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Weapons Upon Her Body: the Female Heroic in the Hebrew Bible

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Weapons Upon Her Body: the Female Heroic in the Hebrew Bible WEAPONS UPON HER BODY: THE FEMALE HEROIC IN THE HEBREW BIBLE by Sandra Ladick Collins B.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1981 M.A., Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, 1987 M.L.S., University of Pittsburgh, 1987 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Sandra Ladick Collins It was defended on May 18, 2009 and approved by Paula M. Kane, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies H. David Brumble, Professor, Department of English Andrew Gross, Assistant Professor of Semitics, Catholic University of America Dissertation Advisor: Adam Shear, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies ii Copyright © by Sandra Ladick Collins 2009 iii WEAPONS UPON HER BODY: THE FEMALE HEROIC IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Sandra Ladick Collins, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2009 The established interpretations of four biblical narratives—Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba—often reduce the women to stock characters who inform our ideas about biblical Israel (Rendsburg; Frymer-Kensky) or the line of David (Menn). When read for their gender information, however, one finds women who employ individual strategies of deception and trickery, motivated by self-interest, to successfully maneuver within the system to their benefit. Such initiative is valorous: they save themselves through their own pluck and ingenuity. The title of this dissertation evokes an argument that heroic biblical women carry their essential weapons upon and within themselves. This study begins by considering the historiographical background to the Hebrew Bible. Next, the four narratives are placed in context by presenting some of the major textual theories behind Genesis through Kings, the books where these stories appear. The women are incorporated into the Bible’s larger civic themes by subsuming them under the heading of “Israel,” thus deflating the characters’ gender and initiative. The action which marks these stories—women motivated by self-interest coupled with deception and an incidence of Wendy Doniger’s “bedtrick,” an instance of sexual trickery that challenges the text’s power and gender dynamics—puts these characters in league with female heroes from folk tale and legend. Folklore methodologies are then applied in order to highlight their robust action. A structuralist iv frame adapted from Vladimir Propp and Mary Ann Jezewski is applied to several biblical stories, testing their common motifs and actions with traits established by other non-biblical female heroic narratives. Strong heroic themes are found in all four narratives. A collective approach to the four narratives then uncovers the allusions, parallelisms and language which links them together and offer a trait list for the female biblical heroic. This work concludes by critiquing previous discussions of women in the Bible as well as conjecturing on the stories’ origins and their role as religious models. The dissertation argues for the efficacy of women as an analytic category as suggested by Ortner and Heilbrun and suggests how this new identification of heroic women in the Bible affects further interpretation of the Bible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................. XII 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 THE STORIES: LOT’S DAUGHTERS, TAMAR, RUTH AND BATHSHEBA ....................................................................................................................... 8 1.1.1 Lot’s Daughters ............................................................................................. 9 1.1.2 Tamar ........................................................................................................... 10 1.1.3 Ruth .............................................................................................................. 12 1.1.4 Bathsheba..................................................................................................... 13 1.1.5 Women and Ambiguity............................................................................... 15 1.2 THE HERO ........................................................................................................ 16 1.3 THE APPROACH: HISTORY, GENDER, FOLKLORE AND THE BIBLE ........................................................................................................................ 19 1.3.1 History and the Text ................................................................................... 20 1.3.2 Bible and Gender ........................................................................................ 25 1.3.3 Folklore and the Bible ................................................................................ 31 1.4 READING THE STORIES TOGETHER ....................................................... 40 1.5 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................ 41 2.0 HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE ................................................. 45 vi 2.1 HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS ................................................................. 50 2.2 BIBLE AS HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ....................................................... 56 2.3 BIBLE AS SALVATION HISTORY ............................................................... 57 2.4 BIBLE AS EPIC NARRATIVE ....................................................................... 59 2.4.1 Pentateuch ................................................................................................... 60 2.4.2 Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings ............................................................62 2.5 BIBLE AS DYNASTIC HISTORY ..................................................................67 2.5.1 Succession Narrative ...................................................................................67 2.5.2 Court History .............................................................................................. 69 2.6 BIBLE AS LITERARY NARRATIVE ............................................................72 2.6.1 History Through Language ........................................................................76 2.7 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................ 78 3.0 BIBLICAL WOMEN: LOT’S DAUGHTERS, TAMAR, RUTH AND BATHSHEBA .............................................................................................................................. 82 3.1 STANDARD APPROACHES ...........................................................................84 3.2 MY APPROACH ............................................................................................... 87 3.2.1 Approach to Bathsheba .............................................................................. 88 3.3 LOT’S DAUGHTERS ....................................................................................... 89 3.3.1 Lot’s Daughters: Interpretation ............................................................... 93 3.4 TAMAR ............................................................................................................ 100 3.4.1 Tamar: Interpretation ............................................................................. 102 3.5 RUTH ................................................................................................................ 110 3.5.1 Ruth: Interpretation ................................................................................ 114 vii 3.6 BATHSHEBA .................................................................................................. 118 3.6.1 Bathsheba: Interpretation ....................................................................... 120 3.7 THE WOMAN IN THE TEXT ...................................................................... 129 4.0 DEFINING THE FEMALE HERO ....................................................................... 132 4.1 THE WOMAN IN THE TEXT ...................................................................... 132 4.2 SEMANTICS AND HISTORY ...................................................................... 136 4.3 WHO IS A HERO? ..........................................................................................138 4.3.1 Universal Heroic Motifs ........................................................................... 139 4.4 CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MALE HEROIC .................................. 143 4.5 FEMALE HEROES......................................................................................... 149 4.6 BIBLICAL WOMEN AND APP LICATION OF THE HEROIC MODEL .................................................................................156 4.6.1 Jezewski’s Categories ............................................................................... 159 4.7 APPLICATION OF THE FEMALE HEROIC TO BIBLICAL NARRATIVES .................................................................................................................. 167 4.7.1 Barren Mothers: Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel (Genesis) ..................... 167 4.7.2 Lot’s Daughters (Genesis 19) ................................................................... 168 4.7.3 Tamar (Genesis 38) ................................................................................... 169 4.7.4 Deborah
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