This was one of the
books referenced in the Grove Booklet “Fairer Sex” which I read
at the start of the year.
We might think
“sexuality” is a new topic but this book was published back in
1978, which as a child of the 80s is ages ago (although I realise for
others it might not feel that long ago).
Trible offers very
close reading of the text searching for the depth of meaning
contained within – rather than resting on surface meanings. This
also brought me to recall James Goodman's Abraham and his Son and
much of the wrestling with that story which was also search for
meaning.
Thinking about
Genesis 1.27 she writes that “although an argument form silence is
never conclusive and often dangerous, this particular one may caution
against assigning “masculine” and “feminine” attributes to
the words male and female in this poem. Open to varied meanings,
these words eschew sexual clichés.” and this becomes a key theme,
while Biblical accounts involve men and women it is often unclear
that the actions of these men and women are intended to be read as
archetypes for the appropriate actions of all men or of all women.
Later thinking about
verse where a man leaves his mother and father and joins his wife –
Trible notes that “No procreative purpose characterizes this sexual
union; children are not mentioned. Hence, the man does not leave one
family to start another; rather, he abandons familial identity for
the one flesh of sexuality.” She places this as the conclusion of a
cycle of creation – where humanity is first created as a single
being, there is then the drawing out of sexual differentiation, and
now a coming back together.
Although Trible does
not really get into issues of sexuality in terms of distinctions
between hetero- and homo- sexualities this reading suggests meanings
to this verse that can be more expansive in their application. It is
one of the verses that is currently popular with those opposed to
same-sex marriage. But we can perhaps read this verse in ways in
which its meaning renders the sex of the participants as incidental.
This can be applied across the Bible – although all the marriages
in the Biblical record are between a man and a woman (or a man and a
number of women) is the sex of the participants an important part of
whatever message about human relationships the various examples of
marriage are trying to convey to us.
The final reflection
I want to share is a point Trible picks out from Eve's dialogue with
the serpent, while God had told them not to eat from the tree Eve
quotes God saying “you shall not eat from it and you shall not
touch it.”. Trible says “Thus the woman builds 'a fence around
the Torah' a procedure that her rabbinical successors developed fully
to protect the law of God and to insure obedience to it.” Eve
counter to many depictions is “intelligent, informed, and
perceptive” - I enjoy the idea of Eve as the first rabbi, but also
because it is important to remember that sin was not born out of
passive ignorance, and being intelligent, informed, and perceptive is
no defence.
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