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.