Originally posted March 4, 2007
It’s funny how, as wide spread as the printed word is, it’s often the oral traditions that persist most strongly. I’ve been going through my periodic rereading of the Tanakh. It’s been a few years since I read it beginning to end, so it’s not all quite fresh in my mind. For example, I had forgotten that the reason given for the confounding of speech is “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach” (Genesis 11.6). No, I remembered the Sunday school version, that language was fractured because men were building the tower of Babel to reach heaven and G-d.
The version of the story I learned in childhood suggested that men were making a direct challenge to G-d, believing that they reached for his seat of power to be nearer to him, but in effect attempting to usurp him. It doesn’t contradict the version in Genesis, but it is a matter of interpretation.
In rereading the original (or at any rate, the earliest version available), the tower seems to me a decidedly earth-bound endeavor. The reason men give for building it is “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world” (Genesis 11.4). (There’s a bit of irony for you.) It sounds to me that though the top of the tower is meant to be in the sky, its purpose is earthly – to act as a beacon which men can find and return to from all corners of the earth. In that interpretation, the confounding of speech seems more like petulant jealousy than defense of the heavenly throne.
Of course, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with interpretations that stray from the earliest versions of stories – if I did, I should hardly publish a magazine of them. Interpretation can be a way of creating dialogue between past and present, of pursuing new layers of truth. But when interpretation becomes a basis for condemnation, there comes the problem.
I am thinking of the story of Tamar and Judah’s sons, commonly interpreted as a condemnation of masturbation. Here’s what actually happens, in the biblical version:
After the eldest son, to whom Tamar was first married, died, “Judah said to Onan, ‘Join with your brother’s wife and do your duty by her as a brother-in-law, and provide offspring for your brother.’ But Onan, knowing that the seed would not count as his, let it go to waste [literally, ‘spoil on the ground’] whenever he joined with his brother’s wife, so as not to provide offspring for his brother. What he did was displeasing to the Lord, and He took his life also.” (Genesis 38.8-10)
It should be fairly obvious that the transgression here has nothing to do with masturbation – Onan’s misdeed is his failure to do his duty as a brother.
Not that it’s any better when literal, rather than interpretive readings are used to justify condemning others, but we might at least be honest with ourselves about the sources of modern Western repression, no?
– Sari
Originally published January 21, 2007
When I write with biblical myth, I usually prefer to focus on brief asides, events and characters mentioned almost in passing – it leaves more room for invention.
I read one such poem in Albuquerque a few years ago:
Birth of Dan: Bilhah’s Story
“Consort with Bilhah, that she may bear
on my knees and that through her
I too may have children.”
– Rachel to Jacob, Genesis 30.3
Breath. Rachel’s breasts holding
my back, her legs close
around mine. Long, slow pulls
of air. Single syllables escape
my lips while my belly stretches to release
Rachel’s son. We move together
closer than sex. The pain isn’t one
I can find words for. It is not like spasm,
not like a blow. It is not like.
What I can tell is Rachel’s hands
gripping my elbows. She loved me first,
so I followed her, and bear her child
far from home in this land Jacob calls
promised. She loves me still, though she
was bartered to Jacob and barters
for him. What is he? Only seed.
Rachel is wind. I know her.
She may betray me
easy as her husband. Now we rake
together, fierce as entropy.
First published in The American Poetry Journal
I later learned that one member of the audience had responded to the poem by saying that she didn’t think the poet knew how irreverent the poem was. It was an interesting comment – not because she thought the poem irreverent, but because she saw something else in it that made her question whether the irreverence was intentional.
Since childhood, the fallibility of biblical heroes has been a strong part of their appeal to me – Moses throwing temper tantrums, Jacob tricking his family out of their property and blessings. If our highest role models can be so indecent and undignified, I thought, surely I can be pious without being perfect?
My sense of piety is a far cry from the view that to be pious is to follow the letter of religious law. But there is a kind of delight in knowing that faith can speak to faith, even for those who find it in an utterly different form.
– Sari
Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Poesia, Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, and others. Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.Art Editor
Dianne Schlies is a practicing artist and has taught studio art since 1986. She received her M.F.A. from SMU at Dallas, Texas in 1990. She has studied or worked with David Bates, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Harmony Hammond, Ed Harris, Joyce Kozloff, Mary Ellen Mark, Duane Michals and Robert Rauschenberg. Schlies presently teaches Drawing and 2-D Design in Albuquerque, New Mexico.