Subversive Sequels in the Bible

Last updated on: June 5, 2010 at 12:26 pm by James F. McGrath

Subversive Sequels in the Bible 2010-06-05T12:26:00-04:00 James F. McGrath

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I am grateful to the Jewish Publication Society for sending me a gratis review copy of Judy Klitsner’s book Subversive Sequels in the Bible: How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other (Philadelphia: JPS, 2009).

The book’s introduction gives a good sense of the author’s approach: “As if aware of its own problematics, the Bible contains a liverly interaction between its passages that allows for a widening of perspective and a sense of dynamic development throughout the canon. As we will see in the six chapters of this book, if certain gnawing theological or philosophical questions remain after studing one narrative, a later passage may revisit those questions, subjecting them to a complex process of inquiry, revision, and examination of alternative possibilities. I call these reworkings ‘subversive sequels.’ Like all sequels, they continue and complete earlier stories. But they do so in ways that often undermine the very assumptions upon which the earlier stories were built as well as the conclusions these stories have reached” (p.xvi). Klitsner’s approach is a literary one and may seem very much in keeping with the postmodern outlook often associated with that perspective. Yet it is also firmly rooted in the historic Jewish rabbinic tradition of interpretation. Moreover, the recognition of sequels and intertextual interconnectedness in the Biblical corpus leads not only to interesting interpretations of texts, but also an interesting perspective on the place of the interpreter in relation to those texts. “As careful readers of the text, we add our own interpretative voices to this multi-tonal concert that began in the pages of the Bible itself” (p.xvii). After looking at some brief examples of “subversive sequels,” Klitsner argues that this approach “adds a dimension of exegesis that is inaccessible through close readings and ordinary intertextual comparisons alone,” since it seeks to measure the creative revision process that takes place between stories (p.xxiii). This leads not only to a hermeneutical embracing of change and revision, but also a view of God as “evolving” (at least on a literary level). Klitsner suggests that this stance may be treated not only as descriptive but as prescriptive, and she paraphrases a famous dictum to make the point: “Just as He is dynamic so should you be dynamic” (p.xxv). Flexibility and adaptability are not problematic aspects of the text crying out for harmonization or some other resolution. They are a model for readers to follow.

Before moving on, Klitsner notes the danger of parallelomania, and asks how a sequel is to be identified (p.xxxi). In each case throughout the remainder of the book, the author draws attention to Hebrew word plays, phrases unique in the Bible to the narratives in question, and other features that provide a genuine justification for comparing and contrasting them. Already in this introductory chapter, important terminology and concepts from the rabbinic interpretative tradition are explained.

The first chapter compares the stories of Noah and Jonah. Plays on words that are important to each story, or to the connection between them, are presented. For instance, we are confronted with the irony that Noah is so named because of a desire for comfort (n-h-m), and yet we soon encounter the same root used in its other sense, when we are told that God regretted (n-h-m) having made humanity (p.4; Genesis 5:29; 6:6-7).

After contrasting Noah’s acceptance of the predicted doom for his contemporaries with Abraham’s pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, Klitsner turns to exploring the contrasts between the stories of Noah and Jonah. In the latter God also regrets (n-h-m), but this time it is regret concerning a planned judgment (p.11; Jonah 3:10). And while in both stories God sends messengers, in Jonah it is for the most part the prophet who is the recipient of messages from God via emissaries such as the wind and the worm, as well as the ship’s captain, who echoes God’s call to Jonah to “get up an call” (Jonah 1:2,6). Discussion is offered of contrasting characters in these and other stories, some of whom are able to envisage the possibility that God may relent from bringing destruction, others of whom are not.

Chapter 2 looks at the story of the midwives of Israel as a sequel to the story of the tower of Babel. Klitsner turns to earlier Jewish interpreters such as Rashi (Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaki, the famous medieval commentator from France) and Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (a 19th century Lithuanian exegete) in an attempt to discern precisely what it was about the action of humanity at Babel that incurred the punishment of diversification of languages. Consulting also the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, Klitsner suggests that the loss of individuality is a key element. “An individual, even a rebellious one, is more godly than a mindless member of a human herd” (p.45). The fact that the Babel story occurs admist lists of names, and yet itself is a story of unnamed builders, helps make this point, and highlights the contrast with the story of the midwives in Egypt.

The two stories are connected by, among other things, the focus on building of cities and the references (found only here in the Bible) to bricks and mortar. Details which are often overlooked by readers are highlighted – for instance, the implausibility of a Pharaoh not being aware of the story of how Egypt was saved from disaster a generation earlier. As a result, it is best to view the “forgetting” of Joseph as an attempt to rewrite history, as totalitarian states so often do (p.52). Likewise Pharaoh’s illogical and self-contradictory statements about the Israelites are discussed, with the insightful observation that “often the first casualty of rabble-rousing is consistency” (p.54).

In contrast to the nameless Pharaoh provoking Egyptians en masse to view the Israelites as a group xenophobically, and in contrast to the Babel story with its lack of named characters, two named individuals strikingly take center stage at this crucial moment: Shifra and Puah, the midwives. “At every stage, the midwives’ innate morality, their fear of God, bests Pharaoh” (p.60). In a powerful irony, as Pharaoh’s command presumes that only male sons among the Israelites pose a threat to him, these two daughters subvert his plan.

Chapter 3 looks at the foreign priests Melchizedek and Jethro and the patriarchs whom they influence. Here it is suggested that the subversive sequel model needs to be qualified, since both Abraham and Moses as leaders are at times in need of a challenge to cast off external influences, while at other times their need is to eschew a solitary existence and accept the advice and assistance of others. The relationship between the stories is dialectical, rather than one undermining the other.

Chapter 4 turns attention to Eve, and while this chapter focuses on subversive elements within the Genesis story itself, chapter 5 turns attention to the story of Sarah as a sequel. In startling echoes of the account in Genesis 3, Sarah becomes the forbidden fruit, while Pharaoh is ironically made to echo the language God uses in that story, with Abraham’s failings highlighted as a result. Abraham’s character is further problematized in the story involving Abimelech, in which Abraham can apparently intercede for the fertility of others, and yet we are never told that he did so in the case of his wife Sarah (p.130).And while Adam was punished for heeding his wife, Abraham is explicitly commanded to do so. The chapter concludes by noting the subversive recasting of language from the Eden narrative: there an ever-turning sword guards the path to the tree of life, while in Genesis 18:17-19, Abraham will instruct his offspring to “guard the path” of the LORD, perhaps suggesting that this represents the way back to Eden, as it were (p.133).

Chapter 6 continues the focus on female characters. In discussing Rebekah it is drawn to the reader’s attention that we here witness the first explicit statement that a woman is the object of a man’s affection, being explicitly told that Isaac loves Rebekah (Genesis 24:67; p.143). Also highlighted in this chapter are subversive equels to the stories of submissive, passive women, Deborah somewhat obviously (although with many details and word-plays that are easily missed), and also the wife of Manoah, who in contrast with earlier precedent is herself the recipient of a revelation through an angelic messenger, and Hannah, who is the first to address God directly herself with a request to conceive (p.166).

The book’s afterword ties together key threads and emphases, presenting the Bible as a book full of conversations rather than declarations, being “oriented much more toward process than toward conclusions” (p.171). And in contrast to the school of thought that focuses exclusively on “faithful recovery of the elusive original intent” of the texts or their authors, “the vibrant discourse begun by the text suggests that the conversation is meant to continue” (p.172). The book thus offers not only a wonderful model of exegesis, but also a hermeneutic for application and appropriation of the Bible’s narratives in our time through a dynamic process that recognizes the conversations taking place within Scripture, and joins in the conversation.

A section with information about classical Jewish sources is included in between the bibliography and the index, and only those with a high degree of familiarity with historic Jewish interpreters and the texts that preserve their insights can perhaps afford to miss this part of the book (pp.179-182).

I recommend Judy Klitsner’s book with unqualified enthusiasm. Even those with some proficiency in Hebrew are liable to miss many of the word-plays in the Hebrew text, some of which involve inversion of letters and other forms of what are perhaps best described as “puns.” Such details connect stories and represent an often-overlooked form of intertextual echo. Anyone who reads this book will find their appreciation of the beautiful tapestry of Biblical narrative enriched and their understanding enhanced. And those interested in briding the gulf between these texts and contemporary readers will find Klitsner’s approach not merely helpful or illuminating but exciting, as her combination of classic and fresh perspectives allows the Bible’s diverse voices to be encountered not merely as something to be analysed or dissected, but as full of life, vigor and possibility.

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