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Daddy's Little Girls?: an Examination of Daughters in the Hebrew Bible

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Daddy's Little Girls?: an Examination of Daughters in the Hebrew Bible Daddy’s Little Girls?: An Examination of Daughters in the Hebrew Bible By Kimberly D. Russaw Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Religion May, 2016 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Date: Herbert R. Marbury, PhD Annalisa Azzoni, PhD Douglas A. Knight, Dr.theol. Jack M. Sasson, PhD Victor Anderson PhD Copyright © 2016 by Kimberly D. Russaw All Rights Reserved Dedicated to my parents iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Daddy’s Little Girls?: An Examination of Daughters in the Hebrew Bible evolved from a simple question: “what about the daughters?” As one of three daughters, I struggled with how (in both sacred and secular settings) people often overlooked, read over, discounted, or discarded daughters in the Bible. Like many before me, I began my doctoral program with an interest in studying women in the Bible, but as I continued my studies, I narrowed my focus to this particular subset, daughters, because I identified a lacuna in the scholarship. Though scholarship included extensive treatments of women in general, or of wives and mothers in particular, there was scant attention paid to daughters. Only a few scholars treat these characters as part of their investigations of women in ancient societies, either in relation to other members of the biblical family, or as part of larger thematic investigations of violence and evil, as in the case of Jephthah’s daughter. To date, however, few scholarly projects center exclusively on daughters. The lack of scholarly focus on the daughter in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible advances the notion that only women who marry or bear children—especially male children— are worthy of critical engagement. When scholars limit the conversations around women in this way, the entire enterprise of biblical scholarship confines the conceptualization of men and women to their particular, procreative functions. Limiting the text’s literary personalities to their reproductive capabilities forecloses on the reader’s ability to attain the varied, nuanced, and complex nature of the characters in the text, and denies readers the intellectual fodder that perpetuates dynamic scholarship. When we fail to engage this material around subtle characters like the daughters, we run the risk of our enterprise becoming irrelevant for future students of the very text we find so fascinating. iv This, as Anna Julia Cooper said, is “when and where I enter.”1 My project, which reflects my scholarly commitments to narrative and ideological criticism, centers on daughters, those unmarried women who are not yet mothers that reside under the authoritative gaze and protective arm of the father, and how they negotiate systems of power in the world of the Hebrew Bible’s narratives. In my project, I read biblical daughters as robust, three--dimensional characters in hopes that readers may no longer simply read over them as ancillary characters relegated to the margins of narratives of ancient Israel. My feminist and womanist sensibilities fuel this project with a passion to ensure that my goddaughter, Avery Dawn Elmore, and her contemporaries have the tools they need to ferret out their place in the community that considers the Bible a sacred text. As they mature to adulthood, I also want my nephew, Sean William Floyd Shelton, my godson, Jonathan Maxwell Guthrie, and their friends to read the biblical text in ways that encourage them to examine the daughters they encounter as meaningful, robust, three--dimensional individuals rather than merely sexualized beings. If they can do this, they can approach their world with an expectation of greatness from everyone they encounter—including those “others” who have been discarded, minimized, and relegated to the margins of societal acceptability. Many named and unnamed individuals ensured my completion of this project. I wish to thank all of the supportive and helpful members of my dissertation committee. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Herbert R. Marbury, who served as its chair. When I presented my preliminary thoughts to him several years ago, he was encouraging, and immediately went about the work of helping me find my scholarly voice as I navigated the various phases of dissertation development. Dr. Marbury stuck with my project when others questioned, “what daughters?” as 1 Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (Cary, NC: Oxford University Press, 1990), 31. v if my project had no textual validity. Throughout the editing phase of my project, Dr. Marbury tempered his criticism with pastoral kindness and balanced his periodic elation with professional decorum. Dr. Annalisa Azzoni was a wonderful coach as I wrestled to debunk even my long- held conceptualizations of women and their roles in ancient societies. Additionally, Drs. Douglas A. Knight, Jack M. Sasson, and Victor Anderson provided important resources and critique that guided aspects of my writing process. My project has also benefitted from the insights of my many mentors, colleagues, and friends who looked me dead in my eyes, asked me how I was doing (and really meant it), entertained many of my ‘no such thing as a bad question’ bad questions, directed me to scholarly resources that made my academic life easier, and championed my personhood and my scholarship behind closed doors, in professional emails, and in private conversations. Uniquely, my seminary professor, Dr. Randall C. Bailey, continues to challenge my thinking around the awesomely radical responsibility we have as scholars of a text that so many hold sacred. Additionaly, my doctoral peer, Dr. Shively T. J. Smith, contributed to this project as a skilled conversation partner. I am indebted to the generous people of both the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) and the United Methodist Church. Dr. Sharon Fluker, Stephen Lewis, Matthew Williams, and the rest of the FTE team (past and present) provided financial and professional resources along my doctoral journey that empower me to rightly claim my space in the academy and the church. Similarly, Dr. Rosetta Ross, Allyson Collingsworth, Angella Current-Felder and the rest of my United Methodist Church Women of Color Scholars Program family provided passionate (and, at times, pastoral) direction and financial support as I connected the dots between my call to both the church and the academy. Dr. Alice Hunt and the entire Chicago Theological vi Seminary community embraced me as one of their own as I coopted their Learning Commons as my workspace in order to prepare a significant portion of this project. I am also thankful to Dr. Lallene Rector and Dr. Cynthia A. Wilson of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary for a flexible work schedule that allowed me to complete this project. Finally, my family members supported me through this process in ways that I may never fully articulate. I know I have a treasure in my sisters, Kaye and Kelly, who always showed up to make sure I was well, and when I was not well, helped put a smile on my face until I got well. As I worked to finish “my paper,” my brother-in-law and my nephew made sure I did not take myself too seriously, and reminded me of the importance of a warm day and a good golf swing. For that, I am appreciative. Lastly, I am grateful to and for my parents, Drs. Floyd and Ethel Russaw, who created a home environment in which three little brown girls could find and value their unique voices in a world that tended to minimize their very presence. I thank God for each of you. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi Chapter I. Biblical Daughters 1 Introduction 1 Feminist Scholarship on Biblical Daughters 8 Virginity 9 Virginity in Ancient Near Eastern Literature 10 Virginity in Ancient Egypt 15 Virginity in the Hebrew Bible 18 Inheritance 22 Inheritance in Ancient Near Eastern Literature 23 Inheritance in the Hebrew Bible 25 Spatiality 31 Daddy’s Little Girls? 35 II. Literature Review 38 Introduction 38 Daughters in the Family 41 Father-Daughter Relations 44 Marriage and Land Tenure 50 Conclusion 57 III. Daughter Language 58 Introduction 58 Hebrew Terms that Describe Daughters 59 as Daughter 59 בת in the Torah 61 בת in the Deuteronomistic History 62 בת in the Prophets and the Writings 63 בת as Daughter 64 נערה as Daughter 67 בתולה as Daughter 70 עלמה as Daughter 73 ילדה viii as Daughter 75 אחות Other Than as a Daughter 77 בת Uses of to Describe Cities, Towns, and Their Inhabitants 77 בת in Unique Phrases 79 בת A Canonical Review of Daughters 81 Daughters in the Torah 81 Lot’s Daughters 81 Rebekah 95 Dinah 100 Pharaoh’s Daughter and Miriam 106 Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah (Zelophehad’s Daughters) 111 Daughters in the Deuteronomic History 116 Jephthah’s Daughter 116 Tamar 119 Daughters in the Prophets 121 Daughters in the Writings 123 Esther 123 Conclusion 125 IV. Power and Social Stratification 128 Introduction 128 Power 129 Power is Finite 130 Power Must Be Legitimated 131 Power is Distributed Unequally 133 Stratification of Power in Agrarian Societies 136 Power and Gender 140 The Subordination of Women 146 Women, Power, and Class 147 Gender and Class Boundaries 149 Conclusion 150 V. Daughters and Power 151 Introduction 151 Status in the World of the Biblical Daughter 152 Daughters and Systems of Power 160 Daughters’s Responses to Antagonistic Power 161 Lot’s Daughters 161 Leah 170 Dinah 172 Pharaoh’s Daughter 179 Miriam 182 Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah (Zelophehad’s Daughters) 186 Rahab 191 ix Jephthah’s Daughter 199 Tamar 207 Conclusion 220 VI. Epilogue 233 APPENDIX A 229 APPENDIX B 230 REFERENCES 231 x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary.
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