An update and planning

July has seen me doing a lot of things, thought most of them were not thesis related. That said, I have been stewing on the issue of where to go next in the thesis.

My original outline started with a section on ancient Israelite/near-east thoughts and rules on sex. This I've gotten at least a draft of written.* What I thought was to follow is commentary on modern thought on sex, but I've come to realize I need to better narrow this section's focus: we in the modern/post-modern era have said a lot of things about sex. That said, I think there are a number of contrasts to make with ancient thought that can help draw a sharper line between modern and ancient views. I think this section is going to be re-purposed to cover those. I have, I think, a whole page (oooo....) started along with an outline. I think this section has been a bit intimidating for me, and I've been avoiding it.

Additionally, I have been working on translating/reading Song of Songs. I have a chapter left to go at this point, though I have some notes of things to look up. (Mostly place names and cultural references I am unfamiliar with.) Additionally, I finally picked up a copy of Gesenius so I will need to dig through it for comments on the grammar of Song of Songs. (And I really should have had a copy before now, seeing how Avi, my advanced Hebrew prof, would reference it all the time in class.)


I think the translation/reading of the text is going to be an appendix in the thesis, along with my notes on translation. And then my exploration of Song of Songs might be limited to 2-3 sections, rather than try to produce a complete commentary on the entire text. (Or at least I may make some statements about the text as a whole but focus on the linguistic aspects of 2-3 sections, likely the more sensual places.)


After that, I think some sort of response to Hosea, Ezekiel and other prophets and their use of sex might be in order. And then some sort of "where do we go from here" section, drawing conclusions and trajectories of thought.




*Which, if anyone wants to read and give comments on, just ask.

Something done

Work continues! Though I don't blog as much as I might like.

I've got a good rough draft of a section on ancient sexuality crafted. While I planned to have something written on modern thought on sex, I'm finding this is a huge topic. (And most of my research seems to turn up things saying "this is how we should be thinking about sex" rather than "this is how we are thinking about sex.") I suspect I need to better limit my topic to more psychological/sociological texts for this part, with some look at religious thought. That said, I have found some good points of view on the evolution of thoughts about sex. (Mostly delineating how Greco-Roman thought heavily influenced budding Christianity's thoughts on the subject.)

A number of sources seem to work on the idea that the modern binary concept of gender (you are male or female) versus the more continuum idea of older thought. I think I might need to dig into this a bit further. It seems to reach into other reading I've done in other areas, specifically it seems to echo some of the Tantric thought: that is that there is a dualism in the world of male/female, but those are ends of a spectrum and individuals fall into different places on that spectrum. Though the Tantric information I read treated the spectrum as equal or level, without one end being inherently better than the other. (They used positive/negative terminology, but I'm not sure they meant it in a better/worse sense, but rather a extruding/intruding sense?)

I find it interesting our language is so coded with insisting on marking one term in a duality as "higher" or "better" than the other term that even terms that in theory should be able to be value neutral aren't. Further on the subject of language, I'm curious whether this gender continuum exists as it has been stated in the Hebrew mind, since it and most of the other Semitic languages I've looked at are so strongly gendered languages. (I mean, they tend to gender their -verbs-, which even Greek doesn't do.) Further, the languages lack a neutral, save for the 3 person plural perfect forms and the 1st person, and even there I vaguely remember it being mentioned in class that there may have been a 3 person plural feminine at some point. (I don't remember if there were gendered 1st persons.)

But that is another interesting linguistic turn: If the society was so strongly gendered, why is there no gendered 1st person voice? Japanese has it, at least to some degree. That is, there are at least 2 versions of "I" (watashi and boku) and my first Japanese instructor insisted that males us boku while females and males can use watashi. In later studies, this might be dialectic, as not all my instructors used this dualism, and most just had us use watashi, with boku being used by males in informal settings. (There are at least 2 other words for "I": ore which was very informal and atashi which I suspect is a dialectic form of watashi.) This gendering of the 1st person pronoun is even more interesting because the language itself is virtually ungendered* and rarely uses pronouns.

Additionally, I'm not sure a thorough exploration of modern ideas about sex/sexuality is what is needed, mostly because it would take the better part of a lifetime (and then the ideas would have changed again and it would need to be started over...). Rather, I suspect I will work on contrasting ancient Israelite thought with modern, bringing out further some of the differences. One of the biggest that I suspect will come out is the soul/flesh dualism of Hellenistic thought, as it is already started even in Paul, but is so much more present in Augustine. (Though I suspect in Augustine's case it has to do with latent influences of his Manechean past and his regrets over his own sex life. Though I'm not quite ready to blame all of modern Christianity's problems with sex on Augustine's youthful libido.)

*It could be argued that it is more interested in social hierarchy for determining how one speaks, and since males were (are?) considered superior to females, this gendered how language was used. However this is a different kind of gendering of language than Semitic and Western languages tend to have.

Yeah, about that momentum thing

I was actually doing fairly well. To be fair to myself, I have managed to get through most of the texts I picked up on ancient sexuality. Most seemed to focus on the biblical texts and their view of sexuality, rather than something more anthropological/historical-sociological. Though, to be fair, the biblical corpus does represent most of the texts we have from Ancient Israelite culture. (As near as I can tell, anyway.)

Looking outside Israel is interesting, and certainly enlightens a bit. The Ancient Israelites seemed to be -far- more patriarchal than their surrounding cultures, and those ones (Egypt, Sumer, Babylon) weren't exactly bastions of ancient feminism. I have been reading some ancient Sumerian poetry and it has been fascinating. What was really interesting was a poem about Inanna (goddess of war) being jealous and angry at her husband's infidelity. This sort of reaction -never- occurs in the biblical text. In fact, when men -do- get multiple women, they are presented as a completely normal family or one of the women more or less drops the other in her husband's bed. (Sarah-Hagar, Rachel/Leah and their handmaidens)  That said, a later poem in the cycle seems to have Inanna offering Dumuzi (her husband) a random taptress (innkeeper/bar wench) into his bed as she recovers from giving birth, so it's the lack of her consenting to his sleeping around that is the problem, not the act itself.

In all, I'm finding the Sumerian poetry oddly interesting. I will have to hunt down copies of texts of the Egyptian and Ugaritic love songs as well.

Regaining Momentum

Having spent the week dealing with large number of strawberries from my mom and some final moving-in work, I'm turning back to reading.

Most of the reading has been on pedagogy and biblical language studies for my TA work, but I did work through Phyllis Trible's God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. While she deals more with gender issues than sex ones (not that they can easily be divided), she does deconstruct the story of Genesis 2-3 rather beautifully and also works quickly through Song of Songs read in the light of Genesis.

Specifically, she shows Genesis 2-3 to be God creating humanity in Eros, in an erotic two-as-one wholeness that is destroyed when humanity disobeys. It echos a good deal of Bonhoeffer's interpretations of the text. (Which I mean to look at soon.) From there, she shows how Song of Songs revels in that two-as-one and rebuilds the unity that is spoken of after gender is differentiated but before the Fall. An interesting read, especially with the implication that patriarchy was a result of the Fall, and not something ordained by God from the beginning. (Though she is perhaps a bit more circumspect about the erotic elements of Song of Songs.)

Cross-pollination

While reading Pedagogy of the Bible by Dale B. Martin for my TA class-work, I've run into Bernard of Clairvaux, a medieval monk. He apparently has a series of sermons on Song of Songs which sound fascinating. I'll have to hunt them down.

Additionally, Martin is going through how (at least American) biblical studies seems to have been captivated by the historical critical method and the belief that there is one single meaning intended by the author of the text (or only one meaning that an audience can or should receive from it). He contrasts this to the pre-moderns would would find a number meanings within a single text, both literal/narrative and allegorical ones. And these theologians had no problem holding multiple meanings, even when they were drastically different.

This seems to parallel Alter's approach to the Bible as literature, that is, as art. Art has always been something in which individuals viewing the art are each drawn to their own meaning. Viewing biblical passages in this same light lets us draw out multiple meanings from the same texts, rather than insisting that there is a way to be guided to a single "true" meaning. (And it implies that the authors/editors/redactors of the biblical text knew they were making art and were inspired to put multiple meanings into it.)

Reaction: Quiverfull

Joyce, Katherine. Quiverfull. Boston, Beacon Press, 2009.

Joyce tells the stories of women and men in the modern patriarchy pseudo-movement within Fundamentalist American Christianity. The title is a reference to a name those within the movement have taken for themselves, and it is based on the biblical concept that a man has a "quiverfull" of seed to sow, that those seed might become children that can be raised as Christian soldiers to win the culture war by shear numbers.

She explores the movement and what it means for women as wives, mothers, and daughters, primarily, though she does offer some commentary on what is expected of the men. While Joyce clearly disagrees with the movement's idea that females should be subject to male rule, she does present a fairly unbiased accounting of the movement. (Though on some of the movement's more egregious stances, she does have an off-hand comment or two.) The movement itself is terrifying for me, a feminist and father to a daughter. My own personal situation seems to be the exact opposite of what the movement itself would demand of me. (I spend a good deal of time at home, when not in class, while my wife holds an MD and works.)

The book does not deeply explore the theological underpinnings of the movement except for where the people Joyce interviews offer it as a justification of their stances. However, it does show some of the modern movement's history, tracing it out of the home schooling efforts in post-Vietnam America. A very interesting read, especially with the exploration of "courtship" as opposed to dating. The movement seems to also be a re-imagining of the gender roles presented in the biblical text.

Joyce also explores several stories of women who have left the movement. These stories in particular I found painful. Stories of excommunication from churches because a woman insisted that she was not the only one at fault within her marriage. The children of these women who watch their church family tear their mother (almost entirely just the mother) apart in front of the church members. The women do start to heal, but I have real trouble seeing this as a good method of resolving marital issues. (But then I would make a very bad Quiverfull believer, as mentioned before.)

It was an interesting (and terrifying) read.

Reaction: Rescuing Sex from the Christians

Sullivan, Clayton. Rescuing Sex from the Christians. New York, Continuum International Publishing Group. 2006.

(Yeah, yeah, not complete Turabian style.)

I picked this text up originally for commentary on Augustine's views on sex while working on a paper for the History of Christianity I course. I've been working through it on-and-off for a while. Sullivan does a very good job deconstructing Christianity's 2 big errors when it comes to sex: misunderstanding Adam and Eve and building the idea of the divided self. However, his later chapters on various sexual taboos and the Harm Principle seem to go in a different direction than where he appeared to be aiming for in the first part. The problem as he sees it is that Christianity adopted the bourgeois social mores about sex and applied them to everyone.

The first big problem with Christians and sex that he sees is that we have continually read the story of Adam and Eve as historical and having to do with sexual knowledge. He goes through the traditional Augustinian interpretation of Genesis 2-3, exploring how Augustine portrayed the Fall as tainting man's seed, and thus sex itself becomes an act of spreading that taint. He then jumps several centuries to modern popular theologians and show how they continue to read the story as our historical ancestors becoming tainted and passing that taint down through the millennia.

The second mistake of the Christians was the adoption of the body/flesh dualism of the Hellenistic world. This also he traces back to Augustine, from there back to Paul, and from there back to Socrates.

From here, he approaches masturbation, homosexuality, fornication (pre-martial sex), and adultery and deconstructs the traditional prohibitions against them from biblical passages. He then applies the harm principle (what does not harm others isn't bad) and finds that only adultery causes harm to others.

My biggest issue with Sullivan's approach is he first deconstructs the traditional interpretations of various passages of scripture and then approaches the moral questions about sex using an entirely different basis of support. He does not explain why one should abandon scripture as a source of authority and move instead to the harm principle. I am uncertain how likely the more conservative voices that might debate his work are going to be willing to change authorities. Thus, the work felt more a piece justifying a more liberal sexual stance than trying to convince those that hold the more conservative position of their fallacies.

Morning thoughts

Working through my notes on Fuchs, I'm still struck how she reads the entire biblical text as a prescriptive text written with a clear hegemony of thought. I'm also working through Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative currently and his thoughts seem to be much more aware of the multitude of authors behind the text. While Alter is not approaching this with a feminist lens, I wouldn't think the creation of a consistent, singular meta-narrator necessary to deconstruct the patriarchal parts of biblical narratives. Especially when Fuchs is very clearly stating that she is presenting one woman's reading and not trying to speak for all women reading the texts.

Alter seems to be approaching the texts much stronger literary formula than Fuchs. While she works out multiple layers of patriarchal societal constructs that are reported and used for the narrative, he seems to be working out thematic points the authors might be intending to bring to light. Fuchs' work is useful for warning against building ancient assumed cultural norms into modern religious morals, Alter's approach seems to work at divining the purpose of the stories and how they might still speak to the human condition and the human intersection with the divine.


And as an aside, I'm not sure why I started with the books on narrative. In Fuchs' case, it was mostly because it dealt with sexual norms, which is the first piece I'm working on teasing out. Alter's text will likely be moved through in the background while I approach a few other texts on sexual morals/ethics/norms in Ancient Israel and the wider Ancient Near East.

To begin

I'm going to use this space to record my thoughts and ideas as I work through the research and writing for my Master's thesis. I'm exploring sexual morals of ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East, contrasting them with modern Christian morality and then using that to explore biblical passages that revel in sexual imagery for the Divine-human relationship. (Specifically, Song of Songs, though I am also planning to look at Ezekiel, Hosea and perhaps Ruth.)

To start with, I'm trying to find texts exploring sexual morals and ethics of the ancient world, specifically for Israel and the lands around it. The one I'm working through right now is Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative, by Esther Fuchs. She has consistently presented the texts shes's explored (all narrative ones) as supporting an andro-centric world view, if not out right patriarchy. In a lot of this, I can certainly agree, yet at the same time I have a few issues.

One, she both presents the texts as written by men and for men, and yet seems to discount that that might have affected what was written. This really struck me when she points out the narrator throughout the Hebrew Bible is wary to ascribe emotions/motives to individuals, but is especially wary in the case of women. Could this not have been a conscious act on the part of the authors(/editors/redactors) of the texts more or less admitting that they neither understood the female point of view nor were they talking to an audience that cared about it? The modern author (might) want to speak to both genders, but it is anachronistic to apply that same concept of audience to the ancient mind.

She also holds that what is presented as moral in the biblical narrative is assumed to be approved by YHWH. I'm not certain about this, as the reverse (what YHWH approves/blesses) is not always moral (see Jacob and Laban's dealings).

Another issue that's come up thus far for me is that she seems to be assuming a single narrative point of view, that is that all of the books have the same narrator. She mentions the lack of direct involvement of God in Ruth and Esther and contrasts that with the active participation of God in Genesis. In doing so, she attempts to show that God/YHWH only directly acts in the case of male protagonists. I'm not sure it's fair to apply this as Esther was likely written well after Genesis. While Ruth may have been written or redacted around the same time as Genesis (or potentially much earlier), I don't think anyone would make the claim that they had the same author.

All this said, the has been some useful summary of sexual morals (and the double standard they create) by Fuchs.