What exactly did Jael do to Sisera in the tent? Was it a b.u.mp-off-or the b.u.mp and grind? We may never know, but it"s plausible that she may have bagged him in a different way than commonly thought.
14.
Did Jacob Use s.e.x Toys?
IF YOU STILL FEEL GUILTY about making out with your cousin in fourth grade, let the Bible free you of shame. The Bible is full of kissing cousins like Isaac and Rebekah and like Jacob and Rachel and Rachel"s sister, Leah. These couples did a lot more than kiss. They got married and had kids. And these kids became the twelve tribes of Israel.
Cousin marriage wasn"t just for way back then, you know. Albert Einstein married his cousin and gained intimate knowledge of the theory of relativity. Charles Darwin married his first cousin and had ten children by her. Insert practically any joke about natural selection here.
But this chapter isn"t just about kissing cousins; it"s also about fake sheep p.e.n.i.ses. (If you have ever been involved with your cousin and fake sheep p.e.n.i.ses simultaneously, perhaps you do have something to feel guilty about.) The technical term for fake sheep p.e.n.i.s is "animal d.i.l.d.o," kind of an ugly, p.o.r.n-catalog word, but it"s possible, at least according to one scholar, that these devices pop up in the Bible in the story of Jacob and Laban.
All in the Family But let"s start with kissing cousins. They always go better first. Cousin number one, who is also this story"s bachelor number one, is Jacob. You may recall that Jacob conspired with his mother, Rebekah, to deceive his aging father, Isaac, and cheat his older twin brother, Esau, out of his rightful blessing. Esau was furious at having been cheated and vowed to kill Jacob. So Rebekah sent Jacob, her favorite son, away (catch the rerun in Genesis 27).
This Semitic soap opera continued as Jacob fled to Uncle Laban"s house. Jacob was supposed to find safe haven there until Esau cooled down. Laban welcomed Jacob with open arms-at first. Fish and visitors smell in three days, and after a month Jacob smelled like an abandoned cannery. So Laban did what most annoyed hosts do. He told Jacob, "Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?"1 This was a not-so-polite way of telling Jacob that his stint as a guest was over and it was time to quit hanging around the living room playing PlayStation and drinking more than his fair share of c.o.kes. It was time for Jacob to earn his keep. But in the meantime Jacob had fallen for-you guessed it-his cousin Rachel. He actually fell in love with her when he first saw her shepherding her father"s sheep,2 which apparently was a major turn-on to single guys back then.
Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, but having fled from his home with little more than the clothes on his back, he had nothing to offer as a bride price except for his labor. So he offered to work for Laban for seven years in exchange for Rachel"s hand. Laban, who wasn"t studied up on the genetic sciences and therefore had nothing against cousin marriage, agreed to the terms. In fact, cousin marriage was common in ancient tribal societies. They preferred to have slightly odd-looking children rather than mingle their blood with other tribes. Isn"t life such a balancing act?
But now the story of the would-be kissing cousins gets complicated and potentially weird. Jacob lived up to his end of the bargain. In fact, the seven years "seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her."3 Sweet guy, huh? When that seven years ended, Jacob was more than ready for his bride. He told Laban, and we quote, "Give me my wife that I may go in to her."4 That"s a fairly blunt thing to say to your future father-in-law. It basically means, "After seven years I"m as h.o.r.n.y as a goat. Give me your daughter or I will explode."
But Laban pulled a fast one. He secretly gave Jacob his older, evidently less attractive daughter, Leah, whose name means (let"s all enjoy this together now) "wild cow." Jacob went through the wedding ceremony with Leah, said "I do," and poured out seven years of pent-up desire on her before discovering that he"d porked the wrong pie. It was the next morning when, after sleeping off the effects of the heavy partying he"d done at the reception, he woke up and noticed the switcheroo. The Bible describes the situation simply and elegantly: "When the morning came...it was Leah!"5 Bang. Suddenly, Jacob found himself hitched to the family"s wild cow. But what could he do? He was far away from home. He owned nothing that Laban hadn"t given him. He had nothing to bargain with. As Leah lay there smiling at him (we surmise), he leaped out of bed, wrapped a sheet around his waist, and ran off to find Laban, who must have been getting a huge kick out of the whole situation. But when Jacob confronted him, Laban defended the deception by citing a local custom: as the older daughter, Leah had to get married before Rachel. Laban may have been making this up, hiding behind "local customs" the way small-town cops in the South use phony local statutes to force innocent motorists to pay exorbitant fines for breaking laws that don"t really exist, thereby ruining family vacations (that was Steve-he"s a little bitter about something). But Laban had won this round and successfully dealt his Old Maid to Jacob. No longer would she mope around Laban"s house complaining that n.o.body would date her.
There was one upside for Jacob, but it came at a price. Laban offered to give Rachel to Jacob in marriage a week later if Jacob agreed to work for him another seven years. Smitten by Rachel, and perhaps digging the idea of sleeping with sisters, Jacob accepted the new terms, married Rachel, and put in another seven-year shift for Laban.
We promise we"re almost to the part about fake sheep p.e.n.i.ses.
When the second seven years ended, Jacob told "Dad" (Laban) that he wanted to take his cousin-wives and children and leave. He was determined to get out of Dodge. But G.o.d had blessed the fruit of Jacob"s labor, and Laban had prospered from it. He didn"t want his star employee to go and asked him, in effect, what it would take to get him to stay. A bigger bonus? Matching 401(k) contributions? More entree choices in the cafeteria? But Jacob wanted none of it. He asked Laban to pony up his back wages and proposed that for his wages he would go through Laban"s flock and pick out the speckled and spotted sheep and goats and the black lambs. Laban would keep the rest. Laban agreed, but had a final trick up his cloak. Later that day, he went through his flock and removed the sheep and goats that had markings on them, along with the black lambs, and had these animals taken far away so that Jacob would not find them. When Jacob got around to reviewing Laban"s flock, he would have to leave empty-handed.
Weird Science This time, though, Jacob fought fire with fire. According to the usual interpretation of this story, Jacob took fresh wooden poles and stripped off their bark, creating stripes and blotches on them. Then he set these poles in front of the watering troughs where the sheep mated. He did this particularly in front of the stronger animals, so that Laban"s flocks, especially the healthier specimens, produced spotted, speckled, and striped offspring, which in turn became Jacob"s property. As a result, Jacob grew rich, while Laban"s livestock diminished. So justice was finally served on one of the Old Testament"s most conniving tricksters.
Jacob"s pole-positioning is usually seen as an ancient superst.i.tion that what an animal sees during conception is somehow impressed upon the offspring. The notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible (third edition), written by the Bible scholar David M. Carr, put it like this: Ancient breeders believed that the female, at the time of conception, was influenced by visual impressions that affect the color of the offspring. Jacob produced striped animals by putting striped sticks before the females" eyes while they were breeding.
A standard commentary on Genesis describes it as "prenatal conditioning of the flock by means of visual aids-in conformance with universal folk beliefs."6 In other words, people back then believed that if a dog wandered by while a couple was rocking and rolling and one of them, especially the woman, saw the dog, their child would have a face resembling that of a dog. We probably all know people to whom this has happened. According to this interpretation, therefore, Jacob was using an early form of genetic engineering.
But this interpretation poses an obvious problem for modern readers. We know that Jacob"s tactics are unscientific and don"t actually work. Jacob himself seems to admit as much later on when he tells Laban, These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. If the G.o.d of my father, the G.o.d of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed.7 But this raises a theological problem: Why would G.o.d reward Jacob for trickery and deceit? Or is there another explanation?
Animal Husbandry A recent article provides a way out of this quandary with a new and highly sophisticated interpretation involving fake sheep p.e.n.i.ses (finally!). The article is by Scott B. Noegel, a professor of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.8 Noegel notes some of the rather ho-hum problems with the usual interpretation. But then he scores a winner by pointing out that the earliest sources for the magical belief connecting what a woman sees during conception with the appearance of her child appeared only in the fifth century CE/AD and later, long after the story in Genesis had been written. What is more, says Noegel, the superst.i.tion related only to seeing living beings-humans or animals-but not to inanimate objects. This makes perfect sense. Otherwise, ancient shepherds would have believed that their animals might produce offspring that looked like rocks, trees, houses, or anything else in plain view when they mated. Finally, Noegel challenges the standard interpretation by asking why Jacob would try to get Laban"s stronger animals to reproduce, as he does in verses 4142, if the basic function of the rods was to act as aphrodisiacs. It doesn"t make sense, given Jacob"s motive.
Noegel"s innovative proposal is based on a new understanding of the Hebrew phrase el hammaqlot.9 This phrase is usually translated "at the sight of the rods" (or "in front of the rods"), to accord with the superst.i.tion and because of the statement in verse 41 that Jacob put the rods "before the eyes" of the flock. But the Hebrew expression in verse 41 lacks any reference to seeing or eyes. What, then, does el hammaqlot mean? Noegel takes el hammaqlot literally and translates it "upon the rods." These "rods," he posits, were a kind of phallus fallax-fake animal p.e.n.i.ses-demonstrating again why Noegel is the most well-respected ancient animal d.i.l.d.o scholar on the planet.
In support of this interpretation, Noegel argues that the ancient Hebrew readers would have immediately recognized the true nature of these "rods" in the story, not only from their shape but also because the word used for "rod" has s.e.xual overtones elsewhere in the Bible. For example, the prophet Hosea used the metaphor of adultery to describe Israel"s worship of other G.o.ds.
My people consult a piece of wood, and their divining rod gives them oracles.
For a spirit of wh.o.r.edom has led them astray, and they have played the wh.o.r.e, forsaking their G.o.d.10 Noegel"s translation of the first line is more explicit: "[My people] consult its rod, its phallus directs them." Go, Noegel!
Sheep Rods Here"s what Noegel thinks might have happened in the Jacob story. He notes that sheep and goat breeders know when females are in heat because they (the female animals, not the breeders necessarily) rub their v.u.l.v.as on trees or sticks. He suggests that Jacob used this same technique to increase his own flocks at Laban"s expense. Rather than using the rods to influence the color pattern of the offspring, Noegel says, Jacob set the rods up in the watering troughs when the normal-colored female goats came to drink and mate. These were the goats Laban was going to keep. The goats rubbed their v.u.l.v.as on the smooth rods, satisfying their s.e.xual urges so they would not mate. But Jacob allowed the goats with markings to mate normally, thus increasing the number of goats he would take. Jacob even took it a step further and used the rods for the stronger animals in Laban"s flock, so that they did not reproduce, but he allowed the weaker ones to reproduce normally. So Laban"s flock grew weaker.
Noegel adds two further considerations in favor of his interpretation. The first has to do with the double reference to troughs (NRSV: "the troughs, that is, the watering places").11 There are two separate Hebrew words here, and it seems unusual that the author would introduce two words for the same thing. The second word (rahatim) occurs only three other times in the Hebrew Bible, one of which is in this same story.12 But another of its occurrences is in Song of Solomon, where it seems to refer to "tresses" of hair, possibly goats" hair.13 Noegel suggests that in this story the word refers to the goats" hair that Jacob used to construct models of goat p.e.n.i.ses or even entire male goat mannequins as a further way of attracting the females in heat. h.o.r.n.y female goats just can"t resist male goat mannequins.
Noegel also finds a series of similarities between Jacob"s deception of Laban in this story and the way Laban tricked Jacob earlier into marrying Leah before Rachel. For example, we learned that Leah"s name means "wild cow"; Rachel"s name, Noegel notes, means "ewe." Also, Leah was said to have "weak eyes,"14 but she was the one who bore more children, just as Jacob got Laban"s weaker animals to reproduce. In addition, "Laban" means "white," which was the color of the peeled rods.15 These and many other wordplays hint at a connection between the stories that tell us that Jacob paid back Laban using Laban"s own style of trickery.
A Sheepish Evaluation We hope we"ve gotten Noegel"s ideas right, because this is an extremely complicated story, as he himself admits. To begin with, the word for "flocks" (tson) occurs often without any clear indication as to whose flocks are meant, Laban"s or Jacob"s. There are also four different terms for markings ("spotted," "speckled," "striped," "streaked"), plus the word "dark," and their precise meanings and differences are uncertain. There are also different words for different groups of animals-sheep, goats, and lambs, in addition to flocks-and also separate words for male and female goats. All these different categories and designations make it hard to determine exactly what Jacob did to which animals.
But as much as we like the idea of fake sheep p.e.n.i.ses, Noegel"s interpretation does not completely clear up the confusion in this story. At points in his paper, he even adds to the confusion by seeming to mix up whose flocks are whose. Also, there is no way to verify that his translation of el hammaqlot is correct. Overall, his theory is entertaining but doesn"t have the support to tip the scales in its favor.
But Noegel"s interpretation appeals to us for other reasons. His recognition of puns and similarities between the Leah-Rachel episode and this one is insightful. Whether Jacob was using magic or sheep-breeding techniques, he was still tricking Laban the way Laban had tricked him. What goes around comes around.
Noegel"s theory also gains traction in providing an explanation for the theological problem of G.o.d blessing Jacob"s trickery. Jacob succeeded in hoodwinking Laban, not because of G.o.d"s blessing, but because of his expertise with sheep-breeding. His success was not the result of magic or some superst.i.tion about genetics. It was the result of techniques and knowledge that he gained, ironically, in the long service of Laban. We suspect that Noegel is on to something, even if it remains uncertain if-and how-fake sheep p.e.n.i.ses fit into the scheme.
15.
Did King David Have p.e.n.i.s Envy?
EVEN DEVOUT ATHEISTS usually know something about the story of David and Goliath. But even avid Bible readers might not remember the story of David and the Foreskins.
King David is one of the towering figures in the Bible and in all of Western civilization. Born the youngest son of an out-of-the-way family, David went from lone shepherd boy to Israel"s king, guided by his faith and piety. Of all Old Testament figures, David arguably gets more ink than anyone. His life includes the well-known stories of his affair with Bathsheba, his conflicts with King Saul, the Goliath episode, and the many psalms that bear his name.
So why would David have been involved in an incident with other men"s p.e.n.i.ses? The answer, as always, is found deep inside the Good Book.
The Measure of a Man David"s victory over Goliath with a sling and a rock launched his career. But the newfound fame also caused him problems. Immediately after the battle, as the Israelite army marched home victorious, women from the towns and cities of Israel came out singing and dancing, accompanied by various musical instruments. It was the world"s first all-girl band. They sang, Saul has killed his thousands And David his ten thousands.1 King Saul heard this and took the lyrics as an insult to his military prowess. How could they compare him with David, a kid and a n.o.body? By this time Saul was a seasoned warrior. But he recognized the threat from David, a startlingly popular up-and-comer. As Saul put it, "What more can he have but the kingdom?"2 The writer of the First Book of Samuel adds in verse 19 that "Saul eyed David from that day on." Yikes.
Saul did more than eye David. He began plotting to kill him, and that"s where the story of the p.e.n.i.ses comes in. We know you"ve been waiting for it. Saul learned that his daughter, Michal, whom the story presents as your typical frigid Jewish princess (see 2 Samuel 6), was in love with David. Like most fathers-in-law, Saul wanted to kill the man who would marry his daughter. But Saul went about it circ.u.mspectly. He thought, "Let me give her to him that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." In other words, "Maybe I can use this to get the Philistines to kill David." Then Saul would be rid of his enemy and his potential son-in-law all at once. It would be a good day for Dad.
So Saul turned on the charm offensive. He told his servants to tell David that he would be pleased to have him as a son-in-law. But, as with all marriages in ancient Israel, there was a price to pay. Marriages then were business deals, not love stories. Daughters were a valuable commodity for purchase. A king"s daughter was especially valuable because she brought wealth and social standing. In fact, neither Saul nor David spoke about marrying Michal. The expression they both used was "becoming the king"s son-in-law." That-not the girl-was the prize.
But David was poor. He had lots of heart, and now lots of fame, but no money. He couldn"t afford a king"s daughter. So Saul played it magnanimous. "No problem," he told David through his servants, which were the ancient form of text-messaging. "The king desires no marriage present except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, that he may be avenged on the king"s enemies."
This was like saying, "Sure, you can marry my daughter. But first scale this tall cliff backward using only your toenails." It was an invitation for David to commit suicide. But David was plucky. He accepted the challenge. Maybe Michal was a real babe-or, more likely, David really wanted to be the king"s son-in-law.
David may also have realized that he was in a catch22. If he failed against the Philistines, he would be dead (that was one catch). But if he succeeded, he would become a close member of Saul"s family, inflaming Saul"s jealousy and suspicion even more. In the end, one of these indeed came true.
David took up the challenge, but apparently none of the Philistines RSVP"d to his p.e.n.i.s-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g party invitation, so David opted for plan B.
David, Meet Yossarian To understand plan B we bring Joseph h.e.l.ler into the picture, author of the era-defining satirical novel Catch22. It would be fun to discuss the finer details of that book here, but that"s what English Lit 101 is for and we have other fish to fry. Let us draw your attention instead to another one of h.e.l.ler"s novels called G.o.d Knows, published in 1984. This book was a runaway international hit with obscure Bible scholars like us, while selling poorly in the general population. It even had a terrifically subversive s.e.xual joke in the t.i.tle itself: G.o.d Knows (get it?). This had Bible scholars like us howling in our cramped subterranean offices on little-known college campuses across America.
But we bring up h.e.l.ler for a reason, and not just because he, like David, was a gifted literary Jew who had combat experience and multiple wives. Rather, G.o.d Knows retells David"s life from David"s modern-day perspective. h.e.l.ler was not a biblical scholar, but his fictional account offers real interpretive possibilities for the David story, including the pa.s.sage we"re considering here. In h.e.l.ler"s story, Abner, the commander of Saul"s army, tells David that to become Saul"s son-in-law, the price will be one hundred Philistine foreskins, please. David begins to calculate how long it will take him to perform each circ.u.mcision, figuring he will need at least five other Israelite men to hold down each Philistine while he makes the unkindest cut. Abner interrupts him to explain that Saul actually wants him to bring back the entire p.e.n.i.s. Duh, David. Saul wants the Philistines dead, not circ.u.mcised. This thrills David, as it will be much easier to kill the Philistines than perform the bris for a hundred unwilling converts.
Fast-forward in h.e.l.ler"s book to the scene where David and his men have accomplished the task and are returning to Saul"s court. h.e.l.ler envisions them to be transporting a cart filled with uncirc.u.mcised p.e.n.i.ses, like some macabre parody of a New York City hot dog vendor. (That"ll make you think twice about your next lunch, won"t it?) Just as the women had done after his victory over Goliath, they emerge from the Israelite villages along the way to greet them with songs and dancing. But in the first village the music and celebration are suddenly broken up by horrible shrieks and weeping as one of the women points to the basket of p.e.n.i.ses and wails, "Urgat the Philistine is dead!" The village goes into an uproar. Some people want to stone her, while other women rush to console her and some even join her in mourning. Apparently Urgat was a popular guy.
Things get worse in the next village, as many more women weep and mourn at the recognition of the notable Philistine"s defunct member. They then move from grief to anger and attack David and his entourage. David orders his men to mix up the basket of Philistine frankfurters and cover the cart so that they can complete their journey and deliver their cargo to Saul.
Stranger Than Fiction?
The real surprise is that h.e.l.ler"s fiction may be fact. At least, Herbert B. Huffmon, a professor of Old Testament at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, thinks so. Huffmon recently presented a paper at a professional meeting in which he suggests that the foreskins in this story are a euphemism for the whole enchilada-that is, the entire p.e.n.i.s.3 But we don"t need Huffmon to tell us that since the dawn of history, victorious warriors have always brought home the enemy"s body parts as trophies of war. Think of cowboys and Indians. When Indians won, they scalped the cowboys. And when the cowboys won, they forced the Indians onto small plots of worthless land in Oklahoma, broke treaties at a whim, and forced the Indians to integrate into white European society. Maybe it would have been better if the cowboys had just cut off their p.e.n.i.ses.
In any case, Native Americans did not invent scalping or body-part trophyism-it goes back to at least the fifth century BCE; the Greek historian Herodotus (Book IV) says the Scythians did it. Other cultures paraded around the hands, feet, and heads of their enemies. But Huffmon also points to examples of p.e.n.i.ses being used as war trophies. Some ancient artwork depicts piles of p.e.n.i.ses (usually uncirc.u.mcised) as symbols of victory over enemies in battle. In the thirteenth century BCE, the unrepentant p.e.n.i.s collector and Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, son of Ramesses the Great (G.o.dfather of the modern condom), claims to have collected more than thirteen thousand p.e.n.i.ses of his enemies, especially Libyans, after defeating them in battle. He then had a huge weenie roast, we a.s.sume.
Declining Membership Huffmon"s idea that David cut off their entire p.e.n.i.ses works, except for one thing-shrinkage. p.e.n.i.ses, as we learned earlier, have no bones. When severed (or when simply unmotivated), they wilt like lettuce in the noonday sun. From that perspective, they make poor trophies. What began as a cartful of stacked cuc.u.mbers in the morning would, by evening, look like a sad pile of dead slugs.
But the advantages of p.e.n.i.s trophyism (as Huffmon and his crazed followers call it) really do outweigh the shrinkage problem. Cutting off a man"s p.e.n.i.s, be he alive or dead, shamed him and his people (don"t you think?). A p.e.n.i.s-less corpse lying on the battlefield signified complete defeat. And a live man whose p.e.n.i.s was cut off (a la John Wayne Bobbitt) would always occupy a lower status in society after that. (Mr. Bobbitt proved this by going on to make dirty movies with his reattached member.) In ancient cultures, p.e.n.i.s-less men were considered not p.o.r.n stars but, for all practical purposes, women.
Is it possible David cut off the Philistines" entire members, not just their foreskins? You bet. A recent scholarly article in the Journal of Biblical Literature took up this topic of wartime mutilation. (The JBL is the geek journal of the Society of Biblical Literature, the leading organization for academic study of the Bible in North America. People like us, who teach the Bible as a career, belong to it mainly because of their awesome holiday parties.) The article is by T. M. Lemos and is ent.i.tled, "Shame and Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible."4 Lemos looks at Bible stories involving mutilation of enemies. The Israelites were both victims and perpetrators of such mutilation. He concludes that mutilation was motivated by the desire to shame the enemy and graphically display power over them. Mutilation signaled a change in the status of the victims, moving them to the category of subjugated, defective, or lower-cla.s.s persons. Lemos does not address David"s circ.u.mcision of the Philistines, but his conclusion supports Huffmon"s interpretation.
Now, to finish the story of David and the foreskins, the young hero met the requirement. In fact, the Hebrew text says he doubled it. He must have found where the Philistine men took a leak and ambushed them one by one as the Philistines waved sayonara to their favorite appendage. In the end David brought home two hundred "foreskins." Whether he brought a piece of each p.e.n.i.s or the whole thing probably didn"t matter much to the Philistines. One wonders whether David dumped the shrunken nubs on the palace floor before a stunned King Saul, who must have marveled at the Philistines" lack of endowment.
One more thing-why would the writer of this story have used the word "circ.u.mcision" as a euphemism? Perhaps because he knew he was writing the Bible and that sales would plummet in the Midwest if he said what actually happened. Or, more likely, the euphemism added a wry element to the story. The ancient writer and audience could well have understood what David really did. But describing it as circ.u.mcision instead of a complete amputation played on the fact that the Philistines did not practice circ.u.mcision (while the Israelites, Canaanites, and Egyptians did). The Philistines were known to Israelites as "the uncirc.u.mcised"-a lowdown dirty insult. By hacking off their manhood, David was, in effect, turning the Philistines into Israelites by circ.u.mcising them. The Israelites might have joked that this mutilation resulted in the Philistines" social improvement. Talk about sick humor.
16.
Was Joseph a Cross-Dresser?
IF YOU DON"T KNOW who Joseph from the Hebrew Bible is, then you haven"t paid attention to American theater for the past thirty years. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a Broadway hit and a staple of cheesy high school productions ever since, made this Bible character a household name. But to Bible readers, Joseph was never obscure. Indeed, his story is the longest single narrative in the Hebrew Bible, taking up the final fifteen chapters of the Book of Genesis. And it"s as juicy as Bible stories come, involving money, s.e.x, power, and, as we are about to see, perhaps a hero who dressed up like a girl.
The Clothes Make the Man...or Woman Joseph was the second-youngest son of twelve brothers, and he was Dad"s favorite. His older brothers resented this, and one day when Joey came out to visit them in the fields where they were pasturing the flock, they put Papa"s pride and joy into an abandoned pit to let him die. If you"ve ever had family strife, be glad it didn"t reach this level of treachery. (But if it did, please be sure to share this book with other guys in your cell block.) Then Joseph"s brothers had second thoughts and pulled him out of the pit-so they could sell him to merchants who were pa.s.sing through on their way to Egypt. The brothers then returned home to their father, Jacob, and told him that Joseph had been attacked and eaten by a wild beast. They provided irrefutable evidence: a b.l.o.o.d.y robe, the very robe Jacob had given Joseph to symbolize his favored status. The brothers had smeared it with animals" blood. Jacob believed he was experiencing every parent"s worst nightmare and said, "It is my son"s robe; a wild beast has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces."1 Joseph, meanwhile, was sold by the slave traders into the house of Potiphar, a powerful government official. He prospered there as a servant, but was eventually thrown into jail for a crime he didn"t commit when he rebuffed the s.e.xual advances of Potiphar"s wife. After languishing in prison for a number of years, Joseph was suddenly set free when he was able to interpret the meanings of two troubling dreams the Egyptian Pharaoh had had. Joseph so impressed Pharaoh that he was appointed second in command over all of Egypt and successfully steered the country through the devastating famine that was the subject of Pharaoh"s dreams. Joseph"s life was one wild ride.
Zeroing in on the subject of the robe, which is the key to the transgender argument, we need first to discard the main myth people have in mind when approaching this story. As good as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was for Andrew Lloyd Weber"s pocketbook and PTAs everywhere, it has given many people a wrong sense of what Joseph"s robe looked like. The coat is often presented as a wildly garish garment with colorful patterns st.i.tched and woven into it. This is reinforced by the King James Version, an influential translation of the Bible that describes it as a "coat of many colors." Most people therefore imagine it as a cross between a bathrobe and the kind of Xtra-Large tie-dyed shirt you might spot on an aging hippie from half a mile away.
In fact, translations like the King James that highlight the coat"s colors are based not on the original Hebrew text but on the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The meaning of the Hebrew text is less clear because the phrase that describes the coat (ketonet pa.s.sim) is difficult to understand. The Hebrew term ketonet is well attested in the Bible as a type of garment, but the precise meaning of pa.s.sim in conjunction with it is not as certain. The word usually refers to the palm of the hand or the sole of the foot, so it is generally believed that the phrase refers to a garment that reaches to a person"s ankles and wrists. We might describe it as a full-length tunic. This is the basis of many recent translations like the NRSV, which calls Joseph"s garment "a long robe with sleeves."
The uncertainty over how best to translate the Hebrew is compounded by the fact that the phrase ketonet pa.s.sim appears in only one other place in the entire Hebrew Bible, and in that place it is worn by a woman. This is the story describing Amnon"s rape of his half-sister Tamar, daughter of King David, where this type of garment is mentioned twice.2 After the rape, the text offers an aside to the reader that provides some information about how Tamar was dressed. "Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves (ketonet pa.s.sim), for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times."3 The mention of the long robe with sleeves in only these two places-once to describe what the king"s daughters wore and once in reference to Joseph"s garb-has struck some observers as unusual. How can it be that the same article of clothing was worn by both males and females? Many commentators, including the early rabbis, have argued that it was probably an example of unis.e.x clothing in the ancient world. According to this theory, a ketonet pa.s.sim describes a type of garment that would have been worn by the children, both male and female, of important people.
Ready to Wear But Theodore W. Jennings Jr., a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, challenges that interpretation. Exercising good fashion sense, he believes the text in 2 Samuel 13 about Tamar leaves no doubt that the garment in question was something worn only by females.4 In other words, Jacob had given Joseph a girl"s outfit. Jennings, ever on the lookout for cross-dressing Bible characters, asks, "What are we to make of this curious case of transvestism?"
This jag into the subject of cross-dressing is part of a larger argument Jennings tries to make about the Joseph story as a whole. He maintains that the narrative presents the Bible"s clearest example of transgendering. A transgendered person does not completely identify with or conform to the gender he or she has by birth. Transgendering can take a variety of different forms, including transvestism, the practice of wearing clothing a.s.sociated with members of the opposite s.e.x, a la J. Edgar Hoover.
Jennings sees Joseph as a transgendered character, and the robe his father gave him is the most visible outward manifestation of that. He goes on to argue that the narrative is actually the story of a young man in a family of males who were all struggling with issues of s.e.xuality and difference. "Jacob/Israel has produced the queer Joseph, transvested him, and thereby transgendered him as a sign of his own masculine desire. And the progeny of Israel have engaged in the first instance of queer bashing," Jennings writes.5 In other words, when Joseph"s brothers sold him off to Egypt, they committed an anti-gay hate crime.
Jennings has company on some of his arguments. Commentators have frequently noted a pattern in Joseph"s time in Egypt. On three successive occasions, Joseph encountered a more powerful man who was impressed by him and delegated some of his authority to him. The first was his master Potiphar, who put Joseph in charge of all the affairs of his house. When Joseph refused to have an affair with Potiphar"s wife, he was sent to prison. There he met the chief jailer, who put Joseph over all the other prisoners. Finally there was Pharaoh, who, as mentioned, promoted Joseph to the number-two position in his government.
Jennings predictably sees a h.o.m.oerotic element. He believes the repet.i.tion of this motif is a way of highlighting how attractive Joseph was to other men. He writes, "Thus, it seems that at every phase of his career, Joseph is carried upon a wave of masculine desire. The consequence of this desire is the designation of Joseph as a kind of surrogate for the male, almost as a kind of wife subst.i.tute."6 Jennings points to other parts of the Joseph story to support his transgendered reading. For example, he notes that the text calls attention to Joseph"s good looks. He says Joseph"s long robe with sleeves was not appropriate for working with the flock in the great outdoors, suggesting he was more at home in the home. He says that Joseph"s rejection of Potiphar"s wife suggests a lack of interest in women. He points out that when Pharaoh gave Joseph a wife, her father"s name was identified as Potiphera, a not-so-subtle allusion to his former master. And finally, when Joseph brought his two sons to Jacob, the older man blessed them, thereby making himself, not Joseph, their father. Jennings even suggests that Joseph"s success in prison may have been the result of s.e.xual favors he performed for the chief jailer. If you"re balking right now, we don"t blame you.
Sizing Up the Proposal Is Jennings off in some Elton John fantasy, or does his proposal have any merit? To start on the positive side, he rightly points out that Joseph"s clothing seems to play a big part in the narrative. Note how many times clothing is mentioned. The robe with long sleeves indicated his father"s preference for him, and it was later used to trick Jacob into thinking Joseph had been killed. When Joseph turned down the come-ons of his master"s wife, he literally escaped from her clutches and left his garment in her grasp as he fled.7 Before he left prison to meet Pharaoh and interpret his dreams, Joseph shaved and changed his clothes.8 Finally, when Pharaoh promoted him to second in command, Joseph was dressed in fine linen clothes.9 Each of these references to Joseph"s clothing signals a change in status for him, whether it be as the favorite son, the dead son, the prisoner-to-be, the former prisoner, or the Egyptian court official. Jennings"s point that Joseph"s robe is somehow tied to his status is valid.
Similarly, Jennings identifies some interesting connections between the Joseph story and the description of Tamar"s rape in 2 Samuel 13 beyond the common mention of a ketonet pa.s.sim. He notes that the beauty of both persons wearing the robe is mentioned, both wearers were a.s.saulted by their brothers, and each time the robe became a symbol of violation and mourning.
But in our opinion Jennings has gone too far with his suggestion that the Joseph story is rife with s.e.xual innuendo and can be read as the tale of a gay, transgendered young man. First of all, it"s difficult to know exactly what to make of the long-sleeved robe. Because it is mentioned in only two places in the entire Bible, neither of which describes exactly what it is, we lack explicit information regarding its appearance and how it might have functioned in ancient Israelite society. Jennings believes it was a garment that was worn exclusively by females, but it"s more likely that the alternative proposal is correct: that it was something worn by the offspring of prominent people. If so, Joseph"s wearing of it early in the story could have been a way of prefiguring the high rank he would achieve later on when Pharaoh promoted him. This story includes several instances of foreshadowing like this. For example, Joseph"s being thrown into prison recalls the scene a few chapters earlier when his brothers tossed him into the pit. This connection is even clearer in the Hebrew text, since the word for "prison" or "dungeon" (bor) is the same as that used for "pit."10 It"s therefore more likely that Joseph"s robe is functioning as a marker of his future prosperity than as an indicator of his s.e.xual ident.i.ty.
Jennings"s claim that the powerful men in Joseph"s life all had the hots for him is also difficult to support. The story doesn"t make a single reference to any such feelings on their part, and sometimes it supplies information that undercuts such an idea. For example, when Potiphar put Joseph in charge of his house, the text explicitly states that he did so because he saw that the Lord was with Joseph.11 A couple of chapters later it says a similar thing about why Pharaoh promoted Joseph.12 Jennings tries to get around this by arguing that the male desire originally was a central part of the story, but that it has been suppressed and rendered more subtle by the author"s theological concerns. But that is just a naked attempt by Jennings to force the story to fit his preconceived interpretation. The story of Joseph is curious in many ways, but probably not for the reasons Jennings proposes. We may not know what made Joseph"s robe so special, but you can file Jennings"s ideas under "highly unlikely."
17.
Did Dinah Marry Her Rapist?
MOST GIRLS DREAM of their wedding day from the time they are little, which is why, when weddings go wrong, it"s so devastating for the bride. Grooms, who are usually more focused on the wedding night than the ceremony, typically don"t care so much as long as there"s a legal "I do" in there somewhere.
But an antsy-pants groom was precisely the problem in one of the worst wedding disasters in history, recounted for us in (where else?) the Bible"s Book of Genesis, chapter 34, to be precise. In this account, a hot-to-trot neighbor boy fell for Jacob"s only daughter, Dinah, and made his move without consulting Jacob or Dinah"s twelve older brothers. Big mistake. These were some of the most overprotective boys in the Bible, and they had a twisted way of taking revenge.
A Sneak Attack The story leaves much confusion as to whether the neighbor kid"s offense was rape or just lack of cultural sensitivity. Here are the details. Dinah, daughter of Jacob, was kidnapped (literally, "taken") by a local Hivite prince named Shechem (whose name means "I am clearing my throat"). Shechem had s.e.x with her and then fell in love with her-typical sequence for a guy. He then asked his daddy, Hamor, if he could marry her. Daddy rolled his eyes and went to speak with Jacob to settle what the young ones had done. Remember that in ancient times marriage was never primarily about love, but about property, inheritance, and power. The bride and groom were merely tools in the broader scheme of family and regional control. Hamor put the best spin he could on his boy"s rush to the good stuff and suggested that Jacob"s family and Hamor"s city-state could intermarry and intermingle their land and livestock. Jacob was oddly pa.s.sive and seemed willing to go along with the arrangement. The man who had wrestled with G.o.d was in no mood for a fight.
But Dinah"s brothers were a different story. Young, reckless, and ticked off in the way only big brothers can be, they gave Hamor a deceitful answer. They said they were willing to grant the marriage between Shechem and Dinah and to join peoples on one condition-that the Hivite men circ.u.mcise themselves. That surely was a difficult sell for Shechem and Hamor to make to the other blokes. Why get their tips trimmed just so Shechem could have Dinah, especially when there were plenty of nubile Hivite women around? But the father and son convinced them that all the livestock and property of Jacob and his sons would become theirs-a big payoff for a pa.s.sing pain in the p.r.i.c.k. So the boys in town went under the knife. We can"t help but wonder how this worked logistically. Did all the guys line up with their drawers dropped like a high school athletic team waiting for their physical?