C
Crumpy
Guest
…How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other by Judy Klitsner, Jewish Publication Society, 2009, 173 pages. Winner of the National Jewish Book Council Annual Book Award.
The author concludes the book with a summary of the methods of analysis she employed. This involved using a model of the “subversive sequel” to compare texts of the (Jewish) Bible.
The presence of a s.s. is tipped off by surprising pattern of sometimes distant stories using the same Hebrew words to outline some event or passage in scripture.
One of these involves the story of Noah and the Flood and the story of Jonah. The obvious connection is that both men are prophets of God, very flawed as it turns out, and their stories quite conspicuously involve boats, non-Jews, and salvation and/or destruction.
There was a dove in the story of the ark, and Jonah’s name (Yonah) means “dove.”
that is a hint of the extended analysis that Klitsner does with the stories.
A “subversive” sequel is something in the Bible where something is “set up” you might say and you think, that’s it, that’s all there is. But, then, sooner or later, something else comes along to perhaps turn it upside down.
In Genesis, when Adam is being reprimanded by God for sinning, God says that he will till the soil and make a living by the sweat of his brow. But, not much further we read that one of Adam’s sons is a herder, and makes his living in a different way.
To Klitsner, the subversive sequels speak volumes about the possibility of redemption – spiritual, social, philosophical, etc. – that is possible and seemingly endorsed by the scripture.
As a feminist, she spends a lot of time looking at the status of women in scripture. By Gen 2, it seems that women are definitely second-class citizens. She interprets Eve’s sin in a very positive way as her attempt to go back to the blissful status she enjoyed in Gen 1.
The Bible points to how physical, social, and psychological motherhood subverts the condemnation of Eve in Genesis. Sarah, Rebekah, Hanna and Deborah are barren AND childless – a double statement of their miserable condition. She plods through the process by which they obtain personal fulfillment and, you might say, “redemption” as much as the Bible describes it.
Klitsner is happy to report that there is a upward yet incomplete resolution of the salvaging of women.
Of course, she had to stop short, in the bounds of the Hebrew Scripture. I suppose that is in Mary, the Mother of Jesus, that the accolade of Eve as the mother of the living, is ultimately fulfilled, or so I would say. Mary is in the sinless state that Eve was in Gen 1, and remains so. It is in that high and primordial sinless state, of course, that the promised Messiah, is given.
Several of the Chapter titles give you the momentum of the book
1 - The wings of the dove: Noah and Jonah in Flight from Self
2- The Rebirth of the Individual - the Tower of Babel and the midwives of Israel
3- Myterious Priests and Troubled Patriarchs- Melchizedek and Jethro and the building of leaders
4- The Three Faces of Woman: the Garden of Eden in Search of Sequels
5- Forbidden Fruit and the Quest for Motherhood- Havvan [Eve] and Sarah
6-the Tent, the Field, and the Battlefield: Rebekah and Other mothers.
The book impresses me as being based on real modern scholarship and NOT on mysterious Bible codes or anything like that.
Yes, the parts on the evolving picture of women in the Bible are very scholarly, persuasive, and substantial.
The author concludes the book with a summary of the methods of analysis she employed. This involved using a model of the “subversive sequel” to compare texts of the (Jewish) Bible.
The presence of a s.s. is tipped off by surprising pattern of sometimes distant stories using the same Hebrew words to outline some event or passage in scripture.
One of these involves the story of Noah and the Flood and the story of Jonah. The obvious connection is that both men are prophets of God, very flawed as it turns out, and their stories quite conspicuously involve boats, non-Jews, and salvation and/or destruction.
There was a dove in the story of the ark, and Jonah’s name (Yonah) means “dove.”
that is a hint of the extended analysis that Klitsner does with the stories.
A “subversive” sequel is something in the Bible where something is “set up” you might say and you think, that’s it, that’s all there is. But, then, sooner or later, something else comes along to perhaps turn it upside down.
In Genesis, when Adam is being reprimanded by God for sinning, God says that he will till the soil and make a living by the sweat of his brow. But, not much further we read that one of Adam’s sons is a herder, and makes his living in a different way.
To Klitsner, the subversive sequels speak volumes about the possibility of redemption – spiritual, social, philosophical, etc. – that is possible and seemingly endorsed by the scripture.
As a feminist, she spends a lot of time looking at the status of women in scripture. By Gen 2, it seems that women are definitely second-class citizens. She interprets Eve’s sin in a very positive way as her attempt to go back to the blissful status she enjoyed in Gen 1.
The Bible points to how physical, social, and psychological motherhood subverts the condemnation of Eve in Genesis. Sarah, Rebekah, Hanna and Deborah are barren AND childless – a double statement of their miserable condition. She plods through the process by which they obtain personal fulfillment and, you might say, “redemption” as much as the Bible describes it.
Klitsner is happy to report that there is a upward yet incomplete resolution of the salvaging of women.
Of course, she had to stop short, in the bounds of the Hebrew Scripture. I suppose that is in Mary, the Mother of Jesus, that the accolade of Eve as the mother of the living, is ultimately fulfilled, or so I would say. Mary is in the sinless state that Eve was in Gen 1, and remains so. It is in that high and primordial sinless state, of course, that the promised Messiah, is given.
Several of the Chapter titles give you the momentum of the book
1 - The wings of the dove: Noah and Jonah in Flight from Self
2- The Rebirth of the Individual - the Tower of Babel and the midwives of Israel
3- Myterious Priests and Troubled Patriarchs- Melchizedek and Jethro and the building of leaders
4- The Three Faces of Woman: the Garden of Eden in Search of Sequels
5- Forbidden Fruit and the Quest for Motherhood- Havvan [Eve] and Sarah
6-the Tent, the Field, and the Battlefield: Rebekah and Other mothers.
The book impresses me as being based on real modern scholarship and NOT on mysterious Bible codes or anything like that.
Yes, the parts on the evolving picture of women in the Bible are very scholarly, persuasive, and substantial.