Although the King James Version is a fundamental work of Western literature, it has come to be regarded as passé and politically incorrect in many circles nowadays. Some modern translators are much more forthcoming about the “forbidden” elements of the Bible than the KJV—the superb Anchor Bible, for example, offers fresh and lucid translations of both the Hebrew and the Christian books of the Bible and explains the real meanings of the biblical text in line-by-line annotations. Still, the newer Bible translations that have replaced the stately old KJV have not matched its grandeur and resonance of language. The new translations are more accurate in their scholarship, more forthcoming in their exploration of history, linguistics, and theology, but something has been sacrificed in the process.
Here is a comparison of Genesis 1:1–3 as it appears in a 1909 edition of the King James Version and two more recent renderings of the Hebrew text.
King James Version (1909) New English Bible (1970) New JPS Translation (1985)
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and dark… ness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.6 In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the earth, and a mighty wind that swept over the surface of the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light; and God saw that the light was good, and he separated light from darkness.7 When God began to create heaven and earth-the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surfaces of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light” and there was light.8
Since the debate over the proper approach to biblical translation is an old, contentious, and highly technical one, I will not belabor it here except to invite the reader to ponder which of the readings of Genesis he or she finds more resonant and meaningful.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
A terrible price was paid by the courageous observers who first proposed that the Bible was written by human beings. Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jewish community; the daring work of an early Bible scholar named Andreas Van Maes was banned by the Catholic Church; and the writings of a French Calvinist named Isaac de la Peyrere were burned. Even today, some true believers refuse to entertain the notion that men and women—merely mortal if also divinely inspired—put down the words on parchment and paper that so many seekers of truth all over the world regard as sacred.
What I have tried to suggest in this book is that some of the richest and most meaningful passages of the Bible—and some of the most instructive moral examples—can be found in stories that have been censored or suppressed precisely because they tell stories that are so deeply human. In a sense, then, the established religious authorities of all ages and all faiths have been far more comfortable with the notion that the Bible consists only of pristine moral pronouncements from on high and not the revelations of real men and women struggling with the messier challenges of life on earth.
Thankfully, however, it is no longer considered heresy to contemplate and explore the human authorship of the Bible—and, I suggest, the experience of reading the Bible is all the richer and more accessible if we do. “The sacred writer,” as the Catholic Church conceded more than a half century ago, may be properly (and even piously) regarded as “the living and reasonable instrument of the Holy Spirit.”9 More recently, as we have already seen, Harold Bloom has put the same thought in slightly more secular terms, when he characterizes the Torah as no more and no less “the revealed Word of God” than Dante, Shakespeare, or Tolstoy.
So, even if we disagree on the outer limits of divine inspiration when it comes to the writing of books by mortal men and women, we all seem to start at the same place: the Bible.
CHRONOLOGY
The dating of many events and works in early biblical history is the subject of much controversy among scholars, and thus all dating is approximate and, in many instances, speculative. I have adopted the designation Before the Common Era (B.C.E.) in place of the more familiar Before Christ (B.C.) to indicate events that occurred before the birth of Jesus, and the designation Common Era (C.E.) in place of Anno Domini (“In the Year of Our Lord,” or A.D.).
ENDNOTES
See Recommended Reading and Bibliography for complete citations.
CHAPTER ONE
1. Susan Niditch, “The Wronged Woman Righted,” Harvard Theological Review 72, nos. 1-2 (January-April 1979): 149.
2. Marvin H. Pope, “Euphemism and Dysphemism in the Bible,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols., ed. David Noel Freedman (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 1, 725.
3. Pope, ABD, vol. 1, 725.
4. G. Vermes, “Baptism and Jewish Exegesis,” New Testament Studies 4 (1957-1958) (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1958): 314.
5. Ralph Klein, “Chronicles, Book of, 1-2,” in ABD, vol. 1, 997.
6. Robert Gordis, The Biblical Text in the Making (Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1937), 30.
7. Pope, ABD, vol. 1, 721.
8. Pope, ABD, vol. 1, 722.
9. Leonard J. Greenspoon, “Rahab (Person),” in ABD, vol. 5, 611.
10. Murray L. Newman, “Rahab and the Conquest,” in Understanding the Word, ed. James T. Butler, Edgar W. Conrad, and Ben C. Ollenburger (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1985), 180, fn. 34, citing John L. McKenzie, The World of the Judges (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 48.
11. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 125. “The word kabod can have a spiritual meaning—its usual translation is ‘glory’—but also a visceral one: It is the standard word for ‘liver.’ According to the eminent linguist and Bible scholar Marvin H. Pope, kabod probably alludes to male genitalia at Job 29:20, where ‘glory’ is still the correct translation, even though genitalia are to be understood.”
12. Roland E. Murphy, “Song of Songs, Book of,” in ABD, vol. 6, 153-54.
13. Sid Z. Leiman, “The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture,” Transactions 47 (February 1976): 72.
14. Murphy, ABD, vol. 6, 153-54.
15. Julian Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of Shechem, or The Politics of Sex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 156.
16. Pitt-Rivers, 146.
17. Pitt-Rivers, 126.
18. “Potiphar,” Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, copyright 1969 The Really Useful Group plc (PRS). Rights in the United States administered by Colgems-EMI Music, Inc. (ASCAP).
19. Mordechai Richler, St. Urbain’s Horseman (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 242-43.
20. Michael Ventura, “Letters at 3 A.M.,” LA Village View (December 24-30, 1993): 5.
21. Reynolds Price, A Palpable God (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985), 3.
CHAPTER THREE
1. Larry R. Helyer, “The Separation of Abraham and Lot,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 26 (June 1983): 77.
2. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1909-1938), vol. 5, 240, n. 171. See also T. Desmond Alexander, “Lot’s Hospitality,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104, no. 2 (June 1985): 289-91.
3. Haim Z’ew Hirschberg, “Lot,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 7 vols. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House), vol. 11, 507.
4. Ginzberg, vol. 5, 243, n. 188.
5. “Minyan” in EJ, vol. 12, 67.
6. Ginzberg, vol. 1, 252.
7. George W. Coats, “Lot,” in Understanding the Word, ed. James T. Butler, Edgar W. Conrad, and Ben C. Ollenburger (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1985), 120.
8. Sharon Pace Jeansonne, “The Characterization of Lot in Genesis,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 18, no. 4 (October 1988): 123, citing Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A New Reading (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 235-36.
9. Jeansonne, 126.
10. Jeansonne, 123, citing Claus Wester
mann, John Skinner, and Bruce Vawter.
11. Coats, 129.
12. J. H. Hertz, ed., The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, 2d ed. (London: Soncino Press, 1981), 67, n. 8.
13. Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 85-86.
14. Patai, 84, 133-135.
15. R. E. Clements, “The Relation of Children to the People of God in the Old Testament,” Baptist Quarterly 11, no. 5 (January 1966): 196. See also Neh. 5:1–5, 2 Kings 4:1–7, and Exod. 21:7–8.
16. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), vol. 1, 41.
17. Jeansonne, 124, citing John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930), 307.
18. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, rev. ed. (London: S. C. M. Press, Ltd., 1972), 218.
19. L. Hicks, “Lot,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), vol. K-L, 163.
20. Jeansonne, 127, citing Gen. 34 (see chapter four), Gen. 38 (see chapter six), Judg. 19 (see chapter twelve), and 2 Sam. 13 (see chapter fourteen).
21. C. J. H. Wright, “Family,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols., ed. David Noel Freedman (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 2, 767-68. “[T]here is much in the [Old Testament) to indicate that love, joy, care and honor were to be found in the Israelite home.”
22. Jeansonne, 124.
23. Coats, 123-24.
24. Warren Kliewer, “The Daughters of Lot,” ILIFF Review 25, no. 1 (winter 1968): 27.
25. Alexander, 291.
26. Gerald A. Larue, Sex and the Bible (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1983), 91.
27. Larue, 91-92.
28. Edmund Leach, “Why Did Moses Have a Sister?” in Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth, ed. Edmund Leach and D. Alan Aycock (Cambridge [England] and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 59-60, fn. 35.
29. Larue, 95.
30. Larue, 93.
31. E. A. Speiser, tr., intro., and notes, Genesis, Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1986), 91-93.
32. Von Rad, 167.
33. Julian Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of Shechem, or The Politics of Sex (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 151-152, citing Speiser, de Vaux, and von Rad.
34. Speiser, 92-93.
35. Speiser, 93.
36. Anson Rainey, “Concubine,” in EJ, vol. 5, 862.
37. Ginzberg, vol. 1, 264.
38. Speiser, 155, n. 9.
39. Coats, 123.
40. Larue, 99. “Expulsion because of jealousy seems too harsh…. [E]xpulsion because of molestation seems more natural.”
41. von Rad, 217.
42. von Rad, 217.
43. Carol A. Newsom, “Angels,” in ABD, vol. 1, 249.
44. Speiser, 139, n. 11.
45. Bernard J. Bamberger, “Angels and Angelology,” in EJ vol. 2, 957.
46. Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 27-28.
47. Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Abraham and the Righteous of Sodom,” Journal of Jewish Studies 33, nos. 1-2 (spring-autumn 1982): 119, n. 1.
48. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, in The Harper Anthology of Poetry, ed. John Frederick Nims (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 574-575.
49. Speiser, 142.
50. Hermann Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 34.
51. D. Alan Aycock, “The Fate of Lot’s Wife” in Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth, ed. Edmund Leach and D. Alan Aycock (Cambridge [England] and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 116.
52. Ginzberg, vol. 1, 255.
53. Aycock, 118.
54. Aycock, 115.
55. The young woman whose dance so charmed Herod that he granted her wish and gave her John the Baptist’s head on a platter is not named in the New Testament (Matt. 14:6–8; Mark 6:22–25), but the ancient historian Josephus gives her name as Salome. RSV, 1189-1190, n. 14.1-12.
56. Ginzberg, vol. 5, 243, n. 188.
57. Ginzberg, vol. 5, 243, n. 188.
58. von Rad, 223.
59. Clements, 201.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Michael Maswari Caspi, “The Story of the Rape of Dinah,” Hebrew Studies 26, no. 1 (1985): 29, citing Midrash Rabbah Genesis.
2. Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909-1938), vol. 1, 395.
3. Ita Sheres, Dinah’s Rebellion (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 6-7.
4. Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 446.
5. Martin Kessler, “Genesis 34—An Interpretation,” Reformed Review 19, no. 1 (September 1965): 4, fn. 6, citing Gerhard von Rad.
6. E. A. Speiser, tr., intro., and notes, Genesis, Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986), 262.
7. Sheres, 1.
8. Sternberg, 446.
9. Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn, “Tipping the Balance,” Journal of Biblical Literature 110, no. 2 (summer 1991): 207.
10. Fewell and Gunn, 196, n. 4.
11. Julian Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of Shechem, or The Politics of Sex (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 146-47.
12. Gila Ramras-Rauch, “Fathers and Daughters,” in “Mappings of the Biblical Terrain,” ed. Vincent L. Tollers and John Maier, Bucknell Review 33, no. 2, 1990, p. 161, citing the work of Samuel Sandel.
13. James Kugel, “The Story of Dinah in the Testament of Levi,” Harvard Theological Review 85, no. 1 (1992): 2.
14. Fewell and Gunn, 200; Sheres, 86.
15. Sheres, 83, 85-86.
16. Caspi, 41.
17. Sheres, 86-87, 89.
18. Kugel, 16.
19. Kugel, 14, citing David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 30-34.
20. Victor H. Matthews, Manners and Customs in the Bible (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), p. 14.
21. Susan Niditch, “The Wronged Woman Righted,” Harvard Theological Review 72, nos. 1-2 (January-April 1979): 145.
22. Ramras-Rauch, 162. “[A]s a denied woman she is doomed to a life of disgrace if she is returned home unmarried, while as the wife of the converted Shechem she would have some status.”
23. Pitt-Rivers, 147-48.
24. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), vol. 1, 26.
25. Cynthia Ozick, Metaphor and Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 278-79.
26. Clinton Bailey, “How Desert Culture Helps Us Understand the Bible,” Bible Review 7, no. 4 (August 1991): 20. “All males are obliged to defend and avenge each other, just as they are all liable to suffer revenge for the misdeeds of the one. This not only gives ‘strategic depth’ to any isolated Bedouin, it also deters one Bedouin from attacking another, lest he cause hardship to the members of his clan.”
27. Sternberg, 470.
28. Fewell and Gunn, 207, fn. 24, citing Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 278.
29. Kugel, 3-5.
30. Sternberg, 472-74.
31. Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “Self-Defense,” in Encyclopoedia Judaica, 17 vols. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House), vol. 14, 126.
32. Menachem Begin, The Revolt, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1977), xxv.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1. Susan Niditch, “The Wronged Woman Righted,” Harvard Theological Review 72, nos. 1-2 (January-April): 148.
2. Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 39-40.
3. Robert Alter, “A Literary Approach to the Bible,” Commentary 60, no. 6 (December 1975): 76.
4. Elaine Adler Goodfriend, “Prostitution (OT),” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols., ed. David Noel Freedman (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 5, 505 et seq.; and Karel Van Der Toorn, “Prostitution (Cultic),” in ABD, vol. 5, 511 et seq.
5.
Eugene J. Fisher, “Cultic Prostitution in the Ancient Near East? A Reassessment,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 6 (June-October 1976): nos., 2-3, 226.
6. Mayer I. Gruber, “Hebrew Qedeshah and Her Canaanite and Akkadian Cognates,” Ugarit-Forschungen, band 198 (1996): 134.
The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible Page 39
