Acting Like Apes

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A few weeks ago, my family went ape. Literally. Within the space of seven days, we visited the primate exhibits at the San Diego Zoo, watched an IMAX film about Jane Goodall, borrowed an educational video about apes from the library and viewed 2001: A Space Odyssey. (We gave the Planet of the Apes series a pass.)

I enjoyed seeing the glow of recognition on my young boys’ faces as they observed young primates tussling with each other and cuddling with a parent. The older child understands the basics of evolution; the younger still asks, “Daddy, which kind of monkey did I use to be?”

Always on the job, my own thoughts turned to the Bible. I reflected on how biblical characters exhibit behaviors observable among our simian relations. That the actions of real and literary humans should resemble those of wild primates is not surprising. After all, we share over 03698 percent of our genetic material with the great apes, making us closer kin than, say, the zebra is to the horse (according to the aforesaid video).

Moreover, the mythology of many peoples intuits the relationship in stories accounting for our obvious structural similarities to simians: Monkeys are botched humans, punished humans or ghosts of dead humans. It would be interesting to know what Israelites made of monkeys. But, unfortunately, they are mostly off the Bible’s radar, although Solomon received some as curiosities (1 Kings 10:22), and the derogatory epithet “dog’s head” (used by Saul’s general Abner in 2 Samuel 3:8) conceivably refers to the cynocephalous, or dog-headed, baboon.¹

Although some primates are matriarchal, the stereotypical simian troop—in fact the stereotypical troop for almost all social mammals—is dominated by one male, the “alpha,” to whom the lesser males and females, “betas,” submit. Having won his position by display and/or combat, the alpha must continually defend it. Eventually, he is defeated and driven off by a younger, stronger challenger, who confiscates the females.

Many researchers, most notably Sir James Frazer and Sigmund Freud, have hypothesized that our ancestors lived similarly. In The Golden Bough (1890), Frazer assembled myths from around the globe to argue that kingship was not originally hereditary. Instead, each king had to earn his rank by killing his predecessor. Frazer’s thesis has not fared well in subsequent research, although as a compendium The Golden Bough remains invaluable.

Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913) is better grounded, at least in its starting premise. The prototypical human social group was the “Primal Horde,” consisting of an alpha male surrounded by his daughter-mates and son-rivals. Eventually, thought Freud, the sons united to kill the father and mate with his women. Ever since, guilt over this original sin, the Oedipal Complex, has conditioned and tormented the male psyche.

Freud’s notion of acquired, hereditary shame violates common sense. Yet his theory does paint a plausible picture of the earliest humans as living in ape-like, male-dominated troops. While it is not conceivable that, in a quasi-Lamarckian fashion, a killer could transmit guilt-feeling to his offspring, it is extremely likely that all human beings inherit social instincts of submissiveness and rivalry from our common forebears.

What has this to do with the Bible?

Take Lamech, a bloodthirsty descendant of Cain and the world’s first polygamist. In good primate fashion, Lamech attempts to impress his women and any would-be male rivals with his aggressive display: “I have killed (or ‘would kill’)² a man for my wound, a boy for my injury. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23–24). One imagines considerable chest-beating accompanying this speech.

Consideration of our simian kin also illuminates the biblical theme of young men battling their fathers and each other over the control of women. For, like 037the apes and unlike us Americans (in theory, anyway), high-status Israelite males were polygamous. Solomon, the extreme case, is credited with three hundred concubines and seven hundred wives (1 Kings 11:3). Women, in contrast, were allowed but one husband at a time, on pain of death.³

For a younger male to make a power move by taking a senior male’s females is a surprisingly common theme in the Bible. The motif makes its first brief appearance in Genesis 35:22, “Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine; and [his father] Israel [a.k.a. Jacob] heard of it.” Apparently the patriarch saved his revenge for an opportune moment, for on his deathbed he cursed his son, the outrage apparently still fresh, “Unstable as water, you shall not flourish, Because you went onto your father’s bed; Then you defiled it. He got onto my couch!” (Genesis 49:4).

Two other sons incur Jacob’s wrath. Usurping their father’s right, Simeon and Levi take it on themselves to control the marriage prospects of their sister Dinah. However deplorable, their savage slaughter of the Shechemites shows that they possess the vigor their father has lost (Genesis 34). They, too, receive a dying father’s curse: “As for the brothers Simeon and Levi … my soul shall not enter their council … for in their anger they killed men … Cursed their anger—how strong!—and their wrath—how harsh! I shall divide them among Jacob, and scatter them among Israel” (Genesis 49:5–7).

As Frazer and Freud might have predicted, the possession of women becomes particularly crucial in the early Israelite monarchy, before the hereditary principle is firmly established. When Saul is chosen king, he appears to possess the right alpha stuff: “No man among Israel’s sons was more handsome than he. From his shoulders and upward, he was taller than all the people” (1 Samuel 9:2, 10:23). Nonetheless, despite his physical qualifications, Saul’s popularity among the women is surpassed by his officer David’s, and the 039older king is constantly provoked by the women’s ditty, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands,” a comparison he takes as invidious (1 Samuel 18:7–8, 21:12, 29:5). The women’s instincts are correct: Throughout the story, Saul displays a lack of confidence that a modern reader would trace to acute paranoia if not bipolar disorder.

Ordinarily, Saul might expect to be succeeded by his son Jonathan. But the Bible presents Jonathan as a clear beta male, constantly deferring to his friend David: “Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he wore, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his girdle” (1 Samuel 18:4). To clinch his claim to the throne, David marries Jonathan’s two sisters Michal and Merab, daughters of Saul (1 Samuel 18:17–27).⁴ Threatened by David, Saul plans to take Michal back; he even promises her to someone else (Palti of Gallim, 1 Samuel 25:44). But David reclaims Michal, as she embodies both his right to the succession and his manly prowess (2 Samuel 3:13–14).

It is possible that David confiscates Saul’s wives as well as his daughters. Saul and David each have a wife named Ahinoam (1 Samuel 14:50, 25:43). Might she be the same person?⁵ The prophet Nathan later reminds David that God has given him “your master’s house and your master’s women” (2 Samuel 12:8). The latter term, nāšîm, could conceivably refer to Michal and Merab, who are literally women belonging to Saul. But more typically nāšîm connotes wives. In either case, in inheriting Saul’s women David inherited Saul’s power.

David’s succession is not uncontested, for Saul’s son Ishbaal (also called Ishbosheth) initially ruled the North (2 Samuel 2—4). “At the time when there was the war between Saul’s House and David’s House, [Saul’s general] Abner was amassing strength in Saul’s House. Now, Saul had had a concubine named Rizpah, Ayah’s daughter, and he [Ishbaal] said to Abner, ‘Why did you come in to my father’s concubine?’” (2 Samuel 3:6–7). Ishbaal appears to have regarded Abner’s act as a play 040for power. Aggrieved, Abner resolves to go over to David’s side.

As king, David is not content with Merab and Michal. We know of six other wives before he reaches the apex of his power (1 Samuel 3:2–5). And then there is Bathsheba, whom David confiscated from Uriah the Hittite, killing the cuckolded officer to boot (2 Samuel 11). God condemns David to spend the rest of his life suffering the consequences for his transgressions of adultery and murder. The death of his first child with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12:14–23) is followed by a legacy of violence. “The sword will not depart from your house forever,” Nathan warns (1 Samuel 12:10). As the final stroke, God promises to “take your women/wives before your eyes and give them to your kinsman, and he will lie with your wives/women under the eyes of yon sun; for you acted in secret, but I shall do this thing in the presence of all 046Israel and in the presence of the sun” (2 Samuel 12:11). David will suffer the ultimate social emasculation, losing his women to a younger male publicly.

David’s eldest son Amnon should be his heir, but there is as yet no precedent of primogeniture. So Amnon forcibly lies with his half-sister Tamar, thus taking one of David’s women. Both before and after the rape, Tamar proposes that Amnon simply marry her, which would solve her problem: instead of a unmarriageable nonvirgin princess, she might become queen.⁶ But Tamar’s full brother Absalom, who stands to lose most from this arrangement, assassinates Amnon, dooming Tamar to spinsterhood and putting himself in line for the throne. Absalom takes his sister Tamar into his house, presumably to maintain possession of her person (2 Samuel 13:20).

Some time later, Absalom openly rebels against David. The king flees Jerusalem, leaving behind his ten concubines. The text tells us he left them to keep an eye on things (2 Samuel 15:16), but it is clearly a sign of submission. David is giving up his women. Not surprisingly, Absalom finds the harem and publicly lies with them in a tent, thus “in the presence of all Israel and in the presence of the sun” (2 Samuel 16:22). Again, one of David’s sons enacts Nathan’s curse. But David has not surrendered entirely. He has his mercenaries and presumably his chief wives with him, and eventually he retakes Jerusalem. Against David’s orders, Absalom is slain, and one would think the curse has finally worked its course (1 Samuel 18).

Eventually, David decays into sexual impotency: Although his concubine Abishag is fairest in the land, “the king did not know her” (1 Kings 1:4)—in the biblical sense. Even after his death, David undergoes one more insult to his manhood. Against the odds, David’s youngest son Solomon, child of Bathsheba, succeeds to the throne. Solomon hesitatingly permits his eldest half-brother Adonijah to live, although Adonijah has many followers and has apparently made a bid for the kingship (1 Kings 1:5–7). But then, in an act of such stupidity that one strongly suspects a set-up, Adonijah asks Solomon for David’s concubine Abishag. The supposed request is conveyed through Bathsheba, who may well have concocted the whole story to eliminate her son’s only living rival.⁷ Solomon expostulates to his mother: “And why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother … God do so to me and more also if this word does not cost Adonijah his life!” Adonijah is forthwith executed (1 Kings 2:13–25). Another child of David has died for claiming one of David’s women.

After Solomon, with few exceptions the Judahite royal succession proceeds in an orderly manner to the eldest surviving son. The wild, woolly days, when men acted like homicidal apes, using sex and violence to assert status, are over. Or else the text just stops talking about it.⁸

A few weeks ago, my family went ape. Literally. Within the space of seven days, we visited the primate exhibits at the San Diego Zoo, watched an IMAX film about Jane Goodall, borrowed an educational video about apes from the library and viewed 2001: A Space Odyssey. (We gave the Planet of the Apes series a pass.) I enjoyed seeing the glow of recognition on my young boys’ faces as they observed young primates tussling with each other and cuddling with a parent. The older child understands the basics of evolution; the younger still asks, “Daddy, which kind of […]