of the beloved.

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Some scholars consider only vv. 6-7 as the limit (e.g., Keel 1992: 245; Noegel and Rendsburg 2009: 160); others include vv. 5-7 (Ravasi 1992: 631–3),13 and still others extend the unit to vv. 1-14 (e.g., Exum 2005: 242). Exum perceives that after two long speeches by the female lover and two by the male lover earlier in the book, in the concluding chapter there are short utterances, ‘where the voices of the woman, the man, and the women of Jerusalem intermingle, and the transitions from one topic to another are more abrupt’ (2005: 244). I offer a translation of vv. 5b-7, just to remind ourselves of the full scope of issues involved in these few verses: Under the fruit tree I disturbed you, there your mother conceived you, there the one who bore you travailed. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For strong as death is love, hard as Sheol is jealousy; its flashes are coals of fire, a divine flame. Many waters cannot quench this love nor rivers can drown it. Were a man to give all the wealth of his house for this love, he/it would surely be scorned.

Main Difficulties in Interpreting the Pericope Although virtually all scholars praise these final words as the pinnacle of the book, there are as many interpretations of them as published works. However, these multiple interpretations are not due to textual corruption, but to the use of polysemic vocabulary and to hermeneutical considerations. Difficulties there are, obviously. Scholars have taken seriously the text’s mythical references to the battle between Mot, Baal and Anath, as well as Sheol, Resheph and the Deep Waters (Pope 1977: 668; Pardee 1987). Recently, Aren Wilson-Wright argued that ‘the Song identifies love with the most powerful force in the Israelite imagination – YHWH, the divine warrior’ (2015: 345). Silvia Schroer too sees mythical antagonism. Looking at love in our text, she sees that ‘[b]ehind such abstract “love” there is the loving woman; it is her love that is fierce like death and 13.  Ravasi distinguishes two main sections: an opening question (‫ )מי־זאת‬in v. 5a, with an introductory function ‘joining the catalogue of repetition of moduli or antiphones, typical of the S[on]g (2,7; 3,5; 8,4; 2,6; 8,3; 2,16; 6,3; 7,11; 2,17; 4,6)’ (1992: 631), and a second section, vv. 5b-7, forming three stanzas, namely (1) the awakening under the tree, at his mother’s house; (2) the sayings on lovedeath, jealousy-sheol, seal-love, rephesh-rephesh; and (3) wealth-love and shame. He sees vv. 5b-7a as the only real stanza in this section, while vv. 5a and 7b are almost anticlimactic (1992: 632–3, chart).



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therefore effective as an amulet worn at the beloved’s arm. This role, however, is incomprehensible without the actual goddesses of love in the ancient Near East who revolted against the death of their brother or husband’ (2014: 158). Today this mythological approach seems to enjoy a basic consensus that is hardly debated. An altogether different approach is that offered by Elsa Tamez, who follows Huizinga’s concept of homo ludens and looks at the different characters playing within the text. Tamez’s evaluation of the whole game is positive in that the game balances society’s ways: ‘The woman was preferred by the text; the text vindicated her because in society (not narrated) she was subordinated and thus, she was always at a disadvantage in the game of love. In narration she had advantage, but not in order to subordinate the other one, but to share on equal terms life at work and at play’ (Tamez 1985: 148). Finally, mention should be made of a proposal by Kathryn Imray, who highlights some unruly aspects of the female imagery in the Song: It is further indicative of the Song’s presentation of the woman’s love that the description of love, with its attendant passion and jealousy, contains a cognate of the name of the Canaanite god ‫( רשף‬Cant 8:6), a chthonic deity who fires arrows into the world causing war and disease, and who appears in Ugaritic ritual texts as the gatekeeper of the underworld… The arrows of love in 8:6 seem not so much to suggest that love results in happiness as that love is a sort of plague. Canticles 8:6-7, therefore, connects love, sickness, and death and also suggests that love can bring a man to social and monetary ruin.14

I find her approach refreshing, because she highlights the unruly aspect of love – of any relationship – as one dimension of passion. Imray’s statement that ‘Canticles 8:6-7…connects love, sickness, and death’ because of the association of Resheph with war and plagues is also intriguing, given recognition (2.5; 5.8) by the woman to being ‘lovesick’ (‫)חולת אהבה‬. I also concur with Imray’s perception that there is a preoccupation in our text with the possibility that love may bring a male to social and monetary death, a preoccupation shared particularly by the late sections of the book of Proverbs (Imray 2013: 654, 664–5). At this point, I would like to put on my gender glasses and remind ourselves that a woman could also face these dangers of social and monetary ruin 14.  Imray 2013: 657. Her reference to sickness comes from ‫רשף‬. Wilson-Wright (2015: 344) suggests that, given the mythical context, the image ‘is both martial and medical’.

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at the hands of ‘love’. While v. 8 uses ‫ איׁש‬and masculine pronouns and verbal markers, exceptional women managed their household’s wealth (including the strong woman of Proverbs 31); and there are women whose households are identified by them, not by a male (Song 3.4; 8.2, 5). Taking another clue from the text, an African scholar notes that, In Song 5.2-6 we encounter the voice of a woman who risks her life to go out in the streets at night in the name of the love she feels for her beloved. This shows just what risks women may take in the name of love… In Song 5.8, the female voice says: ‘I am dying/fainting with love.’ Today, many women risk losing careers, material possessions, social standing, honour and even children due to love. Unfortunately, some even risk dying by engaging in sexual promiscuity, and being the recipient of sexual violence, verbal, psychological, emotional abuse and domestic violence in the name of love. And, due to the enduring patriarchal nature of society, many women continue to live a life of indignity in the name of love (Juma 2014: 145–6).

Love and Death in the Song of Songs 8.5b-7 I see in these verses affirmation of love as a relationship: first with a mother, without whom there would be no lover (v. 5b); then, as a strong and unruly desire between lovers (the adjectives ‫עזה‬, ‘fierce, mighty’ and ‫קׁשה‬, ‘severe, relentless, hard to bear’) excluding any third party (jealousy, darts of fire); with or without YHWH’s direct participation (depending on the translation of v. 6c). Finally, there is the recognition that other social players may try to interfere (v. 7), for good or for bad.15 There are few essays on love and death in the Bible. And even though (as far as I know) virtually none deals with love and death in the Song, a few good ideas may be gleaned from commentaries on this book.16 These ideas may be summarized in the following way: (a) love is the experience closest to death in intensity, particularly in what yielding to love tells about death (Barbiero 2011: 458; Nissinen 2011: 286; Exum 2005: 253); 15.  In some interpretations v. 7 is understood as an allusion against the mohar (bride price), see Barbiero 2007: 99–100. Tamez (1985: 81–2, 96–101, 112–14, 136–9) finds four obstacles to love’s realization: power (including the repression by the woman’s brothers, 1.6; 8.8-9), wealth (1.10-11; 8.7), militarism (5.7) and institutionalism (3.11). Cf. Barbiero 2011: 507; Landy 2011: 128. ‘If an individual does not give his or her wealth, his or her hôn, to Love, where will it go?’ 16.  One welcome exception is Watson (1997) which, unfortunately, is very short. The volume edited by John H. Marks and Robert McClive Good in honor of Marvin Pope (1987) includes a few studies around the topic, but none on love and death in the Song.



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(b) love and death are not oppositional forces: one explains the other (Murphy 1990: 197; Davis 2009: 297; Van der Zwan 2012: 261–2); (c) death’s grip is ‘lessened’ by love (Keel 1992: 244–8); (d) love and death are enemies (Landy 2011: 107, 118). Tension between love and death has been expressed by these and other scholars better than I might have done. Perhaps Wilfred Watson’s insight might prove the wisest: ‘Since this is poetry, perhaps all the multiple meanings are intended, to be discovered by the more discerning reader’ (1997: 386). Men in Love, Women in Love, Love and Death Men of whom it is said that they loved (‫ אהב‬Qal) a woman are not legion – and one may also legitimately question whether the emotion was actually affection or fondness: Isaac ‫ אהב‬Rebekah (Gen. 24.67); Jacob ‫ אהב‬Rachel (and ‘hated’ Leah, Gen. 29.30); Shechem ‫ אהב‬Dinah (Gen. 34.3); Samson ‫ אהב‬Delilah (Judg. 16.4); Elkanah ‫ אהב‬Hannah (1 Sam. 1.5); Amnon ‫אהב‬ Tamar (but after raping her, he ‘hated’ her more than he had loved her, 2 Samuel 13); Solomon ‫ אהב‬many foreign women (1 Kgs 11.1); Rehoboam ‫ אהב‬Maacah (2 Chron. 11.21); and Ahasuerus ‫ אהב‬Esther (Est. 2.17).17 Not many biblical women are said to love: in terms of a relationship to someone outside the immediate family, only Michal ‫ אהב‬David (1 Sam. 18.20, 28; the other instances being Rebekah toward Jacob, Gen. 25.28, and Ruth toward Naomi, Ruth 4.15). Nine men and one woman out of the hundreds mentioned in the Bible is not much. Of these, four die prematurely: Rachel, Shechem, Samson and Amnon. Rachel dies in childbirth, and in two of the remaining cases the lover’s death occurs at the hands of the woman’s ‘party’: Shechem and his whole tribe at the hands of Simeon and Levi (Genesis 34) and Amnon at the hands of Tamar’s brother Absalom (2 Sam. 13.23-29). The fourth story is that of Samson (Judges 16). We will briefly examine these untimely deaths. Shechem and Amnon Shechem’s and Amnon’s stories share several elements: a prince wants to have sex with a woman he (thinks he) likes/loves, her wishes or needs are not considered, after having sex with her the man changes his feelings for her and takes action accordingly, the woman’s brother/s consider the sister to have been sexually mistreated (raped in the one case; ‘treated 17.  Van Seters (1987: 121) explores four stories (2 Sam. 3.6-30; 11.1-24; 13.1-33; 1 Kgs 2.13-46), ‘in which the love or passion of a man for a woman leads to a death, either for the lover or the woman’s husband’.

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as a prostitute’ in the other) and kill the lover in revenge. The lover is ambushed while surrounded by companions or kin, unable to defend himself or be protected (Gen. 34.26; 2 Sam. 13.28).18 Although both stories link ‫ אהב‬and ‫ מות‬and share several motifs, their outcomes are diametrically opposed. According to Genesis, Shechem loves Dinah after having sex with her; according to 2 Samuel, Amnon loves Tamar before having sex with her and hates her afterwards. While Dinah is given no speech at all, Tamar resists her half-brother’s move on her, tries to reason with him and after her rape comes to her brother’s quarters with clear signs of mourning and humiliation. It is debatable whether ‫ אהב‬should be translated ‘loved’ in these two stories, since – romantic love aside – there is no respect for the woman involved. I am aware of how easy it is to fall into anachronisms in matters such as respect, since there is very little evidence in the Bible that a woman’s consent to sex or to marriage was required. Nonetheless, it is hermeneutically very damaging to keep justifying violence against women by the aggressor’s, present or former, sexual partner’s feelings of ‘love’. Samson The remaining story is Samson’s (Judges 13–16). There are four women Samson is related to in his life: his mother, and three others with whom he has love or erotic relationships. The first of the latter is a Timnite woman he sees and marries (ch. 14). Interestingly, he does not say he loves her, but ‘she is right, ‫יׁשרה‬, in my eyes’ (14.3, 8). As we know, he marries her but gets into such a fight with the Philistines before the party is over that he does not get to the erotic part of the deal. In the midst of the party, the anonymous bride cries to him, ‘You only hate me and you do not love me…’ (14.16). We do not have confirmation one way or the other, nor do we hear that she loves him. We do know, however, that for Samson loyalty to his parents comes before loyalty to her: ‘I have not told my father or my mother: Will I tell you?’ (v. 16). Marriage did not presuppose love and there was no time for this couple to grow into it. Not love, but death is much attached to this liaison: first, thirty Philistines are killed by Samson so he can pay his bet (15.2); then, when Samson comes back to the woman only to find that she has been married to another man, he sets fields and vineyards on fire and the Philistines’ enraged reaction is to burn his wife and her father (15.6). 18.  These factors make me wonder to what extent having unauthorized sex with an unmarried girl was a crime, since even Absalom, being a prince like Amnon, needed to plot vengeance rather than execute justice.



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In response, Samson kills some thousands, a ‘great deliverance’ by his own admission (15.18). Here love and death are not offered by the same hands, if love is indeed involved at all.19 Judges 16 continues with these words: ‘And it happened afterward that he loved (‫ )ויאהב‬a woman from the valley of Soreq, and her name was Delilah’ (v. 4). There is very little that is said of her; not even her ethnic background is clear. Likewise, it is unclear what kind of a relationship they have. From their dialogues in ch. 16 one gleans that they have a close physical relationship (she weaves his hair while he sleeps, 16.14). She also claims he has claimed to love her (16.15), with no confirmation from him, no mention of a sexual relationship, no traditional formulae for marriage and also no indication that Delilah is a prostitute. Delilah asks Samson repeatedly what it would take to subdue him (16.6, 10, 13, 15) and the narrator even adds that ‘she pressed him with her words every day and urged him, and his being could not wait to die’ (16.16).20 Samson’s tiredness of her nagging is the reason given by the narrator for his surrender to her. There are nagging spouses, yes. However, Samson’s whimsical attacks on the Philistines and an earlier history of being handed over (by three thousand Judeans, 15.9-13) make me wonder whether there is more to it than Samson’s giving up his freedom and security only because of Delilah’s nagging. Noticeably, nowhere is love mentioned when it comes to Samson’s death. Mercedes Navarro Puerto notes that, ‘What the [Samson] narrative does not say but the context knows is that [loving a woman] is not a treasured feeling in the culture, but a clear sign of weakness’ (Navarro Puerto 2013: 72). At least – she goes on – it is ambivalent, for a man in love will feel restrained in his freedom for bonding with other males, for instance.21 Not only self-control about love, but also self-control about sex, is associated

19.  Samson’s second involvement with a woman (Judg. 16.1) connotes no love: it is a one-night affair at Gaza with an ‫אׁשה זונה‬, a prostitute or a single woman living alone who would be, according to patriarchal standards, ‘playing the harlot’ or ‘fornicating’ by the mere fact of living independently. There is no dialogue involved, no expression of love and no death either. Mieke Bal (1988: 1) starts her book by stating: ‘The Book of Judges is about death’. 20.  The root ‫ צוק‬appears only fourteen times in the Hebrew Bible, ten times in the Hiphil (meaning ‘nag, distress’). Two out of these ten occurrences have Samson’s Timnite wife and Delilah as subjects (Judg. 14.17; 16.16). 21.  Lefkovitz (2010: 19–25) reflects on the association of knowledge, sex and death in the gender construction of ‘woman’ in the first chapters of the Bible, but also on the use of words such as ‘charming, spellbinding, and alluring…’ (2010: 27).

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with power: ‘In the biblical context, sexual self-control indicates male power. On the model of Samson, succumbing to the femme fatale devastates the heroic man, in Samson’s case resulting in symbolic unmanning, a haircut (because of which he loses his strength) and blinding’ (Lefkovitz 2010: 97). Navarro Puerto and Lefkovitz are right on target: a person who loves is no longer free. To Summarize: Love and Death in the Samson Narrative There is a close connection in Samson’s life between love and death; this relationship is not a simple, linear cause–effect relationship, and it involves some guessing as to who loves and who kills. Twice Samson is said to love a woman, but both statements occur in the context of nagging him for his secret, and the connotation seems to be that of loyalty. Neither statement is confirmed by him or by the narrator. And while the first occasion unleashes war between Samson and the Philistines, death to this Timnite wife comes from her own folk as revenge. There is no statement as to her or Delilah’s feelings for Samson, whom the Philistines press for compliance in bringing him down. Delilah’s story with Samson ends up with his strength subdued when he finally tells her the truth about it. How much later he dies is not stated, but this must have taken some time, since his hair had to grow again before he could kill himself and several thousand Philistines at the festival of Dagan. In making Delilah responsible for Samson’s death (as folklore does), his agency is taken away. When made a prisoner Samson is blinded, bound with shackles, made sport of, and made to perform chores the Bible gender-assigns to women, such as milling grain. Were we to give agency to Delilah for his demise, we would both be adding to Delilah’s vilification and lessening Samson’s male subjectivity, which is already compromised. Concluding Remarks: Love, Freedom, and Death I started with a tango about love in terms of a shadow stronger than death. Set in dialogue with his biblical colleague of Song 8, Manzi (the tango lyrics’ author) would attest to love being stronger than, rather than as strong as, death; and, hard pressed, I would agree. When Manzi reminded me of Song 8.5b-7 – the only biblical text to state that love is as strong as death – I wanted to probe whether love could be considered, in the Hebrew Bible, stronger than death. (Of course, most Christians affirm that in Jesus love conquered death. Christian theology would bring in another party to this dialogue, and this is not the place for it.) The difficulty with



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that question is what parameters we would take to compare one (‘love’) to the other (‘death’). Thus, I settled for the examination of their interrelationship in some texts. Looking at the three texts in which the two Hebrew roots ‫ אהב‬and ‫מות‬ come together to speak of human feelings unto other human beings – Gen. 44.20, 2 Sam. 19.6 (MT 19.7), Song 8.6 – there are several similarities between them. Benjamin enjoys a particular place in his father’s affections because he is the bond that ties Jacob to his preferred wife Rachel and his preferred child Joseph, both lost to him (Rachel is dead and Joseph has been declared dead through his brothers’ actions). Also Joab’s rebuke of David has to do with David’s bond with a lost son – Absalom – over against all other bonds, including with his military comrades. There is here a sense of finality, of a bond perceived as tragically severed and irreversible: ‘…for I perceive that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased’, Joab complains (2 Sam. 19.6 [MT 19.7]). This finality may be perceived also in Song 8.5b-7. Common elements between these diverse texts should not be overemphasized, however, since differences speak loud as well. In particular, the poem on love and death in the Song differs from the other stories in that there is no actual death narrated (and the Song text is not a narrative but a poem). How exactly the finality of this relationship between love and death is conveyed is open to much interpretation. For patriarchy, with its double standard of male autonomy and female dependency, a love perceived as weakening or binding is problematic. Samson suffers his wife’s and Delilah’s constant nagging, to the point of death. There is a patriarchal message here: have as many women as you can, but do not give them your heart. And yet, other readings are also possible and desirable. Isaac finds comfort in love after his mother’s death (Gen. 24.67); Jacob labors fourteen years in order to marry the woman he loves (Gen. 29.28); and even with all his pessimism, Qoheleth recommends: ‘Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart… Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life…’ (Qoh. 9.7-9, NRSV; incidentally, here death determines the quality of life’s joys, including the person one loves. Thus, death and love are also related to each other in Qoheleth’s view). The stories under consideration may imply in one manner or another that love binds in ways as strong as death. A contemporary reading with a gender perspective makes us aware also that there is much more to intimate human relations than men willingly subordinating themselves to the person they love, as feared by patriarchy. For many children and

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especially for women, a man in (the wrong) love might become a real threat. Of course, it is debatable whether that is love, although that is how it is presented to society, to many victims unable to break free from violent relationships, and to perpetrators as well. Amnon has a sick obsession with his half-sister Tamar, to the point of raping her: that is anything but love. When a husband submits his wife to an ordeal of jealousy (Numbers 5) it is jealousy, not love. When Samson tells Delilah his secret because he would rather die than hear her again it is not love. And it is also not love when YHWH is said to give away his wife Israel to be beaten and humiliated (Ezek. 16.35-42).22 It is gender violence, of which we sadly hear daily in the news. I am a Lutheran pastor and I was professor at the Protestant ecumenical seminary in Buenos Aires (Instituto Universitario ISEDET) until December 2016, when the school closed down. Currently, I am Director of the Instituto para la Pastoral Contextual, a program of my church for training laity. Whether teaching in Academia or in lay communities, I prioritize advocating on behalf of people who have fewer rights than they deserve (and, certainly, fewer rights than I enjoy). This century demonstrates to us that crass forms of social phobias, political misuse of power and violence against weak groups (women, children, aboriginals, migrants) are not over. I am called to speak up and I see my writing as one of the ways to exercise that responsibility. In this particular topic on love, death, and violence, I wanted to call attention to the dangers of setting them side by side without a critical, gender-oriented, lens. Death may be jeopardized by love and love may be jeopardized by the many faces of death, including gender violence. While we are unable to avoid death, we may walk the tightrope of keeping it in tension with love: love celebrated for its own worth, love as a way of relating to YHWH, love as a tool for a better world, love as part of God’s good creation to be enjoyed while alive. But, in any case, love without violence. References Ackroyd, Peter (1975), ‘The Verb Love – ’āhēb in The David-Jonathan Narratives – A Footnote’, Vetus Testamentum, 25: 213–14. Asensio, Morla (2004), Lamentaciones, Estella: Verbo Divino.

22.  Wilson-Wright (2010: 344 n. 39) identifies ‘the issue of love, as identified with the divine warrior, becoming too violent and militaristic’ as another area deserving further study.



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Bal, Mieke (1988), Death and Dyssymetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barbiero, Gianni (2007), Non svegliatel’amore. Una lettura del Cantico dei cantici, Milano: Paoline. Barbiero, Gianni (2011), Song of Songs: A Close Reading, Leiden: Brill. Burrus, Virginia, and Stephen D. Moore (2003), ‘Unsafe Sex: Feminism, Pornography, and the Song of Songs’, Biblical Interpretation, 11: 24–52. Davis, Ellen (2009), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, Westminster Bible Companion, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Emerton, J. A. (1977), ‘The Textual and Linguistic Problems of Habakkuk II.4-5’, Journal of Theological Studies, NS 28: 1–18. Espasande, Mara (n.d.), ‘El Tango en sus orígenes: Cultura popular y contexto social’. Online: http://www.centrofelipevarela.com.ar/archivos/historia-del%20tango-susorigenes (accessed 19 January 2017). Exum, J. Cheryl (2005), Song of Songs, Old Testament Library, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Gordis, Robert (5721/1961), Song of Songs: A Study, Modern Translation, and Commentary, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Haak, Robert (1992), Habakkuk, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 44, Leiden: Brill. Hanks, Tom (2014), Sexo, Sufrimiento, Sabiduría y Mujeres: Cantar de los Cantares, Job, Lamentaciones, Proverbios, Qohelet (Eclesiastés), Rut, Ester, Buenos Aires: Epifanía. Imray, Kathryn (2013), ‘Love Is (Strong as) Death: Reading the Song of Songs through Proverbs 1–9’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 75: 649–5. Juma, Dorcas Chebet (2014), ‘Encountering the Female Voice in the Song of Songs: Reading the Song of Songs for the Dignity of Kenyan Women’, PhD diss., Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Keel, Othmar (1992), Das Hohelied, Zürcher Bibelkommentare, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. King, Christopher (2006), ‘Song of Songs’, in Daryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache (eds), The Queer Bible Commentary, 356–70, London: SCM Press. Landy, Francis (2011), Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs, 2nd edn, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Lefkovitz, Lori Hope (2010), In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Lipiński, Edward (2004), ‘‫ ָׂשנֵ א‬śānē; ‫ ׂש ֹנֵ א‬śōnē; ‫ ְמ ַׁשּנֵ א‬meśannē; ‫ ִׁשנְ ָאה‬śinâ’, in vol. 14 of G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (eds), The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 164–74. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006. Lisowsky, Gerhard, ed. (1958), Konkordanz zum hebräischen Alten Testament: Nach dem von Paul Kahle in der Biblia Hebraica, Stuttgart: Privileg. Württ. Bibelanstalt. Luzurraga, Jesús (2005), Cantar de los Cantares: Sendas del Amor, Estella: Verbo Divino. Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus Online. Online: http://www.merriam-webster. com (accessed 19 November 2016). Murphy, Roland E. (1990), The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the Song of Songs, Hermeneia, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. Navarro Puerto, Mercedes (2013), Violencia, sexismo, silencio. In-conclusiones en el libro de los Jueces, Estella: Verbo Divino.

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Nissinen, Martti (2011), ‘Is God Mentioned in the Song of Songs? Flame of Yahweh, Love, and Death in Song of Songs 8.6-7a’, in David J. A. Clines and Ellen van Wolde (eds), A Critical Engagement: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of J. Cheryl Exum, 273–87, Hebrew Bible Monographs 28, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Noegel, Scott B., and Gary A. Rendsburg (2009), Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Palomino, Pablo (2007), ‘Tango, samba y amor’, Apuntes de Investigación del CECYP, [S.l.] 12: 71–101. Online: http://www.apuntescecyp.com.ar/index.php/apuntes/article/ view/118 (accessed 19 January 2017). Pardee, Dennis (1987), ‘As Strong as Death’, in John H. Marks and Robert McClive Good (eds), Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, 65–9, Guilford: Four Quarters. Pope, Marvin H. (1977), Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 7C, New York: Doubleday. Ravasi, Gianfranco (1992), Il Cantico dei Cantici. Commento e Attualizzazione, Centro Editoriale Dehoniano, Bologna. Real Academia Española (2014), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd edn, Madrid: Espasa. Online: http://dle.rae.es/?id=2PGmlay (accessed 19 November 2016). Salamone, Luis Darío (n.d.), ‘Tango, canción de ausencia’. Online: https://www.kennedy. edu.ar/wp-content/upload/bsk-pdf-manager/2016-09-19_89.pdf (accessed 19 January 2017). Schroer, Silvia (2014), ‘Ancient Near Eastern Pictures as Keys to Biblical Metaphors’, in Christl M. Maier and NuriaCalduch-Benages (eds), The Writings and Later Wisdom Books, 129–64, The Bible and Women: An Encyclopaedia of Exegesis and Cultural History, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament 1/3, Atlanta: SBL. Seco Reymundo, Manuel, Olimpia Andrés Puente and Gabino Ramos González (1999), Diccionario del Español Actual, vol. 1, Madrid: Aguilar. Sparks, Kenton L. (2008), ‘The Song of Songs: Wisdom for Young Jewish Women’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 70: 277–99. Stewart, James (n.d.), ‘A Short History of Tango’. Online: http://www.edinburghtango.org. uk/tango/Historyoftango.php (accessed 19 January 2017). Tamez, Elsa (1985), ‘Los juegos del erotismo del texto’, tesis de licenciatura, Universidad Nacional en Costa Rica, San José. Thompson, J. A. (1974), ‘Significance of the Verb Love in the David-Jonathan Narratives in 1 Samuel’, Vetus Testamentum, 24: 334–8. Van der Zwan, Pieter (2012), ‘The Religiosity of the Book of Song of Songs in Context’, PhD diss., University of South Africa. Van Seters, John (1987), ‘Love and Death in the Court History of David’, in John H. Marks and Robert McClive Good (eds), Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, 121–4, Guilford: Four Quarters. Wallis, Gerhard (1977), ‘‫’ ָא ַהב‬āhabh; ‫’ ַא ָה ָבה‬ahabhāh; ‫’ ַא ַהב‬ahabh; ‫’ א ַֹהב‬ōhabh’, in vol. 1 of G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (eds), The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 101–18. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006. Walsh, Carey Ellen (2000), Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Watson, Wilfred G. E. (1997), ‘Love and Death Once More (Song of Songs VIII 6)’, Vetus Testamentum, 47: 385–7. Wilson-Wright, Aren (2015), ‘Love Conquers All: Song of Songs 8.6b-7a as a Reflex of the Northwest Semitic Combat Myth’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 134: 333–45.

Part III Q oh el et h

‘ W h at G a i n H ave t h e W or ke r s f r om t h ei r T oi l ? ’ : ( C on ) t e xt i n g E c cl es i a s t es 3.9- 13 i n P asi fi ka* Jione Havea

As well as referring to an increase in wealth and resources, gain can also be nonphysical and nonmaterial. Emotional, political, psychological and spiritual gains are as substantial as stock, produce and financial gains. Qoheleth’s question about gain – ‘What gain have the workers from their toil?’ (Eccl. 3.9; NRSV) – should not therefore be limited to the fruits of one’s physical labor. Qoheleth’s question could apply also to the gain of pleasures and satisfaction in toil (or production), distribution and consumption. One also gains from sharing and feeding, as well as from reflecting on and interrogating texts and traditions. Gain is measured contextually, and one expects that this will fluctuate from time to time. What is considered as gain in one context (or generation) may not be welcomed in other contexts (or generations). For instance, a sow that suckles several piglets into good health is welcomed as a mother of gain in most indigenous Pasifika1 societies, but as a nuisance, or even as a (means of) curse, in other contexts.2

* Earlier versions of this essay were presented at meetings of Kirchentag at Stuttgart, Germany (5 May 2015) and the Society of Asian Biblical Studies at Seoul, South Korea (6 July 2016). The current version benefitted from the comments and questions by participants at both gatherings, and the flavors of orality are maintained in this version. 1.  i use ‘Pasifika’ for the ‘sea of islands’ in the region otherwise known as the South Seas, Pacific Islands or Oceania. i prefer Pasifika (an indigenizing of ‘Pacific’), because it flows calmly over native tongues. 2.  Similarly, what is appreciated as wisdom in some contexts may be laughed at as foolishness in other circles. And over time, the markers of wisdom and foolishness are reassessed and sometimes relocated.

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Appreciation of gain also varies, and societies may change their appreciation of gain over time. Thus something kosher at one time could be banned as an abomination several generations later. The art of tattooing (tatau), for instance, was once valued by native Tongans as marks of belonging, of status and of accomplishment (i.e., success and gain); then it was shunned by the generation of my great-grandfather, at the behest of European Christian missionaries. But, in the recent past, we have seen a revival of tattooing in Tongan communities at home and in the diaspora, with the resurgence of the so-called tribal tattoo patterns (Havea 2017). Around the time when tattooing was banned in Tonga, some of the tattoo patterns jumped from the bodies of natives onto other native art forms like weaving and ngatu (or tapa) making (Vaka‘uta 2017). That which was celebrated became condemned, but is now re-affirmed and re-gained. While writing this essay, Disney contributes toward the revival of tribal Polynesian tattoo patterns through the tattooed body of the character Maui in its animated feature film Moana (released in November 2016). Whether Disney does justice to Pasifika legends and cultures will be discussed and evaluated in time, but Disney will surely gain at the box office. Gain has to do with ability and performance, and there is room for gain to be accidental. For rich and for poor, gain makes a difference. Reading as Toil Qoheleth’s question applies to the toils of biblical criticism as well. Biblical critics have something to gain from their toil (reading), and to give a sense of what i3 might gain from this reflection, bearing in mind that gaining or losing is a matter of judgment, i confess to three preferences that shape my toil with biblical texts, including the reading presented in this essay.

3.  i use the lowercase because i use the lowercase with ‘you’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘it’, and ‘others’. i do not see the point in capitalizing the first person when s/he is in relation to, and because of, everyone/everything else. My use of ‘i’ sees me joining with the resistance of the Samoan character Alofa, who, when her European teacher required students to write about individual experiences, stated: ‘You were always with someone… Nothing was witnessed alone. Nothing was witnessed in the “I” form – nothing but penises and ghosts. “I” does not exist, Miss Cunningham. “I” is “we”… always’ (Figiel 1999: 136–7).



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(1) i read texts as responses to events (so Croatto 1981). Reading texts as responses is the stuff of the talanoa culture that i have presented at previous Society of Asian Biblical Studies (SABS) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) gatherings – talanoa is one of the words used in several of the native Pasifika languages to refer to the (three in one) triad of story, telling and conversation (Havea 2015). In the world of talanoa, story dies without telling and conversation; telling becomes an attempt at control when one does not respect the story or make room for conversation; and conversation is empty without story and telling. In talanoa cultures, there is no separation between story, telling and conversation. And as a native of talanoa cultures, i read texts as talanoa. As a stream in talanoa, texts are responses to events and those events could be fleeting memories, irritating customs, life situations, material representations and/or imagined realities. Intertextual and contrapuntal critics state this preference in the form of the assertion that ‘no text is an island’. Such an assertion makes sense to tourist-like readers who do not know what it means to live and survive on islands, and/or who romanticize what it means to be islanders. As a once born and raised third-world Pasifika islander, i prefer some other expression like ‘no text is unoccupied’, ‘no text is network free’, ‘no text is self-satisfying’ or something along those lines. (2) i share the conviction that all interpretations are situated and conditioned by the desires, abilities, orientations, insecurities and contexts of the interpreters. No interpretation is free of subjectivity and no interpreter is free of context. Put simply, all interpretations are contexted (shaped by contexts; see Havea 2013) and no interpretation is innocent, or free from adding meaning to the text. As Bultmann and many others have concluded, no interpreter is free of presuppositions and i add, to paraphrase José Severino Croatto (1981: 1–4), exegesis is always already eisegesis (see also Conrad 1991: 29). Interpretations are the fruits of reading (read: toil), and they are unavoidably ideological and political. Because interpretations are con­­ texted, no interpretation has universal relevance. Interpretations are limited and the fruits of interpretation could be limiting. (3) Though the canons of Jewish and Christian communities are closed, i argue that interpretations open the canon up. This is not such a radical claim because we find several attempts within the canons themselves to open things up, e.g., the legal revisions in Exodus–Deuteronomy, the rewriting of history in Joshua–Judges and 1–2 Chronicles, the addition to and movement of books between the covers of the Hebrew, Catholic and Orthodox canons, the multiple accounting in the gospels, and the

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multiplying teachings in the epistles. The number and wording of the books in the canons may be closed, but intratextual references, appeals and contestings bubble within to pop the lids off the canons; and the workings of interpretation open canons up by adding layers of meanings as well as by shifting and situating meanings from and into new contexts. In my humble opinion, readings are contextual when they open texts up and shift meanings from and toward new contexts. This is one of the reasons why i distinguish being contexted from being contextual, and i hold that one is not fully contextual if s/he does not open texts up and shift meanings around. I bring those preferences to Eccl. 3.9-13, and i acknowledge three popular and traditional readings of Ecclesiastes lurking in my reading: (1) everything is vanity, (2) there is a time for gaining and a time for losing, for pulling down and for building up, (3) so the best thing to do is to enjoy (the gains of) life under the sun. The lot of humans is to enjoy and be at leisure, for we have no control over life which is in fact fleeting. In the eyes of these mainline readings, humans ought to relax, lay back and accept what happens; in other words, in the romanticizing eyes of tourist minds, humans should seek to be like islanders. Preference for love and peace can be heard in the lyrics of Pete Seeger’s 1965 song ‘Turn, turn, turn’, performed by The Byrds. Seeger was an activist and his song drew upon Ecclesiastes to make his call for ecological responsibility and for peace. The chorus is like a call for repentance and transformation: ‘[For everything there is a season…] To everything – turn, turn, turn; There is a season – turn, turn, turn; And a time to every purpose under heaven.’ The third verse opens and pushes the texts of Ecclesiastes into the war-ridden days of the 1960s: A time of love, a time of hate A time of war, a time of peace A time you may embrace A time to refrain from embracing.

Seeger opens Ecclesiastes up and shifts it toward one of the struggles of his time – to end war, and to embrace peace.4 Opening the Bible up through interpretation is not a privilege of biblical scholars only. Like trained biblical scholars, Seeger has a lot to gain from his toil. Put simply, all interpretations are ideological and political.

4.  For the complete lyrics see, e.g., http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/pete_ seeger/turn_turn_turn-lyrics-223571.html.



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Workers \ Masters Characteristics of wisdom teaching5 are evident in Eccl. 3.9-13. What gain have the workers from their toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. 11[God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; 13moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil (NRSV). 9

The focus of the pericope, clearly stated in the opening question – ‘What gain have the workers from their toil?’ – is on the workers. Posed in the interest of the workers, this is the kind of question that got Karl Marx ticking (i, however, do not know if Marx read Ecclesiastes). Qoheleth sets up his answer to the opening question with two assertions: (1) ‘God has made everything suitable for its time’ (3.11a). It is not as Seeger puts it, that there is a time for everything, but rather, God has made everything suitable for the time when things occur. When there is joy, Qoheleth supposes that God has made joy suitable for that time; when there is pain, God has made pain suitable for that time; when there is sickness, health, laughter, mourning and so forth, God has made those experiences suitable for the time of their occurrence. There is no room for accident or grace according to Qoheleth’s assertion. Qoheleth’s assertion is problematized by the debate that Job offers, for in Job’s experience the bad things that happened to him were not suitable at that time. Rabbi Kushner goes further, asking a broader question concerning whether bad things are suitable at any time for good people (Kushner 1981). (2) Qoheleth’s second assertion is about the ability to discern: ‘God has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end’ (3.11b). God has given humans temporal points of reference – a sense of past and future – but the ability to know all that God has done is beyond those reference points. All that God has done is not known within the limits of time. There is a difference suggested here between knowing what God has done and 5.  Like other wisdom writings, Ecclesiastes focuses on living life meaningfully in the present (here and now). Ecclesiastes is critical and controversial toward traditional teachings, especially around the doctrine of retribution; and Qoheleth is not bothered by the tensions and contradictions that may arise by the assertions that the book carries. And like other wisdom writings, Ecclesiastes is not the work of systematic theologians.

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understanding why God has done so. Human understanding is time-based, but God’s business – of giving tasks for humans to be busy with – is not. Qoheleth asserts that God has given each person a task to be preoccupied with, but one does not really know what task God has assigned to oneself. It was not Qoheleth’s concern that humans know or/and understand what God has done. To borrow from Indigenous Australians, God’s work is ‘secret business’, which means that it is revealed through participation and ceremony. It is ironic that this wisdom text is about the limits on the ability of humans to discern. In this light, the wise person is the one who does not know and who does not understand. The wise person is ignorant of what God is doing. In here is an example of the weirdness of the biblical sense of humour. Qoheleth’s drive is for humans to receive ‘God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil’ (3.13b). Qoheleth’s answer to the opening question – ‘What gain have the workers from their toil?’ – is that workers should ‘take pleasure in all their toil’. One can’t be sure if the work with which s/he is preoccupied was assigned by God, but in case it is God’s design, one should enjoy it. The text invites readers to distinguish between toil (labour, work or production) and fruit of toil. The question – ‘What gain have the workers from their toil?’ – is about gain and fruits, but the answer – ‘take pleasure in all their [your] toil’ – is about labour. The question is in the interest of the workers, but Qoheleth’s answer is in the interest of the masters, who have much to gain when their workers and slaves enjoy their toil. And the clearest sign that workers enjoy their toil is when they are obedient and silent. Qoheleth’s answer would make Marx turn in his grave. Detour: Genesis 2–3 The first part of Qoheleth’s answer has to do with God’s gift – ‘it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink’ (3.13a) – which invites me back to Genesis 2–3. The garden story opens (Gen. 2.5) with the affirmation that ha’adam was created for the purpose of tilling the ground and it ends with a string of curses (Gen. 3.14-19). The serpent and the woman are cursed, and instead of cursing ha’adam Yhwh cursed ha’adamah (the ground). In reading the curse of the ground through the eyes of the land,6 and in the shadows of Eccl. 3.9-13 as read above, two elements jump out before me: 6.  Affirming that the land has eyes is common in, but not limited to, Pasifika (see Hereniko 2004). Nonetheless, readers use human lenses when they look for and through the eyes of the land.



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(1) the ground is cursed to sprout ‘thorns and thistles’ (Gen. 3.18) in response to the toil of ha’adam. This is a painful curse, seeing that in Gen. 2.8-9 and 1.11-12 the ground (land, earth) is appreciated for having the capacity to bring forth life. The Yahwist story affirms the capacity of the ground to bring up water (2.6, 10-14) and vegetation and the Priestly story affirms the life-giving power of the land: in Gen. 1.11, God asked the land to bring forth life, and the land in v. 12 responded by bringing forth many kinds of vegetation. In both stories, ha’adamah is co-creator with God. The default stance of the land is to produce and bring forth life, so the curse in 3.18 makes the land go against its natural disposition. The ground is cursed to only bring forth thorns and thistles, and Cain breaks this curse in Genesis 4 where he brought ‘fruits of the land’ as offering to God. i have offered my reading of Cain breaking God’s curse in another essay (Havea 2003), and will focus here on the curse of the ground. On the basis of the curse of the ground in Gen. 3.17-19, i ask back Qoheleth: how is one supposed to enjoy working if it involves working with and in contexts that have been cursed? This question is critical for the natives of Pasifika who are struggling with the impacts of climate change, which is a recent form of cursing the land and the sea. Furthermore, how might people in occupied lands enjoy their toil? This is also a critical question in Pasifika, where many lands are still under foreign occupation – by France: Kanak (New Caledonia), Futuna, Maohi Nui (French Polynesia); by the USA: Tutuila (American Samoa), Tokelau, Guam, Northern Mariana and Hawai’i; by Chile: Rapa Nui (Easter Island); and by Indonesia: West Papua. i will come back to these struggles in Pasifika, with special attention given to the impact of climate change in Tuvalu and Kiribati, as well as to Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, which results in the black natives not being allowed to enjoy working, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, nor to enjoy the rich resources of their native land and seas. (2) the second element that makes the curse of the ground painful is God’s decision that ha’adam will return in the end to dust (Gen. 3.19b). With human eyes, we celebrate this decision and declaration as our destiny – to dust we shall return because from dust we were taken. We imagine that our bodily remains will be a blessing to the ground. But if we look at the curse with the eyes of the land and of the sea, is this really a good thing? Good for whom? According to whose values? What benefit is it to the ground that we humans return to dust? i ask these questions as someone who comes from oral cultures where the return of gifts is insulting, especially if the gifts were received, used and destroyed, and then returned.

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In our cultures, Yhwh’s design of the destiny for ha’adam involves returning a gift that the ground had given (Gen. 2.7): the ground gave the gift of human body, which God and ha’adam used, and God declares that the gift will be returned to the ground so that it may reclaim its gift/ dust. We of course do not wait until the end to return to dust, for we daily excrete components of dust to the ground. To borrow from Ecclesiastes 3, what gain does the ground get from human dust and human faeces? i point this question back to Eccl. 3.13 in order to ask, whose enjoyment matters? The enjoyment of the workers? The enjoyment of the owners? Is there a place for the enjoyment of the ground, the land and the sea, to matter? This last question points me back to Pasifika and the struggles of natives with climate change and against occupation by foreign empires. Detour: Pasifika The island groups of Tuvalu and Kiribati have caught the attention of environmentalists and politicians in the recent past because of the havoc that climate change brings upon low-lying lands especially, and the threats to the world as a whole. Tuvalu and Kiribati are not the only island nations threatened by climate change (resettlement has already taken place in PNG [Papua New Guinea] and Solomon Islands), and there are more populous nations (e.g., Bangladesh) under threat from climate change. In the case of Tuvalu and Kiribati, i wish to call attention to two less-known struggles of the two groups. First, ecological disaster is not new to Tuvalu and Kiribati. These two culturally distinct groups used to be combined as one British colony named Gilbert and Ellice Islands, until 1976, when the group was separated into two countries and gained independence. While still a British colony, two of the islands were resettled to islands in Fiji: natives from Banaba (an island in today’s Kiribati) were moved to the island of Rabi beginning in 1945, because their home island had been devastated by phosphate mining (so the island of Nauru); and natives from Vaitupu (an island in today’s Tuvalu) were moved to the island of Kioa beginning in 1947, to 1983.7 Both Banaba and Vaitupu suffered because of human civilization: the destruction of Banaba was hurried by economic and developmental endeavors, while overcrowding and soil erosion made Vaitupu inhospitable.

7.  It was only in 2005 that the Fiji government decided to grant full citizenship to the Kioa and Rabi islanders.



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With regard to Qoheleth’s question, the natives of Banaba and Vaitupu, and by extension the groups of islands in Kiribati and Tuvalu, could no longer gain from their toil. In fact, other peoples, corporations and nations were toiling and enjoying the gain from their (is)lands. The natives had to be moved because their home islands, once rich with resources, became cursed grounds. Second, Kiribati and Tuvalu were in the front line of the so-called Pacific War. This was not a war between Pasifika islands, but between the USA and Japan. The capital islands of Funāfuti (Tuvalu) and Tarawa (Kiribati) still bear the scars of this war, with corroding war machineries on shore and open pits (in Funāfuti) that were excavated for the construction of the airstrip used in the war. There are a lot of references to the highest point on Tuvalu being 4.6 meters above sea level (at Niulakita), but not enough conversations around how the Americans dug several points on Funāfuti below sea level. Those pits are filled with sea-water twice a day, when the tide comes in. Climate change is not new to Kiribati and Tuvalu, and war contributed to the ruining of both island groups. The natives of Kiribati and Tuvalu, and of Pasifika in general, have had to live with and through ecological disasters, but the world community pays attention only when it realizes that its existence is also threatened. Adding to the pains of the natives, the world community conveniently forgets that war between superpowers – both the actual fighting and the testing of weapons of war in Pasifika waters – is a contributing factor to the ecological disasters in Pasifika. It is difficult for native workers to enjoy their toil, and the world community is not keen on seeking climate justice. The case of West Papua is painful because the natives do not have the freedom to toil. The largest island (in terms of land, population and languages) in Pasifika is split between two nations – Papua New Guinea (PNG) to the east with West Papua to the west. West Papua was colonized by the Netherlands in 1898, and called Irian Jaya. The Dutch government also colonized Indonesia, but it granted independence for Indonesia in 1949. West Papua meanwhile remained a Dutch colony. The Dutch government promised independence for West Papua in 1961, and by 1 December 1961 West Papua had a national flag, a national song, a national parliament and a national police. Indonesia shortly afterwards invaded West Papua, and made it a province of Indonesia (Papua Barat). The Dutch government did not fight against the Indonesians, and the war favored the stronger Indonesian forces. In 1962 the USA stepped in and brought West Papua under the protection of the UN. But in 1963, the UN gave control over West Papua to Indonesia, and this move was not questioned because

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it was supposed that the black natives were too primitive to ‘cope with democracy’ and that they could not lead national affairs. Since occupation in 1963, Indonesian forces have slaughtered more than 500,000 native West Papuans and tortured, raped and imprisoned thousands more.8 West Papua is fenced off from PNG, and excluded from the rest of Pasifika. In September 2016, finally, seven Pasifika nations spoke up at the UN General Assembly in solidarity with West Papua and in protest against Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua. Time will tell what becomes of West Papua, but Qoheleth’s question is painful for the natives of West Papua and of neighboring island nations. How could people whose homeland is under occupation gain from, much less enjoy any fruit from, their toil? Qoheleth’s Question i read Eccl. 3.9-13 as a response to the event that is Genesis 2–3, and vice versa (as if the two texts are in talanoa / conversation), with my preferred living context of Pasifika in the background. My reading is unapologetically and openly contexted. My reading invites two texts in the closed canon to listen to one another; and for me, readings of those texts that do not address the struggles with climate change and with political occupation have no relevance for Tuvalu, Kiribati, West Papua and many island nations in Pasifika. Those readings might pass as contextual biblical interpretations but they are useless for us in Pasifika. The two-part assertion that Qoheleth offers is not satisfying when assessed through the realities of Tuvalu, Kiribati and West Papua. What do workers in climate-affected and occupied lands gain from their toil? For them, Qoheleth’s two-part assertion is useless. But Qoheleth’s question rings with hope, and so i close with the question rather than the answer: What gain have the workers from their toil? What gain have i received from this reading? Simply this, that with regards to Eccl. 3.9-13, the question is more relevant than the answer. This gain is nonmaterial, but very satisfying. References Conrad, Edgar W. (1991), Reading Isaiah, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Croatto, Severino J. (1981), Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom, Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

8.  Further information available at the Free West Papua Campaign website (https://www.freewestpapua.org).



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Figiel, Sia (1999), Where We Once Belonged, New York: Kaya, 1999. Havea, Jione (2003), ‘To Love Cain More Than God, in Other Words, “Nody” Gen 4:1-16’, in Tamara C. Eskenazi, Gary A. Phillips and David Jobling (eds), Levinas and Biblical Studies, 91–112, Atlanta: SBL. Havea, Jione (2013), ‘Diaspora Contexted: Talanoa, Reading, and Theologizing, as Migrant’, Black Theology, 11 (2): 185–200. Havea, Jione (2015), ‘Sea-ing Ruth with Joseph’s Mistress’, in Jione Havea, Margaret Aymer, and Steed Vernyl Davidson (eds), Islands, Islanders, and the Bible: RumInations, 147–61, Semeia Studies, Atlanta: SBL. Havea, Jione (2017), ‘Tatauing Cain: Reading the Sign on Cain from the Ground’, in Caroline Blyth and Nāsili Vaka’uta (eds), The Bible and Art: Perspectives from Oceania, 187–202, New York: Bloomsbury. Hereniko, Vilisoni (2004), The Land Has Eyes (film: Pear ta ma ‘on maf in Rotuman), Suva: PBS. Kushner, Harold (1981), When Bad Things Happen to Good People, New York: Random House. Vaka‘uta, Nāsili (2017), ‘Art as Method: Visualising Interpretation through Tongan Ngatu’, in Caroline Blyth and Nāsili Vaka’uta (eds), The Bible and Art: Perspectives from Oceania, 97–116, New York: Bloomsbury.

H e Ḇ el a n d K ong : A C r os s - T ex t u a l R ea d i n g b e t we e n Q ohe le th a n d t h e H ea r t S ūtr a Huang Wei

Introduction In the Heart Sūtra, one of the best-known Chinese Buddhist texts, the concept of kong [空] conveys the essence of this piece of literature. And this character kong [空] is also used to translate heḇel in Qoheleth in most Chinese translations of the Bible. Why and how would those Chinese translations use kong to understand heḇel (Hebrew ‫הבל‬, pronounced he-vel)? This article aims to make a cross-textual reading between the two religious texts. The Bible is of course alien to China. Most of the books in the Hebrew Bible have nothing to do with Chinese people, especially those books that contain the historical narrative of ancient Israel. However, the Chinese people, be they Christian or not, somehow appreciate the book of Qoheleth among all the other biblical books. As for my own experience, I remember that, the first time I read Qoheleth in Chinese, I immediately related this piece of biblical writing to the well-known Chinese Buddhist text, the Heart Sūtra [心經], mostly because one character, kong [空], appeared in both texts. Then questions arose in my mind. What kinds of worldviews are behind the two words in each text? Would Qoheleth share something in common with the Heart Sūtra? Could the two texts achieve any mutual understanding? Heḇel in Qoheleth To answer these questions, first I would like to focus on the important lexeme in the book of Qoheleth, that is, heḇel. Probably no one would deny heḇel is the keyword of Qoheleth. This word appears 73 times in the Hebrew MT, 38 times of which are in Qoheleth. The lexeme is so



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important because it is part of the thematic statements haḇel habalim… hakkol heḇel (‫)הבל הבלים…הכל הבל‬, both in the prologue (Qoh. 1.2) and in the epilogue (Qoh. 12.8). It is often translated as ‘vanity’ in modern versions, following the translation in the LXX and Vulgate. Throughout Qoheleth, the author frequently uses this word in two formulas, ‘this is heḇel’ (Qoh. 2.1, 15, 19, 21, 23; 3.19; 4.8; 5.9 [Eng. v. 10]; 6.2; 7.6; 8.10, 14) and ‘all is heḇel and a chasing after wind’ (Qoh. 1.14; 2.11, 17, 26; 4.4, 16; 6.9). In these examples of its use, heḇel is to be found as part of a summary or concluding statement: the interpretation of this term shapes the way we understand the message of the entire book. That other translations have been proposed by biblical scholars forms one of the most debated topics in Qoheleth studies. The original concrete meaning of heḇel is ‘breath, vapor’. This literal meaning is used in Isaiah (57.13), Psalms (62.10 [Eng. 9]; 144.4) and Job (7.6 [Eng. v. 7]). It can also be attested in various other Semitic languages (TDOT 3:313–14). But here the author of Qoheleth clearly does not use it in its original meaning. In other words, the literal translation of heḇel does not suffice to express Qoheleth’s thought. Following the translation in the LXX and Vulgate, many English versions of the Bible we have today render ‘vanity’, including RSV, NRSV, NAB, ESV, KJV and NKJV. This has become the dominant translation of heḇel. This is not only because Jerome’s translation has been profoundly influential for around a thousand years, even though his commentary ‘became the standard interpretation’ (Meek 2013: 242) of the book until the Reformation (Bartholomew 2009: 28). But, nowadays many biblical scholars are not satisfied with the translation ‘vanity’, since it has a narrower semantic range than the Hebrew heḇel. Therefore, many different translations and interpretations have been suggested in the past century. We can divide those opinions roughly into three categories, though the boundaries are sometimes vague or overlap. (1) The first group of scholars tends to keep the translation ‘vanity’ or uses some equivalents. New renderings may be proposed such as ‘fruitless, ineffectual, unavailing’ (Barton 1908: 72), and ‘useless, futility’ (Lauha 1978: 18–19). heḇel is used to emphasize either ‘the futility of various human activities or situations’ (Whybray 1989: 36) or the endless and meaningless repetition of life and the process of nature (Barton 1908: 69). Yet, scholars also come back to the original meaning because they believe ‘the most basic meaning must serve as a starting point to guide any investigation’ (Shuster 2008: 229). C. L. Seow also uses the traditional translation

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‘vanity’ in his commentary. He argues that Qoheleth has expanded the original meaning of heḇel and the word clearly has negative connotations, used only to describe human activities not God’s. All earthly things are fleeting, unpredictable, arbitrary and incomprehensible, beyond the grasp of mortals, both physically and intellectually, just like ‘breath or vapor’ (Seow 1997: 102). (2) The second group of scholars explains that ‘vanity’ seems to be too pessimistic for Qoheleth. If ‘vanity’ is the kernel in the book of Qoheleth, the author would not command joy and wise behavior as often as he does (Fredericks 1993: 32). For example, in 2.24 we read: ‘There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil’;1 and in 11.6: ‘In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good’. Scholars like W. E. Staples (1943), Graham Ogden (1987a) and C. Bartholomew (2009: 103–4) suggest that heḇel should be translated as ‘mystery’, ‘enigma’ or ‘enigmatic’. Instead of describing human life as futile and meaningless, Qoheleth determines that ‘life is enigmatic, not fully within our power to comprehend’ (Ogden 1987b: 28). Mystery is not necessarily negative. It does not immediately color any perception of the book. But the problem with this translation is that it does not do justice to the original meaning of ‘breath, vapor’ (Meek 2013: 244). (3) The third group of scholars, to some extent, rejects the way commentators commonly define heḇel by listing numerous translations. They present their own analysis for understanding heḇel. One of them is Douglas B. Miller (2002), who points out that those who attempt to determine a single, abstract meaning of heḇel fail to apply the same translation in the diverse contexts of the lexeme’s occurrences in Qoheleth, while those who attempt to employ multiple terms fail to understand Qoheleth’s overall theme. Having noticed this dilemma, Miller regards heḇel as a symbol or an image which holds together a set of meanings, and can neither be exhausted nor adequately expressed by any single meaning (Miller 2002: 15). Crenshaw (2013: 36–7) too says that in Qoheleth heḇel is omnivalent and symbolic. Shuster (2008: 230) affirms Miller’s innovative argument in helping us unify the multiple meanings of heḇel. Then he points out that Miller 1.  English Translation of biblical passages is from the NRSV.



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fails to explain why the symbol is needed here. We already have plenty of translations for heḇel, and we need to find a way to understand them in a consistent manner: there is no single ‘dictionary’ definition that will sufficiently explain its meaning, yet a philosophical term will suffice. Here I agree with Shuster’s argument. heḇel is a philosophical concept in the book of Qoheleth and ‘one that must be unpacked philosophically’ (Shuster 2008: 230). Therefore, it seems that Michael V. Fox’s idea is unique. Fox acknowledges that ‘no one English word corresponds exactly to the semantic shape of heḇel as Qoheleth uses it’ (Fox 1986: 409). But, unlike some other scholars, he also believes it possible to find a word ‘that comes close to representing its range of meaning and that bears similar connotations’ (Fox 1986: 409). Finally he opts for ‘absurd’, which is a term borrowed from Albert Camus’s work, The Myth of Sisyphus. By doing so Fox is not suggesting that Camus’s ideas are the same as those of Qoheleth, but that the connotations ‘absurd’ has for Camus are highly helpful in understanding the philosophy behind heḇel. In the Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain, only to see it roll down again. The absurdity which can be perceived in the repeated and meaningless events, even resentment at the ‘gods’ in the Sisyphus story, is highly congruent with the connotations that heḇel has for Qoheleth. Let me quote Fox’s words: The essence of the absurd is a disparity between two terms that are supposed to be joined by a link of harmony or causality but are, in fact, disjunctive. The absurd is an affront to reason, in the broad sense of the human faculty that looks for order in the world about us. The quality of absurdity…(does inhere) in the tension between a certain reality and a framework of expectations (Fox 1986: 409).

Actually, to find the right translation for heḇel is not the most significant issue. It is not the ultimate answer for understanding heḇel. Many translations we encounter above can fit into a heḇel-statement in some way. What matters is to go deep into the philosophy of Qoheleth. Fox correctly points out the philosophy behind the term. We would expect that righteous people prolong their life in their righteousness, and wicked people perish in their evildoing. But Qoheleth describes just the opposite: ‘In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing’ (Qoh. 7.15). The ‘absurd’ indicates the absence of a rational relationship between legitimate expectations and outcomes (Meek 2013: 244).

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Now let us go back and take a look at the theme statement. haḇel h ḇalîm (‫ )הבל הבלים‬is a combination of two substantives, the first of which is constructed on the same substantive in the plural that expresses a superlative (Joüon-Muraoka 2006: 491), similar to ‘the holy of holies’ (‫קדש הקדשים‬, Exod. 26.33) and ‘the song of songs’ (‫שיר השירים‬, Song 1.1). The second half of the statement hakkol heḇel (‫הכל הבל‬, ‘all is heḇel’) forms probably the most compact parallelism in the Hebrew Bible, as John Jarick observed (Jarick 2000: 79–83). He also reminds us to look at the actual Hebrew letters instead of the transliterations. In Hebrew, ‘all’ is hakkol; the letter in the middle of the trilateral word (‫ )הכל‬is a Kaph (‫)כ‬, while the middle letter of heḇel (‫ )הבל‬is a Bet (‫)ב‬. The two letters, Kaph and Bet, are very much alike in their written form. The slightest change to the stroke to the bottom right corner of the letter Kaph would turn it into a Bet. Obviously, the author has deliberately crafted a fine, minimal and neat form of antithetical parallelism. If we are trying to replicate this poetic form in English translation, it perhaps should be like this: Everything is nothing (Jarick 2000: 82). And this would lead us to a very similar expression in the Heart Sūtra. a

The Heart Sūtra and the Prajñāpāramitā Literature In the Chinese context, the Heart Sūtra is probably the best loved Buddhist Scripture. It can be found printed in many kinds of artifacts as souvenirs or decorations. The immense popularity of the text is attested by the abundance of its translations and commentaries. Guangchang Fang (2011) has collected eighteen versions of Chinese translations and eighteen commentaries which were completed by the Tang and Song dynasty, that is, by around the thirteenth century CE. Among all the Chinese versions, the one attributed to Xuanzang [玄奘], with only 260 Chinese characters, is perhaps the most influential and widely spread in China, and has also been the object of much attention from academics. All of the extant Chinese commentaries are based on Xuanzang’s version (Nattier 1992: 179). In China it is generally agreed that Buddhist sūtras are all from India; without the Sanskrit pedigree, the legitimacy of the scriptures would be questioned. Thus the Heart Sūtra is usually regarded as having been translated by Xuanzang from Sanskrit into Chinese in 649 CE, and was long believed to be either a condensed form of a larger work or it was expanded into some new larger works (Beal 1865: 25). The question of its origin is under debate, since the Heart Sūtra has its counterparts in Sanskrit and Tibetan: long and short recensions whose English translations can be found in Edward Conze’s book (Conze 1967b).



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Edward Conze was the best-known Western scholar of Sanskrit and Tibetan manuscripts and also a pioneer translator of Buddhist texts. The greatest contribution Conze made was his study of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. (Cf. a list of Conze’s publications on the Prajñāpāramitā literature, Conze 1978: 127–38.) Prajñā [般若] means ‘wisdom, understanding’ [智 慧] (Soothill–Hodous 1982, 1988: 337). The meaning of Pāramitā [波羅 蜜多] is ‘to cross over from this shore of births and deaths to the other shore, or nirvana’ [到彼岸, 即涅槃] (Soothill–Hodous 1982, 1988: 267). Thus the word Prajñāpāramitā [般若波羅蜜多] means ‘the acme of wisdom, the virtue of wisdom as the principal means of attaining Nirvana’ (Soothill–Hodous 1982, 1988: 338). Prajñāpāramitā is usually translated in the title of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras as ‘the Perfection of Wisdom’ or ‘Perfect Wisdom’, implying that the main concern of the text is wisdom. Much like Qoheleth is considered as Wisdom Literature in the Hebrew Bible, so the Heart Sūtra is categorized as a Prajñāpāramitā text in Mahāyāna Buddhism (Lopez Jr 1988: 5–6). Also, the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras are believed to be among the earliest Mahāyāna Buddhist texts, which constitute the philosophical basis of later Buddhist thought. Mahāyāna Buddhism is a form of Buddhism later than old-style Conservative Buddhism, i.e. Hīnayāna Buddhism. Conze outlines nine stages in the development of Prajñāpāramitā thought. He concludes that the creative period of Prajñāpāramitā texts began in 100 BCE and ceased two hundred and fifty years later, with the emergence of Chinese translations (Conze 1967a: 141). Thus Conze regarded the Heart Sūtra as a portable edition aimed at providing the essence of Prajñāpāramitā thought (Conze 1967a: 141). This might be the reason why this piece of sūtra is called the ‘heart’ sūtra. Since Conze, Jan Nattier has done a thorough examination of philological evidence from all the earliest versions of the text, both in Chinese and in Sanskrit. She concludes that the philological evidence shows that the popular Chinese Heart Sūtra is not an independent translation from the Sanskrit by Xuanzang, but was originally composed in China as an adaptation of Kumārajīva’s [鳩摩羅什] (c. 400 CE) version of the Large Sūtra [摩訶波若波羅蜜經] (Nattier 1992: 188–9); and her second level of argument suggests that Xuanzang is the most likely person who translated it back into Sanskrit and who spread the sūtra to the West (Nattier 1992: 198). Among the Prajñāpāramitā literature, the Heart Sūtra is unique. Just as Nattier points out at the end, even if the Heart Sūtra is an apocryphal text, it has no less a role in the Buddhist teachings (Nattier 1992: 199). Conze referred to the Heart Sūtra as one of the Buddhist wisdom books (Conze 1958), and even mentioned that ‘…the close analogies which

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exist between the Prajñāpāramitā and the Mediterranean literature on Sophia…’ is important (Conze 1978: 2). He wrote in his book that the Heart Sūtra occupied ‘in Buddhist mysticism about the same place that the “Mystical Theology” of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita’ occupied in Christianity (Conze 1967b: 149). However, the Greek influence on Mahāyāna Sūtras could not be proven. The cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, though, has been studied extensively (cf. Nakamura 1987: 156–7). I do not intend to suggest here links between Mahāyāna Buddhism and Israelite Religion. Nor do I suggest any comparative links between the two. Wisdom literature is so vast, without a clear boundary to define it. But, like other ancient peoples, the ancient Israelites must have been convinced that truth could be grasped in the experiences of the real world through wisdom. Just as the Prajñāpāramitā text is trying to reveal the ultimate wisdom, the Hebrew Wisdom Literature is focused on the goal of achieving the truth. The likely analogy between them seems significant to me, which makes a cross-textural reading possible. Kong in the Heart Sūtra Now it is time for us to move to the Chinese Buddhist text attributed to Xuanzang. The Heart Sūtra aims to teach followers the Perfection of Wisdom in order to proceed to nirvana. There are two figures mentioned in the sūtra: Avalokiteśvara [觀自在菩薩], one of the sons of the Buddha and Śāriputra [舍利子], one of the great early disciples of the Buddha. At the very beginning, Avalokiteśvara is described as engaging in deep meditation and gains the Perfection of Wisdom. Then the main body of the sūtra consists of two parts, where Avalokiteśvara, expounding the Perfection of Wisdom, addresses to Śāriputra first a short statement and then an expanded one. Avalokiteśvara confirms with Śāriputra that all buddhas have reached nirvana relying on the Perfection of Wisdom. The sūtra concludes with a mantra, which is in a transliteration form inaccessible to native Chinese readers. I hereby quote from the short statement Avalokiteśvara makes to Śāriputra, this being probably one of the most well-known lines in Buddhist literature: Form is empty; emptiness itself is form [色即是空空即是色].2 2.  For the English translation of the Heart Sūtra in this article, see Nattier 1992: 155–6.



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Here, for Śāriputra, form is not distinct from emptiness; emptiness is not distinct from form. And the same goes for sensation, concept, conditioning force and consciousness. The first observation Avalokiteśvara addresses is ‘form is empty; emptiness itself is form’, which is an elusive and enigmatic declaration. Then Avalokiteśvara goes on to explain the core concept of ‘emptiness’ by a series of negations in the following speech: Here, Śāriputra, all dharmas have the mark of emptiness. They are non-originated, non-extinct, non-defiled, non-pure, non-decreasing, non-increasing. Therefore, Śāriputra, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no concept, no conditioning forces, no consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body [or] mind; no form, sound, scent, taste, touch-object [or] mind-object; no eye-realm and so on up to no realm of mind-consciousness; no ignorance, no destruction of ignorance and so on up to no old-age-and-death and no destruction of old-age-and-death. There is no suffering, arising, extinction, or path; no knowledge and no attainment.

The most important keyword in the Heart Sūtra is ‘emptiness’, which corresponds to the Chinese character kong [空]. It is exactly the same character that is used to translate heḇel in most Chinese versions of the Bible. In fact, the word xu kong [虛空] or kong xu [空虛] is often found in many modern Chinese translations. The other character, xu [虛], is a synonym of kong. In Chinese morphology, it is not surprising to find two juxtaposed synonymous characters forming one word. As for the word xu kong or kong xu, the meaning of the word does not change by interchanging the two characters. So we will just focus on kong as the core concept in the Heart Sūtra. The understanding of this concept in the Heart Sūtra will shed some light on how the concept of heḇel might be understood by Chinese readers. The ultimate wisdom focuses on reality, and engages in and experiences the nature of all phenomena. The aim of the wisdom sūtras in Buddhism is to recognize ‘the truth of human existence’ (Nakamura 1987: 168). In the Heart Sūtra the full, complete understanding of true reality lies in the startling economical statement: ‘Form is empty; emptiness itself is form’. ‘Form’ refers to the outward appearance that changes and disappears (Soothill–Hodous 1982, 1988: 126). And it belongs to the five skandhas [五蘊]: the ‘five skandhas’ in Buddhism are the five accumulations, substances, or aggregates that are the components of an intelligent being, especially a human being (Soothill–Hodous 1982, 1988: 220). In Avalokiteśvara’s first speech, the other four skandhas (‘sensation’

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[受], ‘concept’ [想], ‘conditioning force’ [行] and ‘consciousness’ [識]) are also mentioned as empty of ‘form’ [色]. Here the sūtra addresses the five skandhas as empty of intrinsic entity: appearance is disjunctive from reality. In the beginning of the second speech Avalokiteśvara makes, not only are the five skandhas empty but all the dharmas are also marked with emptiness. Emptiness is the nature of all phenomena. ‘Everything exists dependently upon everything else. Nothing exists independently in and of itself. Therefore, everything is empty of inherent existence. Every phenomenon is empty of true existence’ (Gyeltsen 2000: 102). Conclusion: ‘heḇel’ Is ‘Kong’ The book of Qoheleth and the Heart Sūtra surely originated from different traditions. Each has its own historical context and history of interpretation. The juxtaposition of a Chinese Buddhist text and Qoheleth is intended for readers who want to explain the meaning of the biblical text in the context of the Heart Sūtra. This reading may alter, develop or replace previous interpretations of the biblical text with new insights. In this article, the focus was only on the use of the theme word heḇel in Qoheleth. As discussed at the beginning of this article, heḇel has a variety of meanings. By using the term, Qoheleth shows us absurdity in the real world. The concept of heḇel indicates the gap between legitimate expectations and outcomes. Thus Qoheleth generalizes his ideas with the famous motto ‘everything is nothing’. In a similar way, the Heart Sūtra uses ‘emptiness’ to indicate the very profound reality; ‘form is emptiness’ shows a distinction between reality as such and the perception of that reality (Matsuo 1987: 112). Let us look again at Qoh. 7.15 as an example: ‘There are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing’. In this verse, Qoheleth describes what he has perceived in reality. But a legitimate expectation should be that righteous people prolong their lives in their righteousness, whereas wicked people perish in their evildoing. Absurdity (heḇel) is thus implied in this situation. The Heart Sūtra would agree with Qoheleth at this point. For the Heart Sūtra, the perception of reality exists only when we perceive it in this way. That is to say, our perception is empty of inherent existence. What Qoheleth has perceived in 7.15 is emptiness. In that sense, heḇel could be understood as equivalent to kong in the context of the Heart Sūtra.



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References Bartholomew, C. G. (2009), Ecclesiastes, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Barton, G. A. (1908), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Beal, S. (1865), ‘The Páramitá-hṛdaya Sútra, or, in Chinese “Moho-pô-ye-po-lo-mih-tosin-king”, i.e., “The Great Paramità Heart Sútra”,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, New Series, 1 (1/2): 25–8. Conze, E. (1958), Buddhist Wisdom Books: Containing the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra, London: G. Allen & Unwin. Conze, E. (1967a), ‘The Development of Prajñāpāramitā Thought’, in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies, 123–46, London: Bruno Cassirer. Conze, E. (1967b), ‘The Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra’, in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies, 148–67, London: Bruno Cassirer. Conze, E. (1978), The Prajñāpāramitā Literature, Tokyo: The Reiyukai. Crenshaw, J. L. (2013), Qoheleth: The Ironic Wink, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Fox, M. V. (1986), ‘The Meaning of Hebel for Qohelet’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 105 (3): 409–27. Fang, Guangchang, ed. (2011), Bore xinjing yizhu jicheng, Shanghai: Shanghai Guji [方廣 錩編纂, 《般若心經譯著集成》.上海: 上海古籍出版社, 2011年]. Fredericks, D. C. (1993), Coping with Transience: Ecclesiastes on Brevity in Life, Sheffield: JSOT Press. Gyeltsen, G. T. (2000), Mirror of Wisdom: Teachings on Emptiness, trans. Lotsawa Tenzin Dorjee, eds Rebecca McClen Novick, Linda Gatter and Nicholas Ribush, Long Beach: Thubten Dhargye Ling. Jarick, J. (2000), ‘The Hebrew Book of Changes: Reflections on Hakkōl Hebel and Lakkōl Zemān in Ecclesiastes’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 25 (90): 79–99. Joüon, P. (2006), A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, trans. and rev. T. Muraoka, Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006. Lauha, A. (1978), Kohelet, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Lopez Jr, D. S. (1988), The Heart Sūtra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries, Albany: State University of New York Press. Matsuo, H. (1987), The Logic of Unity: The Discovery of Zero and Emptiness in Prajñāpāramitā Thought, trans. Kenneth K. Inada, Albany: State University of New York Press. Meek, R. L. (2013), ‘The Meaning of ‫ הבל‬in Qohelet: An Intertextual Suggestion’, in M. J. Boda, T. Longman III and C. G. Rata (eds), The Words of the Wise Are like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the 21st Century, 241–56, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Miller, D. B. (2002), Symbol and Rhetoric in Ecclesiastes: The Place of Hebel in Qohelet’s Work, Leiden: Brill. Nakamura, H. (1987), Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Bibliographical Notes, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Nattier, J. (1992), ‘The Heart Sūtra: A Chinese Apocryphal Text?’, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 15 (2): 153–223. Ogden, G. S. (1987a), ‘‘‘Vanity” It Certainly Is Not’, The Bible Translator, 38: 301–7. Ogden, G. S. (1987b), Qoheleth, Sheffield: JSOT Press. Seow, C. L. (1997), Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, New York: Doubleday.

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Soothill, W. E. and Lewis Hodous, eds (1988), A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms with Sanskrit and English Equivalents and a Sanskrit-Pali Index, repr., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. [最新漢英佛學大辭典, 台北: 新文豐出版公司, 1988] Shuster, M. (2008), ‘Being as Breath, Vapor as Joy: Using Martin Heidegger to Re-read the Book of Ecclesiastes’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 33 (2): 219–44. Staples, W. E. (1943), ‘The “Vanity” of Ecclesiastes’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2: 95–104. Whybray, R. N. (1989), Ecclesiastes, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

D ea l i n g wi t h D e at h : R e a di ng Q oh el et h i n D i f f er e nt C onte xt s * Klaas Spronk

The book of Qoheleth is fascinating reading for a man of my age (nearly sixty), somewhere between a midlife crisis (I survived) and a good death (I hope). The relation between Qoheleth and the midlife crisis is obvious to every man in his forties looking at his life and wondering whether all he did was and still is worthwhile.1 Taking seriously Qoheleth’s advice to enjoy life in the best way and for as long as possible, I realize that it makes a big difference whether your prospect is a good or a bad death. With the biblical views on this subject at the back of my mind (Spronk 2004), I picture the end of my life at this moment more to be in line with Abraham’s good death than with Absalom’s bad death – because I have grandchildren, I am still with the woman I have loved since my youth, have enough money and feel healthy. Someone who is less lucky will not read Qoheleth in the same way as I do. Does he/she understand Qoheleth better? Is my interpretation of Qoheleth’s words correct when I do not feel provoked by them? One thing is clear to me. The context of Qoheleth’s reader has a strong influence on the interpretation, more so than with many other books of the Bible. In this contribution I wish to make a modest attempt to describe a number of readings from readers in different contexts, past and present, of a text of Qoheleth on death. This may enable me to get a better, more critical view on my own way of reading this text. I will concentrate on what we read in ch. 9 about life in the face of death. There can be no doubt that death is one of the primary themes in the book of Qoheleth. This has been demonstrated in scholarly literature * Thanks are due to my students Liesbeth van Deventer, Stefan Honing, Sico de Jong and André Wingelaar for their support in writing this article 1.  In their book 40/40 Vision: Clarifying Your Mission in Midlife (2015), Peter Greer and Greg Lafferty base their discussion of the midlife crisis and their suggestions to cope with it on their interpretation of the book of Qoheleth.

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time and again (Burkes 1999; M. George 2000; Krüger 2005; Lux 2009; Debel 2011; Fuhr 2013: 117–36; Berner 2015). Most scholars agree that, according to Qoheleth, death is the great equalizer, making no distinction between good or bad, wise or foolish; and that there is no life after death. Some want to leave open the possibility that Qoheleth, when speaking of the human spirit going to God (3.21 and 12.7), indirectly refers to a positive conception of the afterlife (Lux 2009: 61–3). Others assume a later ‘eschatological’ redaction, especially in 3.17; 8.5b-6; 11.9; 12.13-14 (Park 2014: 195–209; Berner 2015: 70–2). In his monumental commentary, however, Schoors sticks to the interpretation of Qoheleth as denying any form of individual survival, and is also reluctant to assume redactional activity in a verse like 12.7 (Schoors 2013: 819–20). Reading Qoheleth 9 In ch. 9 there is clearly no life after death in sight. The focus in vv. 1-3 is completely on this life, as summarized by Schoors: ‘(t)he idea that the same fate overtakes everybody is expressed in a more emphatic way’ than in previous texts (Schoors 2013: 649). He adds that in vv. 4-6 Qoheleth ‘underlines the emptiness of death’, that there is ‘neither reward nor punishment to be received’ in Sheol and that ‘(t)he only practical solution is again to enjoy the good things of life’ (2013: 650). I have read 9.1-12 in a class with thirty students. Twenty of them were Dutch students in the final year of their academic study and preparing for ministry in Protestant churches. Ten students came from other parts of the world, following a three-month Masters program at our university (Protestant Theological University) in Amsterdam. I asked them to give a personal reaction to this text from Qoheleth: How does it relate to your own views on death, life and the afterlife? Most of the students pointed to the contrast with their own Christian views about life after death. Some pointed to the different views within the Bible, especially to Lk. 16.19-33, 1 Corinthians 15 and the book of Revelation. Two African students also indicated that they could not accept Qoheleth’s view because it was not in line with traditional African conceptions of the afterlife, which has a prominent place for ancestors. They did not indicate that there was a tension between these African religions and Christianity on this subject.2 Some of the students stated that they no longer shared traditional Christian ideas in this regard, and 2.  Editor’s note: On this approach cf. also Masenya’s essay on Ruth in this volume.



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sympathized with Qoheleth. Two Dutch students did not accept the idea of completely different views within the Bible and announced that they were going to study the matter, apparently hoping to find some way to bring the seemingly opposing views together as different aspects of the same belief. A student from Myanmar reported that Qoheleth 9 is the text quoted most in his country at funeral services; and that it is used to make clear in that situation how important it is ‘to understand the will of God, and to learn how to live the rest of each and everyone’s life’. It was also remarked, especially by Dutch students, that Qoheleth’s view sounds remarkably modern, which makes it possible to use the work ‘as a beautiful gateway for a good conversation’. Two students related it to their future occupation as ministers, stating that – from a pastoral viewpoint – this Qoheleth text is of no use. A number of students indicated feeling provoked by the words of Qoheleth. Only two of them spoke of a slight change of mind caused by reading this chapter. A white student from South Africa remarked: ‘For me, this text is bringing relief in a way – it reassures me that it will not help me to stress and worry about death. Rather, we must spend our time in life on living it.’ A Dutch student concluded his reaction with: ‘Perhaps we should live this life as if it is the only one we have got…’ One difference between the reactions of the foreign students and those from the Netherlands is that the former referred more explicitly to their context and to the community they live in. This may have to do with the fact that at that moment they had been far from home for a month and were probably used to telling Dutch people, including me as a teacher, about their background. Nevertheless, it is an indication of the impact of one’s context on reading texts about death. More than the Dutch students, the foreign students could refer to their own experiences with death. An African student told of the death of her four siblings. She was the only child left to her parents. A student from Colombia wrote: This portion of the Jewish Scriptures allows me to put in dialogue the meaning of death and hope in this passage, with the context of war and desolation in my country. More than two interrupted centuries of civil wars within our country caused the Colombian population to see death as a natural or normal event. The surprise for us is to watch a newspaper not informing about death. The most usual experience in my country for decades has been to be eating lunch and sharing a good moment with a partner while, on the screen, there is news on how dozens of Colombians kill themselves. The experience of the other’s death is a place not to mourn, but to naturalize the hegemony of evil of our society.

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The only Dutch student to bring in a personal experience was an older student who stated that for him ‘death is not a taboo’, because his wife had worked in a hospice and they had often spoken about death. Moreover, he had also lost his wife at a relatively young age. He stated that he does not fear death, that he does not have illusions about a life after death and that death is primarily a problem for those who are left behind. This small investigation of the modern reception of Qoheleth’s words on death underlines the great influence of the context on the way Qoheleth’s message is understood and digested. It also indicates that this text does not seem to have much potential for changing the way the reader looks at death. Before going further into the matter of the application of this text, it is interesting to pay attention to the interaction between Qoheleth and the context in which it was written. Qoheleth in his Historical Context The book of Qoheleth is presented as the work of King Solomon, but in all probability it has to be dated in the Hellenistic era, somewhere between 280 and 230 BCE (Schoors 2013: 3). One of the arguments put forward by many scholars is that Qoheleth seems to be influenced by Greek ideas.3 One of the parallels that can be noted between Qoheleth and Greek literature is the combination of the conviction of death as the absolute end, and the admonition to enjoy life for as long as and as well as possible. It is evident, for instance, in Euripides’s play Alcestis, about a woman who dies so that her husband may live, but who eventually is rescued by Heracles. In one part of the play, a drunken Heracles proclaims: …let me tell you something that will make you wiser. Do you know what human life is all about? I think you don’t. How could you? Listen to me: We all must die. That goes for me and you, and no man living has the slightest clue if he’ll live another day. Out of the blue comes all our fortune. Scientists pursue the truth, and teachers teach their arts and skills, but still we know less than we ever knew.

3.  This was already suggested in the eighteenth century; cf. the survey by Burkes 1999: 91–108. Burkes herself is not convinced. She finds an explanation for Qoheleth’s worldview from within the history of the Jewish tradition.



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You’ve heard what I have to say. Now, have a drink! Enjoy yourself! The life you live today is yours, and all the rest belongs to fortune.4

Especially on this point there are also close parallels with much older Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts. The most famous one is the ending of the Gilgamesh Epic, where the hero of story, who had striven in vain for immortality, is addressed by the tavern-keeper Shidiru in a way that is strongly reminiscent of Qoh. 9.7-9: O Gilgamesh, where are you wandering? The life that you seek you never will find: when the gods created mankind, death they dispensed to mankind, life they kept for themselves. But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, dance and play day and night! let your clothes be clean, let your head be washed, may you bathe in water! Gaze on the child who holds your hand, let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace! For such is the destiny [of mortal men,] that the one who lives…5

This parallel of Qoheleth with the Gilgamesh Epic is one of many,6 but it is striking that this element of the Gilgamesh Epic is only found in the Old Babylonian version, dating from the first half of the second millennium BCE. There are also clear parallels with ancient Egyptian literature, especially with the Harper’s Song from the tomb of King Intef, found in different copies from the second millennium BCE. It expresses serious doubts about all efforts made to secure a good life after death. Little is left of the ‘houses of eternity’ of the kings of old. Therefore, it is better to concentrate on this life and make the most of it:

4.  Euripides, Alcestis 828-840. Translation by Arnson Svarlie 2007: 39. 5.  OB Gilgamesh VA+BM iii 2-15. Translation by A. George 1999: 124. 6.  A survey is given by Samet (2015), and she also discusses the parallel with Qoheleth 9 (377–9).

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There is much discussion about how precisely these texts should be related to the book of Qoheleth. Although some still assume that the Gilgamesh Epic functioned as a direct literary source of Qoheleth (Samet 2015), most scholars nowadays are more reluctant to take this position and consider a relation with popular Greek philosophy to be more likely (Van der Toorn 2001; Kelly 2010; Sneed 2012: 42–3). A middle position is taken by those who emphasize that Qoheleth should be read in a traditional Semitic context; that echoes of views in the Gilgamesh Epic can still be found in later Akkadian texts; and that the same holds true for the Egyptian views (Kaiser 2003: 263). When evaluating the relation with the Greek, Mesopotamian and Egyptians texts one should also take into account that along with these parallels there are also a number of differences. The most important

7.  Translation by M. Lichtheim in Hallo 2003: 1:49.



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of these is that, according to Qoheleth, one can find no comfort in the expectation of being remembered after death: ‘There is no enduring remembrance of the wise as well as of the fool, because all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come’ (2.16).8 Here Qoheleth contradicts a motif which is broadly attested in Greek literature (Berner 2015: 59), and which also occurs at the end of the epic of Gilgamesh. It concludes with Gilgamesh proudly referring to the walls of Uruk for which he became and will remain famous (A. George 1999: xxxiv). In 3.21 Qoheleth has also dealt with another idea about escaping death. He asks a rhetorical question: ‘Who knows if the spirit of the sons of men goes upward and the spirit of the animal goes down to the earth?’ This can be read as a denial of belief in the immortality of the soul, which became common in later Greek-influenced Jewish writings (Schoors 2013: 309), and of the ancient Egyptian conception of the spirit as a bird leaving the body after death. Burkes compares Qoheleth’s view on death and the way death is described in late Egyptian biographies, and sees this as an insoluble problem. She does not assume that one has been influenced by the other. What connects the two views is that they both were ‘part of a broader pattern of change where a wide spectrum of religious beliefs, expectations, and emphases are coming in for new reflection (…) at approximately the same time’ (Burkes 1999: 236). The problem with this theory is that Qoheleth’s view on death can hardly be seen as deviating from traditional views. It is the other way around: Qoheleth is resisting new ways, probably influenced by Greek thinking, of softening the harsh reality of death. In his plea for making the best of this life, he wants to cut off every escape contained in any form of positive views on an afterlife. A Liberationist Reading In her rereading of Qoheleth in both today’s context and its own context, Elsa Tamez sees similarities between the frustration of the people suffering under the ‘globalization’ of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic system in the time of Qoheleth, and the ‘dehumanizing reality’ of the present time (Tamez 2000: v). She interprets 4.1-12, which starts with the reference to the ‘tears of the oppressed’ who ‘have no comforter’, as Qoheleth’s call for ‘solidarity as a way of combating the avaricious and meaningless spirit of his society’ (Tamez 2000: 68). She also wants to read ch. 9 as a text of resistance: ‘to live and feel the vibrancy of life (…) is a feasible

8.  All translations from the Hebrew biblical text in this essay are the author’s.

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way to resist the times of anti-human hostility, and to combat the total frustration caused by the society’ (Tamez 2000: 113).9 She acknowledges, however, that from a liberationalist point of view, Qoheleth as ‘a renegade aristocrat under foreign domination’ may have been too inclined to accept a situation he could not easily change. Suffering people, however, do not have this luxury. For this reason, Tamez wants to put the apocalyptic vision of a completely different future next to Qoheleth’s advice ‘to live life from day to day (…) in the midst of enslaving labour and sorrow’ (Tamez 2000: 145). Not everyone will agree with Tamez about her analysis of Qoheleth’s view on society. According to Schoors, Qoheleth was aware of political and economic oppression, but did not really criticize them. He did not see oppression as a problem, but only used it to illustrate the absurdity of human existence (Schoors 2013: 325). Katharine Dell, who sympathizes with the liberationalist approach, is also reluctant on this issue: ‘the very bluntness and realism of Ecclesiastes make it a resistant text for liberation’. Instead, she advocates a postcolonial approach, reading the texts as a two-edged sword, leaving room for a struggle over their meaning, both creating problems and solving them. With regard to the issue of life and death, Dell concludes that Qoheleth ‘could be read in the postcolonial context of either group – by the dominant Eurocentric former colonizer or the poverty-ridden formerly colonized – and both would probably come to the same conclusion that life should be enjoyed in the present, whoever you are, and that nothing can ultimately be changed’ (Dell 2013: 83). Read this way, however, the biblical text hardly functions as a two-edged sword. Motivated by the experiences of reading this text with my students, I think that more inspiration can be found in it. Enjoying Life as a Protest What strikes me in the reactions to the way Qoheleth speaks about life in the face of death is that his advice to enjoy life as much as possible is understood so differently. I now realise all the more that it makes a big difference when you hear this in my privileged situation, as 9.  Besides the parallel from the Gilgamesh Epic, Tamez also refers to the admonition to enjoy life in the face of death in a Latin-American (Nahuatl) poem of the sixteenth century CE: ‘For only a short time, like the magnolia flower, have we come to open our corolla in the world. We have come only to wilt. Let your bitterness cease for a moment: even for a moment let us cast away sorrow! What shall we sing, oh my friends? In what shall we delight?’ (Tamez 2000: 118).



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described above, or when you live, like some of the students, in Medellin (Columbia) or in Central Africa. For me, enjoying life is simply taking some of the many possibilities offered by the amusement industry and advocated by my employer, who wants me to stay happy and healthy. For people in a situation of poverty and oppression, the advice to enjoy life can be heard as a call for protest against their situation and an urge not to give in to resignation. Here I agree with Elsa Tamez. This can also explain why it sometimes seems to be more difficult to enjoy life properly in a comfortable situation. One could also say that being bored or depressed is a luxury not everyone can afford. These experiences of reading Qoheleth in different contexts are enriched by what Mark George writes about his way of reading the texts in a postHolocaust age. In his view, Qoheleth teaches us to accept the reality of death in order to take responsibility for the life one has been given (M. George 2000: 289). In his attempt to apply this to the present-day situation, George first consults Jacques Derrida, who states that responsibility requires the act of a unique person, a subject who is finite and irreplaceable. The unique self is not constituted by the role one plays in life, but by one’s death. Each person’s death is unique (M. George 2000: 290–1). To cope with death in a post-Holocaust age, George suggests going one step further. In line with the view of Emmanuel Levinas that subjectivity arises in the encounter with the Other, George suggests (2000: 293) that ‘it is not only one’s own death one must take upon oneself, but also the death of the Other, for the death of the Other is oneself’. The death one must accept is also the death of those who died in the Holocaust and the freedom to enjoy life is ‘a freedom derived from taking on the deaths of all those who died’. In this way the awareness of death is the beginning of life. I see here also a connection with what I learned from my foreign students, namely that it makes a big difference whether you think of death from the perspective of the individual or from the experience of being part of a community.10 The obvious conclusion of this survey of interpretations and applications of Qoheleth’s texts on life and death is that there are many differences which to a large extent can be attributed to the different contexts of the readers. What can be indicated as characteristic of Qoheleth and which can also be used as a critique on some of the positions taken, 10.  It is interesting in this connection to note that in his essay of 2012, on the Gilgamesh Epic, A. R. George points to the contrasts between humans as individuals and humans as a collective in old Babylonian thought as one of the basic elements of the text.

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is that Qoheleth is constantly presenting problems. One should be careful with attributing definitive answers or clear-cut conceptions to Qoheleth, because ‘he shows that any truth wisdom can attain has only a relative value, there is always a pro and a con’ (Schoors 2013: 20). So, why not take the rhetorical question of 3.21 (‘Who knows if the spirit of the sons of men goes upward and the spirit of the animal goes down to the earth?’) as an open question? In 9.3 Qoheleth confronts the reader with a harsh reality: ‘and afterwards – to the dead’. Psalm 73.24 can be read as a specific reaction to that statement, declaring that a difference is made for those who stay with God: ‘and afterward you will take me into glory’ (Spronk 1986: 326). One does not have to see this as a contradiction. Where Qoheleth did not want to or dared not to go further, the psalmist did want to; or could not stop. References Arnson Svarlie, Diane, trans. (2007), Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus / Euripides, introduction and notes Robin Mitchell-Boysak, Indianapolis: Hackett. Berner, Christoph (2015), ‘Evil and Death in the Book of Qohelet’, in B. Ego and U. Mittmann (eds), Evil and Death: Conceptions of the Human in Biblical, Early Jewish, Greco-Roman and Egyptian Literature, 57–73, Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Burkes, Shannon (1999), Death in Qoheleth and Egyptian Biographies of the Late Period, SBL Dissertation Series 170; Atlanta, GA: SBL. Debel, Hans (2011), ‘Life-and-Death Advice from a Conservative Sage: Qohelet’s Perspective on Life after Death’, in L. D. Matassa and J. M. Silverman (eds), Text, Theology, and Trowel: New Investigations in the Biblical World, 39–58, Eugene, OR: Pickwick. Dell, Katharine J. (2013), Interpreting Ecclesiastes: Readers Old and New, Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible 3, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Fuhr, Richard Alan (2013), An Analysis of the Inter-Dependency of the Prominent Motifs within the Book of Qohelet, Studies in Biblical Literature 151, New York: Peter Lang. George, Andrew R. (1999), The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. George, Andrew R. (2012), ‘The Mayfly on the River: Individual and Collective Destiny in the Epic of Gilgamesh’, Kaskal. Rivista di storia, ambiente e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico, 9: 227–42. George, Mark K. (2000), ‘Death as the Beginning of Life in the Book of Ecclesiastes’, in T. Linafelt (ed.), Strange Fire: Reading the Bible after the Holocaust, 280–93, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Greer, Peter, and Greg Lafferty (2015), 40/40 Vision: Clarifying Your Mission in Midlife, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Hallo, William W., ed. (2003), The Context of Scripture. Vol. 1, Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, Leiden: Brill.



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Kaiser, Otto (2003), ‘Carpe diem und Memento mori in Dichtung und Denken der Alten, bei Kohelet und Ben Sira’, in Zwischen Athen und Jerusalem: Studien zur griechischen und biblischen Theologie, ihrer Eigenart und ihrem Verhältnis, 247–74, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 320, Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Kelly, Joseph Ryan (2010), ‘Sources of Contention and the Emerging Reality Concerning Qohelet’s Carpe Diem Advice’, Antiguo Oriente, 8: 117–34. Krüger, Thomas (2005), ‘Leben und Tod nach Kohelet und Paulus’, in M. Abner et al. (eds), Leben trotz Tod, 195–216, Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 19, NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Lux, Rüdiger (2009), ‘Tod und Gerechtigkeit im Buch Kohelet’, in A. Berlejung and B. Janowski (eds), Tod und Jenseits im alten Israel und in seiner Umwelt, 43–65, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 64, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Park, Young Joon (2014), Der Durchbruch zum ewigen Leben: Der Psalm 49, das Buch Kohelet und das Wachstum der Weisheit, Marburg: Tectum Verlag. Samet, Nili (2015), ‘The Gilgamesh Epic and the Book of Qohelet: A New Look’, Biblica, 96: 375–90. Schoors, Antoon (2013), Ecclesiastes, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament, Leuven: Peeters. Sneed, Mark R. (2012), The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A Social-Science Perspective, Ancient Israel and Its Literature 12, Atlanta, GA: SBL. Spronk, Klaas (1986), Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East, AOAT 219, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Spronk, Klaas (2004), ‘Good Death and Bad Death in Ancient Israel according to Biblical Lore’, Social Science and Medicine, 58: 987–95. Tamez, Elsa (2000), When the Horizons Close: Rereading Ecclesiastes, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Van der Toorn, Karel (2001), ‘Echoes of Gilgamesh in the Book of Qohelet? A Reassessment of the Intellectual Sources of Qohelet’, in W. H. van Soldt et al. (eds), Veenhof Anniversary Volume, 503–14, Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten.

Part IV L a m en tat i ons

R e a di ng D a u g h t er Z i on and L ady M e ng : T e a r s , P r ot es t a n d F em ale V oi ce s * Archie C. C. Lee

1. Introduction The ending of Lamentations has puzzled many a reader of the book as to whether the female voices are being answered, or sufferers are being utterly rejected (5.21-22). It seems that at least some ambiguities persist, with no divine assurance to the female voices in the first two chapters in the quest for divine response (‘See/Look’, Lam. 1.20; 2.20). This essay intends to look at the issue again from the perspective of the Chinese story of Lady Meng Jiang’s Tears, which narrates the power of a widow’s cries for her husband who died of forced labor in the course of the imperial building project of the Great Wall. Her tears moved heaven and earth and, as a result, cities collapsed and the Wall tumbled. Discussions in the following will focus on the meaning of female cries of protest being answered in Lady Meng Jiang’s Tears, or seemingly gone unheeded in the case of Daughter Zion in Lamentations. Both the female voices of Lady Meng’s Tears and the personified Daughter Zion will be read cross-textually. The legendary story of the former has gone through a long history of development in the past 2500 years (from 549 BCE onward) in China (Hong Lee 2007: 49–50; Idema 2008: 5–6), adding different dimensions of lament from subsequent contexts in a great variety of literary, theatrical and ritual compositions (narration, poetry, songs, folklore, novels, ballads, plays, dramas, films and stage performances). It may help to *  The author acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Education of PRC for ‘Interpretation and Reception of the Bible in Modern China’ (Project No. 14JJD730001). The research for this article is also partially supported by the following grant: The Hebrew Bible and the Cultural World of the Mediterranean (Research Project: 15ZDB088).

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unpack some of the complications (e.g. the tension between human mourning and the notion of retribution in the conception of theodicy) in the present textual framework of Lamentations. With the aspiration articulated in Lady Meng Jiang’s Tears, this essay proposes to read the five chapters of Lamentations together and to consider that the voices of Daughter Zion do not disappear in the first two chapters, but persist to the very end of the book. The more positive male voice of Lamentations 3 does not then cancel out the female voices’ lament; instead, the latter are reaffirmed in the communal voices of Lamentations 5. The accusation of ‘her’ sin is put into doubt and is being questioned in the generational context: ‘Our fathers sinned but now they are gone’ (Lam. 5.7, TEV). It is further suggested that even if God’s punishment of her sin is justified, the suffering is already too severe and can be seen as unreasonably excessive. God is called to return and have compassion on the painful agonies of Daughter Zion. The contrast between the conception of the divine, and the supernatural dimensions in Lamentations and in Lady Meng Jiang’s Tears, respectively, are well articulated in the ending of both literary traditions we are to study. II. The Story of Lady Meng’s Tears in Chinese Tradition The story of Lady Meng’s Tears has grown over the long history of literary folklore traditions from a short and simple tale of a widow’s rightful request to the Marquis of Qi, a small city-state in the Shandong province, for a proper rite of lament at the ancestral home for her lost husband, Qi Liang, who was killed in battle (Rojas 2010: 81–3). It evolved from this simple tale of an unnamed wife, who refused to receive an improper ritual of condolence on the outskirts of town, to become a powerful narrative of the widow’s tears that brought down city walls.1 The story has further developed in different regions of China, with variations, to become an extended dramatic account of a widow searching for her husband, who has been taken away by the soldiers of the autocratic emperor in the midst of the wedding feast to do forced labor on the building project of the 10,000-mile Great Wall.2 The connection with 1.  There is an extensive and large-scale study of the origins, history and development of the story by one of the greatest and most influential critical historians on Chinese history, Gu Jiegang (1893–1980), and by other members of the Folklore Movement in China. See Gu Jiegang 1984. 2.  Wilt L. Idema translated ten versions of the story with an Introduction (Idema 2008).



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the Great Wall of the First Emperor (221–208 BCE) first appears in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE).3 The long and hazardous journey of Lady Meng took her to the building site, only to be told that her new husband had died after being buried alive to ritually ascertain the firm and secured foundation of the Great Wall. Her cry and lament were said to have worked a miracle: the collapse of the wall and exposure of her husband’s corpse. It would be illogical to carry out a blood test to correctly identify the husband’s bones; but the validity of the marriage institution affirms the cosmic response to the heroine’s quest, and supports the conversion of husband–wife relationship into a ‘blood’ relationship within the primacy of the patrilineal kinship system. Therefore, Lady Meng’s love for her husband is likened to the practice of filial piety of a son toward his father (Rojas 2010: 85, 88). The retellings of the story have added many extended details, in a great variety of forms, in literary writings and in opera performances in popular theatres, across different regions of China. Among such versions are tales about how Lady Meng, after recovering all her husband’s bones, had great pity on the other unidentified bodies of many conscribed laborers who died at the harsh task of the Wall. She comforted them and offered to bring messages to their families about their tragic fate. In a fragmentary manuscript found in one of the cases of Dunhuang, replies are even incorporated from the skulls, who described their hardship under the Qin Emperor and in poetic verses: Our corpses were scattered over the wastelands, no one knew what had become of us. Spring and winter forever we lie amid the yellow sands. Bring word to our wives that pine desolate in their bowers. Telling them to chant the Summons to the Soul and keep up the sacrifices. Make sure to record in your heart what we tell you now. And if you see our fathers and mothers do us the kindness to tell them.4

In some other versions the emperor was enraged at the news of the fall of the Wall, and Lady Meng was summoned to him. The emperor was then attracted by her beauty and wanted to take her as queen. She agreed on condition that she was to be allowed to mourn her husband for forty-nine days. To do so, she requested the building of a wooden tower by the river – or by the sea, as one tradition has it in the case of the shrine 3.  See Rojas 2010: 81–9, Chapter 3, ‘Between History and Legend’. 4.  See Arthur Waley’s translation of an old Dunhuang manuscript in Minford and Lau 2000: 1079–81.

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at Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall meets the sea of Bohai in the East (Idema 2008: 3). She demanded the highest honor for her husband in the ceremonial burial authorized and officiated by the emperor. She ascended to the top of the tower to lament for her dead husband and curse the emperor for all the brutality, cruelty and oppression against humanity he committed before she jumped from the tower into the river to kill herself. In great anger the emperor ordered the soldiers to chop her body into small pieces, grind her bones into powder and throw this into the river. The story ends with the transformation of each of these pieces of human flesh into hundreds of thousands of small fish, symbolizing the spirit of protest and resistance that lives on, shedding tears for the injustice done to the suffering people and giving hope for the possibility of transformation. As stated above, there is a great variety of versions of this story, retold and rewritten again and again. Students in the third-world theologies class of R. S. Sugirtharajah have written a play based on the retelling of Lady Meng’s Tears by C. S. Song, an outstanding Taiwanese theologian (Song 1981). It is reported that the play is often performed as part of class work, followed by a discussion of issues arising from the drama (Sugirtharajah 1994). All the versions circulated in locations and regions in China and which are in different phases and stages of development have one significant common and almost indispensable feature: the woman’s cries and tears are responded to by the natural world through a supernatural phenomenon – the city wall or the Great Wall collapses. Lady Meng’s lamenting voices are always heard, and the heavens miraculously respond to her tears. Lady Meng’s story becomes more detailed as it develops, thus reflecting the people’s aspirations for vindication under tyrannical rule. The positive theme of justice is never absent, in spite of the addition of many dramatic elements. The new and innovative notion of Lady Meng’s final sacrifice in the fight for her rights reflects the enduring suffering she has to undergo before the final triumph is to be seen. The transformation of the tragic heroine from her dead body into numerous small fish demonstrates the power of tears in the quest for justice and righteousness. The story, therefore, has survived as a popular tale of the people to be re-told, re-enacted and widely shared. In its long history of development, we see its vitality extended across localities and temporalities in China. The people’s contemporary social and economic struggles and sufferings under oppressive power are being incorporated, articulated and inscribed in the ‘retelling’ of the legend and ‘re-singing’ of the folksong. It is evident that the motif of protest and complaint against unjust rule constitutes the core of the cry of anguish and grief. As Richard Hughes rightly comments, complaints against God in individual lament psalms are



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characteristically ‘stated in accusatory “why?” or “how long?” questions’ (Hughes 2004: 45) which are raised by the prophets in defending the people from divine anger and wrath. Daughter Zion’s complaints must then be seen in the same light, as being directed against a God who brought about the catastrophe of destruction to the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Lady Meng’s tears do not intend only to express apparent injustice and death, which are experiences of the past as understood in dirges, but also to insist on an open future with the hope of rectification and an assurance of vindication. According to Haiyan Lee, who sums up the reason for the intensive interest of the folklorist movement in China in the 1920s, the legend of Lady Meng has functioned as a powerful dramatization of enduring ‘themes by bringing a helpless woman in direct confrontation with the most iconic of the Confucian edifices: the Great Wall’ (Haiyan Lee 2005: 42). In addition, Lady Meng is also a symbolic representation of suffering women who sing in tears, protest from grief and lament in sorrow against the oppressive and violent sociopolitical order. This is well summed up by Gu Jiegang, the prominent folklorist and critical scholar of ancient Chinese historical traditions in the 1920–30s: Thus, whatever sorrows they experienced, they projected onto Meng Jiang. She became their patron saint in suffering (beishang de daoshi), and she changed correspondingly to the way their feelings changed. Because she embodied all the feelings of pain and misery, her character (renge) became extraordinarily great.5

III. The Female Voices in Lamentations Next we will look at the female voices in Lamentations. In the first poem Daughter Zion addresses God directly, but briefly, in the first person feminine singular in 1.9c (‫)ראה יהוה את עניי‬, 11c (‫)ראה יהוה והביטה‬, and at the very end of ch. 1 (‫ראה יהוה‬, v. 20). The same call for attention, ‘See, O YHWH’, is adopted to express ‘her’ affliction (v. 9c), humiliation (v. 11c) and desperation (‘in torment’ with the heart turned ‘upside down’ [v. 20a, b]).6 The petition is based on the admission of a deserved punishment for her transgression, and the retributive notion of the same divine punishment to be given to the foes who rejoiced in her misfortune. 5.  Gu 1984: 119. Translation is taken from H. Lee 2005: 47. 6.  The translation is from Salters 2010: 34. Detailed textual and exegetical analysis of the chapter are found on pp. 35–106.

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Daughter Zion appeals to God in the imperative, urging God to take action: ‘Hear, how I groan… For my groans are many and my heart is faint’ (vv. 21a, 22c). She seems to echo the voice of Deutero-Isaiah for comfort (‫נחמו נחמו‬, Isa. 40.1), and stresses that ‘I have no one to comfort me’ (‫אין מנחם לי‬, v. 21a).7 The picture one gets from the second poem in Lamentations 2 is that all violence tragically suffered by Jerusalem has been caused or permitted by God, who was in total control and admittedly responsible. The subject of the verbs in the first section (vv. 1-8) is definitely YHWH, even in the case when the enemies are involved: ‘He has withdrawn his right hand in the face of the foe’ (v. 3). Indeed, in the other two cases when the enemies are referred to (vv. 17, 22), one in each of the last two sections of Lamentations 2 (vv. 11-19 and 20-22), it was YHWH who let the enemies rejoice and promoted their power to destroy. God’s merciless and aggressive attack in vv. 1-8 prepares the stage for the narrator’s comments in vv. 9-10 and 11-19, which confirm the harsh suffering and devastation of the personified Zion, and which prepares us for the dirge-like lament – in prayer form – at the end of the poem (vv. 20-22; Salters 2010: 108–9). Daughter Zion’s voice is heard again in her plea to God with the same cry, ‘Behold, O YHWH’ (‫ראה יהוה‬, v. 20). She appeals to God’s mercy with the heart-rending question, ‘Should women be eating their own children?’ which, according to Salters, ‘appears to accuse Yahweh of going too far in God’s aggressive attacks’ (Salters 2010: 109). The traditional notion of the Day of Yahweh as severe judgment is referred to twice, and the day of a solemn assembly once, in the last two verses (vv. 21-22). No doubt, God in his wrath has brought about the people’s destruction by the hands of the enemies, who are invited to a festival of slaughtering. Moving on to the longest poem of Lamentations in ch. 3, we find that many scholars consider this the centre of the whole book though it is, according to B. S. Childs, ‘The most controversial chapter in the book’ (Childs 1979: 592). The identity of ‘the man’ (‫ )הגבר‬in 3.1 cannot be definitely decided. Some refer to the laments of Jeremiah, with textual support from Jer. 11.18-23; 12.1-5; 15.10-12; 20.7-18 (and cf. 2 Chron. 35.25). Magne Sæbø may well be pointing in the right direction in his perception of the person as in general just anyone who has suffered and accused God in the process, but has eventually arrived at a positive and pious attitude (Sæbø 1998: 135–7). The use of the same verb ‘see’ (‫ראה‬, Qal again) by this male sufferer may well echo the lamenting cry 7.  Salters suggests that similar forms are used in vv. 2, 9, 16 and 17.



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to God, requesting attention, in the previous two chapters. He confirms his suffering is all coming from God, who is the subject of the verbs in vv. 1-18. There is no protest against God from this man, who justifies God’s bringing about his plight. He regards ‘remembering’ as the key to a reversal of his fate (vv. 19-21), leading to his confidence of ‘having hope’ (‫על כן אוחיל‬, v. 21, cf. ‘hope’ in vv. 24, 29) and concluding with a confident affirmation through an address to God’s unfailing compassion (‫כי לא כלו רחמיו‬, v. 22, cf. v. 32) and great faithfulness (‫רבה אמונתך‬, v. 23). The threefold use of the word ‘good’ (‫ )טוב‬in vv. 25-27 is not accidental; not only is God good to the man who has hope in God (v. 24) and waits for God’s salvation (vv. 25-26), but it is also good for a man (‫ )טוב לגבר‬to bear his yoke (v. 27). It is interesting to recognize the adoption here of words and phrases used by Daughter Zion in Lamentations 1 and 2, in the words of ‘the man’ in ch. 3. The man sits alone and keeps silent (‫ישב בדד וידם‬, 3.28) whereas, at the very beginning of Daughter Zion’s lament, she sits alone (‫איכה ישבה בדד‬, 1.1) but does not keep silent. Her elders were said to sit in silence but they were in lament (‫ישבו לארץ ידמו‬, 2.10). There are only three appearances of the root ‫( דמם‬d-m-m) in Lamentations (2.10, 18; 3.28). The contrast between the silence of the man (3.28) and the opposite response of Daughter Zion is clearly shown (2.18). We should not miss the link between the lament cry of Daughter Zion for God to behold (‫ראה‬ ‫יהוה‬, 1.9, 11, 20; 2.20) and the man’s assertion that he has seen (3.1), and that God will also see from heaven (‫עד ישקיף וירא יהוה משמים‬, 3.50). At the end the man expresses his affirmation that God has seen his affliction (‫ראיתה יהוה עותתי‬, 3.59) and the wickedness of the enemies (‫ראיתה כל‬ ‫נקמתם‬, 3.60). The trust and hope in God, expressed in Lamentation 3, are almost absent in Lamentations 4, where the issue of Jerusalem’s sins (in particular those of the prophets and priests, 4.13) and the justifiable divine punishment (4.11, 16), are raised again and are both said to be heavier than those of Sodom (4.6). The community, which is in great grief and deep lament, as represented in this chapter, is also different from the individual orientation of the previous chapter. Lamentations 4 recalls the sufferings of Daughter Zion in Lamentations 1–2 with the same usage of ‘how!’ (‫ )איכה‬at the beginning (1.1; 2.1; 4.1-2) and the adoption of the acrostic form throughout the poem. A similar use of the literary feature of contrasting former glory (4.1-2) with present degradation (4.3-5, 8-9) does not fail to connect this chapter with the first two. In addition, there is also the reference to the impurity paradigm (4.14-15) as in Lam. 1.8-9. Lamentations 4 contains indications about the people’s severe sufferings not only with references to the destruction of Zion (4.11), her religious leaders (4.13-14) and the anointed of YHWH (4.20), but also

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by presenting a vivid, but tragic image of mothers boiling their children (v. 10): ‘The trope of cannibalism’, comments Adele Berlin, ‘is made more horrible by the adjective “caring, compassionate” (raḥamāniyyôt)’ (Berlin 2002: 109). And yet, despite the recognition of the coming of the end (4.18), there is some expression of hope amidst the despair at the end of ch. 4. In addition to the promise of no more exile for God’s people, there is the certainty of punishment for ‘Daughter Edom’, Israel’s archenemy, once the punishments for Daughter Zion’s iniquities have been executed (4.22). When we come to Lamentations 5 we are reminded of Daughter Zion’s plea already in the first verse: ‘Remember, O YHWH, what has come upon us; Behold and see our reproach’ (‫הביט [הביטה] וראה את חרפתנו‬, 5.1). Not only has her lament not been answered, as is claimed in Lamentations 3, but she has also been left alone and forgotten. Chapter 5, the shortest of the five poems, seems to be marked out from the earlier chapters of Lamentations. The acrostic device is not strictly followed even though the number of the Hebrew letters is formally indicated, represented in the twenty-two verses of the chapter. The complaint (5.1-18) is presented in a communal lament, with the ending (5.19-22) in the form of an appeal to God, a prayer for restoration. The prayer echoes the plea for God’s attention as expressed by Daughter Zion in 1.9c, 11, 20 and 2.20. Altogether, in all five chapters of Lamentations there are 16 direct references to sin (1.5, 8, 9, 14, 18, 20, 22; 2.14; 3.39, 42, 64; 4.6, 13, 22; 5.7, 16). Except for 1.22, 3.64 and 4.22, which concern the enemies’ sins, thirteen of these occurrences refer to the sins of Israel (Jerusalem and/ or the people; Boase 2006: 141). Only in ch. 1 is the sin motif voiced by Daughter Zion (1.14, 18, 20, 22). Eight other occurrences of the motif are by the narrator (1.5, 8, 9; 2.14; 3.64; 4.6, 13, 22), while three are found in the communal voice (3.42; 5.7, 16) and two are said by an individual (3.39, 64). It is worth noting that when Israel is rhetorically feminized and metaphorically perceived as a wife, the imposition of sin and punishment is more often articulated. This is clearly shown by Carleen R. Mandolfo, who analyzes Jer. 2.3 and 13.20-27, regarding God’s accusation of the effeminate Judah (Mandolfo 2007: 37–45). Mandolfo concludes, with reference to Mary Shields’s work, that the move from divine accusation to divine promise occurs at the point of shifting from female imagery to male imagery (Shields 1995: 68–71). There is an aspect of the communal impact of sin that is raised by the sufferers in Lam. 5.7: they complain of their ancestors’ sin (‘Our fathers have sinned and they are gone, but we have borne their iniquities’).



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Whether these ‘fathers’ refer to their ancestors or to the people’s contemporary spiritual leaders does not alter the view that not only do the people, in suffering, feel the impact and consequences of other people’s sin, but also that the pain is still a present reality. A more or less similar complaint of bearing the burden of the fathers was responded to by Jeremiah (31.29) and Ezekiel (18.2), who both attempt to sever the generational link between punishment and sin (e.g. Exod. 20.5; Deut. 5.8). There is no denial of the present generation’s sin in Lam. 5.16 (‘We sinned, and now we are doomed’ [TEV, rev.]), but the problem is the duration of the ongoing suffering which, finally, provokes the question, ‘Why have you abandoned us so long? (‫למה לנצח תשכחנו‬, 5.20) at the end of the book. Robin Parry assumes that the verse underlines a ‘devastating severity’ and ‘the seemingly unending duration’.8 The request for restoration is still not in sight.9 Lamentation 3 is certainly not the climax of the book. The female voice and Daughter Zion’s tears are now taken over by the community in pain. The five poems of Lamentations, according to Salters, exhibit different foci and each has its own emphasis.10 Salters states that God’s way of dealing with the people is regarded as proper and right (1.18), though he also admits that the God of Israel is painfully seen as the Lord who brought about Israel’s defeat and humiliation. The accusation of divine violence in 2.1-9 clearly shows God’s total control of historical events, leaving no room to ponder any claim of superiority by the enemies and their gods.11 Salters further points to the faith invested in YHWH in the call to act against Edom (4.21-22). Looking at the poems as a whole, the theological themes of loyalty to YHWH in spite of or because of the disaster, the 8.  Parry 2010: 154. Taking the current situation as due to the extremity of God’s ‘anger’, Parry, however, asserts that ‘this very question presupposes a grief in YHWH’s ongoing covenant relationship with his people’. 9.  Parry is in favor of a positive note, while assessing O’Connor’s suggestion of the title for this last verse as ‘What God should do but probably will not’, as incorrect (O’Connor 2002: 77). Parry quotes ‘But probably will not’ and puts it in italics, which is not a feature of O’Connor’s original work. His summary of four different categories for scholars’ discussions of the meaning of ‫( כי אם‬kî ’im, beginning of 5.22) is very helpful. The categories are: (1) A doubting conclusion? (2) An open conclusion? (3) A protesting conclusion? (4) A hopeful conclusion? (Parry 2010: 154–7). 10.  In his ICC commentary on Lamentations, Salters reverses his earlier view that ‘All the poems were the work of a single author’; instead, he now holds that the poems ‘did not come from the same pen’ (2010: 26). 11.  This view is more or less similar to the perspective of reward and punishment in the deuteronomistic theology (Salters 2010: 27–8).

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divine rightful punishment of sin and the new or renewed affirmation of YHWH as the Lord of history in the midst of the enemies’ victories over God’s temple and the people, will never overshadow the loud and clear voice of complaint against God by the deserted destitute who dares to protest, addressing God in the second person pronoun (1.9c, 11c, 12, 22; 2.20-22; 3.1-18; 5.1-18) and laying bare the sheer horrifying but ongoing and present reality of suffering (Salters 2010: 27–8). The ending of the last poem (5.21-22) testifies to this very core of the dilemma of hope in a merciful God, whose intervention is anticipated. The lamenters, however, have absolutely no control over the sheer ambiguities embedded in the divine–human relationship. IV. Reading Daughter Zion and Lady Meng Cross-textually Daughter Zion in Lamentations is a literary persona, much like in the city laments from Mesopotamia (Dobbs-Allsop 1993). In the latter case, it is a city’s matron goddess who laments for the destruction done because of the male patron God. On the other hand Lamentations, as is characteristic of Hebrew poetry in the Bible, ‘largely removes goddess language from Zion’s lineage’ (O’Connor 2002: 14). The role of the goddess in the city lament is now being taken up by Daughter Zion, personified as a wailing widow lamenting the withdrawal of divine patronage. Both Lamentations and city laments from Mesopotamia present us with a silent male God. In contrast to Job, Lamentations has no divine speeches at all. When the people’s enemies are God’s enemies as well, complaints directed to God in laments are mostly perceived of as appeals to God to act. God’s passive response is the issue in some of the Psalms of lament (Pss. 9–10; 74, etc.; Broyles 1989: 218). In cases where God is regarded as an active agent who brings about distress by delivering God’s people to their enemies (44.11-13; 80.13-14; 89.41-42, 44; Broyles 1989: 219), elements of ‘sin’ and ‘punishment’ are expressed in some community laments to justify the present suffering and defeat; but the issue of God’s ‘excessive’ wrath (Pss. 79.5; 80.5-6) hangs over the lamentable mood, since deliverance is not forthcoming or is already long overdue. The ground for complaints against and petition to God for the fulfillment of promises is based only on God’s saving deeds in the past (Broyles 1989: 221). When God is on the opposite side of the lamenter, acting as an enemy and causing disaster to befall humans, tears and cries only serve to confirm trust in God as the very one who can actually reverse the desperate situation (Broyles 1989: 5).



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The open-endedness and intended ambiguities of Lamentations contrast greatly with the clear-cut and conclusive approach in Lady Meng’s story on the power of tears. Perhaps, the traditional position held by the prophets on sin and punishment, though being questioned, still prevails in some strata of the post-exilic community undergoing destruction. But obviously, reading through the chapters of Lamentations, the presentation of misery and plight of the personified Daughter Zion outweighs any justification for excessive and extensive justification of suffering on the basis of any theodicy. God is held responsible for the ongoing pain. The doctrine of retribution is never denied; nevertheless, it is being questioned. There is tension between accusing Daughter Zion of sin only in general terms, and between the detailed depiction of the harshness of YHWH’s punishment inflicted on her. Elizabeth Boase repeatedly emphasizes this imbalance between ‘the lack of specificity of sin’ and ‘the overriding dominance of the suffering portrayed’.12 In comparison to similar presentations of sin and suffering in prophetic literature, for example in Jeremiah and Ezekiel where the attribution of sin follows the traditional causal link of act–consequence, Lamentations evokes more sympathy from its audience and draws more attention to the enormity of Daughter Zion’s suffering (Boase 2006: 190–1). While confession of sin is present in Daughter Zion’s speech (1.14, 18, 20, 22), it is not the dominant motif and in no way constitutes the final word among more prominent protests and complaints regarding portrayals of suffering and grief. The same also applies to Lam. 4.6, where the people’s sin is depicted as heavier than that of Sodom’s. It must be noted that the book of Lamentations uses a variety of Hebrew words for ‘sins’ and ‘iniquities’. On the one hand, one hears the theological voice nailing down the cause of human sufferings in the case of Jerusalem’s destruction by putting forth again and again the retributive hermeneutical key of prophetic, deuteronomic and wisdom writings. The narrator(s), representing both the individual and the community, as noted above, attempt to point out the people’s general sins, without being specific. On the other hand, the female voices are clear and loud in the first two chapters; and these voices remain unanswered, although they are recognized at the end of the final chapter. In contrast to the outright prophetic condemnation of Israel on the causal notion of sin and punishment, the non-specificity in the references to sin in Lamentations should alert us to having an alternative perspective on reading, and to having ‘a third ear’ when listening to the voices of Daughter Zion. 12.  Boase 2006: 17; cf. also pp. 175–8, 190, 201.

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The ending of Lamentations 5 is to be read in conjunction with the female voices in chs. 1 and 2, which resist being silenced. At the end of the whole book, the communal lament and final prayer function to underline excessive divine punishment, not only of the ancestors who are no more, but also of the current community. Though sin may be admitted as somehow the reason to justify the bitter defeat and subsequent catastrophic sufferings, the right of shedding tears, raising protest and questing for divine response is not to be denied. God is silent and no divine speech is heard like it is in the book of Job. O’Connor may well be on the right track when she writes that ‘Lamentations expresses human experiences of abandonment with full force’, and that ‘because God never speaks, the book honors voices of pain’ (O’Connor 2002: 15). In cross-textual reading with the biblical tradition, Lady Meng’s Tears challenges the conventional position of the prophets of laying blame for human suffering using the sin–judgment approach, with the view of protecting the divine in favor of theodicy. It is the exilic and post-exilic reaction to the disasters encountered by Israel that takes the direction of justifying Israel’s suffering as retributive judgment, avoiding any attempt to hold God accountable and to conceive of blaming God for God’s impotence (Mandolfo 2007: 41). The affirmation of God as still being the Lord of history, who is seen as active in human affairs, will preclude the notion of YHWH’s non-agency in Israel’s history. In this way, suffering is inevitably read as punishment from God, a consequence of the sinful deeds of the community. Divine decision is made and is justified as based on the people’s sins. In Lamentations, YHWH is definitely looked at as being responsible for the plight and pains of Daughter Zion because of her many transgressions: ‘For the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgression’ (‫כי יהוה הוגה על רב פשעיה‬, 1.5). As a grieving widow, Lady Meng embodies the aspirations of a suffering community in protest against the overlord who acts unjustly and brings about great pain to the people. Arguably, in the same vein, Daughter Zion personifies the community of Jerusalem as protesting against a God who has inflicted upon her the humiliation of defeat by so tragically handing the people over to her enemies. The apparent ambiguities at the end of Lamentations 5, however, give space for a deeper theological imagination that must accommodate the appropriate tears of Daughter Zion and her community, and God’s long silence. The poet still holds a view of the God of Israel who is in full control of the people’s present reality; and it is only with God’s mercies that an open future will be assured. At the end of Lamentations, Daughter Zion’s cries still resonate profoundly, yet her community is in no way conceived of as having been utterly rejected by God.



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V. Conclusion The above cross-textual reading of Daughter Zion in Lamentations and Lady Meng’s Tears has given us a new perspective for understanding the symbolic power of crying tears, which constitute part of a lament and can substitute verbal lament. It is also noted that both crying tears and groaning words of protest when in pain are, in most cases, powerfully performed by women and are associated with female professions. The tears of women in suffering and female voices of lament represent a subversive form of defiance of and rebellion against the power of the agent that brings about suffering. Divine or supernatural intervention to right the wrong is anticipated and is forthcoming in Lady Meng’s story. But in the case of Lamentations, when the enemy is portrayed as God who brings about the suffering, it is difficult – if not totally impossible – to imagine the reversal of injustice. Lament in such a context is regarded only as prayer or petition which comprises ‘a polarity of anger and trust, hope and accusation’ (Hughes 2004: 31). The issue acutely posed in Lamentations is not so much theodicy and anti-theodicy, but that of excessive punishment. Taking even the legitimacy of the doctrine of retribution into account, the question remains: how much suffering is to be justified? Is there an acceptable range, an allowable intensity and a particular degree of punishment imposed by God which is considered as appropriate in the case of the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple and the horrible conditions endured by those who went into exile and those who were oppressed in the land? The God of vindication has turned into an enemy, a God of punishment attacking the people of Israel in general. This is especially distressing when the situation of devastation has lasted a long time: ‘Our ancestors sinned and there are no more’ (Lam. 5.7). Ultimately, God has gone too far in bringing about the humiliation of Israel. When the story of Lady Meng’s Tears is read in the cross-textual hermeneutical process, the assurance of the appropriateness of punishment is indeed much anticipated and, surely, the voices of the lamenter in deep pain must be honored. That these voices are heard is only the initial step. Ways and means of ratification are to be expected. The Chinese experiences of oppressive government and authoritarian rule are well expressed in a saying in the Book of Rite, which has been widely circulated in folk sayings: ‘tyrannical government is fiercer than tigers’ (苛政猛于虎). In passing by Mount Tai, the famous mountain near Confucius’s home town in Qufu, Shandong, Confucius came upon a wailing woman who cried bitterly by a grave. It was revealed that her husband’s father and

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her husband were both killed by tigers, and now her son too had been devoured by tigers. When asked by Confucius: ‘Why do you not leave this place?’, the answer given is that there has been no oppressive government in that place. Thus, Confucius remarked, ‘Remember this, my children. Tyrannical government is fiercer than tigers.’13 This explains the growing popularity of the story of Lady Meng’s Tears and the ever-increasing vitality of its adaptation into a great variety of literary and performance forms. The Great Wall of China has become a legend of great historicalnational significance, and it also embodies a long history of border crises and foreign invasions. The ordinary people’s sacrifice in building it with forced labor and death cannot, however, be adequately justified. The politics of human tears against all government oppressions and imperial corruption well demonstrate the ability of human emotional expression to surpass the fragility of hegemonic power, which is believed to destroy even the Great Wall. The legend of the tears shed by Lady Meng, and the female voices of Daughter Zion, are in actuality allegories of subaltern protest and hope that is never absent in human tears and verbal laments. Indeed, ‘in her tears Meng Jiang Nü lives through all eternities’ (Hung 1985: 98) and ‘what we witness in Lamentations is faith rising, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of doom and gloom’ (Salters 2010: 27). References Berlin, Adele (2002), Lamentations: A Commentary, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Boase, Elizabeth (2006), The Fulfillment of Doom? The Dialogic Interaction between the Book of Lamentations and the Pre-Exilic/Early Exilic Prophetic Literature, New York: T&T Clark International. Broyles, Craig C. (1989), The Conflict of Faith and Experience in the Psalms: A Form-Critical and Theological Study, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Childs, Brevard S. (1979), Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, London: SCM Press. Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. (1993), Weep, O Daughter of Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible, Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico. Gu Jiegang (顾颉刚), ed. (1984), Studies in the Meng Jiangnü Legend (孟姜女故事研究 集), Shanghai: Guji Publishing (上海古籍出版社). Hughes, Richard A. (2004), Lament, Death, and Destiny, New York: Peter Lang. Hung, Chang-Tai (1985), Going to the People: Chinese Intellectuals and Folk Literature, 1918–37, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

13.  The Book of Rites, Book 2B (‘Tan Gong’), 2.193. For an introduction to the Book of Rites, see Riegel 1993.



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Idema, Wilt L. (2008) (Translation and Introduction.), Meng Jiangnü Brings Down the Great Wall: Ten Versions of a Chinese Legend; with an Essay by Haiyan Lee, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Lee, Haiyan (2005), ‘Tears That Crumbled the Great Wall: The Archaeology of Feeling in the May Fourth Folklore Movement’, Journal of Asian Studies, 64 (1): 35–65. Lee, Lily Xiao Hong (2007), ‘Meng Jiangnü’, in A. D. Stefanowska (eds), Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity through Sui, 1600 B.C.E.–618 C.E, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Legge, James, trans. (1967), Li Chi: Book of Rites. An Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions, with an Introduction and Study Guide by Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai, New Hyde Park: University Books. Mandolfo, Carleen R. (2007), Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007. O’Connor, Kathleen (2002), Lamentations and the Tears of the World, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Parry, Robin A. (2010), Lamentations, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Riegel, Jeffrey K. (1993), ‘Li Chi 禮記’, in Michael Loewe (ed.), Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, 293–7, Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Rojas, Carlos (2010), The Great Wall: A Cultural History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sæbø, Magne (1998), ‘Who Is “the Man” in Lamentations 3:1?’, in On the Way to Canon: Creative Tradition History in the Old Testament, 131–42, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Salters, Robert B. (2010), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Lamentations, London: T&T Clark International. Shields, Mary (1995), ‘Circumcision of the Prostitute: Gender, Sexuality, and the Call to Repentance in Jeremiah 3:1–4:4’, Biblical Interpretation, 3: 61–74. Song, C. S. (1981), The Tears of Lady Meng: A Parable of People’s Political Theology, Geneva: World Council of Churches. Sugirtharajah, R. S. (1994), ‘Lady Meng: A Liberative Play Using Common Folklore’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Frontiers in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Trends, 130–40, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Waley, Arthur (1960), Ballads and Stories from Tun-Huang: An Anthology, 145–9. London: Allen & Unwin. Reprinted in Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau (2000), Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations I. From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty, 1079–81, New York: Columbia University Press; Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.

L a me ntat i on s a s M us i ca l P e r for mance , i t s O r i g i n s a n d L i f e O ccasi ons : S om e R ef l ec t i ons Athalya Brenner-Idan

The Context and Psalm 137 My renewed fascination with the book of Lamentations grew out of a recent teaching situation and an earlier research undertaking. The teaching situation was a revisit, a seminar on recent readings of the Five Scrolls, conducted several years ago with graduate students at the department of biblical studies of Tel Aviv University. In the case of Lamentations, my original inclination was to discuss it almost solely in a post-Shoah context, utilizing both non-biblical Shoah fiction and the growing body of bible research tying non-research readerly response – such as fiction, prose and poetry and popular media – to the reading of the Lamentations Scroll. The research situation was first circumstantial at best. Years prior to that Tel Aviv University seminar I wrote an essay reading Psalm 137 (‘On the rivers of Babylon’), especially the last verses about dashing the enemy’s babies on the rocks in horrible revenge (Ps. 137.8-9), together with Jan T. Gross’s Neighbors, about the massacre of Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 (Gross 2001; and see Brenner 2003). Even then it seemed obvious to me that Psalm 137 was a unity and somehow related to Lamentations beyond subject matter (the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the suffering caused by this destruction). One of the minor points that remained unexplained, to me at least, in Psalm 137 is the double reference (vv. 3-4) to the ‘song of Zion’ (‫שיר ציון‬, grammatically singular), as if there was only one single song that the exiles refused to sing, a textual state that is changed by many Hebrew MSS and translations to the plural ‘songs of Zion’ (‫)שירי ציון‬. Indeed, Ps. 13.1-4 seem to contain the (fictive) contextual introduction to the ‘song’ requested of the exiles by their foes, whereas vv. 5-9 seem to contain the poetic blueprint if not necessarily the actual



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poetic ‘text’ alluded to in the word ‘song’: a poem about the remembrance of Jerusalem, its suffering and destruction and the memory of its inhabitants, with the hope for revenge. Psalm 137 and Lamentations So, while rereading Lamentations with the students, I was alerted to a possible close connection between Psalm 137 and Lamentations first by the conqueror’s designation as ‘Sons of Edom’ (‫ )בני אדום‬in Ps. 137.7 (and see ‘Daughter of Babylon’, ‫ בת בבל‬in v. 8) and as ‘Daughter of Edom’ (‫ )בת אדום‬twice in Lam. 4.21, 22. Hebrew Bible references to towns and cities in the Latter Prophets are many, and some appear in the Psalms as well. ‘Daughter of Zion’ is the most common, but see also for instance ‘Daughter of Tyre’ (Isa. 23.12), ‘Daughter of Chaldeans’ (Isa. 47.1, 5), ‘Daughter of my People’ (unique to Jeremiah, cf. chs. 6 and 8), ‘Daughter of Babylon’ (Jer. 50.42; Zech. 2.11), ‘Daughter of Egypt’ (Jer. 46.11, 19, 24).1 ‘Edom’ as location and political entity/enemy is common in the Prophets as elsewhere, and appears five times in the Psalms (Pss. 60.2, 10; 83.7; 108.10; and in our passage), but never elsewhere as ‘Daughter of’ (Lam. 4.21, 22) or ‘Sons of’ (Ps. 137.7).2 This is a unique usage that ties together Psalm 137 and Lamentations 4 (at least, if not the whole of Lamentations). Further, and still looking for the ‘song’ (singular) mentioned in Ps. 137.3-4, I took my clue from the fact that both Psalm 137 and the book of Lamentations are performed in Jewish public liturgy on the night preceding the ninth of the month Ab (the eleventh month of the Jewish calendar) or on the day itself, traditionally the day on which both Jerusalem Temples were destroyed centuries apart, and that liturgy is often performed as synagogue liturgy.3 I write here ‘performed’, not ‘recited’ as I found in 1.  For an extended discussion of the ‘Daughter of xxx’ appellation as a designation of a political entity or location, see Maier 2008. 2.  In Mal. 1–4, ‘If Edom says…’ (NRSV), the verb in Hebrew seems to be in the grammatically feminine form (‫)תאמר‬. This is probably tied up with the usual noun phrase ‘land of Edom’, ‫ארץ אדום‬, also grammatically feminine in Hebrew (twelve times in the Hebrew text, from Genesis to Chronicles). No ‘daughter of’ is cited here. 3.  Traditionally, Ps. 137 is recited by the Jewish praying male every weekday, in remembrance of the destruction. (At the weekend Ps. 126, about the return from exile, is recited.) The public performance of Lamentations on day nine of the month Ab is, one has to admit, halakhically late (early middle ages). Lamentations is also part of orthodox Christian liturgy, i.e. of the Holy Week. We shall return to the issue of its performance later.

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most commentaries, because Lamentations is chanted to certain musical instructions, not simply ‘recited’, that is, read aloud. Here I stopped and asked myself: working backwards, could I look at both Psalm 137 and Lamentations as ritual pieces? And if so, how can they be characterized as such? The realization that music is part of the scene not only in Psalm 137 but also relevant to Lamentations was the next step in my reflections. Recurrent, date-determined, annual liturgical occasions more often than not contain musical performance, singing and playing musical instruments; almost certainly, the refusal to use the kinnoroth (musical string instruments) and to sing in Ps. 137.1-2 should be understood as a refusal to engage in cultic activity, as has been long suggested in biblical scholarship. These considerations and others that will be described just now lead me to view both Psalm 137 and Lamentations in a new light, as a culticliturgical unity that was publicly performed, sung or ‘chanted’, if you will, together on the occasion of the annual mourning for Jerusalem and the Temple, when the former was sung as an introduction to the latter. In other words, my question became: What if the ‘song’ mentioned in Ps. 137.3-4 is not just vv. 7-9 of the same psalm, but the whole of Lamentations? And my answer to my own question was: This may be viable and should be examined. There are clear connections between the two. In short, I started to examine how these two texts related to each other on the Sitz im Leben level, as texts or prooftexts for cultic public performance rather than for personal reading or recitation. The Bible Sung Musical performances have two components: instrumental and vocal. The vocal part (libretto and voice) can be divided between groups, such as a chorus, and individual performers. Such groups and individuals can be differentiated by age, status, gender, class and vocal range, and the musical instruments can be divided into classes such as string, percussion, brass/wood etc. The biblical Hebrew words ‫( שיר‬shir) and ‫( זמר‬zemer) and their verbal and nominal derivatives and synonyms cover both music and vocality (voice and words): while zemer perhaps better designates a song accompanied by music, shir would cover, semantically, both ‘song’ and ‘poem’. This should be borne in mind when we read what to us are texts to be read silently or recited aloud without a tune, such as the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15), Song of Deborah (Judges 5) and the women’s song after David’s victory (1 Sam. 18.6-7; 29.5). The Song of Songs and the



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Psalms (from the Greek: ψαλμοί, again designating both instrumental and vocal components) are certainly and originally voiced songs, not poems to be read internally or recited. Laments, until today, are sung to traditional tunes and with traditional formulas. Do we remember that when, for instance, we read David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1)? And finally, as evidenced in many biblical texts, whereas some song performances were exclusively made by certain classes of males (such as the Songs of Ascents [‫ ]שיר המעלות‬in the Jerusalem Temple according to Psalms 121–134, v. 1 in the title of each psalm), singing as a profession, for victory and joy and lament, was shared by females and males alike.4 If anything, females were considered more adept at lament, real professionals who transferred their knowledge to other women of their guild (Jer. 9.16-20). A quick survey of the biblical texts here mentioned, together with ancient Near Eastern laments in particular in the genre known as city laments,5 shows the following shared features. • By and large, we have lost the musical part of such songs while retaining the transmitted librettos. However, this should not prevent us from realizing that we do have half a musical performance in each case, tunes lost but including the possibility of distinguishing the voices in it. (At this time I am not going to discuss prayer tunes or the special musical notations, the ṭe‘amîm, which feature as the marginal notes in the Hebrew text in the case of Psalms, Proverbs and Job, known in Hebrew as ‫טעמי אמ״ת‬.) • Such voices can at times be identified at least on the singular/plural level. • Such voices can be identified, at least at times, on the gender level. • In each of the texts female and male voices are either clearly marked or can be identified. 4.  Although both genders could be singers (cf. Qoh. 2.8) or mourners/lamenters (Qoh. 12.5, males; and Ezek. 32.16, females). Cf. specifically 2 Chron. 35.25: ‘Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah which all the singers, male and female, recited in their laments for Josiah, as is done to this day; they became customary in Israel and were incorporated into the laments’ (emphases mine; JPS 1985). The biblical assumption that the Jerusalem temple musicians of various categories and classes, from composers to singers to instrument players, were males only is well documented. 5.  Cf. Gabbay (2016) and Samet (2016) for Sumerian city laments, and Klein (2016) for a comparison between ‘Daughter of Zion’ in Lamentations and the Mesopotamian lamenting goddess.

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• Formulas of victory and lament were adjusted and copied, adapted to certain situations. They also included stereotypic language and imagery that was elaborated upon (in ways deemed suitable for their actual performance) according to changing contexts and circumstances. Lamentations as Song and Performance Reading the whole of Lamentation as one song, a song of lament performed in public to music and divided into group and individually gendered role portions, the ‘song’ (grammatically singular) that the addressees of Ps. 137.3-4 refuse to sing in exile, has indeed advantages and de-problematizes several issues that might otherwise seem difficult. For example: • As a musical performance, Lamentations can be combined with Psalm 137 to constitute the ‘song’ missing there, and for which Psalm 137 can serve as an introduction or prologue. • The first four chapters of Lamentations are acrostics, first simple then more complex (we shall return to the non-acrostic ch. 5 later). Acrostics are limited in the Hebrew bible to ‘poetry’, notably, several psalms and Proverbs 31. In the same breath we define acrostics as mostly a mnemonic device. Mnemonic devices are so much less necessary in writing or in reading silently or vocally from a written text; but in oral performance devices like acrostics and refrains and repetitions and parallelism are of the utmost help. So it would seem that performance antedated the writing as a text or the writing was undertaken secondarily in order to create an easily remembered performance, so that sections are delimited by the number of letters, section ends are marked and new sections can be started with the aid of the alphabetical arrangement. • As we read (and not hear, unfortunately) the lament now, we realize that the speaking voice in it mutates and changes, as to the addressees of the lament: we read multiple voices, not one voice. Rather than explain this situation away or correct certain sentences, it is much easier to imagine a plurality of voices and listeners who take part in the performance. A dialogic situation is buttressed by the performance hypothesis, as does the actual content. • Since textual female figures and probably actual women specialized in singing and in lament performance, there is no surprise that female lament voices are many in Lamentations.



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• When imagining a performance, there is no need to compress such speaking personalities as mother, daughter or wife into one. Indeed, all these poetic/musical personalities stand in for Zion or Jerusalem, the city itself. But they also stand for themselves, as abstracted parts of the whole. • The division of speakers/performers into voices and specific addressees, gender-wise, number-wise and class-wise, is not always easy but certainly rewarding. Thus, Lam. 1.1-11 is not marked in any way and can be a choir/chorus piece. On the other hand, vv. 12-22 in ch. 1 (precisely the second part of the chapter) must be assigned to a female Jerusalem, as city and mother. Chapter 3 begins with ‫אני הגבר‬, ‘I the man’ but, as Greenstein recently claims, there are four voices in the chapter, for instance a genderless collective (v. 40) and a single female (v. 52). [although I disagree with Greenstein following Klein that ‘I the man’ here is a genderless formula; this doesn’t make sense at all; Greenstein 2016]. • For the different voices to be distinct, to avoid the difficulty in interpretation that we face while reading the written text, a live performance is necessary, when the participants are heard as well as seen, where roles are assigned as well as carried out, where dialogue is achieved by means other than and in addition to a change of grammatical pronoun, if and when it appears. In short: Lamentations makes sense only as a publicly performed ritual, a song sung like many psalms of lament, personal emotions mixed (as they often are) with the collective, anger with frustration and sorrow, and with audience participation. As is noticeable, Yhwh is appealed to in Lamentations in various ways and locations, but never answers the appeal. At the end of the performance (Lam. 5.19-22) a collective voice appeals to him again, with the plea and hope for resurrection. An answer is hoped for, but does not seem assured. God is eternal (5.19), but will he appear to save his people? This god-less closure – and if my reading is correct, Lamentations begins (1.1-12) and ends (the whole of ch. 5, just about) with a group text, a chorus line if you wish – leads me in another direction. Lamentations and Greek Tragedy So far I have written about Lamentations as a performance, a mostly musical performance. It is now time to sharpen this definition and ask: Apart from lament songs from the ancient Near East, such as the city

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laments, can we find other performance forms in the ancient world that can let us sharpen this definition further? The tentative answer to this question is actually staring us in the face. How about Sumerian cultic laments sung daily by priests in city temples (Gabbay 2016: 132, 149; to distinguish from city laments in general); other Mesopotamian religion and myth-related performances (Green 2008); Egyptian cult-related performances;6 but mainly, Greek drama, and specifically Greek tragedy? The comparisons to other ancient Near Eastern [sacred] literatures have been and certainly continue to be valid. However, it appears that the cultural backdrop can be widened somewhat. Let us consider Greek tragedy in this connection. Its origins, earlier than its heyday in the sixth and even more so the fifth century BCE, go back to the Dionysian rites. Its original medium is rooted in music, recitation, dance and performance within an annually repeated ritualistic context. Its participants are individuals and groups (choruses). Its structure is interesting: usually five segments, including or excluding a prologue and an epilogue. The prologue and epilogue are performed by a choir. The subject matter is ultimately destruction, of individuals or collectives, against the backdrop of war. Woman figures often stand in the center of the action, and their fate is not good. Such rites, from Asia Minor and Greece, eventually developed into the theatre and drama we are familiar with from Athens of the fifth century BCE. I am not referring here to Aristotle’s later definition of what a tragedy play is. Several of his definitions, as is increasingly recognized nowadays, are idealistic rather than factual (Inbari 2005). What should be of interest is the general recognition: that tragedy is a telling in drama rather than in narrative, in lofty language, in imitation of action, with the intent of arousing pity and fear, and ultimately causing catharsis or another release of tension through empathy or emotional participation. Most of these features, even without comparing specific Greek tragedies to Lamentations, are common to both. Further, let us consider the structural similarities between Lamentations as a whole and the extant Greek tragedies of the fifth century, and what we know of their origins – without going into details about specific tragedies. Again, Greek tragedy is theatrical drama, the mimicking of a myth or epos in sound and visual features. Its original Sitz im Leben is religious, although the gods do not necessarily play a part in it. Its end is unhappy and sometimes hopeless, at times leaving space for some kind of future grace. Its players are divided into groups. Its gender content is heavily 6.  For ancient Egyptian ‘theatre’ cf. http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/ ceremonies/theatre.htm (accessed December 2016).



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skewed towards the male viewpoint although females have central roles – which is not to say, of course, that female players actually participated in them, presenting the female roles. All these features beckon us to try and consider the hypothesis that Lamentations was originally or at some point in its literary history structured as a ritual drama; and that drama may have been related to Mesopotamian city laments and cultic temple laments, but eventually was constructed vaguely after the structural model of Greek tragedy, to be performed annually – perhaps in the smaller Second Jerusalem Temple, perhaps elsewhere in the diaspora or in the land before the Second Temple was properly built. This is a hypothesis and as such should be examined further. It does have several merits. It recaptures the assumed original musical and theatrical mood and purpose of Lamentations, as set forth in Ps. 137.3-4 (‘song’). It explains why Lamentations has five chapters, although this does not cover the non-acrostic nature of ch. 5. (And still, its 22 verses conform to the number of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, thus preserving a similarity to the other chapters.) It explains the changes in voices and the gender shifts within the libretto (text). It explains the prologue-epilogue chorus. It gives Lamentations extra life, more so than it has in later Jewish liturgy – which is musical as well, but without the dramatic element of voice changes and so on. You may say that I have to ‘prove’ that whoever composed or edited Lamentations or combined its poetic constituents (distinct acrostic compositions + a last 22-verse chapter) into a whole had access to and knowledge of Greek tragedy. I would respectfully claim that this is far from necessary. Greek literature, philosophy and art did not grow in isolation. It connected to other ancient Near Eastern cultures through Asia Minor, was influenced by them and influenced them in return. This process started way back at the beginning of the first millennium BCE if not before. By the fifth to third centuries BCE, when Lamentations was (in my view) beginning to be performed annually, Greek influence on the bible can certainly be acknowledged. Let me here mention recent works by Jan Wim Wesselius in the Netherlands (about Herodotus and biblical historiographical literature; Wesselius 2002) and Guy Darshan in Israel (about Homeric literature and biblical literature and its division into twenty-four books; Darshan 2012). And there are more scholars of similar opinions, as can be gleaned from Wesselius’s and Darshan’s copious references. So, in my view, the need to prove the occasion of a Lamentation author meeting a Greek tragedist seems to me uncalled for, in addition to being impossible to establish.

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If you still balk at viewing biblical texts as ritual musical drama, with choruses and soloists and perhaps narrators (in music or plain recitation) and all, let us consider, for instance, the kingdom of God (‘royal’) psalms, such as Psalms 98 and 99 and 146, or the Songs of Ascents again: is there any doubt these were public ritual spectacles? Or the wedding procession indicated by Psalm 45, complete with action and wardrobes, like a dress rehearsal? Or, for a biblical drama without a ritual connection, the Ruth Scroll – this time a comedy, not a tragedy, with the prologue and epilogue undertaken by a narrator; and the prologue to be followed by four acts, each containing three scenes exactly in the same unique location (although with no music). Or the Shulammite dance scene in the Song 7.1-10, complete with audience comments. Surely one can find other biblical texts that were enacted and performed, not merely or only recited, once upon a time, on repeated life occasions. One thing needs to be emphasized, though. Claiming drama and play (cultic or other performance) status for some biblical texts does not necessarily mean that they were completely musical. They may have been oratorio-style or opera-style, that is, a bare ‘production’ containing only assigned singing/speech roles; or a fully fledged ‘production’ containing setting and wardrobe instructions (lost and only implied for us), or something in between these two performance modes. Preliminary (and Cautious) Conclusions Is there a prologue-to-performance connection between Psalm 137 and the book of Lamentations? Is Lamentations, as a whole (five chapters), the ‘song’ alluded to twice in Ps. 137.3-4? This merits further consideration. Along the way, the essence of Lamentations as a cultic, mostly musical performance for an orchestra and/or several voices, perhaps repeated annually and publicly in ancient times, perhaps as an original setting, should be considered as well. Finally, this poetic lament can and should be linked not only to Mesopotamian laments of various periods and locations, but also to other performances of the ancient Near East, namely for example Greek tragedy, in order to understand further some formal features of Lamentations and its polyphonic performance potential, and perhaps actuality. Back to the Personal and Contextual It is always a pleasure to imagine a biblical text as alive, to try to find out what it meant for people in past millenniums to own and cherish it. This is what I have tried to do here with Lamentations.



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It is not difficult for me to think about psalms and laments, the book of Psalms and Lamentations as well as other biblical texts, as musical and dramatic performances rather than recited (spoken) texts and prayers. This is certainly conditioned by my upbringing in Israel, which was socialistsecularist rather than religious. What I knew about Jewish customs and liturgy was conditioned more by Zionist tribalism than tradition. As stated elsewhere about the Song of Songs (Brenner 2000), I often heard texts based on the Hebrew bible as songs before I realized the words were biblical. Since my education was far from religious, I did not go to the synagogue on the ninth of Ab, Temple Destruction memorial day; neither do I remember ever reading Lamentations in bible classes at the secular schools I attended as a child and teenager, although some psalms were indeed on the syllabus, Psalms 126 and 137 probably among them. For me Psalm 137 was first and foremost a popular song, covering vv. 1 to 4 verbatim, often on the radio. In Hebrew.7 Later came English versions: Don Mclean’s rendition (the final track of his 1971 album, American Pie) is perhaps the most famous one,8 heard again on an episode of the TV show ‘Mad Men’ (2011, first season).9 The trio Peter, Paul and Mary sang to the same tune,10 used also by Manfred Mann.11 The tune is reflective, mournful and slow, almost dreamlike. Another tune is that of the Melodians,12 also popularized by Boney M13 and others, and is hip-hop and joyful, in contrast to the emotional tone of the biblical words. These two very different tunes received many, many covers, and are quite popular even now on YouTube, although their heyday was in the 1970s. For me, for a very long time, they were Psalm 137, to the extent that reading the psalmic poem immediately translated in my head into a silent song. 7.  Try as I may, I did not manage to find a performance of that well-remembered tune on the Internet. All I remember is the tune and the words of the first verse, ‫‘( על נהרות בבל‬On/by the rivers of Babylon’). 8.  Don Mclean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTnspbSjKVc; http://www. zemereshet.co.il/song.asp?id=2378#versions is in Hebrew, but with the same tune as Don McLean. The tune was supposedly, originally, composed by American composer W. Billing, who paraphrased Lamentations as ‘Lamentation over Boston’. Another performance in Hebrew is more of a piyyut style, sung by Meydad Tasa (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=EhUAWf6jlek). 9.  Online: https://vimeo.com/29164651. 10.  Peter, Paul and Mary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYqkgrCg3N0. 11.  Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VisxHApl8Y. 12.  The Melodians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tAb5rYRXvs. 13.  Boney M: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGyfxOCYvtM&feature=related.

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Lamentations as music came later, as classical not popular music. A good selection is contained in the Naxos Early Music 8.550572 disc: sixteenth- to early seventeenth-century works by White, Tallis, Palestrina, Lassus and de Brito, performed by the Oxford Camerata, in Latin.14 The sacred nature of the text and musical pieces comes over, as one listens, quite forcefully. A near religious experience is also inspired by Leonard Bernstein’s (1918–1990) Lamentations (which is the third and last Movement of his first symphony, Jeremiah, written in 1942). In this finale of the symphony, a mezzo-soprano sings some verses from Lamentations in Hebrew, with piano or organ accompaniment. Zion is wailing.15 She will also have wailed in other classical music pieces, though I did not come across any other examples while researching for his essay. I am trying to convey that, because of my secularist upbringing, because I encountered Psalm 137 as pop music and Lamentations as classical music before reading them as biblical liturgical texts, it is – perhaps – easier for me to image/imagine them as (mostly musical) dramatic performances; and, therefore, to embark on a trajectory like the one attempted here. References Brenner, A. (2003), ‘“On the Rivers of Babylon” (Psalm 137), or between Victim and Perpetrator’, in J. Bekkenkamp and Y. Sherwood (eds), Sanctified Aggression: Legacies of Biblical and Post-Biblical Vocabularies of Violence, 76–91, Bible in the Twenty-First Century 3, London: T&T Clark. Brenner, A. (2000), ‘“My” Song of Songs’, in A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine (eds), The Song of Songs: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, Second Series, 154–68, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Darshan, G. (2012), ‘The Twenty-Four Books of the Hebrew Bible and Alexandrian Scribal Methods’, in M. R. Niehoff (ed.), Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters, 221–44, Leiden: Brill. (Earlier version, in Hebrew, Tarbitz, 77 (1) (2008): 5–22.) Gabbay, U. (2016), ‘ The Sumerian Cultic Laments: History, Remembrance and Theology’, in N. Wazana (ed.), Shnaton for Bible Research and Ancient Near East, 24, 131–49, Jerusalem: Magnes Press (in Hebrew; with English summary; online: http://www.hum. huji.ac.il/upload/_FILE_1457282468.pdf).

14.  For more details about the disc, see online: https://cdn.orastream.com/pdf/ 730099557221.pdf, although with a firm attribution of the biblical Lamentation to the prophet Jeremiah. 15.  The entire symphony can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zueKARho6s8 and other YouTube sites. This one is a recording of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, 1977, and Bernstein himself is the conductor. Many other performances of the symphony are available on Internet or in disc form.



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Green, Lyn (2008), ‘Drama and Theater in Ancient Mesopotamia’, in Peter Bogucki (ed.), Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World, New York: Facts On File= Ancient and Medieval History Online. Online: http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2. asp? Greenstein, E. (2016), ‘A Woman’s Voice in Lamentations 3’, in N. Wazana (ed.), Shnaton for Bible Research and Ancient Near East, 24, 167–78, Jerusalem: Magnes Press (in Hebrew; with English summary; online: http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/upload/_ FILE_1457282504.pdf). Gross, J. T. (2001), Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Inbari, A. (2005), Biblical Literature and Greek Tragedy. Online: http://inbari.co.il/ articles/greek.pdf (in Hebrew); originally in Alei Si’ach, 53 (accessed December 2016). Klein, J. (2016), ‘Bat-Ṣiyyon in the Book of Lamentations and the “Lamenting Goddess” in Mesopotamian Literature’, in N. Wazana (ed.), Shnaton for Bible Research and Ancient Near East, 24, 177–208, Jerusalem: Magnes Press (in Hebrew; with English summary; online: http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/upload/_FILE_1457282517.pdf). Maier, C. M. (2008), Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Samet, N. (2016), ‘Historical Readings in Literary Texts: Sumerian City Laments as a Case Study’, in N. Wazana (ed.), Shnaton for Bible Research and Ancient Near East, 24, 151–66, Jerusalem: Magnes Press (in Hebrew; with English summary; online http:// www.hum.huji.ac.il/upload/_FILE_1457282489.pdf). Wesselius, J. W. (2002), The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’s Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 345, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/Continuum.

Part V E s t h er

W om en ’ s B a n q uet s a n d G at he r i ngs i n  T ex t a n d C on te xt : T h e Q u een s B a n q uets i n E sthe r a nd  C on t em p ora ry W ome n - O n ly I s ra el i /J ewi s h C ere moni e s * Ora Brison

Personal Introduction In the past year I have received several invitations to participate in new, public women-only ceremonies organized by religious Jewish women in Israel, involving a ritualistic process of baking bread. As a feminist and a Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern cultures scholar, my curiosity and interest were captured by the idea. I decided to research this quite unique phenomenon from anthropological, social and feminist perspectives. The first ceremony I attended took place during the Hebrew month of Adar (March/April), which is the month of the Purim Festival. The ceremony was celebrated around the baking of bread and was followed by a number of elements and traditional customs characterizing the Purim Festival, such as a feasting banquet, wearing costumes and exchanging gifts. After attending and exploring several similar ceremonies and speaking with participants and organizers, I decided to write this comparative study on the subject of women-only religious ceremonies and gatherings. Introduction: Text and Context This essay presents the theme of ancient and modern-day ceremonies arranged or established by women. The study focuses on examining the women’s banquets described in the Hebrew Masoretic text of the * This essay is expanded from a paper presented at the International SBL Meeting in Buenos-Aires, July 2015.

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book of Esther,1 and comparing them to contemporary Jewish religious women-only ritual celebrations and prayer services. We will examine and analyze Queen Vashti’s banquet, the only banquet exclusively for women mentioned in the Bible, as well as Queen Esther’s banquets, versus the newly founded Dough (challah)2 Offering ceremony taking place in present-day Israel. We will also examine these events in comparison to a somewhat different occurrence of women’s public gatherings: the women’s prayer services led by Neshot HaKotel (‫נשות הכותל‬, Women of the [Western] Wall) group.3 Although differences exist between these various women’s ceremonies, there are also many similarities, and the latter are interesting and important for understanding the position and conduct of women trying to make a change and gain rights in men’s worlds. Banquets Communal banquets and feasts are cross-cultural, cultic and religious events that are characteristic of human societies everywhere. From prehistoric times to the present, around the world, people assemble for banquets celebrated with food and drink, marking special events in their personal lives and in the social, economic, political and religious life of their communities (Meyers 2012: 141–2). Since the beginning of human society, feasts have served as a cultural signifier for constructing the identity of individuals and communities. On the important social function of banquets in societies around the world, Michalowski says that over time, banquets became a social regulator, a means of conveying the ideology of the ruling class (1994: 30–1). 1.  Unless otherwise noted, I refer to the NRSV when the text is translated from the Hebrew. The book of Esther was rewritten and reinterpreted many times. On the various versions, see Moore 1967; 1971: lxi–lxiv; Clines 1984a: 169–74; 1984b: 252–4; Fox 1991: 254–73. 2.  The word challah comes from the instruction for hafrashat challah (‫הפרשת‬ ‫ – )חלה‬separating dough. This commandment is peculiar to Eretz Israel and is related to Num. 15.18-20 and also for instance Ezek. 44.30; the negative consequences of not fulfilling it are stated in b. Shab. 32.2. The etymology of the Hebrew root ‫ל‬-‫ל‬-‫ח‬ (ch-l-l) is uncertain: see HALOT 137, 148. It may have originally indicated roundness (‘circle’) before it came to denote hollowness (‘space’), or vice versa (Paran 2002). For more on feasts, drinking and food in the biblical worlds, and their social importance, see Milano 1994; Brenner and Van Henten 2001; Altmann 2011. 3.  The Western Wall is also called the ‘Kotel’, a synonym in Modern Hebrew to ‘wall’, although apparently an Aramaism in biblical Hebrew (Song 2.9, and see Dan. 5.5 and Ezra 5.8).



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Women and Banquets in Ancient Near East Literature and Iconography The textual and iconographic records of the cultures of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible render many descriptions of public banquets, feasts, religious ceremonies and festivals.4 The luxurious Persian royal banquets described in the MT Esther and in the Greek texts had a precedent in Assyrian banquets (Berlin 2001: 4). The long-enduring royal banquet’s art theme was conceived in Greater Mesopotamia c. 3000 BCE to carry a royal political and religious message (Collon 1992; Pinnock 1994; Ziffer 2005: 133). Banquets became an important event of court life and an efficient tool in power politics during the rule of the various dynasties in Mesopotamia, and influenced its neighboring cultures for over two millennia (Altmann 2011: 78–98). The most elaborate representations of banquets and feasts come from the Neo-Assyrian period (911–609 BCE). Yet only some rare records present high-status women, wives or daughters of the Neo-Assyrian rulers, as active participants. One example is Ashurbanipal’s royal consort Libbali-šarrat, celebrating with the king. We find similar descriptions of lavish royal banquets depicted in Egyptian, Hittite and other Levant iconography but only few royal women are described as participating in such feasts. The descriptions of Greek literary sources about the luxurious banquets in the Persian Empire’s royal court resemble the portrayals of King Ahasuerus’s luxurious banquets in Esther.5 According to Greek sources, Persian elite women too rarely attended banquets held at court.6 Moreover, there is almost no concrete evidence for a banquet held exclusively for women of the royal court.7 The only evidence comes from several Urartian belts where women of high rank, their female attendants as well 4.  For more on banquets in the Bible and the ancient Near East, see VanderKam 2007; MacDonald 2008; Ziffer 2005, and extensive bibliography there. 5.  See Herodotus, Historiae 1.133; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.8.10; Atheneus, Deipnosophists 4.131. 6.  On women’s participation in these banquets, see also Berlin 2001: 11–15; Clines 1984a: 169–74. For another opinion see Berg 1979: 49–50 n. 7; Brosius 1998: 96–7. 7.  Other ‘women-only’ festivals celebrated in ancient Greek cities were the widespread Thesmophoria festivals (women’s rites of passage), held in honor of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. It is worth noting that two days of fasting preceded the Thesmophoria festivals, similar to the Purim Festival. On the Thesmophoria festivals, see Versnel 1994: 235–60; Dillon 2002: 109–38; Burkert 2006 [1985]: 242–6.

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as female musicians, dancers and acrobats are depicted; and from the single mention in Est. 1.9 (Ziffer 2002).8 Women and Banquets in the Hebrew Bible Women are involved in the central Israelite public festivals mentioned in the Bible in different capacities, which probably reflects the socioeconomic gender distinctions in Israelite societies.9 Ackerman (2012: 30–40) describes the participating women mainly as a silent audience. Other commentators (such as Brenner 1985: 51–7, 62–5; Bird 1999; Gafni 2008: 119–30; and Meyers 2012: 150–1) suggest that in different periods described in the Bible, specifically in periods during which central societal institutions were weaker, women enjoyed a certain active involvement in political, religious, ritual and cultic public events such as assemblies, feasts and festivals. In victory celebrations they are portrayed as having roles of poetesses, singers and dancers (Exod. 15.20-21; Judges 5 or 1 Sam. 18.6-7; 2 Samuel 5; Ps. 68.26); and as wailing women (2 Sam. 1.24; Jer. 9.16-17; 2 Chron. 35.25). However, one cannot ignore the textual evidence showing that women were in general only passive participants: so the banquet in the book of Daniel (5.2, 10) held with the women of the harem, while the queen appeared later. In Judea of the post-Second Temple period, the participation of Judean/ Jewish women in public social life, including the cult, declined further. They had no public voice, were barred from study halls and schools, and were confined to a ‘women’s gallery’ in synagogues. That the exclusion of women continued throughout Jewish history in the Diaspora in most Jewish communities is exemplified by rabbinic literature. Women were ‘present-absent’ – a silent audience – in most religious ritual practices until the Enlightenment, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The growing influence of feminist groups in the twentieth century resulted in women-only celebrations of religious contexts, such as the Passover ceremony and the reading of the Esther Scroll. These celebrations, for women and enacted by women, started in the United States. But in contemporary Israel, these remained insignificant. 8.  On Urartu, see Piotrovskij 1967 and Haas 1986. For more on Urartian belts, see Kellner 1991. 9.  Most scholars agree that the Bible as a literary text does not necessarily relate to actual historical events. However, they agree that some of the social reality reflected in the text is rooted in and does reflect the reality of their period (Gottwald 1979; Meyers 1988, 2013).



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Banquets in the Book of Esther Banquet (mišteh, ‫ )משתה ;משתה היין‬scenes are a most prominent feature in Esther, mentioned twenty times in this book out of forty-six occurrences in the entire Bible. Banquets are generally considered the book’s main ‘leitmotif’.10 Banquet descriptions open and close the book, providing the thematic and social background, presenting the social gender hierarchy and cultural boundaries, and setting the story in motion (Berg 1979: 31–5; Fox 1991: 156; Berlin 2001: 11–13).11 The banquets in Esther and the events that follow them are also the setting for a turning point in the life of the protagonists – the fall of Vashti and Haman and the rise of Esther and Mordecai (Craghan 1982: 14–15; Day 1995: 108–10). The banquets also characterize Purim, marking the empowerment of the Jews and the disempowerment of their enemies (Berg 1979: 35). King Ahasuerus’s luxurious banquets are described as offering plentiful menus, an abundance of food and wine, spectacular decor and guest lists including court members, governors of provinces and delegations of vassals.12 These banquets serve Ahasuerus as a means to display his wealth and power (Beal 1995: 90–1). This is all evidence signifying the importance of royal banquets as economic and political institutions and as a symbol of Persian imperial authority (Briant 2002: 200–203, 246–7; Berlin 2001: 58). Still, Ahasuerus’s banquets were exclusively for men; neither the queen nor elite women were present. The only women who attended were those who occupied different menial, catering and entertainment positions.13 Banquets are the contextual setting for the stories of the two queens, Vashti and Esther, and have a most important literary function in enhancing the dramatic occurrences in their lives. Vashti’s Banquet (1.9) Queen Vashti’s banquet is the only instance where the term ‘women’s banquet’ is used in the Hebrew Bible. Only a few details about the banquet are given. Its location is inside the king’s palace, implying that it was 10.  The MT uses the term ‫ משתה‬in reference to a banquet/feast or a drinking bout, see HALOT 401; BDB 1059; (Est. 1.3, 5, 9; 2.18 [×2]; 5.4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 14; 6.14; 7.2, 7, 8; 8.17; 9.17, 18, 19, 22). 11.  Clines suggests that these banquets may be seen as a foreshadowing of the Purim Festival (1984b: 274). 12.  On Persian conspicuous consumption, see MacDonald 2008: 203–11 and Fox 1991: 156–8. 13.  On the portrayal of Persian women as represented in Greek and Persian sources, see Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1983; Brosius 1998; Hancock 2013: 141–50.

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approved by the king. Through a statement from Ahasuerus’s minister, Memucan, we may assume that beside the harem women, mentioned also in the Greek versions of the book, noble women of Persia and Media also participated. Some commentators maintain that Vashti’s story has minor significance and propose that it is only a literary enclosed unit, a small novel within the main story with a recurrent theme about insubordinate women that require control. The rabbinic interpretive tradition of Esther (b. Meg. 10b and further)14 as well as modern interpretations so belittle Vashti’s role that it seems that even mentioning her women’s banquet becomes almost unnecessary to the plot and story, except for her role as a deposed queen that facilitates a path for Esther to become the new queen.15 The emphasis in these interpretations is on Vashti’s insubordination and her refusal to comply with the king’s command to appear in front of his court and guests. Such interpretations ignore the fact that this is the only time in the Bible that a woman refuses a king, and do not pay much attention to the significance of this refusal. Vashti’s motivation for refusing the king is not explained; thus, her story remains enigmatic.16 However, Vashti’s story influences the perspective by which we examine Esther’s story, her character, behavior, actions and consequences thereof. Although Vashti’s voice is not heard, her presence echoes throughout the story (Berlin 2001: lvi). Vashti’s banquet is introduced with the particle ‫( גם‬gam, ‘also’), which has the rhetorical force within the narrative of emphasizing a turn in the story while linking it with the description of the king’s extravagant banquet. The Talmud interprets the particle gam as ‘secondary, less important’, thus labeling Vashti’s banquet as a minor event (b. Meg. 12b). Others, including pre-modern and modern interpreters, describe Vashti’s banquet as less important in comparison to Ahasuerus’s extravagant banquets. Beal explains the use of ‘also’ as a literary device meant to emphasize that Vashti’s women’s banquet is analogous to Ahasuerus’s banquet. Although the phrasing ‘did a drinking feast’ ‫ – )משתה) עשׂה‬so literally in the Hebrew – remains the same, says Beal: the active role passes from king Ahasuerus to queen Vashti (1995: 93). She is here the protagonist. 14.  On the midrash to Esther in the Babylonian Talmud, see Segal 1994. 15.  The Talmud shows negative attitudes toward Vashti and she is considered ‘wicked’ (b. Meg. 10b, 12b). 16.  Josephus explains that Vashti refused to come before the king because this would be violating the Persian law that forbids married women to be seen by strangers (Ant. 191.11).



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Considering that the interpretations reduce the importance of Vashti’s banquet, I argue that, foremost, as the only women’s banquet mentioned in the Bible, it is in itself a significant occurrence. Moreover, this banquet is an essential element and an integral part of the story. Seeing that banquets are a significant means for displaying the king’s status, power and importance, one cannot ignore that Vashti is also an important person within the royal court hierarchy, since she too throws a banquet. That the king sends an entire delegation of seven eunuchs to summon the queen proves her importance and offers a clue to their relationship. Furthermore, that the men in this society feared that their wives would be negatively impacted by Vashti’s ‫ – דבר המלכה‬her speech, words and behavior – shows how big her influence is. Contrary to the king’s banquets where women are placed only in secondary, menial and entertainment functions, Vashti’s banquet allows her and the participating women to have a party of their own. Vashti and her female guests celebrate a festive event in which they hold the central roles, albeit within the king’s palace and probably with his approval (1.9). Moreover, Vashti’s banquet has an important role in introducing the queen’s banquet motif, thus creating the setting and background for Esther’s banquets (Fox 1991: 17). The Queens: Parallels and Contrasts Before we move on to Esther’s banquets, it is worth noting that the text positions the stories and characters of Esther and Vashti as a set of parallels and contrasts. The two queen figures are juxtaposed (Fuchs 1999: 81–2; Fox 1991: 169; Day 1995: 170), and Esther is Vashti’s Doppelgänger,17 her counterpart and reversed mirror image (Brenner 1995: 74–5). Both queens are described and objectified as beautiful women (1.11; 2.8), with an emphasis on their royal attire. Vashti is commanded to appear before the king and his guests ‘…wearing the royal crown’ (1.11) but she refuses the degrading command to be on display. Esther, on the other hand, appears using the tools of display: ‘On the third day, Esther put on

17.  Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul Richter’s novel Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces; or, the Married Life, Death, and Wedding of Siebenkäs, Poor Man’s Lawyer (1796), the concept of Doppelgänger has had significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. Doppelgänger as a psychological term was developed by Freud in his article ‘The Uncanny’ (1953[1925]). Doppelgänger narratives involve a duality of the main character, which is either duplicated in the figure of an identical second self, a mirror image, or divided into polar opposite selves.

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her royal robes…’ (5.1). Her act is a positive version of Vashti’s negative act (Bal 1999: 233). While Esther violates an existing law, which is punishable by death (4.11),18 Vashti’s refusal to obey the king leads to him creating a new law with the aim of ensuring wives’ obedience (Bal 1999: 228), so that women hear about and learn from her behavior. Although Vashti is no more disobedient than Esther, they provoke a very different response by the king, by the author/redactor and by commentators.19 Both queens prove to be women with independent and assertive personalities who break social boundaries.20 But then, Vashti insults the king by refusing his command, whereas Esther behaves respectfully and with finesse. The consequences are immediate – Vashti has no opportunity to vindicate herself. She is silenced, disposed of and replaced, all because of her insubordination and refusal to play the prescribed gender role as the unimportant, minor side in the man/woman, king/queen, ruler/ subject equation, behavior which undermines the social order. The text (1.17) emphasizes the social threat she represents by a precedent of a woman’s independent, defying behavior which is dangerous for patriarchal gender conventions (Fuchs 1999: 82–4). Esther, however, acts within social conventions and limitations, and gains political and social power inside the royal hierarchy. Although the story portrays Vashti and Esther primarily as contrasting figures, in fact they both break the king’s laws (1.13, 15; 4.16) and risk their lives, and actually complement each other in their gender role-reversal actions, like two sides of the same coin. Esther’s Banquets (Chapters 5 and 7) Banquets also have a most significant role in Esther’s story, in which king Ahasuerus arranges a special banquet for her enthronement (2.17-18). Esther’s banquets are the setting of the book’s narrative; they not only present Esther as an initiator of festive events similar to the king, but she also uses them to obtain her objectives (White 1989: 170–1). She initiates her first banquet, risking her life, by appearing unsummoned before the king (4.11) and then humbly and respectfully invites him to attend her banquet and to bring along Haman, his vizier. This scene is the reversal of the scene in which Vashti refuses to appear at the king’s banquet and is 18.  According to Herodotus women had limited access to the Persian king (Hist. 3.68). 19.  ‘The literary prominence given to Esther, at the expense of Vashti’, says Fuchs, ‘demonstrates the biblical stance on sexual politics’ (1999: 82). 20.  On Vashti’s as a feminist model, see Gendler 1976; Bal 1999; Day 2005: 43.



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punished for it. By her tactics of organizing a social drinking event, Esther represents the ‘proper’ image of a woman focused on the provision of food and drinks, conforming to social gender conventions. Hence Ahasuerus accepts her invitation and generously offers to fulfill her request ‘…up to half the kingdom’ (5.3, 5). Why does Esther not take advantage of the king’s good mood by announcing her petition immediately, and why is it necessary for her to have two banquets? She seems to hesitate. Her hesitancy can be explained according to the Babylonian Talmud (b. Meg. 10b) and Ibn Ezra in his commentary on the book of Esther, by her inner anxiety and fear of the king’s reaction to her sudden unsummoned appearance, especially as he is known for his quick anger (1.12; 7.7).21 Although the MT text does not elaborate on her feelings, in the B and A texts the inner characters of Esther and the king are presented more fully. It looks as though Esther needs more time to carry out her plans. Fox (1991: 73) suggests that Esther’s procrastination is also a tactical means to heighten Ahasuerus’s curiosity (similar to Scheherazade’s story in A Thousand and One Nights). What is still unclear is why Esther’s invitation to host the king and his vizier Haman has not aroused questions and has been accepted unproblematically by the various commentators, as though an invitation by the queen for the king’s minister to attend a banquet in the women’s quarters was a customary occurrence. Assyrian, Persian, Sasanian, Greek and Roman sources emphasize the laws forbidding any male to enter the women’s quarters and harems – apart from the king, his sons and the eunuchs. Moreover, it is Esther, not the king, who selects the banquet’s location and guest list.22 She risks her life not only by her unsummoned arrival at the inner court but also by her invitation to another male beside the king to attend her banquet. Further, if Esther’s invitation is so selfexplanatory, it is strange that Haman, the most important man in the Persian empire next to the king, reacts to the invitation as if it were an extraordinary circumstance. His hurrying home to tell his wife and family about the unusual and remarkable news, of his being the only male beside the king to be invited by the queen (5.12), also shows that this was an exceptional event.23 21.  Fox (1991: 22) maintains that Esther was still hesitant at that stage until seeing Mordechai, which gave her strength to continue. 22.  Mentioning the various places where the banquets are held indicates their significance and importance (LaCocque 2008: 22–4). 23.  Esther’s invitation is another element in the reversal theme/motif dominating the story.

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I agree with the commentators who interpret the two banquets as Esther’s manipulative tactics of maneuvering the situation for her own benefit.24 Both banquets are set in the palace’s inner quarters, where Esther can easily control the situation. I propose that Esther’s first invitation was probably for a drinking banquet which was already happening, as it is described in the text in the present tense (5.4). This banquet was perhaps similar to Vashti’s women banquet, for the entertainment of the same guests – the harem and noble women – but seems to takes place in the women’s quarters (5.4-5), not in the king’s palace and without his guests. Esther’s first banquet was also possibly the first step of her strategy to unveil Haman’s plot to bring destruction upon the Jews and to save her people. As Clines (1984a: 37) points out, by using the first banquet as a social occasion, Esther has outmaneuvered and lulled Haman into a false sense of security and pride, thus also appealing to his vanity (White 1989: 171). I suggest that Esther orchestrated the second banquet, this time a private one, as an opportunity to reveal her Jewish origin and for making her plea. She probably understood that she would not achieve her goal by accusing and shaming Haman in an open confrontation in front of the harem’s women. She probably also wished to prevent the influence of the various royal advisers and counsellors, therefore choosing a more private setting for the second banquet, most likely in the pavilion (7.7-8).25 In Esther’s second banquet, which is the dramatic climax of the story, only three of the story’s primary protagonists (Esther, the king and Haman) participate (Bal 1999: 212). Neither the king’s nor Haman’s advisors are present. With this, Esther has the stage to herself. When both the king and Haman are relaxed and expect more entertainment of the first banquet’s sort, Esther chooses to clash with Haman head-on and throws the bomb of accusation (Fox 1991: 22–3). Haman is not prepared for Esther’s change of behavior and makes major mistakes. Esther uses her banquets the way a skillful politician might, causing Haman’s downfall, saving the Jews and authorizing the Purim feast (9.2932). Her banquets effectively change the status of the Persian Jewish community and its religious history. Although not of a ritualistic nature, the banquets also become the inspiration for one of the three customs of the Purim Festival. Esther’s royal and social status is transformed and 24.  Some scholars explain the double scenes in the book as the result of the author’s composing the text from two or more previous versions (Clines 1984a: 115–74). 25.  On the categories of private and public spaces in Esther, see Hancock 2013: 99–102, 133–6.



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she morphs from an objectified, passive girl in the hands of Mordecai to a liberated individual. She ascertains the appropriate type of power to use in royal Persian state matters, as well as that which is appropriate in the Jewish community (Day 1995: 170–4; 2005: 6, 151). It is worth noting that the theme of women’s ceremonies has survived the ages and has come to the surface in the twentieth century, in the wake of the appearance of feminist movements. In contemporary Israel, as well, we are witnessing a revival of Women-Only Israeli/Jewish banquets and gatherings, though in a much changed form. Contemporary Women’s Religious Ceremonies and Prayer Services Roughly forty years ago there was a marked change in the complex scene of women in various Jewish religious communities. Women began demanding some means of religious self-expression and a change in their status within the religious patriarchal, male-dominated community. Several factors and circumstances influence the growth and development of women’s liberal and feminist movements within the religious institutions of various contemporary Jewish denominations. Among them are the ‘Return to Judaism’ or the ‘Return to the Religious Fold’, the ‫( חזרה בתשובה‬chazarah be-teshuvah)26 movements that attract secular women who have previously been exposed to feminist ideas.27 The women’s liberation movements in the United States and the struggles of Israeli secular feminist women’s groups within Israeli legislative and national legal institutions also influenced the religious women’s need and wish for change. These new tendencies and ideological/theological reforms have brought about changes in Jewish religious communities. The three major Jewish denominations (Orthodox, Conservative and Reform) are struggling with women’s new needs. Sometimes concessions and changes to old customs are suggested or implemented: some are minor and accepted, whereas others are rejected as too radical. What is important is that the reassessment of Judaic values finally includes the subject of women’s status and place in the public religious sphere.

26.  A process through which secular non-observant Israelis who grew up in Israel within the majority secular culture join Orthodoxy (Beit-Hallahmi 1992: 55). 27.  Which, in Israel, would be especially indebted to the influence of woman immigrants from English-speaking countries.

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The new Dough (challah) Offering ceremony, as well as the prayer services of Neshot HaKotel (Women of the Wall), demonstrate these exciting, challenging and problematic changes. The Dough (Challah) Offering Ceremony and Women’s Religious Identity In recent years a new, religious women-only collective ritual emerged, celebrated especially by women returning to the religious fold but also by secular and orthodox women. The trend peaked recently (2015) with a mass ceremony that was attended by thousands of women and held at the old Roman amphitheater in Caesarea. It is worth mentioning that, during the course of Jewish history, no celebrations designed exclusively for women are recorded, with the exception of the traditional ḥenna pre-wedding ceremonies celebrated in several North African, Yemenite and Indian Jewish communities.28 Since the time of the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, there have been attempts to create several women-only celebrations with secular characteristics, but most of them did not catch on. The Dough (challah) Offering ceremony involves a ritualistic process of baking bread, out of which a small portion of the dough (named challah) is set aside and burnt. This is followed by a banquet. The source for this ritual supposedly originates in the 133rd of the 613 biblical commands of law, and is one of the twenty-four priestly gifts. The edict found in Num. 15.17-21 states (v. 20a): ‘From your first batch of dough you shall present a loaf [challah] as a donation’.29 This law was initially meant to be followed in the privacy of one’s home, where a handful of the dough prepared for baking was intended as an offering to God. This Dough (challah) Offering is one of the three commandments later understood as meant specifically for Jewish women (together with candle lighting on Shabbat eve and holidays, and observing purity laws during menstruation [niddah]). The preparation of dough is followed by a blessing: ‫ברוך אתה יְ יָ אלהינו מלך העולם אשר קדשנו במצוותיו וציוונו להפריש חלה‬ ‫מן העיסה‬ Blessed are You, Lord, our God, king of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with His Commandments and commanded us to separate challah from the dough. 28.  For a description of the ceremony see for instance http://www.myjewishlearning.com/jewish-and/embracing-a-jewish-henna-wedding-tradition/ 29.  The halakhicsources for the mitzvah are Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 322 and Maimonides’ Mishne Torah, Seder Zeraim, Bikkurim 5.1.



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The contemporary Dough (challah) Offering ceremony exemplifies how an ancient personal ritual has been turned into a new public ritualistic banquet. This ceremony, which was started during the 1960s and 1970s by orthodox Chabad30 women, has become very popular in recent years. The ceremony and ritual are customarily conducted by a woman titled Rabbah (‫רבה‬, a grammatical feminine form of ‫ )רב‬or Rabbanit (‫)רבנית‬. This is not a neologism, since there is no feminine parallel term in traditional Hebrew for the title Rabbi.31 The ritual includes communal dough preparation, blessings, praying, eating, and singing and dancing; in effect it is a ritualistic banquet celebrating a biblical commandment. It is usually celebrated on the first day of the month (‫ראש חדש‬, ro’sh chodesh)32 in side rooms within synagogues, or in private homes or ceremonial halls. The ceremony is considered a special occasion when prayers are answered – a time to request blessings for health, marriage and children. It is a celebration that utilizes the traditional, accepted women’s role associated with the preparation of food and combines it with a command meant for Jewish women. In this way, it transfers the ritual from the domestic space to the public space and turns it into women-only ceremony Neshot Ha-Kotel, Women of the [Western] Wall Another example of contemporary Israeli women’s festive gatherings is provided by the Neshot Ha-Kotel group, which conducts public prayers where female participants fulfill the religious cultic roles intended for men. I chose to study these women because they represent, like the women participating in the Dough (challah) Offering ceremonies, the Zeitgeist of their place. Both women’s groups, the Dough Offerers and the Wall women, try to introduce more liberal changes concerning women into their communities.

30.  On the Chabad movement see the organization’s webpage, www.chabad.org. 31.  The title is the translation of the Yiddish word Rebbetzen (‫)רבעצען‬, the feminine form for Rebbe in Yiddish. It refers to the (male) rabbi’s wife. The title Rabbanit has begun to acquire a new meaning in Modern Hebrew, that of a woman in a religious leadership role whose title signifies recognition of her knowledge, stature and leadership. Especially in the Reform and Conservative Jewish denominations, this title exists for women who lead congregations (mainly in the United States). The first Rabbah was ordained in the United States in 1972. 32.  The origin of celebrating the first day of the month (ro’sh chodesh) can be found in Num. 10.10; 28.11.

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The Women of the Wall group was founded in 1988 as an organization of Jewish multi-denominational (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and in-between) women who wished to secure the rights of women to lead monthly prayer services for women and perform religious public worship at the Western Wall in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. These women want to bring about changes in the traditional Jewish Law (halakha), especially in the status of women in the public religious sphere. They challenge the Jewish Orthodox establishment, fighting against worship segregation, or the exclusion of women from participating in a women’s minyan (a prayer quorum)33 in the main square of the Western Wall. They fight against their confinement to a separate distant women’s gallery, and the prohibition against bringing a Torah Scroll to the Wall and reading from it in public. The women attend the service wearing prayer shawls (tallit) and other characteristically male religious garments such as phylacteries (tefillin) and yarmulke (kippa). Recently they have even attempted to carry out a women’s version of the Priestly Blessing ceremony. Notably, not only is there no priestesses’ blessing ceremony in the Jewish religion; but also, the very term ‘priestess’ does not exist in the Hebrew Bible or in the Jewish writings at all. Moreover, the status of priesthood is one of the main structured discriminative systems of the Jewish ritual/cultus. In the Jewish tradition, priesthood is hereditary and passes from father to son, irrespective of personal choice or achievements. During their prayer services the Women of the Wall face insults, their prayer services are disturbed by shouting and violent threats and they need police protection. Comparisons and Considerations There are several notable parallels between the ancient queens’ banquets, their conduct and circumstances, and the modern Dough (challah) Offering ceremonies, the prayer services at the Western Wall and the conduct and circumstances of contemporary [religious] Israeli/Jewish women’s groups. The most significant similarity is that the ancient and modern banquets, the festive meetings and gatherings of individual women or groups are all arranged by and mostly for women. In the book of Esther, Vashti organizes a ‘women’s banquet’; and Esther sets up two banquets and initiates and establishes two religious holidays: Esther’s fast day (4.15-16; 9.31) 33.  Minyan actually means ‘[counted] number’ but in Judaism signifies the minimal quorum of ten men that is needed for reading the Torah in public.



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and – with Mordechai – the Purim Festival (9.29-32), neither of which is decreed by God or by the Jewish religious hegemony. The contemporary Dough (challah) Offering ceremonies and the Women of the Wall’s prayer services were also initiated by women, for women. Every one of these banquets and gatherings is also characterized by different levels of gender-role reversal, expressed by the women’s conduct. If we look at the Women of the Wall group’s controversial approach and Vashti’s ‘feminist’ behavior, we can see a correlation between the two. Vashti’s confrontation and open resistance to submit to the patriarchal social system was perceived as a feminine behavioral threat to all the men in Persia (1.16-18) (Wyler 1995: 116). In the accusations against her there is repeated emphasis on Vashti’s womanhood not just in the book itself but also in the various translations and by most commentators. As a result of her conduct Vashti is punished, banished or even executed. Moreover, her insubordination provokes the decree of a new law in the Persian kingdom, defining women’s behavior within the domestic space (1.19-22). Niditch maintains that the book of Esther is about the status quo, the maintenance of it and finding a proper place within it: Vashti’s action marks her as a threat (Niditch 1995: 33). Like Vashti, the modern Women of the Wall group acts against the religious Orthodox establishment. With their innovative discourse and revolutionary ideas concerning prayer, ritual and worship, they demand equality between men and women and are seen as a threat to the status quo. They threaten the Jewish religious male hegemony that has dominated Jewish life for generations and challenge Jewish Orthodox patriarchal religious customs.34 The group’s confrontation with religious institutions has led to the tightening of the interpretation of the existing Israeli law of holy places, forbidding women to read the Torah at the Western Wall. The Women of the Wall group is currently on a collision course with the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel, and their leader, Anat Hoffman, was recently arrested for smuggling a Torah Scroll into the main square of the Western Wall. On the other hand, we have Esther and the women celebrating the Dough (challah) Offering ceremonies. Contrary to Vashti’s behavior, Esther accepts her secondary position and acts in compliance with the royal system of the Persian hierarchy and the Jewish hegemony. With her wisdom and resourcefulness, Esther may have somewhat stretched the boundaries of the patriarchal norms of ancient Persian and Jewish societies, but basically leaves them intact, thereby realizing her objectives 34.  On Judaism and feminism, see Greenberg 1976.

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without offending the system (White-Crawford 2002: 11). Similar to the banquets in the book of Esther that took place in a specifically feminine traditional space – food and drink – the Dough (challah) Offering ceremony revolves around food, too.35 These ceremonies are a distinctive demonstration of feminine self-expression, and a typification of limited women’s liberation within the religious social order. Examining both contemporary groups from a socio-anthropological perspective, I consider the Dough (challah) Offering ceremonies and the Women of the Wall’s worship gathering as a sort of communitas,36 similar to what Boyarin and Boyarin (1993: 720–1) and Rubenstein (1992: 258– 62) suggest when referring to the establishment of the Purim Festival in the book of Esther. They maintain that the Purim Festival promotes new ideas, such as creating a group identity in the Diaspora that is based on shared experience – a sort of communitas ceremonies that include previous Jewish cultural and religious aspects combined with new aspects taken from the local culture. Following this viewpoint, I also propose that contemporary womenonly celebrations create a type of new tradition of women’s communitas. These ritual ceremonies and gatherings allow the integration of different women from different socioeconomic classes to share a strong sense of commonality, and serve to forge and maintain female identity and solidarity. These ceremonies offer new expression of female independence for religious women within well-defined boundaries that allow them to be active and responsible as primary participants in religious events within modern Jewish religious practice. Taking into consideration that the establishing of the public Dough (challah) Offering ceremony is an expanded interpretation based on one of the three rabbinic (and biblical) commandments directed especially at women strengthens this view. Moreover, the Jewish religious establishment is aware of the influence of the feminist movement’s revolution on Jewish women from the different denominations. The dialectic tension that exists between old and new Jewish religious customs and traditions was and still is regulated by the Conservative and Reform communities, but is mostly not accepted by the Jewish Orthodox community.

35.  Preparing food and baking in the Hebrew Bible, although not exclusively, is mainly associated with women (for instance Gen. 18.6; 1 Sam. 8.13). 36.  Turner uses communitas as a concept denoting intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging, often in connection with rituals (Turner 1967: 129).



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Nevertheless, these Jewish religious establishments cannot ignore the exposure of religious women to secular women’s success in achieving equal rights and integrating into what was once predominantly a man’s world. The Orthodox community prefers (not so willingly) to accept women’s ‘quiet’ demands for change, like celebrating the Dough (challah) Offering, that are still within the old traditional boundaries, rather than accepting the revolutionary ideas of women like the Women of the Wall, who fight for equal religious and cultic rights. Both the Dough (challah) Offering and the Women of the Wall prayer services focus on the issue of women’s ‘visibility’ or ‘invisibility’ in the public space, especially from the Jewish cultic perspective. These women’s initiatives, each in its own way, try to transfer women’s position and roles from the private domestic sphere, as passive onlookers, to the public sphere as active participants. Conclusion Arguably, the Esther Scroll’s didactic and moral lesson serves as a model for the Dough (challah) Offering ceremony. Its female initiators follow conventions of the religious establishment, and the ceremony is contained within the defined limits of the contemporary religious system. As such, the Dough (challah) Offering celebrations attract more participants than the Women of the Wall group. Thus, the contemporary women’s initiatives are a creative transient change in the process of developing a new female identity within the religious establishment. These women’s ceremonies are small but significant steps on a long path that might lead to a less rigid framework of female exclusion from Jewish Orthodox religious rituals, exclusion that has increased in recent years. Hopefully, such a process could evolve to an authentic self-expression of female identity in Israeli/Jewish religious practices, and to the establishment of female religious expression that is different from that of male religious expression. An ideal female representation would not necessarily relate to the androcentric Orthodox conventions of confining women’s worship to the domestic sphere, but would allow women an independent self-expression of worship in the public sphere. I wish to conclude with the words of Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), the great scholar of Kabbalah, and his definitions and insights on Judaism, as quoted and explained by Rachel Elior (2015). In response to the question ‘what is Judaism?’ Scholem wrote,

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These words well reflect the current struggle of Jewish women’s new religious aspirations within the ancient traditions. References Ackerman, S. (2012), ‘Cult Centralization, the Erosion of Kin-Based Communities, and the Implications for Women’s Religious Practice’, in S. M. Olyan (ed.), Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: Essays in Retrospect and Prospect, 19–140, Atlanta: SBL Press. Altmann, P. (2011), Festive Meals in Ancient Israel: Deuteronomy’s Identity Politics in their Ancient Near Eastern Context, Berlin and Boston: W. de Gruyter. Atheneus of Naucratis (1927–1941), The Deipnosophists, trans. C. B. Gulick, Loeb Classical Library, London: W. Heinemann. Bal, M. (1999), ‘Lots of Writing’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith, and Susanna, 212–38, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Beal, T. K. (1995), ‘Tracing Esther’s Beginnings’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith, and Susanna, 87–110, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1992), Despair and Deliverance: Private Salvation in Contemporary Israel, Albany: State University of New York Press. Berg, S. B. (1979), The Book of Esther: Motifs, Themes and Structure, Missoula: Scholars Press. Berlin, A. (2001), Esther, The Jewish Publication Society Bible Commentary, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Bird, P. (1999), ‘The Place of Women in the Israelite Cultus’, in A. Bach (ed.), The Pleasure of her Text: Feminist Reading of Biblical and Historical Texts, 3–20, Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Boyarin, D., and J. Boyarin (1993), ‘Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity’, Critical Inquiry, 19 (4): 693–725. Brenner, A. (1985), The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative, Sheffield: JSOT Press. Brenner, A. (1995), ‘Looking at Esther through the Looking Glass’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith, and Susanna, 71–80, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Brenner, A., and J. W. van Henten, eds (2001), Food and Drink in the Biblical Worlds, Semeia 86, Atlanta: SBL Press.



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Briant, P. (2002), From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Brosius, M. (1998), Women in Ancient Persia (559–331 BC), Oxford: Clarendon Press. Burkert, W. (2006 [1985]), Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, Oxford: Blackwell. Clines, D. J. A. (1984a), The Esther Scroll: The Story of the Story, Sheffield: Sheffield University Press. Clines, D. J. A. (1984b), Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, New Century Bible Commentary, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Collon, D. (1992), ‘Banquets in the Art of the Ancient Near East’, in R. Gyselen (ed.), Banquets d’Orient, 22–30, Res Orientales 4, Bures-sur Yvette, France. Craghan, J. F. (1982), ‘Esther, Judith, and Ruth: Paradigms for Human Liberation’, Biblical Theology Bulletin, 12 (1): 11–19. Day, L. M. (1995), Three Faces of a Queen: Characterization in the Books of Esther, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 186, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Day, L. M. (2005), Esther, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries, Nashville: Abingdon Press. Dillon, M. (2002), Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, London and New York: Routledge. Elior, R. (2015), ‘What Kind of Religion Is Judaism’, part I, Odyssey, 28: 58–73. http:// odyssey.org.il/ [Hebrew]. Fox, M. V. (1991), Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Freud, S. (1953 [1925]), ‘The Uncanny’, in J. Strachey (ed. and trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud XVII: 212–52, London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Fuchs, E. (1999), ‘The Status and Role of Female Heroines in the Biblical Narrative’, in A. Bach (ed.), Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, 77–84, New York: Routledge. Gafni, W. C. (2008), Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Gendler, M. (1976), ‘The Restoration of Vashti’, in E. Koltun (ed.), The Jewish Women: New Perspectives, 241–7, New York: Schocken Books. Gottwald, N. K. (1979), The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel 1250–1050 B.C., Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Greenberg, B. (1976), ‘Judaism and Feminism’, in E. Koltun (ed.), The Jewish Women: New Perspectives, 179–92, New York: Schocken Books. Haas, V. (1986), Das Reich Urartu: ein altorientalischer Staat im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., Konstanzer altorientalische Symposien, Bd.00, Xenia (Series), Heft 017, Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Hancock, R. S. (2013), Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: Public and Private Spaces and the Figure of the Female Royal Counselor, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Herodotus (1998), Historiae: The Histories, trans. R. Waterfield, with an introduction and notes by C. Dewald, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Josephus (Flavius Josephus) (1937), Antiquities of the Jews, trans. R. Marcus, London: Loeb. Kellner, H. J. (1991), Gürtelbleche aus Urartu, Prӓhistorische Bronzefunde Abteilung 12/3, Stuttgart: F. Steiner.

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Koehler, L., and W. Baumgartner (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), trans. M. E. J. Richardson, rev. W. Baumgartner and J. J. Stamm, Leiden: E. J. Brill. LaCocque, A. (1999), ‘The Different Versions of Esther’, Biblical Interpretation, 7 (3): 301–22. LaCocque, A. (2008), Esther Regina: A Bakhtinian Reading, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. MacDonald, N. (2008), Not Bread Alone: The Use of Food in the Old Testament, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meyers, C. L. (1988), Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, New York: Oxford University Press. Meyers, C. L. (2012), ‘The Function of Feasts: An Anthropological Perspective on Israelite Religious Festivals’, in S. M. Olyan (ed.), Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: Essays in Retrospect and Prospect, 141–68, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Meyers, C. L. (2013), Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, New York: Oxford University Press. Michalowski, P. (1994), ‘The Drinking Gods: Alcohol in Mesopotamian Ritual and Mythology’, in L. Milano (ed.), Drinking in Ancient Societies: History and Culture of Drinks in the Ancient Near East, 27–44, Padua: Sargon. Milano, L. ed. (1994), Drinking in Ancient Societies: History and Culture of Drinks in the Ancient Near East, Padua: Sargon. Moore, C. A. (1967), ‘A Greek Witness to a Different Hebrew Text of Esther’, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 79: 352–8. Moore, C. A. (1971), Esther: Introduction, Translation and Notes, Anchor Bible 7B, Garden City: Doubleday. Niditch, S. (1995), ‘Esther: Folklore, Wisdom, Feminism, and Authority, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna, 26–46, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Paran, M. (2002), ‘Challoth’, in B. A. Levin, and M. Paran and Y. Siphman (eds), Leviticus, 21–22, Olam HaTanach Encylopedia, Tel-Aviv: Divrei Hayamim [Hebrew]. Pinnock, F. (1994), ‘Consideration on the “Banquet Theme” in the Figurative Art of Mesopotamia and Syria’, in L. Milano, (ed.), Drinking in Ancient Societies: History and Culture of Drinks in the Ancient Near East, 15–26, Padua: Sargon. Piotrovskij, B. B. (1967), Urartu: The Kingdom of Van and its Arts, London: E. Adams & Macay. Rubenstein, J. (1992), ‘Purim, Liminality, and Communitas’, Association of Jewish Studies Review, 17 (2): 247–77. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. (1983), ‘Exit Atossa: Images of Women in Greek Historiography on Persia’, in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds), Images of Women in Antiquity, 20–33, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Segal, E. (1994), The Babylonian Esther Midrash 1–3, Atlanta: Scholars Press. Turner, V. (1967), The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-structure, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. VanderKam, J. C. (2007), ‘Feasts and Fasts’, in K. Doob Sakenfeld (ed.), New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 2:443–7, Nashville: Abingdon Press. Versnel, H. S. (1994), Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion II: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual, Leiden: Brill.



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Wyler, B. (1995), ‘Esther: The Incomplete Emancipation of a Queen’, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna, 111–35, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. White, S. A. (1989), ‘Esther: A Feminine Model for Jewish Diaspora’, in P. L. Day (ed.), Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, 161–77, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. White-Crawford, S. A. (2002), ‘Esther Not Judith: Why One Made It and the Other Didn’t’, Bible Review, (18): 22–31. http://www.biblereview.org/. Xenophon (1914), Cyropaedia VIII, trans. W. Miller, Loeb Classical Library, London: W. Heinemann. Ziffer, I. (2002), ‘Four Urartian Metal Belts from the Land of Ararat and the Feast of the Women in Esther 1.9’, Rencontre assyriologique internationale, 47: 645–57. Ziffer, I. (2005), ‘From Acemhöyük to Megiddo: The Banquet Scene in the Art of the Levant in the Second Millennium BCE’, Tel Aviv, 32 (2): 133–67

E s t h er , P i ous a n d B r ave : R e a d i n g C h i l d r en ’ s B i ble s as C omm en ta ry on T wen t i e th - C e ntury A f r i k a n er C ult ur e Jaqueline S. du Toit

Children’s Bibles exemplify simplified vernacular Bible interpretation. Masquerading as plain, child-friendly accounts of the narrative sections of the Bible, this prolific body of literature has historically been undervalued for what it may contribute as commentators on contemporary religious communities, the centrality of the text and the Zeitgeist. Highly dogmatic, enhanced by illustration (otherwise frowned upon by the aniconicism of Judaism and Protestant Christianity) and supremely selective in content, these morality tales pose as ‘truth’ and the ‘authoritative Word of God’ (Maartens 2004; Smit 2002). Their authors claim these texts to be unmodified and child-friendly readings of the biblical text, while they most often represent disarmingly naïve exaggerations or grotesque caricatures of an adult community’s conception of self and the other. Excessively aware of the target audience, the stories tend to overstate concepts of class and gender that are biased through the representation and exaggerated importance placed on traditionally marginalized reading communities – such as women (especially the category ‘mother’), children and the unschooled or semi-literate ‘simple folk’, a category often conflated with the recently converted ‘children’ in faith. These texts also have a tendency to make the marginalized complicit in the perpetuation of the status quo by introducing and then normalizing caricature through authoritative retelling. The retelling adds a performative quality and predictive social context reminiscent of early oral transfer, lost by the isolation of silent reading. Performance is likewise carefully staged to reinforce the hierarchical values of what Anne McClintock (1993: 68) refers to as a ‘putative organic unity of interests’



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or ‘family trope’1 that is dependent on the perpetuation of a twentiethcentury Victorian perception of the family. For Afrikaans literature the family trope became laden with added gendered and racial hierarchies, as Giliomee explains: With the Western world experiencing an upsurge of racism in the 1880s, the Afrikaner and English-speaking whites tended to justify white supremacy in different ways. English South African politicians and journalists drew particularly on the concept of a biological hierarchy of races and on the (social) Darwinism theory of the survival of the fittest. By contrast, Afrikaans or Dutch publications seldom considered the biological concept of race. They focused on an idealized picture of paternalism, depicting the white master as caring for faithful servants, and punishing them when they erred. The more modern among them sketched a world of competing organic nations, each with its own distinctive cultural heritage and needs, co-existing under the aegis of white supremacy (Giliomee 2003: 286).

This gains added significance when children’s literature becomes part of a nationalist narrative. I will illustrate this point by looking at the portrayal of the idealized woman as constructed by early twentieth-century white Afrikaner nationalists and trace its remnants in late twentieth-century Afrikaans children’s Bibles. Of the biblical characters on the margin, Esther offers the best template to demonstrate that context is equal to text in determining meaning. The Family Trope For the predominantly Calvinist, Reformed Afrikaner (cf. Gerstner 1991 and Giliomee 2003), the authoritative reading and interpretation of the Bible in white Afrikaans society has consistently been an adult, male preoccupation. Notwithstanding social and political shifts, the white, male voice still predominates in the academy and in interpretive literature. This is supported by the disinclination of clergy to relinquish their historic role as gatekeepers to the interpretation of the biblical text for the Afrikaner lay audience and the tacit agreement to the continuation of this state of affairs by the same audience (both religious and secular), with literature for children frequently posing the exception in terms of female 1.  ‘A paradox lies at the heart of most national narratives. Nations are frequently figured through the iconography of familial and domestic space… [T]he family offers a “natural” figure for sanctioning social hierarchy within a putative organic unity of interests’ (McClintock 1993: 63).

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authorship. When women’s interpretive voices have come to the fore in the mainstream, their interpretations are often qualified or referenced by their gender. As recently as 2011, retired University of Stellenbosch professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature and venerated Afrikaans poet, Lina Spies, began her interpretation of the book of Esther with a preamble marked, ‘Justification’ (Verantwoording). Spies’ ‘justification’ takes as point of departure a description of the context in which she was first introduced to the biblical text. She describes her ‘naïve fascination’ as a child with the story of Esther, when the Bible read aloud by her father. This, she tells us, is how she identifies: ‘I am a human being molded by Bible2 and a poet.3 My father, every morning and evening, used to read a cogent passage from the Bible, without ever adding an interpretation or a moral lesson. He also didn’t read selectively, but started at Genesis with the object of reading all the way to Revelation’ (Spies 2011: 1). Her father a primary school teacher, Lina Spies was born in 1939. Her recollection captures the domestic religious practice (huisgodsdiens) of an upwardly mobile lower middle class Afrikaner household contemporaneous to the historical culmination of the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, with the 1948 victory of D. F. Malan’s National Party.4 The fixed routine of morning and evening Bible reading, led by the family patriarch and accompanied by the singing of hymns and prayer, was integral to a series of social interventions for shoring up the family as bulwark for the establishment of a unified Afrikaner nation after its moment of crisis, the South African War (1899–1902). The defeat of the Boers at the hands of the British came at the cost of the death of 26,000 women and children. Referred to as a ‘woman’s war’, the outcome made family integral to the future project of social improvement and national unity. Poverty stricken, poorly educated and with few employment opportunities,5 disparate and destitute communities of Afrikaans speakers flocked to the cities (cf. Hofmeyr 1987). By the 1930s, the so-called ‘poor white’ question and resultant urbanization, as well as rapid post-war industrialization, meant the breakdown of the idyllic agrarian family unit. This proved a grave 2.  Bybelsgevormde mens. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 3.  On the integral role of the Bible in Afrikaans poetic oeuvre, see Cloete 1989. 4.  By 1948, ‘the profile of urban Afrikaners was predominantly working class. Some 40 per cent of all Afrikaners were in blue-collar and other manual occupations, only 27 per cent had white-collar jobs and the rest were in farming’ (Giliomee 2003: 489). 5.  At the time, ‘[m]ost Afrikaners…attached little value to education and many children had only a year’s schooling, many of the rest leaving school before they were ten’ (Giliomee 2003: 268).



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concern to the Afrikaner nationalists who mobilized church and private resources around the traditional and domestic virtues of womanhood, the volksmoeder (‘mother of the nation’) motif and the family (Roos forthcoming). Huisgodsdiens represents only one fairly innocuous example of the intertwining of Afrikaner Church and State, regulating the intimate relations of the Afrikaner household in order to build social cohesion. It affirmed existing social hierarchies anchored in patriarchy and the household. This resonated with a nostalgic recall of Afrikaner origin narratives (families on farms meeting around the dinner table in lieu of formal church attendance); and a fetishized perception of the Bible as a replacement for God, with the home functioning as ‘temple’ and the family Bible as the ‘altar’. By 1958, serious concerns in the church over the lax observance of huisgodsdiens are detectable in a series of Sunday evening radio broadcasts by the Reverend William Nicol (n.d.: 70–80). Nicol’s description of the practice illustrates both the nature of idealized life of a mid-century aspiring middle-class, white Afrikaner family and its religious routines. The title of the radio series, ‘Behind Closed Doors with the Family’ (Agter geslote deure met die huisgesin), admits to the intimate intrusion Afrikaner religious leaders allowed themselves, down to the minutiae of the very time it would take to fulfill domestic rituals of religious observance. Nicol says: I have encountered two reasons, or excuses, why no huisgodsdiens is observed. The excuse is: ‘If I need to include this [in my morning routine], I don’t know what else to leave undone; we have no time for this’. A friend encountered this [objection] during a home visit (huisbesoek). ‘Come’, said he, ‘let’s see how long it takes’. He then opened his pocket watch, placed it on the table, and started to conduct huisgodsdiens. Scripture reading, a hymn and prayer followed and when he was finished, scarcely six minutes had passed. This may perhaps be a bit hasty. My own experience is that ten minutes before seven in the morning is ideal to start [conducting huisgodsdiens] if you want to have breakfast by seven (Nicol n.d.: 75–6).

The second ‘excuse’ for not observing huisgodsdiens, according to Nicol, is the fear of ridicule: older children would ‘laugh’ at a father trying to reinstate a custom that hasn’t been strictly observed in the family before. This suggests that many of the domestic traditions – claimed to be pervasive in Afrikaner households and part of Afrikaner ‘tradition’ – may rather represent fairly recent, pious inventions instituted to advance social cohesion and promote religious adherence. As much as Nicol is criticizing lax religious practice, he may also be inventing, circumscribing and regulating observance.

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While Lina Spies’ father in the 1940s was observing an ‘unadulterated’ reading of the biblical text from Genesis to Revelation during huisgodsdiens, by the advent of the 1960s Nicol is conceding a change of attitudes by suggesting the use of available Bible almanacs as a means of covering ‘most of’ the Bible, while allowing for the ‘more important’ parts of the Bible to be read more often (Nicol n.d.: 73–4). By the 1980s, changes in the Afrikaners’ socio-economic circumstances and the advent of television meant disruption of family hierarchies and nightly routines. The father was no longer undisputed ‘king’ (Nicol n.d.: 77) of the nuclear family. A mother or father reading to the young child at bedtime had largely replaced huisgodsdiens. Children’s Bibles, with their highly selective coverage of subject matter and the inclusion of moral object lessons, were substitutes for the reading of the Bible ‘from Genesis to Revelation’ of an earlier generation. Although a corpus of original and translated Afrikaans children’s religious literature exists dating back to the nineteenth century (Roux 1984: 9–19), the late twentieth-century foregrounding of the child-friendly text represents an important development: the opportunity for, and broad acceptance of, informal (populist) biblical interpretation within a formerly rigid and circumscribed community of practice. To test the nature, longevity and acceptance of new interpretations into the existing canon, I chose two Afrikaans children’s Bibles authored and illustrated by women: Louise Smit’s Die Bybel vir kleuters (The Bible for Toddlers, 2002; first published in 1982); and Maretha Maartens’ Die geïllustreerde kinderbybel: Leer ken God van kleins af (The Illustrated Children’s Bible: Learning to Know God from a Young Age, 2004; first published in 1996). Both children’s Bibles have since been reprinted, pointing to their popularity and acceptance within the Afrikaans religious community. Reading Esther The ‘breaking of the biblical text into concrete tales’, as is the case for both Smit (2002) and Maartens (2004), represents an important interpretive shift for a tradition fixated on ‘reading from Genesis to Revelation’. Whereas Lina Spies’s father read the Bible ‘without ever adding an interpretation or a moral lesson’, moral object lesson is now foregrounded while the biblical narrative becomes merely the vehicle for its transmission. This is even more pronounced where a biblical character, Esther, is used to embody a single moral quality such as virtue, patience, forgiveness, piety or bravery. The main character is stripped of



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moral ambiguity and physical attributes. Reference to the latter becomes inferences to spiritual qualities: physical beauty, for example, becomes a signifier for virtue or piety. In this context, familiarity with the biblical story is of little relevance and may even prove an impediment to the furtherance of the moral object lesson. Louise Smit (2002: 78–9) thus chooses, for example, not to mention the king’s banquet (Esther 1). Like the typical fairy tale, the story opens with the king noticing Esther’s beauty, they fall in love and get married.

Fig. 1. Esther, the Queen who Prayed for Three Days (Ester, die koningin wat drie dae lank gebid het; Smit 2002: 79).

For Smit (2002: 78) the emphasis is on Esther’s piety. Esther is ‘the queen who prayed for three days’, thus underplaying the fierce warrior queen who saved her people and effectively sent Haman to his death. This is in stark contrast to Avi Katz’s Jewish portrayal of Esther in the awardwinning JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible (Frankel 2009: 214),6 depicting Esther at the moment when she points to Haman as the culprit. This Esther, feet apart and regal in posture, mimics a male pose of strength and righteous anger. By contrast, in Smit’s version, prolonged prayer in the story is followed by acts and attributes associated with a very traditional conception of the ‘wife’. She dresses ‘well’ (appropriately) and waits to 6.  I make the comparison with the image in Frankel (2009) because it stems from a more-or-less contemporary and contrasting tradition where the text explicitly contains national (Jewish) undertones.

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be noticed by her husband. Smit’s Esther moves ‘softly’ in the presence of the king. She kneels, emphasizing subservience in a relationship otherwise presented as a love match. The king grants her wish of an audience with him, her people are spared and Haman is removed from the king’s presence without any mention of his death. The essential moment of the story, captured in illustration by Alida Bothma (Smit 2002: 79), is of Esther in white – signifying virtue but inferring also race in a narrative where racial belonging is essential to the story. This is unusual: Esther tends to be portrayed as dressed exotically and colorfully, covered in jewelry, to depict her status as queen in a foreign court. Bothma’s Esther is kneeling, head bowed, in subjugation before the king – suggestive of prayer and implying male authority sublimated for God. Maartens’ (2004: 136–7) Esther includes references to the banquet and Queen Vashti’s banishment, but any part of the biblical story undermining or detracting from the moral object lesson is retold without comment – in contrast to Smit’s expurgation of moral ambiguity. The king in Smit’s Esther is a loving, modern husband willing to indulge his wife, with no obvious moral flaws. Maartens, by contrast, notes the king’s drunkenness at the banquet, but the absence of comment on his questionable and sexist behavior redirects the reader towards the single moral thrust of her story. Maartens emphasizes Esther’s ‘bravery’ and highlights it starkly by accentuating the stakes – Esther’s certain death should she not succeed in her quest on behalf of her people. But courage, Maartens suggests, does not come simply as a result of moral rectitude or inner strength. God makes Esther brave through prayer. That is, the story suggests, although bravery is a quality to aspire to, it is a male characteristic not inherent to women but conferred after determined supplication to the male God and ultimate patriarch. The child reader is told to implore God to make her similarly courageous – for what purpose, Maartens does not offer. In light of this, Haman’s consequent death is matter-of-factly related as the inevitable conclusion to the tale. In the summative illustration of the story, the same moment is chosen by illustrator Samantha van Riet (Maartens 2004: 137) as by Avi Katz (Frankel 2009: 214): Esther revealing Haman’s plans at the dinner table with her shocked (Van Riet) or enraged (Katz) husband as audience. Katz’s Esther is towering in righteous anger over a seated Haman, pointing at him with an accusatory finger. By contrast, Van Riet’s Esther (Maartens 2004: 137) poses as a composed hostess with little facial expression and an open hand gesture pointed in the general direction of Haman. Even at this moment of national suicide or redemption, the heroine Esther still conforms to the strictures of her role within the domestic sphere as that of the perfect hostess.



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Fig. 2. God makes Esther Brave (God maak Ester dapper; Maartens 2004: 137).

Idealized Womanhood The Bible was translated into Afrikaans in 1933. This was pre-empted by the ‘conscious creation’ of an Afrikaner tradition steeped in biblical motifs by ‘cultural brokers and image-makers’ (McClintock 1993: 68). The Afrikaans theologian, poet and Bible translator par excellence, D. J. du Toit (Totius), was central to this endeavor. Totius recognized the centrality of the Bible to Afrikaner folk religion and created a body of work resonant with biblical geography, names and themes. He understood that formal appeals to an intellectual framing (neo-Calvinism) for the nationalist and apartheid project deferred to a pervasive biblicity: the ‘simple folk’ needed to believe in the inherent Bible-ness of the nation’s existence.7 This included depictions of idealized womanhood. 7.  ‘When, in 1944, Totius addressed the Volkskongres on the Afrikaner’s Racial Policy, he was aware that most Afrikaners…considered blacks their inferiors, and that they resisted social equality among races, abhorred miscegenation, and feared African inundation of the cities. Yet Totius could not rely on the abstractions of neo-Calvinist

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Shaping the identity of the Afrikaner woman, and her antithesis, in terms of biblical figures became a central pre-occupation for Totius.8 His third collection of poetry on the suffering of Afrikaner women and children in the concentration camps, Rachel (Du Toit 1913), refers to the patriarch’s wife and to Jer. 31.15: ‘Thus saith the Lord: A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not’ (KJV). Interestingly, Totius and his partners in the pursuit of circumscribing the idealized identity of the Afrikaner woman do not use Esther, despite the opportunities a reading of this book offers to a nationalist agenda. My sense is that Esther fills the traditionalist Totius with unease. As orphan, Esther is outside the traditional family structure. She is married outside her faith. The manner in which she gains her position as queen, her reliance on physical attributes, but perhaps most importantly, her pronounced entry into the public arena – all these features do not fit the depiction of ideal womanhood. Kruger (2011: 100) refers to Totius’s 1915 poem, Trekkersweë, for a depiction of the idealized Afrikaner woman contained in a description of the farmer’s bride: ‘[She] promises innocence, sincerity, naivety, and hard work, and undertakes not to be too clever or politically outspoken’. According to Hermann Giliomee, this represented a regression of the social position of Afrikaner women: Afrikaner women were remarkably independent, with a strong position in the pre-industrial burgher family and agrarian household… In the first phase of Afrikaner settlement in the towns and cities many women in the towns were wage-earners and often were the sole providers.

Giliomee notes that this slowly changed from the early 1920s onwards, to a more conservative position, encouraged by the Dutch Reformed Church: The church encouraged women to see their main role as the anchor of their family, and whose place was at home. And, according to him, only three Afrikaner women were elected to Parliament between 1910 and 1974 (Giliomee 2003: 376). Within this context, the outspoken and militant portrayal of Esther would prove an anathema. The character needed to be contained and philosophy to persuade Afrikaners that apartheid was their own God-given philosophy, or inspire them to fulfill their national calling sacrificially. Hence, he appealed to the Bible, the most powerful intellectual influence on the Afrikaner’ (Elphick 2012: 254). 8.  Totius uses Dinah as antithesis.



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reduced to simple, unobjectionable moral values emblematic of traditional gender roles. By the late twentieth century, the lack of moral ambiguity in the portrayal of Esther seems to indicate complicity on the part of Afrikaans women in the successful perpetuation of a caricature of the identity of Afrikaner womanhood. Conclusion Afrikanerdom was largely shaped by the creation and re-imagination of nationhood in terms of biblical myths of origin: the Great Trek of the 1820s–1850s as exodus narrative; Afrikaans and Afrikaner exceptionalism explained by the Tower of Babel; the death of women and children in concentration camps as the slaughter of the innocents; and so forth. The recognition of this ‘biblicism’ as inherent to Afrikaner folk religion is crucial to the mapping of the national project, and the understanding of group and individual identity formation in the middle to late twentieth century. Afrikaner biblicism was utilized by religious authorities and the State to guarantee and sanction the maintenance of an emerging social order. The Bible and the consequences of a particular interpretation, rather than any clear understanding of the nuances of the Afrikaner intellectual elite’s appeal to neo-Calvinism, assured acquiescence on the part of the general (white) populace. In this context children’s Bibles prove invaluable vehicles for tracing the conservation and transfer of these informal Bible interpretations, seldom otherwise codified. This is important, as such populist Bible readings – for children as well as for adults – retain time capsules of polemical and often anti-intellectual identity formation long after they disappear from scholarly Bible commentaries. References Cloete, T. T. (1989), ‘Die Boek wat laaste uitgepak word: Oor die Bybel in die Afrikaanse digkuns’, Hervormde Teologiese Studies, 45 (4): 874–93. Du Toit, J. D. (1913), Rachel, Potchefstroom: Koomans. Elphick, R. (2012), The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Frankel, E. (2009), JPS illustrated Children’s Bible, illust. A. Katz, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Gerstner, J. N. (1991), The Thousand Generation Covenant: Dutch Reformed Covenant Theology and Group Identity in Colonial South Africa, 1652–1814, Leiden: Brill. Giliomee, H. (2003), The Afrikaners: Biography of a People, Cape Town: Tafelberg. Hofmeyr, I. (1987), ‘Building a Nation from Words: Afrikaans Language, Literature and Ethnic Identity, 1902–1924’, in S. Marks and S. Trapido (eds), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa, 95–123, London: Longman.

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Kruger, L.-M. (2011), ‘Memories of Heroines: Bitter Cups and Sourdough’, in A. Grundlingh and S. Huigen (eds), Reshaping Remembrance: Essays on Afrikaans Places of Memory, 99–104, Amsterdam: Rozenberg. Maartens, M. (2004), Die geïllustreerde kinderbybel: Leer ken God van kleins af, 2nd edn, illust. S. van Riet, Cape Town: Struik Christelike Boeke. McClintock, A. (1993), ‘Gender, Nationalism and the Family’, Feminist Review, 44: 61–80. Nicol, W. (n.d.), Agter geslote deure met die huisgesin, Bloemfontein: SondagskoolBoekhandel. Roos, N. D. (forthcoming), White Apartheid Culture, Bloomington: University of Indiana. Roux, C. D. (1984), ‘Perspektiewe op aspekte van Afrikaanse kinderbybels’, MA diss., University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch. Smit, L. (2002), Die Bybel vir kleuters, 2nd edn, illust. A. Bothma, Cape Town: Human & Rossouw. Spies, L. (2011), ‘Ester: Vroulike durf binne ’n manlike bestel’, HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies, 67 (1), Art. #1031, 10 pages.

I n d ex of R ef er e nce s (Biblical books arranged according to the sequence found in the Hebrew Bible)

Hebrew Bible Genesis 1.11-12 129 1.11 129 1.12 129 1.26-27 99 1.31 100 2–3 90–2, 128, 132 2.5 128 2.6 129 2.7 130 2.8-9 129 2.10-14 129 3.14-19 128 3.17-19 129 3.18 129 3.19 129 4 129 18.6 204 19 66 19.30-38 66 19.30-37 65 19.32 65 22.2 107 24.67 113, 117 25.28 113 27.4 107 29.28 117 29.30 113 32.5 66 34 113 34.3 113 34.26 114 37 107 38.8 32 44.20 107, 117 48.7 108 50.1-14 5

Exodus 13.39 5 15 176 15.20-21 192 20.5 167 21.1-6 106 26.33 138 Leviticus 18.18 93 19.9-10 3 23.22 3 25 71, 74-77 25.8-55 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81 25.12 76 25.14-15 76 25.14 76 25.25-28 77 25.25 32, 76 25.28 76 25.35-37 76 25.47 76 25.53 76 26 75 26.13 75 Numbers 5 118 10.10 201 15.17-21 200 15.18-20 190 15.20 200 16.29 104 22–24 65 25 15 25.1-5 65, 66 28.11 201

Deuteronomy 5.8 167 15 77 22 15 23.3-6 65 23.3-4 76 23.6 106 24.19-22 3 25.5-10 32, 76 Joshua 22.5 106 Judges 3.12-30 65 5 176, 192 11 108 13–16 114 14 114 14.3 114 14.8 114 14.16 114 14.17 115 15.2 114 15.6 114 15.9-13 115 15.18 115 16 113, 115 16.1 115 16.4 113, 115 16.6 115 16.10 115 16.13 115 16.14 115 16.15 115 16.16 115

222 1 Samuel 1.5 113 8.13 204 18.6-7 176, 192 18.20 113 18.28 113 29.5 176 2 Samuel 1 177 1.24 192 3.3 108 3.6-30 113 5 192 8.2 65 11.1-24 113 13 113 13.1-33 113 13.23-29 113 13.28 114 19.5-6 108 19.6-7 mt 108 19.6 mt 107, 117 19.7 mt 107, 117 1 Kings 2.13-46 113 3.16-28 108 11.1-8 66 11.1-2 65 11.1 113 11.7-8 65 2 Kings 3.4-27 65 3.27 108 6.26-31 108 8.1-6 77, 81 10.35 5 12.21 5 13.9 5 13.20 65 14.16 5 24.2 65

Index of References Isaiah 11.14 65 15.1–16.14 65 23.12 175 40.1 164 47.1 175 47.5 175 56.1-8 78 57.13 135 61.1 74 Jeremiah 2.3 166 6 175 8 175 9.16-20 177 9.16-17 192 9.25 65 11.18-23 164 12.1-5 164 13.20-27 166 15.10-12 164 20.6 107 20.7-18 164 31.15 218 31.29 167 32 77 46.11 175 46.19 175 46.24 175 48.1-47 65 50.42 175 Ezekiel 16.35-42 118 18.2 167 32.16 177 44.30 190 Amos 2.1-3 65 Habakkuk 1.12-17 105 2.4 105 2.5 105 2.6 105

Zechariah 2.11 175 Malachi 1–4 175 Psalms 6.5 4 9–10 168 40.3 105 44.11-13 168 45 182 60.2 175 60.8 65 60.10 175 62.9 Eng. 135 62.10 135 68.26 192 69.3 105 73.24 154 74 168 79.5 168 80.5-6 168 80.13-14 168 83.7 175 89.41-42 168 89.44 168 98 182 99 182 108.10 175 121-134 177 126 175, 183 137 15, 174–6, 178, 182–4 137.1-4 174 137.1-2 176 137.1 183 137.3-4 174–6, 178, 181, 182 137.4 183 137.5-9 174 137.7-9 176 137.7 175 137.8-9 174 137.8 175 144.4 135 146 182

Proverbs 7 92 8 107 8.36 107 31 112, 178 Job 7.6 135 7.7 Eng. 135 7.7-10 4 Song of Songs 1.1 138 1.2 98 1.6 112 1.10-11 112 2.5 106, 111 2.6 110 2.7 109, 110 2.8-17 92 2.9 190 2.16 96, 110 2.17 110 3.1-5 92, 93 3.4 112 3.5 109, 110 3.11 112 4.6 110 4.9–5.1 96 4.10 98 5.1 98 5.2-6 99, 112 5.7 112 5.8 106, 111, 112 6.3 96, 106, 110 7.1-10 182 7.11 110 8 116 8.1-14 110 8.2 96, 98, 112 8.3 110 8.4-5 109 8.4 110 8.5-7 106, 109, 110, 112, 116, 117

Index of References 8.5 8.6-7 8.6

109, 112 110, 111 104, 107, 111, 112, 117 8.7 112 8.8-9 112 8.8 112 Ruth 1.1-5 9 1.1 11, 20 1.4 53, 65, 75 1.6 21, 32 1.8-10 7 1.8-9 5 1.8 3, 4, 6, 21 1.9 63 1.14-16 63 1.14 22, 63 1.16-17 7, 23 1.16 22, 65 1.19-21 25 1.20-21 3, 68 1.21 10, 11, 68 1.22 31, 65 2 3, 53 2.1 52 2.2 31, 65 2.3 23 2.4-7 79 2.5 23, 53 2.6 65 2.8 33, 53 2.10 25 2.11-16 53 2.13 25 2.14-16 52 2.17–3.18 54 2.18-19 52 2.20 3-5, 7, 9, 11, 23 2.21 31, 65 2.23 33 3 12, 24, 66 3.1 12 3.3-4 54

223 3.5 25 3.7 34 3.9 12, 25 3.10-13 78 3.10 24, 53 3.11 33 3.13 78 3.15 33 4 24, 71, 72, 74–8, 80, 81 4.3-5 25 4.3 79 4.4 78 4.5 5, 7, 12, 13, 31, 65, 80 4.6-7 78 4.6 25 4.7 79 4.9 80 4.10 5, 7, 12, 13, 31, 33, 63, 65 4.11-12 64, 65, 76 4.13-17 34 4.13 12, 34 4.14 34 4.15 113 4.16 34, 68 4.17-22 64 4.17 34, 63 24.11 3 Lamentations 1–2 165 1 165, 166, 170, 179 1.1-12 179 1.1-11 179 1.1 165 1.2 164 1.5 166, 170 1.8-9 165 1.8 166 1.9 163–6, 168 1.11 163, 165, 166, 168 1.12-22 179

224 Lamentations (cont.) 1.12 168 1.14 166, 169 1.16 164 1.17 164 1.18 166, 167, 169 1.20 104, 105, 159, 163, 165, 166, 169 1.21 164 1.22 164, 166, 168, 169 2 164, 165, 170 2.1-9 167 2.1-8 164 2.1 165 2.3 164 2.10 165 2.11-19 164 2.14 166 2.17 164 2.18 165 2.20-22 164, 168 2.20 159, 165, 166 2.22 164 3 160, 164, 165, 167, 179 3.1-18 165, 168 3.1 164, 165 3.19-21 165 3.21 165 3.22 165 3.23 165 3.24 165 3.25-27 165 3.25-26 165 3.27 165 3.28 165 3.29 165 3.32 165 3.39 166

Index of References 3.40 179 3.42 166 3.50 165 3.52 179 3.59 165 3.60 165 3.64 166 4 165, 166, 175 4.1-2 165 4.3-5 165 4.6 165, 166, 169 4.8-9 165 4.10 166 4.11 165 4.13-14 165 4.13 165, 166 4.14-15 165 4.16 165 4.18 166 4.20 165 4.21-22 167 4.21 175 4.22 166, 175 5 160, 166, 170, 178, 179, 181 5.1-18 166, 168 5.7 160, 166, 171 5.16 166, 167 5.19-22 166, 179 5.19 179 5.20 167 5.21-22 159, 168 5.22 167 Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 1.2 135 1.14 135 2.1 135 2.8 177 2.11 135 2.15 135 2.16 151

2.17 135 2.19 135 2.21 135 2.23 135 2.24 136 2.26 135 3 104, 130 3.9-13 126–8, 132 3.9 123 3.11 127 3.13 128, 130 3.17 146 3.19 104, 135 3.21 146, 151, 154 4.1-12 151 4.4 135 4.8 135 4.16 135 5.9 135 5.10 Eng. 135 6.2 135 6.9 135 7.6 135 7.15 137, 142 8.5-6 146 8.10 135 8.14 135 9 145-47, 149, 151 9.1-12 146 9.1-3 146 9.3 154 9.4-6 146 9.7-9 117, 149 11.6 136 11.9 146 12.5 177 12.7 146 12.8 135 12.13-14 146 Esther 1 215 1.3 193 1.5 193

1.9

192, 193, 195 1.11 195 1.12 197 1.13 196 1.15 196 1.16-18 203 1.17 196 1.19-22 203 2.8 195 2.17-18 196 2.17 113 2.18 193 4.11 196 4.15-16 202 4.16 196 5 196 5.1 196 5.3 197 5.4-5 198 5.4 193, 198 5.5 193, 197 5.6 193 5.8 193 5.12 193, 197 5.14 193 6.14 193 7 196 7.2 193 7.7-8 198 7.7 193, 197 7.8 193 8.17 193 9.17 193 9.18 193 9.19 193 9.22 193 9.29-32 198, 203 9.31 202 Daniel 5.2 192 5.5 190 5.10 192

225

Index of References Ezra 5.8 190 9.1-2 65, 66 9.2 75 9.12 75 10.44 75 Nehemiah 5 76 13.23-27 65, 66 13.25 75 1 Chronicles 1.1-42 5 2 5 3 5 4.1-38 5 18.2 65 2 Chronicles 11.21 113 35.25 164, 177, 192 New Testament Luke 16.19-33 146 Romans 1.26-27 93 1 Corinthians 14.34 91 15 146 Ephesians 5.22-23 91 Apocrypha Ecclesiasticus 17.27 4 Mishnah Bikkurim 5.1 200

Babylonian Talmud Megillah 10b 194, 197 12b 194 Shabbat 32.2 190 Josephus Antiquities 191.11 194 Other Rabbinic Works Shulhan Arukh Yoreh Deah 322 200 Classical and Ancient Christian Writings Atheneus Deipnosophists 4.131 191 Euripides Alcestis 828-840 149 Herodotus Historiae 1.133 191 3.68 196 Xenophon Cyropaedia 8.8.10 191 Inscriptions OB Gilgamesh VA + BM iii 2-15 149 Other Ancient Sources Confucius Book of Rites 2.193 172

I n d ex of A ut hor s Abdool Karim, Q. 43, 55–8 Abdool Karim, S. S. 58 Ackerman, S. 192, 206 Ackroyd, P. 106, 118 Agosto, E. 72, 82 Althaus-Reid, M. 52, 57 Altmann, P. 190, 191, 206 Anderson, C. B. 51, 57, 89, 91, 101 Anderson, R. 58 Arnson Svarlie, D. 149, 154 Asensio, M. 105, 118 Bal, M. 115, 119, 196, 198, 206 Ball, H. 59 Barbiero, G. 107, 109, 112, 119 Bartholomew, C. G. 135, 136, 143 Barton, G. A. 135, 143 Bassa, H. 80, 82 Baumgartner, W. 208 Beal, S. 138, 143 Beal, T. K. 33, 34, 36, 38, 66, 70, 193, 194, 206 Beauclair, R. 44, 47, 57 Beit-Hallahmi, B. 199, 206 Berg, S. B. 191, 193, 206 Berlin, A. 166, 172, 191, 193, 206 Berner, C. 146, 151, 154 Bhabha, H. K. 36, 38, 62, 69 Bird, P. 192, 206 Boase, E. 166, 169, 172 Bob, U. 80, 82 Boer, R. 33, 38, 66, 69 Bonino, J. M. 49, 57 Botta, A. F. 72, 74, 82 Boyarin, D. 204, 206 Boyarin, J. 204, 206 Boyes, M. 57 Brenner, A. 9, 10, 14, 23, 24, 26, 66, 67, 69, 76, 82, 95, 96, 101, 174, 183, 184, 190, 192, 195, 206 Briant, P. 193, 207 Brosius, M. 191, 193, 207 Brown Douglas, K. 90, 91, 94, 100, 101 Broyles, C. C. 168, 172 Burkert, W. 191, 207

Burkes, S. 146, 148, 151, 154 Burrus, V. 93, 102, 106, 119 Bush, F. W. 21, 26, 75, 76, 79, 80, 82 Buthelezi, T. 58 Caraël, M. 58 Carasik, M. 66, 69 Carr, D. M. 99–101 Carroll R., M. D. 73, 82 Chandiwana, S. 58 Chang, I. 62, 63, 69 Chang, J. 61, 69 Cheng, A. A. 61–3, 67, 69 Chesters, J. 59 Childs, B. S. 164, 172 Clarke, S. 17, 26 Clines, D. J. A. 93, 101, 190, 191, 193, 198, 207 Cloete, T. T. 212, 219 Cluver, L. 56, 57 Cochrane, J. R. 41, 50, 57 Cohen, C. J. 90, 101 Collon, D. 191, 207 Comaroff, J. 50, 57 Comaroff, J. L. 50, 57 Conrad, E. W. 125, 132 Conze, E. 138–40, 143 Cook, L. S. 76, 82 Coorey, P. 18, 26 Cox, H. 92, 101 Craghan, J. F. 193, 207 Crenshaw, J. L. 136, 143 Croatto, S. J. 125, 132 Darshan, G. 181, 184 Davies, E. 76, 82 Davis, E. 113, 119 Day, L. M. 193, 195, 196, 199, 207 De Gruchy, J. 72, 82 De Gruchy, S. 72, 82 De La Torre, M. A. 98, 101 De Villiers, G. 71, 75, 76, 78, 82 Debel, H. 146, 154 Dell, K. J. 152, 154 Dellar, R. 43, 55–8



Index of Authors

Delva, W. 44, 47, 57 Dillon, M. 191, 207 Dlamini, S. 43, 55–7 Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. 168, 172 Donaldson, L. E. 34, 38 Doniger, W. 53, 57 Du Toit, J. D. 218, 219 Dube, M. 51, 57, 91 Dube, M. W. 101 Elior, R. 205, 207 Elphick, R. 218, 219 Emerton, J. A. 119 Eng, D. L. 62, 69 Eskenazi, T. C. 65, 66, 69, 71, 75–80, 82 Espasande, M. 103, 119 Exum, J. C. 109, 110, 112, 119 Fang, G. 138, 143 Fewell, D. N. 66, 69, 95, 101 Figiel, S. 124, 133 Fischer, I. 23, 26, 75, 76, 82 Flax, J. 63, 69 Foucault, M. 49, 51, 57 Fox, M. V. 137, 143, 190, 193, 195, 197, 198, 207 Frankel, E. 215, 216, 219 Fredericks, D. C. 136, 143 Freud, S. 61, 69, 195, 207 Frevel, C. 71, 75, 82 Frohlich, J. A. 58 Frostin, P. 41, 49, 57 Frymer-Kensky, T. 64–6, 69, 71, 75, 76, 78–80, 82 Fuchs, E. 195, 196, 207 Fuhr, R. A. 146, 154 Gabbay, U. 177, 180, 184 Gafney, W. C. 54, 57 Gafni, W. C. 192, 207 Garnett, G. 58 Gendler, M. 196, 207 George, A. R. 149, 151, 154 George, M. K. 146, 153, 154 Gerstner, J. N. 211, 219 Giliomee, H. 211, 212, 218, 219 Gillingham, S. 65, 69 Gonzalez, J. 73, 82 Gordis, R. 109, 119 Gottwald, N. K. 192, 207

227

Grätz, S. 75, 82 Green, L. 180, 185 Greenberg, B. 203, 207 Greenstein, E. 179, 185 Greer, P. 145, 154 Gregson, S. 42–4, 58 Griffiths, E. 19, 26 Gross, J. T. 174, 185 Grünwaldt, K. 71, 75, 82 Gu Jiegang 160, 163, 172 Gunn, D. M. 66, 69, 95, 101 Gyeltsen, G. T. 142, 143 Haak, R. 105, 119 Haas, V. 207 Haddad, B. G. 39, 50, 51, 58, 60, 91, 102 Hallo, W. W. 150, 154 Han, S. 62, 69 Hancock, R. S. 193, 198, 207 Hanks, T. 109, 119 Harling, G. 43, 58 Harris, A. 93, 94, 101 Havea, J. 124, 125, 129, 133 Hawkings, K. 43, 58 Hawkins, P. S. 64, 70 Henderson, R. 59 Henten, J. W. van 190, 206 Hereniko, V. 128, 133 Hlongwa-Madikizela, L. 59 Hodous, L. 139, 141, 144 Hofmeyr, I. 212, 219 Holmstedt, R. D. 21, 22, 26 Honig, B. 63, 70 Hubbard, R. L., Jr 75, 76, 83 Hübinette, T. 62, 70 Hughes, R. A. 163, 171, 172 Hung, C.-T. 172 Idema, W. L. 159, 160, 162, 173 Imray, K. 111, 119 Inbari, A. 180, 185 Ipsen, A. 55, 58 Jarick, J. 138, 143 Joh, W. 36, 38 John, M. 161, 173 Joosten, J. 75, 83 Joüon, P. 138, 143 Juma, D. C. 112, 119

228

Index of Authors

Kaiser, O, 150, 155 Kalina, B. 59 Kanyoro, M. R. A. 3, 10, 14, 51, 58, 91, 101 Kawachi, I. 58 Kee, A. 72, 83 Keel, O. 110, 113, 119 Kellner, H. J. 192, 207 Kelly, Y. R. 150, 155 Kharsany, A. B. M. 42, 44, 45, 58 Kim, U. 31, 32, 34, 38 King, C. 96, 101, 109, 119 Klein, J. 185 Kleinschmidt, I. 59 Knohl, I. 71, 75, 83 Knust, J. W. 98, 102 Koehler, L. 208 Köhlmoos, M. 71, 75, 83 Koosed, J. L. 64–6, 70 Korpel, M. C. A. 76, 83 Kruger, L.-M. 218, 220 Krüger, T. 146, 155 Kushner, H. 127, 133 Kwok, P.-l. 34, 38 LaCocque, A. 54, 58, 65, 67, 70, 75, 76, 83, 197, 208 Lafferty, G. 145, 154 Lancaster, C. 59 Landy, F. 54, 58, 112, 113, 119 Lau, J. S. M. 161, 173 Lauha, A. 135, 143 Le Roux, J. 71, 75, 76, 78, 82 Leclerc-Madlala, S. 43, 45–8, 56, 58 Lee, E. 11, 14, 20, 21, 26 Lee, Ha. 163, 173 Lee, Ho. 159, 173 Lefkovitz, L. H. 115, 116, 119 Legge, J. 173 Levine, A.-J. 67, 70 Linafelt, T. 23, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 66, 70 Lipiski, E. 106, 119 Lisowsky, G. 108, 119 Longfellow, S. P. 99, 102 Lopez, D. S., Jr 139, 143 Lorde, A. 100, 102 Lozada, F., Jr 73, 83 Luke, N. 43, 44, 58 Lundström, C. 62, 70

Lux, R. 146, 155 Luzurraga, J. 109, 119 Maartens, M. 210, 214, 216, 217, 220 MacDonald, N. 191, 193, 208 MacPhail, C. 59 Mahlase, G. 58 Maier, C. M. 175, 185 Maldonado, R. D. 66, 70 Maluleke, T. 51, 58, 72, 83 Mandolfo, C. R. 166, 170, 173 Marais, J. C. 58 Martin, D. B. 91, 95, 102 Masenya, M. J. 3, 7, 10, 14, 51, 58, 59, 72, 77, 79, 83, 91, 102 Mason, P. 58 Matsuo, H. 142, 143 Matthews, V. 76, 83 Mbiti, J. S. 7–9, 12, 14 McClintock, A. 210, 211, 217, 220 Meek, R. L. 135–7, 143 Meyer, E. E. 71, 74, 75, 77, 83 Meyers, C. L. 190, 192, 208 Michalowski, P. 190, 208 Milano, L. 190, 208 Milgrom, J. 71, 83 Miller, D. B. 136, 143 Miller, W. C. 59 Milton, L. 59 Modise, L. 80, 83 Molwena, T. 57 Moore, C. A. 190, 208 Moore, S. D. 93, 102, 106 Mosala, I. J. 72, 74, 84 Motlhabi, M. B. G. 72, 83 Mtshiselwa, N. (V. N. N.) 71–3, 77, 79, 80, 83, 84 Munien, S. 80, 82 Muraoka, T. 138, 143 Murphy, R. E. 113, 119 Mussá, F. 43, 58 Nadar, S. 51, 59 Nakamura, H. 140, 141, 143 Nattier, J. 138–40, 143 Navarro Puerto, M. 115, 119 Nelson, J. B. 99, 102 Newell, M.-L. 58 Nguyen, N. 59

Nicol, W. 213, 214, 220 Niditch, S. 203, 208 Nihan, C. 76, 84 Nissinen, M. 112, 120 Nkosana, J. 43, 59 Nobelius, A.-M. 43, 59 Noegel, S. B. 110, 120 Nürnberger, K. 9, 14 Nyamukapa, C. 58 Nzimande, M. K. 72, 84 O’Brien, K. 59 O’Connor, K. 167, 168, 170, 173 Odeny, M. 80, 84 Oduyoye, M. A. 7, 14 Ogden, G. S. 136, 143 Olojede, F. O. 77, 84 Olson, D. T. 52, 59 Orkin, M. 57 Ostriker, A. 98, 102 Otto, E. 71, 75, 84 Padian, N. 59 Palomino, P. 103, 120 Pantelic, M. 57 Paran, M. 190, 208 Pardee, D. 110, 120 Parikh, C. 61, 70 Park, Y. J. 146, 155 Parry, R. 167, 173 Paulsell, S. 92, 101 Pettifor, A. 42–5, 55, 59 Phillips, J. 17, 18, 26 Phiri, I. A. 12, 14, 91, 102 Pilarski, A. C. 72, 73, 84 Pinnick, F. 208 Piotrovskij, B. B. 192, 208 Pool, R. 59 Pope, M. H. 110, 120 Power, R. 59 Price, N 43, 58 Puente, O. A. 105, 120 Ramantswana, H. 72, 84 Ramos González, G. 105, 120 Rashkow, I. 21–3, 26 Räterlinck, L. E. H. 62, 70 Ravasi, G. 110, 120 Rees, A. 15, 26, 27

Index of Authors

229

Rees, H. 59 Rendsburg, G. A. 110, 120 Riches, J. 51, 59 Richter, J. P. 195 Ricoeur, P. 52, 59 Riegel, J. K. 172, 173 Rogers, J. 95, 102 Rojas, C. 160, 161, 173 Roos, N. D. 220 Rosenberg, M. 59 Rosenthal, D. 43, 59 Routledge, B. 66, 70 Roux, C. D. 214, 220 Rubenstein, J. 204, 208 Russell, M. 59 Sæbø, M. 164, 173 Said, E. W. 16, 27 Salamone, L. D. 103, 120 Salters, R. B. 163, 164, 167, 168, 172, 173 Samet, N. 149, 150, 155, 177, 185 Samsunder, N. 58 Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. 193, 208 Sasson, J. M. 93, 102 Scharper, J. 78, 84 Schipper, J. 65, 66, 70 Schoors, A. 146, 148, 151, 152, 155 Schroer, S. 111, 120 Schwartz, B. J. 71, 75, 84 Scott, J. C. 49, 50, 59 Seco Reymundo, M. 105, 120 Segal, E. 194, 208 Segovia, F. F. 29, 30, 36, 38, 72, 73, 84 Seow, C. L. 136, 143 Shanahan, D. 19, 27 Shepherd, D. 66, 70 Sherr, L. 57 Shields, M. 166, 173 Shiu, A. S-F. 61, 70 Shuster, M. 135–37, 144 Smit, L. 210, 214–16, 220 Sneed, M. R. 150, 155 Song, C. S. 162, 173 Soothill, W. E. 139, 141, 144 Spangenberg, I. 75, 84 Sparks, K. L. 107, 120 Spies, L. 212, 220 Spivak, G. C. 49, 60

230

Index of Authors

Takaki, R. 62, 70 Tamez, E. 109, 111, 112, 120, 151, 152, 155 Tanser, F. 58 Thompson, J. A. 106, 120 Till, B. 58 Travers, S. A. 58 Trible, P. 8, 14, 21, 27, 91, 92, 98, 102 Turner, V. 204, 208

Waley, A. 161, 173 Walker, T. 18, 27 Wallis, G. 106, 120 Walsh, C. E. 98, 99, 102, 106, 120 Watson, W. G. E. 112, 113, 120 Weems, R. J. 92, 93, 102 Wesselius, J. W. 181, 185 West, G. O. 39, 41, 49–51, 53, 55, 56, 60, 72–4, 85 White, S. A. 196, 209 White-Crawford, S. A. 204, 209 Whitworth, J. 59 Whybray, R. N. 135, 144 Williams, D. K. 91, 102 Williamson, C. 58 Wilson-Wright, A. 110, 111, 118, 120 Wyler, B. 203, 209

Uchida, A. 66, 70

Yee, G. A. 34, 35, 38, 61, 64–7, 70

Vak‘uta, N. 124, 133 van Dyk, A. C. 60 van Dyk, P. J. 60 Van Seters, J. 113, 120 Van der Toorn, K. 150, 155 Van der Zwan, P. 113, 120 VanderKam, J. C. 191, 208 Vermaak, K. 59 Versnel, H. S. 191, 208

Zakovitch, Y. 71, 75, 85 Zenger, E. 71, 75, 85 Zevit, Z. 76, 85 Zhuwau, T. 58 Ziffer, I. 191, 192, 209 Zimmerman, Y. C. 97, 102 Zuma, N. Y. 58

Spronk, K. 145, 154, 155 Stanton, E. C. 22, 23, 27 Staples, W. E. 136, 144 Steffenson, A. 59 Stewart, J. 103, 120 Subramanian, S. V. 58 Sugirtharajah, R. S. 29, 38, 162, 173