Bible Books

010

Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context

Carol Meyers
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) 247 pp., $24.95

The story of Eve and the status of women in biblical Israel share an odd fate: both are far less well understood than we would expect given the centrality of the Genesis accounts in the history of Western culture. The textual Eve has been obscured, oddly enough, by such a long history of interpretation that most of us forget, if we ever knew, that the biblical verses, Genesis 1:26–31 and 2:4–3:24, never mention sin or a fall, let alone identify the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge as an apple. In this engaging and provocative book, Carol Meyers aims to advance our understanding both of the biblical Eve in the second creation account (Genesis 2:4–3:24) and of Everywoman Eve: Israelite women living around the time of the composition of this creation story.

Genesis 2–3 was probably composed during the time of the Israelite settlement of the Palestinian highlands in the premonarchic period (c. 1200–1000 B.C.E.). Meyers accordingly seeks the context of ancient Israelite women in the social, economic, historical and ecological circumstances of these settlers. The elite male, urban, priestly, public and often bureaucratic perspective of the books of the Bible does not facilitate such study. Therefore, Meyers relies not only on careful linguistic and literary analysis, but on evidence drawn from archaeology and from anthropological studies of societies similar in many ways to that of ancient Israel, tempered by the judicious use of feminist insights.

Paradise in Genesis was the precise opposite of the real world of the Israelite settlers. In the Palestinian highlands, rain was scarce, and the soil was rocky. Gender and other social roles were integrally related to economic and ecological conditions. The household served as the central social unit, even in the religious sphere. Divisions of labor largely followed lines of gender and age, but the work of all was seen as crucial for survival, so women and their contributions were valued highly. Virtually no public institutions existed, and thus little distinction between public and private life, with the occasional exceptions of irregular military associations drawn from tribal units.

In these circumstances, women had considerable prestige and power. Formal authority almost certainly rested with men, but Meyers draws on the insights of anthropological studies to propose that male dominance was largely a culturally constructed conceit superimposed on a community that was in reality characterized by a “functional lack of hierarchy in … gender relations” (p. 44).

Social institutions and practices that many scholars have regarded as evidence of patriarchal domination of women, such as rules governing sexuality and marriage, Meyers interprets more benignly as aspects of ancient Israelite life that enhanced community prospects for survival and prosperity. Where land is the only asset, and patrilineal descent the prevailing system of inheritance and property distribution, certainty of paternity becomes crucial. Regulating the sexual behavior of women, but not men, is then of great concern. Since men had primary responsibility for the plow-based cultivation, patriliny itself was functional, transferring land to those who best knew how to farm it. Those same men held authority, especially over outsiders (wives and others) who came into the household and who needed to be instructed in the most effective ways to maximize household productivity. Such male authority did not, however, extend to all aspects of household life, nor even to all males regardless of status and age. Furthermore, such male authority prevailed without misogyny, oppression of females or belief in female inferiority.

Meyers bases her intriguing revised reading of Genesis on this reconstruction. Contrary to centuries of interpretive history, nothing in the text compels us to draw hierarchical conclusions from the order of creation. The depiction of woman as the “assistant” of man similarly does not support the conclusion that she is his inferior: On the contrary, in biblical usage, one who helps may have superior powers, as in those instances where God is portrayed as the helper of man.

Just as Eden represents all that life was not, so God’s pronouncement to Adam and Eve on their departure reflects all that life was. Only by hard work would Adam be able to produce sufficient food from the inhospitable soil, while the same climate would require Eve both to work hard and to produce more children to aid in the agricultural labor. Rather than decree that henceforth Eve will bear children in pain, Genesis 3:16, in Meyers’s persuasive translation, predicts increased toil and pregnancies for women, analogous to the increased agricultural labor of men. More problematically, Meyers proposes that God’s final words to Eve do not decree any absolute submission to her husband. Rather, because Eve, recognizing the risks of increased childbearing under the new circumstances, will resist her husband sexually, she must yield to her husband in the matter of sexual desire only.

Meyers attributes the eventual decline in women’s authority and prestige to the development of the wider public life that emerged in the wake of monarchy, to the associated regular military and bureaucratic institutions from which women were largely excluded and 011to the process of urbanization. Except for childbearing, wives of bureaucrats became increasingly less productive, radically lessening the interdependence of the sexes and disrupting the balance of power between them. Meyers insists, however, that women even then were still not associated with evil; she lays the blame for this devastating connection on the corrupting, late influence of Greco-Roman culture.

Meyers’s reading of Genesis 3:16 and her vision of early Israelite culture have much appeal. But if this hospitable egalitarianism is a direct function of impoverished economics and ecological constraints and of the absence of much public life apart from that of the household, this might suggest that women can achieve respect an parity only under the worst of economic conditions, that, paradoxically, prosperity is bad for women, or at least that relative economic ease costs women dearly.

Meyers’s work has clear modern political and social ramifications. Despite a long history as the basis for the subordination of women to men in Western culture, neither Genesis 2–3, nor the social reality of early Israelite women, supports the paradigm of male domination. Meyers thus undercuts those who adduce Genesis and biblical precedent as justification for the wholesale subordination of women to men. The creation narrative can no longer be read to justify denying women reproductive freedom, or relief from the physical discomforts of labor during childbirth, on the claim that this is what God imposed on Eve. Finally, Meyers eliminates from these texts any justification for anti-Judaism, feminist or otherwise.

Underdogs and Tricksters: A Prelude to Biblical Folklore

Susan Niditch
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987) 201 pp., $18.95

Some biblical tales, says Susan Niditch, reflect a storytelling tradition that exhibits universal patterns found in non-biblical folklore. The ones that interest her have to do with status and authority, so Niditch chooses tales of underdogs and tricksters to explore the Bible’s storytelling art. In these familiar stories, an underdog alters his or her marginal status through various forms of manipulation. This pattern can be found in traditional underdog and trickster stories in many cultures.

The first group of biblical tales presents Abraham and, later, Isaac among foreign people, such as the Egyptians (Genesis 12, 20, 26). To ensure their status in an alien, potentially hostile world, they play the part of trickster by pretending that their spouses, Sarah and Rebekkah, are their sisters. The result in each instance is the elevation of their status in the eyes of the foreigners.

The second pair of unlikely heroes are Joseph and Jacob, youngest sons, marginal people who outwit their superiors and improve their financial and social status. Jacob the trickster obtains the birthright and blessing of his older brother, Esau, and then grows wealthy in the house of Laban, his avaricious uncle, by breeding sheep. Joseph, cast off by his older brothers, ascends the ladder of power in Egypt through the exercise of wisdom, eventually to save his family from famine. The pattern of Jacob and Joseph’s lives is not unique to the Bible. It resembles tales of heroes such as Odysseus: An unusual birth is followed by family rivalry, adventures, successes in a new environment and a final resolution of rivalry.

The third tale is about a very unlikely underdog: a Jewish woman in a Persian king’s court. By acting wisely, Esther vanquishes Haman, her evil opponent, and rescues the Jews from extinction. Marginalized by gender and race, Esther can still manipulate the 043corridors of power to elevate her status and the status of her people. Yet this tale, contends Niditch, is folkloristic: It is more concerned with pattern than with personality; it has less to do with the concrete persona of Esther than it has to do with the power of wisdom to enhance one’s status through manipulation.

Although biblical tales exhibit general patterns similar to non-biblical folklore, they do differ from one another in content and style. Niditch believes these differences exist because the tales were composed and performed by storytellers to meet the needs and expectations of various audiences. For example, the Joseph and Jacob stories share a concern for status and authority, a preoccupation that is characteristic of underdog tales in other cultures, but they also differ from each other. The Jacob story closely follows the anti-authoritarian stance of trickster tales: Jacob improves his status by usurping his elder brother’s birthright and his uncle Laban’s sheep. In contrast, Joseph cooperates with foreign authorities to improve his status. What Jacob obtains by craftiness, Joseph attains by wisdom. Niditch attributes these divergent views of authority to the different audiences for whom these tales were performed. The Jacob tale appeals to popular audiences who lacked authority and could identify with Jacob, who had little recourse but to usurp authority. The Joseph tale appeals to courtly, bourgeois audiences who, as they saw it, possessed authority through their wisdom.

This underdog pattern and its various manifestations, according to Niditch, had tremendous appeal for “the Israelite composers who shaped the tales of their ancestral heroes: for throughout its history, Israel had a peculiar self-image as the underdog and the trickster” (p. xi). A story such as the one about Esther, whose scheme saved her people from destruction by the Persians, reinforced the idea that Jews could survive among alien enemies if they used their wits and kept their nerve.

This folkloristic approach to narrative, with its emphasis on oral performance, provides an important alternative to the traditional source theories of scholarship. Niditch prefers the lively image of “the composer creating in a storytelling tradition” rather than “the image of the scholar at work in the scriptorium” (p. 132). For instance, scholars have tended to regard the “wife-sister” stories as three versions of the same tale, the written products of two sources called the Yahwist and the Elohist. In contrast, Niditch argues that no single “wife-sister” tale, of which these are different versions, ever existed; rather, these tales exhibit a pattern common to the folklore of the underdog—marginal status, manipulation, improved status—and their differences are due to the adaptation of the trickster pattern to the expectations of various audiences.

Niditch’s approach can be illustrated by her interpretation of the “wife-sister” tales. She contends that Genesis 12, in which Abraham is a true trickster, was performed for a popular audience. Genesis 12, in which Abraham is on a par with foreign authorities, was performed in a sophisticated style for a courtly audience that possessed power. Genesis 26, in which Abraham is God’s protege, was performed homiletically to teach about God’s pervasive presence. These variations are not the result of different written sources but of different kinds of storytellers.

Although subtitled A Prelude to Biblical Folklore, Underdogs and Tricksters must not be mistaken for an introduction. Readers unfamiliar with folklore studies will find that the first chapter contains too brief an overview of the subject to prepare them for Niditch’s study. Indeed, not until page 28 does Niditch introduce her method of analyzing layers of pattern and meaning. The rest of the book contains excellent charts that compare the various levels of her analyses, and lucid summaries that help the reader to navigate through the detailed analyses and comparisons.

Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context
Carol Meyers
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) 247 pp., $24.95