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Monday, 16 May 2011
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A response to some of Mordecai Kaplan, Judaism as Civilization Chpt. 15 “Constituent Elements
Judaism as more-than civilization
Kaplan, Chpt. 15 Response “Constituent Elements of Judaism as Civilization”
Introduction:
In this chapter, Kaplan lays out the “constituent elements” of his perspective on Judaism as civilization, briefly described in the subtitle of this chapter as “a land—a language and literature—mores, laws and folkways—folk sanctions—folk arts—social structure.”[1] From his use of the word “folk,” I take Kaplan to be attempting to describe the complexities of Judaism which I have often categorized as “tribal” (meaning an eclectic combination of religion, culture, historical memory and ethnicity), which attempts to describe the messiness of describing Judaism as an idea or identity encompassing many nuanced perspectives. By choosing to classify Judaism as a civilization, Kaplan selects a category into which he hopes the varying expressions and experiences of Judaism will fall. In my own thought, the constitutive elements of Judaism, which I cannot even classify as civilization, are fourfold: historical memory, culture, communal ritual and textual dialog. I have not maintained land to be as significant as Kaplan, which seems necessary for his categorization of Judaism as civilization, because I do not believe all forms of Judaism find land to be a significant component. While the Ancient Israelites, from whom Judahite then Jewish peoples find themselves descended in historical memory, may indeed have valued land—contemporary forms of Judaism do not all prioritize a particular piece of earth over others.
I. Kaplan’s ideas on Judaism as Civilization:
In the pluralistic American context from which I write, my perspective is skewed in considering Judaism as a civilization from the various ways I have witnesses co-existent, disagreeing forms of one identity participate in that identity. Before attempting to debunk Kaplan’s categorization of Judaism as civilization any further, however, I will describe his arguments concerning the constitutive elements by which Kaplan can categorize Judaism as a civilization. Having offered his readers six different elements of Judaism as civilization in this chapter’s subtitle, Kaplan goes on to detail them in clear and distinct subtitles. Beginning with land, Kaplan argues that Judaism is tied to a physical piece of earth, because land figures as “the locus of a civilization,”[2] allowing Kaplan to conclude that “Judaism could neither have arisen, nor continued to exist apart from the land that gave it birth.”[3] I think this point demonstrates a large assumption that conflates Israelite and Jewish identities and experiences, which I will address in my critique of Kaplan’s depiction of Judaism as civilization. Kaplan utilizes his linkage of Judaism to a land as a way of refuting the Christian assignment of Judaism to a religious identity.[4] While I agree that Judaism is not purely a religious identity, I find it unhelpful to refute this claim by linking Judaism to land, arguing for a “civilization” in a pre-colonial sense… where status of the civilized is based upon one’s ability to dominate a land and its pre-existent inhabitants. In addition, Kaplan points to the self-identification on non-Palestinian Jews as “exiles” to the necessary linkage of Judaism with a land,[5] a self-delineation which seems to me, again, to be a product of historically appropriated memory rather than a constitutive element of Judaism.
In one sense, Kaplan is offering a myth of origins for the Jewish people by conflating their roots with Israelite history, a history which I believe leads to the development of Judaic identity, but is not synonymous with Jewish identity and experience. The phenomenon of Jewish solidarity as a nomadic peoples in the Western world is indeed a great wonder, but attributing this solidarity to a pre-existent Israelite culture does not seem helpful for encompassing the vastly varying expressions of Judaism under an umbrella of the “Jewish” identity. To further build his case for Judaism as a civilization which spans the globe, longing for return to its own land, Kaplan describes language as another prominent characteristic of Judaism.[6] Arguing “that a common language gives a people individuality,”[7] Kaplan says links that linguistic continuity of the Jewish people in biblical Hebrew with the concept of the Jewish people being linked to a land. I think this is a false distinction, for civilization is not necessarily characterized by a common language: take, for example, the Catholic Church, whose “official” language is Latin, but it is not common to all people, nor related to a civilization. Instead it is a tool of religious universalism, by which all Catholic officials can communicate. By analogy, one might argue that biblical Hebrew, considered a dead language by modern scholars, though continually used in some Jewish ritual, is a tool of universalism for Jewish officials (though most laity may not be very familiar with this tongue). I would respond to Kaplan’s assertion that language demonstrates civilization with a point Kaplan himself makes: if “the Hebrew language ceased to be the language of communication amongst the Jewish masses,”[8] how is it a continuing mark of Jewish civilization? Kaplan seems to respond to my point by noting that Hebrew has various forms, both biblical and modern, though I suspect that modern is less well-know by the Judaic community at large that the “dead” Hebrew, biblical.
Transitioning from language to mores, laws and folkways, Kaplan describes these particulates as the “form or mode of expression” as well as the content, of Jewish civilization.[9] I think Kaplan’s idea of these forms or modes of expression can be summed up by the concept of “social habits,” which he describes as covering “the entire range of human conduct”[10] in a particular society—or in my own words, as a kind of code of social ethics, which I classify as a cultural component of Judaism. For Kaplan, these social habits include: “folkways, social etiquette, moral standards, civil and criminal laws, and religious practices,”[11] which is an extremely broad way of classifying these varying facets of an identity. In my own classification of Judaism, I distinguish between folk mores and religious practice, which may fall under both civilization and historical memory if considered from the time of the Ancient Israelites, but may also be the performative aspect of Judaism I call “communal ritual practice.” I find my idea of Judaic identity and experience including an aspect of this element of Kaplan’s depiction of Judaism as civilization, namely where he says, “the main object of the Jewish people in maintaining Torah” is the following of “Divine” statues and ordinances whereby “Judaism functions only so long as it is coextensive with the whole of the Jew’s life.”[12]
Agreeing that Judaic identity influences the creation of one’s whole identity, I cannot but help to see Judaism as a composite of varying civilizations, rather than a civilization in itself, for it is a more complex identity structure whose constitutive parts are tied through historic memory to folk sanctions. Since Kaplan has rooted folk culture in the structure of civilization, it makes sense that he would also attribute the inner-structural meanings for these folk practices to civilization itself. I attribute his idea of folk sanctions which includes “the traditions, both oral and written, which motivate its folk habits,”[13] directly to an influence by text and historical memory. These “folk sanctions” seem to be the motivational underpinnings in Kaplan’s system for the very activity of “tradition” which derives meaning and existence from text. While I understand these “folk sanctions” to underlie communal ritual, deriving from historical memory and textual bases, Kaplan asserts that these “folk sanctions” underlie more than religion, but also the culture of Judaism.[14] I have already concurred that Judaism is more than a religious identity, but something far more complex, though not as structural a framework as a civilization. Rooting “folk sanctions” deeply within historic and textual memory, I believe I can account for the variety of ways Judaism expresses its folk roots, without arriving at a concrete notion of civilization as Kaplan does.
Arriving at Kaplan’s element of folk art, I again fundamentally disagree that a folk-Judaic approach to art draws on the symbols of a Jewish civilization, but rather depicts the dialog of Judaic notions of identity with surrounding civilizations and cultures. Kaplan defines folk art as “part of the social heritage which is the driving force of civilization, and has come to be the means of calling forth from the group the civilizations characteristic emotional reactions.”[15] Kaplan highlights the ways in which Judaic forms of folk art distinguish the Jewish people from surrounding civilizations, suggesting the presence of a migrant, interior civilization amongst the Jews, which is able to survive in spite of external pressures. Kaplan focuses his arguments of the distinguishing factors of Jewish folk art from surrounding cultures, while an equally strong argument might be made for the influence of these cultures upon Judaic artistic expressions.
Finally, Kaplan turns to his ideas of social structure, which he describes as a typical social contract government, through which the will of the people within a given civilization is expressed.[16] From my limited understanding of Jewish history, it might be more precise to configure Judaic social structure in conversation with surrounding societies, not as social contract, but more reactionary to the presence of other societies, but also embedded within those societies. In his descriptions of Jewish social structure, Kaplan again betrays a historical conflation of Judaic and Israelite identities, especially when he claims that “in early society the social structure, like all other elements of civilization, was related to the God-idea.”[17] This assertion may have been true in terms of early Israelite civilization, but Judaism, as the diasporic child of Israel, is already reaping the effects of pluralism within Israel, so is over-simplified by reference to the God-idea. Judaism, unlike Israelite social structure, is not founded upon a unity of religion and government. I cannot readily agree to the idea of high-priests working within Jewish social structures, except through appropriation by Jewish historical memory.
II. Some Critiques of Kaplan’s configuration of Judaism as Civilization:
By way of critique, I will address Kaplan’s “constituent elements of Judaism as civilization”[18] in order, beginning with land. Kaplan assumes that Judaism’s existence is dependent upon the land, but I would categorize this linkage as a rhetorical move of historical memory. While I would not conflate Judaism and Israelite identities, as Kaplan does, Jewish historical imagination tends to memorialize elements of Israelite civilization in Jewish terms, falsely linking Judaism to the land. I would argue that Israelite identity if more tied to the land than Jewish identity, which may or may not value the archaic linking of land and people through folkloric/tribal-mythic ties.
In terms of language, Kaplan notes the connection of Yiddish and Hebrew, which I would classify as a cultural denotation, and the conflict of considering Yiddish a truer “Jewish” language than Hebrew.[19] I take great issue with Kaplan’s assertion that the Hebrew language is one of the fundamental elements of Jewish civilization,[20] partly because a civilization should not be defined according to the language and practices of its elite, but rather the common members of society, who set the mass tone for the civilization. If the variety of Judaic traditions do not all value Hebrew at the same level, I would tend to classify Hebrew as a cultural element, which retains some presence in Judaic culture, but is not linguistically important in and of itself.
For Kaplan to lump all the facets of an identity such as mores, laws and folkwaystogether as one component of civilization seems very un-nuanced to me. While these may indeed be woven into the existential fabric of the individual Jew’s entire existence, it seems to me that these are more complex than can be summed by the Torah. The Torah, though a foundational element of constructed Judaic identity, is only a dialog partner for the rest of Judaic mores, laws and folkways… influencing them profoundly, but not shaping them solely. These elements of Jewish identity and experience are formed throughout a dialog between Jewish culture, external culture of civilizations in which Judaism is dispersed, and the texts of the historic identity of the Israelites which Judaic memory clings in hopes of creating continuity. The large ambiguity over this category of folk facets of identity causes me to be suspicious about the general lumping together of these elements, whose roots are attributed to the Torah. My suspicion is that more than the Torah has created the particulars of Judaic identity which we attribute to “folk” facets, though not without dialog to the Torah, subsequent Mishnah and Talmud.
To me, Kaplan’s boundary of civilization around Jewish folk art expression is too artificial, and must be re-configured through more inclusive eyes, seeing the ways in which Jewish artistic expression was influence by the contemporary notions of cultures into which those of Jewish identity assimilated or sprung up in reaction to. Kaplan seems to ignore the idea of Jewish ideological discourse with surrounding culture through his persistence in isolating these artistic expressions as elements of Jewish civilization. Civilization seems to be too singular a term for the emergence of folk arts in Judaism, which could be configured as a product of Jewish cultural discourse with surrounding societies and cultures. Kaplan treats Judaic folk art as if it grew up within a vacuum of a pure Jewish existence, and was never tainted by an outside world, though I would argue to the contrary.
In terms of Jewish social structure, I suggest that Judaism has always been embedded in the structure of a larger civilization—partly given that my argument concerning Judaism is historically founded on the spiritualization of Israelite cult practices. From my understanding of early Judaism, while elements of identity which became in Judahite, post-Israelite culture, began developing even during the time of the Babylonian exile, one cannot historically posit the presence of Judaism within a particular land. In my understanding of Judaism, Judaic identity is always embedded within the context of a larger civilization, expressing ideas of particularism through practices of communal ritual, historically imagined memory, cultural traits, and textual dialog.
Conclusion:
My biggest critique of Kaplan’s overall ideas of Judaism as civilization is that Judaism becomes overly conflated with Israelite identity—and though there is some blur or overlap between these two eras, Israelite existence can rightly be classified as civilization linked to the six elements Kaplan raises up, while Judaism, though more than a religious identity, cannot be rightly linked to these elements without being conflated with Judaism. I think Kaplan’s idea of Judaism as civilization is simply too narrow to encompass all the expressions of Judaic identity which currently exist, especially in the context of “modern ideology” which Kaplan references towards the end of this chapter.[21] Finding useful the elements which Kaplan has raised up as a part of Judaic identity, I propose that there is more to Judaism than the category of civilization, to which Kaplan attempts to confine Judaism, seeing that it is always part of a larger structure of civilization, which allows for inter-identity dialogs.
[1] Kaplan, 186.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Kaplan, Ibid; Also see Boyarin in Border Lines, where Boyrain argues that Judaism is not a religious identity, but is configured thus because Christianity has project it as a religious identity.
[5] Kaplan, 189-90.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Kaplan, 192-3.
[9] Kaplan, 194.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Kaplan, 196.
[13] Kaplan, 197.
[14] Kaplan, 201-2.
[15] Kaplan, 203.
[16] Kaplan, 205.
[17] Kaplan, 206.
[18] Kaplan, 186.
[19] Kaplan, 193.
[20] Kaplan,194.
[21] Kaplan, 208.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
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Interpreting Rahab: Mimetic Theory, “Legend of Keret” & “Insider”/"Outsider"
I. Interpretation: Rahab—Tenuous Inclusion of An Outsider in Joshua 2 & 6.22-25
Introduction:
For many Christians such as myself raised in church-going or biblically religious families, the story of Joshua, Jericho, and Rahab is far too familiar. Growing up, we watched the comic dramatization of the Jericho narrative inVeggie Tales, which strategically omits Rahab’s crucial role in the story and presents the classic Christian assumptions that Joshua and the Israelites were commanded by God to annihilate the inhabitants of Canaan. Should we be so quick to make these assumptions? The Jericho narrative I grew up with never questioned the assigning of violence to God for the slaughter of the Canaanites of Jericho. In my relation to this narrative as a Gentile Christian, I understand my ability to have covenantal relationship with God as directly due to precedents set by such biblical characters as Rahab. In a context where the connections of Christian and Jewish identities are in need of a common ground for understanding, I believe a reading the Rahab narrative through a lens recognizing the exclusion of outsiders or “Others” can establish commonality over feelings of mutual exclusion. In the Deuteronomic historian’s portrayal of Israelite covenantal boundaries, Rahab presents an anomaly: while she is firmly located in her Gentile/Canaanite-“outsider” identity, she confesses a belief (or a belief is editorially placed in her mouth) which locates Rahab as an “insider” with God, but an outsider to the covenantal people, Israel. Rahab’s story presents us with the first Israelite crisis of identity: a recognized outsider, a Gentile prostitute, identifies with Israelite religion, and is subsequently spared for demonstration of this belief by favoritism for the Israelite spies she hides- directly contradicting Mosaic commandments.
Rahab as Doubly “Othered” through Mimetic Rivalry
The most helpful lens for depicting the Israelite-Canaanite struggle from which Rahab emerges as heroine is René Girard’s mimetic rivalry. One of the most typical modes for describing Rahab’s final position as a Canaanite woman in the midst of Israel is to trace out a conversion story. I find the discussion of Rahab as a convert unhelpful, because it not only anachronistically depicts “Israelite” as a religious system, but also imposes a rivalrous relationship between the convertee and the group to which she is converting. Such a relationship does not appear to exist between Rahab’s character and Israel, butdoes exist between Jericho-ites and Israelites in general. The straightforward reading of the Jericho narrative suggests that the object of desire for both Jericho-ites and Israelites is the land of Canaan, to the exclusion of the other nation. When the narrative begins, Israel approaches Canaan, “insiders” with God, but “outsiders” to the Promised Land—whereas Rahab and the other residents of Jericho are in exactly the opposite categorizations of “insider” and “outsider.”
In order to accomplish the Israelite goal of achieving “insider” status to the land, Joshua prescribes genocide of the Canaanite “outsiders” to covenantal relation with God. Dr. David Livingston’s depiction of the Jericho story as a war of gods, Yhwh vs. Jericho’s divine monarch, suggests that the conflict is whose god is the god of Canaan.[1] In the midst of the very masculine conflict involving deities and war, Rahab emerges as “Other” to both Israelites and Canaanites, displaced by allegiance to an Israelite god though of Canaanite nationality. Following Girard’s theory, if mimetic rivalry is to be eliminated, one of the parties must be eliminated—in the case of Joshua 2-6, this party is the Canaanites of Jericho—including Rahab in some ways. By literary comparison of the Jericho narrative with the Ugaritic Legend of Keret, Rahab can be read as the sacrifice which pacifies the conquest after Jericho’s conquering, as taken into the midst of Israel as a foreign trophy wife for Israel’s god. By arguing through the Legend of Keret that Rahab is incorporated into—but not included amongst—the Israelites, I will demonstrate how she remains relegated to marginality despite being recognized as a fearer of Yhwh.
Redacting Rahab in Relation to Ugaritic Legend of Keret
Because we are all familiar with Jericho conquest narrative, I will only recount the details necessary to make a case concerning the relationships of “outsiders” to the people of God. One element which places some methodological distance between readers and the text is the issue of redacting Rahab. Several scholars suggest that compared to the rest of the conquest narrative, Rahab seems out of place, added at a later date.[2] The entire Jericho narrative can be read parallel to the ancient Ugaritic Legend of Keret, in which “the God of Israel had come to challenge the city-gods of the Canaanite world.”[3] Livingstone argues that throughout the entirety of Joshua 2-6, “all of Israel’s actions were designed…as a travesty, a mockery of the ritual or pageant known to the Canaanites living in Jericho.”[4] In the Legend of Keret, “ King Keret [conquers] the city of Udum in order to obtain the princess Hurriy as his wife,”[5] which seems to be parodied in the way the Deuteronomic historian editorially seems to add Rahab to the Jericho narrative.
While portraying Rahab as the “spoils of war” which Yhwh takes for himself serves to reinforce her “outsider” status, the Deuteronomic historian subverts the Legend’s trophy wife image by depicting Rahab as a prostitute. Through an ironic play on Rahab’s name, which means “wide,” the author of Joshua “links her implicitly to the land” where her name is an adjective used “only in connection with the land of Canaan, where it signifies goodness and abundance.”[6] From this description, the Deuteronomic historian seems to offer a critique of the conquest of Canaan: that it is not the “others” who threaten the sanctity of Israel’s covenant with God, but Israel is her own worst enemy, capable of being seduced by the land.[7] Thus while Rahab is portrayed in the mode of victim similar to the captured wife of Keret, her marginal status liberates her from the constraints of victimhood, to a saved refugee.
Rahab’s Relation to Israel-From Covenant to Incorporation
We are introduced to Rahab’s character in the Jericho narrative in her interaction with the two spies sent to Jericho,[8] which only emphasizes her status as the ultimate “other” to the male, elite, circumcised, Israelites.[9]Though a woman of marginal, independent status, Rahab dominates the conversation, holding both the fate of the spies, and the Israel conquest in her hands—which enables her to ensnare the spies in covenant.[10] Merling suggests that when Rahab vocalizes the Canaanites fears of Israel (notably, not their God), her words “become diagnostic of all of Canaan. On one hand, from a literary point of view, it is her words that show her to be an insightful disciple of Yhwh.”[11]As a literary representative for all of Jericho, potentially even all of Canaan, Rahab presents herself not as “a foreign city to be destroyed but an alien who has treated the spies fairly and deserves just treatment.”[12]
If Rahab can be read a spokesperson for the Canaanites, perhaps she can be read as dismantling the mimetic rivalry between the highly masculinized forces—Joshua and his circumcised spies and soldiers, as well as the god-king and his soldiers of Jericho. Carolyn Sharp suggests that Rahab’s survival of the genocide and colonization of Jericho is ironic in that “this Israelite discourse that may have intended to dehumanize the Other also dehumanizes itself, sowing seeds for its own future destruction as king after king chooses apostasy rather than purity.”[13]
Yet while Rahab’s character may serve as a prophetic critique of Israel’s trajectory, but her feminity, marginality, and discontinuity with a Hurriy character results in a difficult incorporation. While “it is because of her borderline status that she is able to help the ‘outsider’ Israelites,”[14] it is this same marginality that complicates Rahab’s inclusion into Israel. When it comes time for Joshua to honor Rahab’s covenant, “in the presence of the people, Joshua had spoken her name and declared that she would be spared because ‘she hid the messengers we sent,’”[15] privately “Joshua frames the deliverance as an act of obligation.”[16]
Conclusion:
While she is not included amongst the Israelites, Rahab and her family are rewarded in 6.23, being settled “outside the camp of Israel,” though in vs. 25, she and her family were permitted to remain in Israel’s midst, though remaining in the borders of marginality. Mitchell notes that Rahab remains “radically non-Israel in ethnicity and occupation but distinctively Israelite in loyalties and behavior.”[17] Yet, she is spared when all “Others” in Jericho are destroyed. Sharp suggests that from the story of Rahab’s redemption we can learn that “human desire for the Other and acknowledgement of the needs of the Other are more powerful even than the army of the invincible God.”[18]This type of interpretation offers a beginning point for empathy with “Others” on the basis of common experience—and in Rahab, Christians find a Gentile position of minority to relate to Jewish religious minority today.
Bibliography
den Braber, Marieke and Jan-Wim Wesselius. “The Unity of Joshua 1-8, its Relation to the Story of King Keret, and the Literary Background to the Exodus and Conquest Stories.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, Volume 22, Number 2 (November 2008). 253-74.
Hawk, L. Daniel. Joshua: Berit Olam, Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2000.
Livingstone, David. “The Fall of the Moon City,” Khirbet Nisya: The Search for Biblical Ai, 1979-2002. Online at: <http://http://davelivingston.com-/mooncity.htm>
Matties, Gordon H.”Reading Rahab’s Story: Beyond the Moral of the Story (Joshua 2).” Directions Journal (Spring 1995, Vol 24, No 1), 57-70. Online at <http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?872>
Merling, David. “Rahab: The Woman Who Fulfilled the Word of YHWH.” Andrews University Seminary Studies (Vol 14, No 1, 2003), 31-44.
Mitchell, Gordon. Together in the Land: A Reading of the Book of Joshua.Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993.
Myers, Don. “The Story of Rahab: Joshua 2.” Faulkner University, Department of Bible. Accessed on 15 March 2011 at < http://www.faulkner.edu/admin/websites/donmy-/Rahab.Myers.docx>.
Robinson, Bernard. “Rahab of Canaan—and Israel,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament.Vol. 23, No. 2, 257-273, 2009.
Sharp, Carolyn. Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Soggin, J. Alberto. Joshua: A Commentary. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972
Spina, Frank Anthony. The Faith of the Outsider: Exclusion and Inclusion in the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 2005.
Wu, Rose. “Women on the Boundary: Prostitution, Contemporary and in the Bible,” Feminist Theology (Vol 28, 2001), 29-81.
II. Explanation: Post-Shoah Christians Relating to Rahab’s Memory in Judaism
Audience and Approach:
My interpretation is rendered with a mostly Jewish audience in mind, in the context of a class on Jewish-Christian interaction over Hebrew bible interpretations to be offered sometime next year at a local Conservative Jewish congregation. This particular paper will be one of two presentations given on the same day—the other will be given by my Jewish friend on Jewish memory of Rahab. We will be focusing on biblical narratives/passages which have been difficult for Christians and Jews to converse over, Rahab being an apt example.
Some comments about the context I have located myself in: Post-Shoah, Christian memory of Rahab. When I say Post-Shoah, I am speaking of the theological consequences and questions brought about by the genocides of WWII, particularly of the Jewish experience of being the scapegoatted at the hand of the Nazis. An acute, existential awareness of being “Other” and difference have permeated Jewish thought, and I hope by locating myself in a post-Shoah era, and by recognizing the Jewish genocide as a shoah rather than a holocaust (sacrifice, offering), that I am applying the understanding of “Otherness” I have gleaned from Jewish thinkers to a Gentile scenario.
Why this passage?
I am existentially motivated by this as an ongoing question for me, discovering the roots of Christianity’s origin in Israelite/Judaic religious heritage. Rahab’s narrative seems ripe in the wake an alienating experience such as the Shoah of WWII, to mine potential commonality between Gentile and Jewish historical experiences, finding a new basis for mutual understanding in our past experiences of being mainstream society’s “Other.” The irony of Rahab’s salvation—that her covenant with God is worth honoring despite the fact that it forces the Israelites to violate an explicit commandment of God to dispel/exterminate all Canaanite “outsiders” from the promise land—offers much ethical low-hanging fruit for the value of human relationship with God despite one’s status of “Other” in a culture. If sufficient analysis of similar biblical passages can be done to demonstrate the value of the “outsider” for his/her relationship with God, if for no other reason, the Rahab narrative can found the beginning of a new sort of ethical-theological relation between Jews and Christians.
I am very interested in the themes of inclusion/exclusion of outsiders in the Israelite community within the biblical period, and how this is varyingly accepted in varying passages. As my thesis is focusing on the Apostle Paul’s work in Romans 3.21-31 on this very issue, the inclusion of the Gentiles, I think such intertextual work with characters such as Rahab, Ruth, Naaman, etc. can set the stage for Paul’s hermeneutical “leaps” of integration and inclusion. In the midrash Paul accomplishes, allowing for Gentile assumption of Jewish covenantal relationship with God without taking of Judaic ritual-ethnic identity, he abrogates the assumed tradition of entering Judaism before taking on Christ. If Paul is reading such narratives of inclusion as Ruth and Rahab’s, he can find ample interpretive room to make the claim that Judaic tribal-ethnic identity traits are irrelevant to “New Israel” identity of Gentiles (and even Jews) in Christ. These are just some of the thoughts that occupy my mind during this paper’s composition.
Methodology and Explanation:
To do this responsibly, I apply hermeneutical distanciation between myself and the text through a constellation of methods: (1) Giradian mimetic theory (which I give a feminist spin with Rahab); (2) redaction criticsm, asking if Rahab added to the Jericho narrative at a later date; (3) literary criticism and comparison; and (4) specific analysis of “insider” and “outsider” rhetoric/positioning. Now let me elaborate on how each of these methods influenced my work.
Clearly, I found Girardian mimetic theory (1) useful in mapping out the mutually exclusive relationships of “Israel” and “Jericho,” which are problemitized by Rahab, who remains outside of both full identities. While Rahab can be seen as the “victim” or “spoil of war,” the remainder of the exterminated Canaan, I believe she can also be read as subverting the system of mimetic rivalry. By the Deuteronomic author’s ironic twisting of her social status: rather than being a princess who can be claimed as a spoil of war, Rahab is portrayed as a prostitute, a woman of marginal status, who cannot be more dehumanized socially by being taken as a prisoner of war. And according to the narrative, Rahab is taken into the midst of Israel as a privileged refugee, a saver of the conquest of Jericho and ally of Israel. In addition, Rahab subverts the mimetic system through her covenantal interaction with the spies—immediately removing herself from the rivalrous engagement over the land. Allying herself with Israel and Israel’s God, Rahab is not concerned with rightful possession of the land, because she demonstrates a dual “Insider” relation to God and the land.
I also use literary criticism to compare the Ugaritic Legend of Keret with the literary construct of Joshua 2-6 to aid my redaction (2) and my argument (3). While I don’t present the full comparison myself, relying on other scholars’ works which go into more depth of comparison, using conclusions from this comparison in my attempts to locate Rahab as a literary figure, suggest a conclusion to the redactionary question of the necessity of including Rahab’s figure in the rest of the Jericho narrative. The subversive nature of Rahab in Jericho’s story becomes strikingly apparent when contrasted to the Legend of Keret—suggesting both a critique of conquest, as well the importance of Rahab’s marginal status to the victory of Israel.
Literary comparison also highlights the ironic natures of Rahab’s character within the whole narrative structure as a prostitute-heroine. While I considered attempting to remove Rahab from a patriarchal stratification of “prostitute,” my reading of Rahab’s assigned status by the author and Christian memory is more subversive than harmful, and increases her agency to Israel’s conquest. As Merling notes, “attempts to distance Rahab from harlotry undermine the literary intentions of the biblical writers,” a status/occupation which “provides the initial drama in the story.”[19] Since the role of Rahab’s occupation/marginal status plays such a crucial position in the Jericho narrative, to read her as a later addition to a narrative which is suspiciously crafted in mockery of a native Canaanite tale seems unnecessary. Comparison to the Legend of Keret allows me to read Rahab as an integral, subversive element to both the themes of God’s participation in violent conquest and her status as an accepted “outsider.”
My primary concern with the themes of “insider”/”outsider” status is not only to demonstrate the rivalrous nature of Israel and Jericho’s claims to the land of Canaan, but to problemitize the change of Rahab’s status from quintessential outsider to a Hebrew of Hebrews. The language of the passage itself does not seem to accommodate such conclusions—Rahab is never “amongst” the Israelite community, but remains an “outsider”. Analysis of the “insider” and “outsider” motif of depicting the characters and communities within the Jericho conquest narratives offers the most profound critique of Joshua’s conquest. Since Rahab never is called an “Israelite,” but remains an alien in their midst, “there is no sense in which her group is a threat; the danger to Israel’s existence lies within the camp.”[20]
Comments about Exegesis:
I approach this text with the assumption that my audience is extremely familiar with the story of the Jericho conquest, so familiar in fact, as I discuss in my introduction, that there is a need for distance from the story to be able to see its subversive, ironic nature. While I do not go into in depth exegesis for this essay, I rely on commentaries and the exegesis of other scholars. The particular verses I pay the most attention to, 2.8-14 in which Rahab and the spies make a covenant, and 6.22-25 which discusses the various positions of Rahab’s family after their salvation to the Israelite community. I do very few references to the text itself, only pointing to these verses which demonstrate my point most clearly. I did not make use of any Christian intertextual scriptures—from Hebrews or James—which might be helpful to mention when discussing Christian memory of Rahab as an example of Gentile faith, but omitted due to length of this paper.
Concluding Concerns- Conversion and Incorporation.
I wonder how much Christian imagination should be affected by Jewish imagination of Rahab. In Christian imagination outside of the of the Jericho narrative, Rahab is memorialized as an ancestor of the Christ (Matt. 1.5), an example of salvific faith (Heb. 11.31) and an example of active, living faith which produces works (Jas. 2.25). For this particular work, the most I may do with these New Testament references is to allude to them, because I view these books as products of the Jewish/Christian era, not Israel, and my focus is on the memory of Rahab as an included outsider in Israelite identity narratives. There is no mention of her marriage to Joshua, which becomes a crucial part of Rabbinic imagination of Rahab and her supposed “conversion.” The Judaic depiction of Rahab seems to exploit her marginality as a prostitute—demonstrating that God can reach the most fallen—while the Christian perspective can offer a position criticizing the very notion of violent colonization of “Others.” For a post-Shoah interpretation of Rahab, rejection of the colonization or elimination of “Others” seems most apt.
I am rejecting the notion of conversion, which is an extremely prevalent theme throughout the majority of Christian literature on Rahab, as well as the few Jewish sources I looked at. Besides rejecting the notion of conversion because it seems to large a conclusion to draw from the literary evidence of the text, I believe the notion of Rahab as a convert clouds her crucial role in Christian interpretation of our hermeneutical relationship to Judaism. My perspective is largely informed by the Christian memory of Rahab, as a model of faithfulness, which is diffused by reading Rahab as a convert who takes on not only the tribal identity of Israel, the ritualistic identity as well. Also, the depiction of Rahab as a convert situates her within the context of the mimetically rivalrous relationship of Canaanites and Israelites, a relationship I have attempted to demonstrate that she subverts rather than participates in.
[1] Livingstone & Myers.
[2] Hawk 90; Mitchell 166-7; and Merling 40.
[3] Myers.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Marieke den Braber and Jan-Wim Wesselius, 253.
[6] Hawk 41.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Joshua 2.1-14, English Standard Version.
[9] Hawk 42.
[10] Ibid. 46.
[11] Merling 42.
[12] Ibid. 43.
[13] Sharp 101.
[14] Wu 76.
[15] Joshua 6.17; Hawk 103.
[16] Hawk 103.
[17] Mitchell 47.
[18] Sharp 102.
[19] Merling 34.
[20] Mitchell 163.
Tuesday, 08 March 2011
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Mizmor l'david 23: A Cry to a Shepherd
From the next room, strains of the minor, hauntingly beautiful Mizmor l'david 23 arranged by Rabbi Menachem Creditor and sung by him and the group HaMakom.... it is one of those absolutely gorgous pieces, prayers that wrenches your heart, comforts you and makes you long deeper for our Lord... wherever you are in you walk and life. And I am in such a place where I feel that ache strongly again. Eating away at the marrow of my bones. Pushing me forward
Adonai, my life, light of hope and conveyor of salvation giver
of all that i squander daily; in searching for you, i have given
away all the times and energies i solely poured into you... but
i feel i am somehow pouring into the wider spread of your arms
and still missing you. where is the hiddenness with you in the dark
places of my heart that i used to know so intimately and now find
in the dark places of sleepless, working nights... where dreams
are still thick and untainted by my living-with in the world... my
strength has been shown to me such weak stuff that i need a soul's
shepherd and what i mistook for strength is perhaps my subborn will
when broken, able to see, but so demolished and disabled in the breaking
i hardly think your will is always to crush me. where is the using i was
promised? hid with god in dark places. i used to be sleepless in craving
love over you and here i am again, here i have been for so long, just
too tired to give voice. will you only act when the desperation of my heart
screams out at you again, or moans softly on a bed covered with tears of
missing. you made the world out of the creativity your yearning to love
spun forth and i, dust that i am, what am i making of the holes in my soul?
i used to talk to you about holes in the hands, and i have achieved holes
only elsewhere, wounds on other parts of my anatomy. and in giving, i
am still spent up; are you reminding me of my finitude or am i doing
this to me. you, i told you long ago to use me up and i never learned how
to let go enough... the rapturous bliss of that ache, still so raw and fresh in
my soul i taste the salt of blood, and yet it harks of another ache, the
singularity of aloneness. you claim that place of the heart for yourself alone
and you will not share or be shared as such. so how are you the cleaver that
separates lover from beloved, as well as the tie which binds a bond never
to be broken... only frayed by the clamor of ringing human hearts?
this sounds more like the bleating of a frightened little sheep than the
crying to a shepherd, but i am told you still love me.
Thursday, 12 August 2010
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On atonement, first thoughts
I have been increasingly more fascinated by that subject in Paul and atonement in Rom 3.21-31 (vs. the Galatians 4 Hagar and Sarah issue I was working on) as the summer has gone on… this week I attended lectures with Congregation Netivot Shalom about the high holidays coming up…we had a talk on the scapegoat and something struck me that I didn’t pick up in our class: atonement is completely different between Judaism and Christianity (allowing for plurality of opinions in both).
On Yom Kippur, who got the better deal, the sacrificed goat to Adonai or the goat for Azazel? Death or life? The sins on the scapegoat’s head were allowed sent off into the wilderness, not destroyed. The speaker drew out an interesting comparison: the Israelites wandering around the wilderness for 40 years were led into it by God, and couldn’t get out without his help; so it seems the wilderness was a safe place to send sins. It seems to me from the discussion, the Conservative Jews engaging in the discussion were willing to agree that atonement does not eradicate sin, it takes care of the relational issues with God and gives sin a safe place to be. How different from Christianity, eh? As the talk was going on, someone brought up Jesus, and how Christians discuss him as a scapegoat. I was already thinking, what does atonement mean for Christians?
We saw in our God, Bible, Non-Violence class that Girard’s attempts to equate Jesus with the scapegoat gave us a really shoddy parallel. One woman at the synagogue said she thought Christians had to have Jesus be raised from the dead, so he could be the scapegoat. Was Jesus stepping into the place of both goats? I have rarely heard Christians specifically talk about Jesus as the scapegoat in a Day of Atonement sacrifice of eschatological proportions. Yet, in some way we talk about Jesus that we theologically. we quote the NT, “For Christ died for sins, one for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the spirit.” I Peter 3.18 But I grew up with a comparison between Jesus and the Lamb of Pesach…. his blood as a covering to preserve us from death. Catholicism seems to have preserved that way of considering Jesus; liturgically and theologically I have often heard Jesus spoken of as the Paschal Lamb… but obviously this is a very loose comparison.
What DOES Christianity mean in considering Jesus the atoning sacrifice for our sins? How do we read leviticus 16 as well as the Exodus Pesach discussion and understand Jesus to have accomplished these things for us in some kind of in-time-out-of-time setting? These are the questions I am struggling with in my faith, and considering struggling with in my thesis as well… though I have gone some ways into Hagar and Sarah. That’s a fascinating issue, but atonement in Romans 3.21-31 might be a better way to make my Pauline thesis theological and open to the interreligious Jewish-Christian dialog.
So here’s an attempt to begin an analysis between the Leviticus 16 day of atonement…. And the atonement theologically understood to be accomplished at Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection in Christianity. My mentor tells me I need to look at Hebrews 8 and 9, texts which make the comparison of Jesus and Day of Atonement-like stuff…. But I want to focus primarily on this Pauline text of Romans 3.21-31. I will write down some more in-depth thoughts about Jesus and atonement after I analyze those texts, but for now I’ll stick with Paul and the theological understanding passed along in Christian verbal traditions. So we Christians tend to see Jesus as eradicating sins in atonement, taking our place for God’s wrath or some sort of punishment… or so we? What does Jesus’ death do for our condition, our sin? Will we go one sinning or do we have a choice in the matter? What kind of salvation are we talking about? In my personal beliefs, God does not turn blind eyes towards sin once we are “his children.” So is atonement making right the past relationship that was sullied, and moving forward with hope for better?
In Christian Scriptures, we have comparisons of Jesus to the Paschal lamb and to something akin to day or atonement sacrifice magnitude. But there’s a huge difference between scapegoat and sacrifice, no? Jesus died. Was he the goat that was killed for sins? But he did also rise from the dead,does that mean he was also the goat come back from the wilderness, a feat only God could have accomplished? Obviously direct parallels would be very hard and tenuous to draw… so maybe looking at the theological significance of the Paschal and Yom Kippur animal sacrifices might be the best way to approach the differences in Christian and Jewish understandings of atonement. Of course, all of this must be done in the context of community and covenant… two things which I wonder if Christianity today really understands.
Tuesday, 03 August 2010
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Hiddenness from the Inside Out
Hiddenness from the Inside Out
I sit before work, straightening the threads of life that reorganize my existence into
A tapestry of existing. Each thing I think, do, act upon… the consequence of movements
And lack of doing. Cold coffee sits next to 1000 pg fiction on a desk littered with research
Materials, journals, articles, text books… the air silently hovering around me lightens with
A quiet breeze, stirring tall pines and my inward movement of thoughts. Where am
I hiding the me that would express in clamoring intonations and resonances that seemed
To shatter the darkness of my internal incognito: the world is my fishbowl, but my eyes
Looking from inside out see only the murkiness of each movement forward, blindness is
Often the companion that spurns on the searching I do; resting in between each breath,
The marathon of life shows me something more is hidden inside than I can imagine.
I think your purpose, Spirit of my God, is to draw it out and into union with you, communion
With the rest who share the spirit. Yet what does that mean, how abstract, and how comforting
When the entirety of my day has been spent in the menial labors of the mind and manipulation
Of the stuff in my life… thought-stuff and physical objects… more papers to file everyday, more
Research to note-take on, to fill out my ideas and to feed the imaginative struggle to produce,
To create the being that is hidden inside of me. Voice of imagination, I have wondered down
Your dark corridors, battering continually at my darkened fish bowl, dissatisfied with every
Attempt to be more. Less is more, you tell me, and so I divest of some things and thoughts alike…
Where is the meaning of purity, do I flee or fight the shadows clinging to the edges of my
Small, circumfrual world of this glass case. Should I stay here forever, or go forth from this place?
I live the existence of a wanderer, a traveler, a sojourner who grows so weary as to rest from time to time; to take leave of the tiresome introspective battle and journey on the outside in the
Playground of everyday, people coming and going, me in my quiet room, trying hard to listen to
The unknown that keeps knocking at the glass bowl around me. I know the world I float in is so limited, so I welcome its expansion into more… yet I wonder how much stretching I can take before
My hands and feet tear and break… You tell me I’m clay and will melt down again, flop off the
Pedestal of beauty I have tried to imitate, and be shorn down to a mere lump, shavings
Collected and reformed, reborn anew. An endless cycle, my ups and downs? Should I believe it?
Is it true, or only until all that is hidden is made known, the secrets kept become revealed and
I am complete in what/who You believed me to be, in the essence of being, before I knew?
As I keep the questions flowing let me never let go of the glimpses of you, let my courage
Continue though it waver to press through illusions in the running search for You.
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Anrwaluin
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- Name: Hannah
- Location: Ohio, United States
- Gender: Female
- Member Since: 9/23/2003
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Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo! (A Star Shines upon the hour of our meeting!) I am Hannah, Hanja, "Sis," Hane (Tolkienian Elvish-Quendi-dialect version of my name) and a variety of other names. The posts on this site are reflections of my thoughts and meditations on Scripture, etc. This quote sums up my view of anyone who denies God: "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -C.S. Lewis
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Heading off into the wild blue yonder of my sky sheets to rest before paper route.
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