Bible, Old Testament or Tanakh
Bible, Old Testament or Tanakh
The Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament and to Jews by the acronym Tanakh) is an anthology of religious literature of different genres written in various settings of Israelite society over a period of approximately one thousand years. This diverse collection of sacred books, which reached its final form in the first century ce, played a central role in the development of the post-biblical religious traditions of Judaism and in shaping attitudes about sex and gender in Western society.
The diversity of the Hebrew Bible on the topic of gender and human sexuality is evident in the two biblical creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. Genesis 1:1-2:3 recounts that both males and females (unspecified in number) were created simultaneously in the divine image and equally charged to multiply and to assume stewardship over the earth and their fellow creatures. Genesis 2:4-3:24 preserves a tradition of male priority, where woman is a subsequent and secondary creation, formed from the body of the uniquely created man to fulfill male needs for companionship and progeny (Gen. 2:24). Despite the pains of childbirth, a woman desires her husband sexually and he rules over her (Gen. 3:16). Until very recent times, this image of differentiated and unequal gender roles was far more influential in the post-biblical development of Judaism than the first, egalitarian vision.
Biblical narratives offer vivid portraits of fascinating and complex women who determined the national destiny (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Yael, Hannah, Abigail, Bathsheba, and Huldah, among many others). However, biblical legislation assumed a woman was subordinate to the dominant male in her life, whether father or husband. This man controlled a woman's sexuality, including the right to challenge both her virginity and her marital faithfulness (Deut. 22:13-22; Num. 5:11-31). Legal concerns in the Hebrew Bible about women's sexual activity really have to do with relations between men. A man could be executed for having intercourse with another's wife (Lev. 20:10) because he had committed a crime of theft against a man; similarly, a man who seduced or raped a virgin had to pay a bride-price to her father and marry her (Deut. 22:28). Israelite society was polygynous, although biblical narratives display ambivalence about this practice in their frequent depictions of hostilities between co-wives and half-siblings.
In the patriarchal culture of ancient Israel, where women were essentially the daughters, wives, and mothers of particular men, women had virtually no property rights. Unmarried women inherited from their fathers only if they had no brothers; in such cases, women had to marry within their father's clan to prevent the dispersal of tribal property among outsiders (Num. 36:2-12). Widows did not inherit from their husbands but were dependent on their sons or the generosity of other heirs. According to the biblical practice of levirate marriage, childless widows were the legal responsibility of their husband's oldest brother (Deut. 25:5-10) or in some cases, his nearest male relative (Ruth 4:1-11). Some women were prostitutes, an occupation condemned in priestly texts but presented as part of the larger Israelite landscape in narratives about Rahab (Joshua 2, 5) and Tamar (Gen. 38), and the two women who brought their dispute to Solomon (1 Kings 3:16-28).
In the ritual regulations of Leviticus, menstruating and postpartum women were considered ritually impure and sexually unavailable to their husbands for prescribed periods of time (Lev. 12, 15), during which they could also render people and objects they touched ritually impure. A woman was ritually impure for a period of seven days after giving birth to a male child, and fourteen after a girl. For thirty-three additional days after a boy and sixty-six after a girl, she was forbidden to enter the Temple or to touch hallowed things (Lev. 12:1-8). Although such ordinances were part of a priestly system in which other genital discharges, male and female, could cause ritual impurity, they applied particularly to women, due to the biological consequences of fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce, when most other forms of ritual impurity lapsed, the practice of separating menstruating and postpartum women from conjugal contact and communal religious life until their cleansing in a ritual bath continued in rabbinic Judaism.
Scholars suggest that so long as Israelite society was mainly agricultural, social and religious gender roles were relatively egalitarian. With the emergence of a monarchy, political state, and the institutionalization of religious life in the Temple cult and priestly bureaucracy (beginning in the tenth century bce), women were increasingly excluded from the public arena and lost access to communal authority, a social approach maintained in the rabbinic Judaism of the post-biblical era.
Public religious rituals in ancient Israel were mainly male. The priesthood was a hereditary position, limited to men of the tribe of Levi. According to Leviticus 21:14, the high priest may not marry a widow, a divorcée, or a harlot, but only a virgin. Other priests may marry a widow. Women participated in communal festivals, brought sacrifices, and sang and danced at festivals and as part of victory celebrations (Exod. 15; Judg. 5:1-31; Judg. 21:19-23; I Sam. 18:6-7). Hannah, the mother of Samuel, Israel's last judge, is depicted as praying alone at the Tabernacle at Shiloh (I Sam. 1:19). Her prayer (I Sam 2:1-10) became the model for supplicatory prayer in rabbinic Judaism (Babylonian Talmud: Berakhot 31a). Women had no publicly recognized religious leadership roles in ancient Israel, although there are references to "wise women" (2 Sam. 12:1-6; 2 Sam. 14:1-20; 2 Sam. 20:16-22) who were consulted in times of crisis. A few women, including Miriam (Exod. 15:20), Deborah (Judg. 4:4), and Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-16), are designated as prophets.
Sexuality is affirmed in the Hebrew Bible as a powerful human force with both positive and negative potentialities. Channeled within marriage, heterosexual intimacy leads to both pleasure and progeny. The Song of Songs preserves an idyllic vision of human sexuality and an established vocabulary of female-male erotic love. However, from the early post-biblical period on, this book was read as an allegory of the divine-human relationship. Heterosexual love and potential betrayal also underlie the powerful biblical metaphor of God and Israel as husband and wife (e.g., Hosea). Conversely, Proverbs warns young men to shun the snares of enticing and seductive women (Prov. 5 and 7, 31:2-3), and post-biblical Jewish writings frequently represent women as temptresses and sexually unreliable. Male homosexual relations are forbidden in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 and this prohibition continued in rabbinic Judaism. There are no allusions to lesbian sexual activity in biblical legislative or narrative texts.
Contemporary Judaism exists in diverse movements; in recent years, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Judaisms have affirmed the equal status of women and men in all aspects of Jewish life, leadership, and ritual practice. Reform and Reconstructionist Judaisms also endorse the full participation of gay and lesbian Jews in every area of Jewish life. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, conservative Judaism continued to struggle with this issue. Orthodox Judaism, which also exists in many forms, professes separate (generally lesser) social, communal, and ritual roles for women and maintains traditional negative attitudes towards homosexuality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Frymer-Kensky, Tikva Simone. 1992. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Free Press.
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Judith R. Baskin