Consideration of the story of Tamar has demonstrated that prostitutes were part of the everyday life assumed by the story writers. Tamar was impregnated by Judah when playing the part of a qedeshah, or sacred/cultic prostitute; his meeting with her was civilized, offering her his payment of a sheep, which he honoured and risked blame if he did not do so - he was agitated when he couldn't find her again and let everyone know that he had tried his best to pay his debt. He also entrusted to her his personal seal as proof of identity, vital evidence of paternity later. Contrast this with Judah's assumption that she had acted as a zonah, or common prostitute, for which his penalty was death as it brought on family dishonour.
The story is just a story and has nothing to do with any historical event involving people called Judah and Tamar. Such historicising is sheer romanticising influenced by naive conservative theology. The story was an artefact of its time, communicating a point of view relevant to that time - and its time was nearer 500 BCE than 1500 BCE, a time when the legitimacy of Judah's heirs was a real issue. Perez was Judah's heir, Tamar's son by his quasi-father the dead Er by the law of levirate marriage; and he superceded the claim of the older Shelah, Er's younger brother. The death of Er and Onan was explicitly for their wickedness, which is connected to the fact that they are sons of intermarriage - the great concern of the post-exilic community who returned from Babylonian exile. Tamar's strategy of pretending to be a cultic prostitute did not damage Perez's legitimacy in any way.
Names for sex workers reflect public attitudes. 'Whore', the translation found in several of the prophets and in Revelation in the New Testament (the great whore Babylon), is hugely pejorative. The tone in these passages is indeed pejorative. 'Prostitute' is pejorative also, more so as a verb than a noun. 'Harlot' is rather We should not assume without evidence that the sex worker function was always viewed negatively. The qedeshah was, as we have seen, respected.
Fortuitously, I have received for review Sex Working and the Bible by Avaren Ipsen (Equinox Press, 2009). This book (a converted PhD thesis) surveys some texts (Rahab, and the judgement of Solomon relating to two prostitutes are the Old Testament examples), and by discussing the exegesis of these with prostitutes and their support groups, draws insights into the possible experiences of these women in the light of similar contemporary experiences. It becomes then an exercise in liberation hermeneutics rather than exegesis. It will be a positive review, since it is a powerful and interesting book and since we don't upset the conservative fraternity (I choose the gender carefully) enough. Exegesis and hermeneutics do not always sit comfortably together. Hermeneutics assumes that modern people can read a text with some personal profit, and it can help them make sense of modern lives today. It lays modern attitudes and definitions on ancient texts which may make the understanding of the ancient text more difficult. In particular, the moral horror of sex work may not mirror how it was viewed two and a half millenia ago. Nor do we know whether stories about sex were told by men or women, although we might assume that written forms, including laws, were produced by men and emphasise male assumptions. In the stories reviewed above in earlier posts, sexual activity is social and not constrained by morality. This calls for readers to keep an open mind and to keep Christian moralising at bay.
Rahab.
Rahab was described as a prostitute in Jericho, at whose home the Hebrew spies ended up. She gave them information, protected them, and let them escape from her window which opened outside the city wall. For this kindness, they agreed to spare her and her family, so long as she collected them into her house and hung out a red chord from the window.
Following the story through, her descendants included Boaz and king David, accolade indeed. She is emphasised in the family tree of Joseph in Matthew's Gospel (supposed to be the genealogy of Jesus).
There are interesting questions raised. Why does the story name her as a prostitute? Features in the story have a symbolic rather than historical function. The story has chosen what conservative Christians today might think an unlikely heroine. Clearly, the biblical narrator thought differently. Rahab was respected, believed by the Jericho authorities, respected by the Hebrew invaders. The story of conquest mirrors the return to Palestine after the Babylonian exile. The occupation of Palestine is declared legitimate, and Yahweh's will - how else would the walls have fallen down? King David is linked to the original population by birth. David is a unifying monarch, ruling consensually as the one who has both Canaanite and Hebrew ancestry. Moreover, this was not a political establishment link: it was underbelly, created by moral action, as Tamar also had demonstrated, an earlier David ancestor. David therefore is a king of the common people, of mixed descent, the product of moral purpose. The community promoting this image of monarchy had emerged from exile, the produce of resistance and underground community building, who brought together strong-minded people from the exploited underclass to be pioneers in a new country which they needed to claim ownership. There is solidarity therefore between the real exiles in Babylon and the fictional slaves in Egypt, the real mixed bag of returners who needed fictive kinship, and the fictional mixed multitude in the Exodus from Egypt who needed recircumcising. Victory for this underclass would be by cunning, resilience and moral choice and not by birth or privilege. Seen therefore in their contexts, the stories of both Tamar and Rehab paint a positive view of prostitution - both were fundamental links in the legitimacy both of the tribe of Judah and of king David. In the New Testament version of the genealogy of Joseph (assumed to be the genealogy of Jesus) both Tamar and Rehab are named heroines, as also is the wife of Uriah, mother of Solomon. Matthew at least is faithful to the real story in the Hebrew Bible of legitimacy in spite of unexpected sexual encounters. Of course, thinking of our own civic leaders and politicians, such sexual intrigues are actually normal and it is faithfulness which is unusual.
Not all biblical texts will agree with the positive account of prostitutes I have identified. Passages in the prophets will be explored later. This account has implications for the stories of David, which I will explore later. It assumes also that these stories are primary material for the post-exilic era.
No comments:
Post a Comment