I
realize that, on a certain level, the style I’ve been adopting may be a little
tedious. After all, I’m sorta recounting every story and not leaving out many
details. Plus, I'm telling them in the order they appear rather than trying to group them into coherent narratives. And since the stories themselves are often tedious, poorly written,
and/or nonsensical, some of that is going to bleed into recounting and
commenting on them. But the reason I’m doing it is that the Sunday School
version of the Bible story most of us get leaves so much out as to be almost
entirely divorced from the actual text. So it’s a matter of giving context, and
bringing out the details that ministers prefer to (for lack of a better word)
hide when asking us to accept the Bible.
So
that’s a little bit of what I’m thinking, and why you readers are being
subjected to every single story I come across as I read. If it works for you,
then by all means keep reading! If it doesn’t, comment and let me know if you’d
prefer a different style.
Now back
to the Bible. Today we start one of the most famous and well-loved stories of
the Old Testament – possibly because it’s one of the very few in which someone
behaves like a decent human being and is rewarded for it.
Israel
(formerly Jacob) is now settled in Canaan once again with his 12 sons. One of
them, Joseph, is his favorite, and Israel gave him a robe of many colors. Now,
the Bible says he’s his favorite “because he was the child of his old age,”
which seems inaccurate to me. Joseph was the first child born to him by Rachel.
The last child whose birth was recorded (and therefore who best qualifies as
“child of his old age”) was Benjamin, who Rachel died giving birth to. But
maybe it’s just meant to suggest that when Israel was an old man, Joseph was
the son who still hung around to help him out.
Anyhow, since
Israel is apparently sufficiently unsubtle about Joseph being his favorite that
all his other sons are aware of it (and since Joseph has a history of “making a
bad report of them” – aka tattling), Joseph’s brothers are not his biggest fans.
It doesn’t get any better when, at seventeen, he tells them about a dream he
had in which they were all collecting sheaves of wheat, and all their sheaves
came and bowed down to his (“Ha ha ha! Someday you’ll all be my bitches!”).
Then he steps it up a notch with a dream in which the sun and moon and eleven
stars all bowed before him (“Not only you, but mom and dad too!”). Young Joseph
was kind of a brat.
A little
while later the boys are out pasturing the flock near Shechem (remember that
city where they killed all the men and stole all their livestock, women and
children, then ran away for fear the neighbors might give them shit for it?
Guess they’re feeling kind of ballsy after having gotten away with it). Isaac
wants to know what they’re up to, so he sends his little favorite to go snitch
on them. When Joseph arrives, he hears that his brothers aren’t there, but in
some other town called Dothan.
When
Joseph finally catches up with them, they decide that the way to deal with
their snotty little bro is to kill him and dump him in a pit. Fine bunch of
young men, aren’t they? But the oldest, Reuben, managed to convince them it
would be better to leave him in a pit to die of exposure rather than just kill
him, since somehow that would mean that his blood wasn’t really on their hands
(apparently logic wasn’t a strong suit with them either). Though apparently
Reuben’s real intent was to wait for his brothers to go away, then rescue
Joseph when they weren’t looking. So good on him.
He
didn’t get the chance, though. While the brothers were having lunch, they saw a
caravan of Ishmaelites heading by. And Judah convinced the others that as long
as they were getting rid of Joseph, they might as well get some profit out of
it. So they sold him to the Ishmaelites as a slave, who in turn took him to
Egypt and sold him to the captain of the Pharoah’s guard. The brothers then
took Joseph’s pretty multicolored robe, slashed it up and spilled a goat’s
blood on it, and gave it to Isaac with the story that Joseph had been killed
and eaten by a wild animal. Then we get Israel’s reaction:
“Gen 37:35 All his sons and all
his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said
‘No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.’ Thus his father wept for
him.”
Now, I
hadn’t actually encountered the word “Sheol” before coming across it reading
the Bible, but I had heard from my Jewish friends that they don’t actually
believe in Hell. So I was curious what this was about, and decided to look it
up. The grossly simplified version is that it is the Jewish version of the land
of the dead, where all the dead go regardless of their state of morality,
piety, etcetera. The dead wait there in silence, mere shadows of their living
selves and in more or less the spiritual/emotional state they were in at the
end of their lives. Sheol is physically located deep underground, at the
furthest possible distance from God in his heaven.
This is
kind of a far cry from the Hell of Christian imaginings with all of its
tortures and burnings, but neither is it anything like the Christian Heaven.
It’s a completely different (and somewhat unpleasant) conception of an
afterlife that reminds me more of the Greek Hades. And I have to wonder why it
isn’t mentioned at all in the creation account, since it seems that any given
person will spend a damn sight more of their existence hanging out in Sheol
than they will spend on earth. Most of the descriptions I found in looking it
up made only the sketchiest of references to the Bible as source material,
which sort of implies most of the ideas about it aren’t actually contained in
the Bible. You’d think it would be worth describing.
Maybe it
gets some attention later on, since it seems to me it would be a pretty huge
oversight in describing Biblical cosmology to leave it without description.
So after
the brothers give their little tale to Israel, the Bible goes off on a weird
little aside and kind of ignores the Joseph story for a bit. It diverts to tell
the story of his brother Judah, who soon after selling his brother into slavery
married a Canaanite woman (we don’t get her name because she’s a woman, though
her father was named Shua). With her, he had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah
in that order. Er grew up to marry a woman named Tamar. Now, I’m gonna give you
a long quote here because what happens to Er and Onan is pretty fucked up and
the wording is important. And this is not a story they tell much in Sunday
school – again, never heard about it until I tried reading the Bible.
“Gen 38:6 And Judah took a wife
for Er his firstbaorn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was
wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. 8 Then Judah
said to Onan ‘Go into your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a
brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother’ 9 But Onan knew
that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went into his brother’s
wife he would waste the semen on the ground so as not to give offspring to his
brother. 10 And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him
to death also.”
That’s
pretty fucked up, right? Aside from the irony of those Christians who want to
ban books with graphic discussions of sex, I’m told that this passage is the
Biblical basis for Christian proscriptions against masturbation.
Now… I
know sex education is not a big Christian thing. So I’m going to share a little
information that you may not have been exposed to: what was described in that
passage was not masturbation. Onan
was having sex with his brother’s
widow, but pulling out before ejaculating in order to make sure she doesn’t get
pregnant. He was doing this because, culturally, those children would have been
considered his brother’s children, which would have entitled them to his
brother’s (Er’s) portion of any inheritance from Judah. Whereas if Er had no
heirs, that portion would belong to Onan. That was Onan’s crime – not spanking
his monkey, but screwing his brother’s widow because he’s supposed to give his brother
heirs, but deliberately refusing to impregnate her.
There’s
been a lot of interesting research on masturbation in recent years. And that
research pretty much concludes that it’s healthy and good. Aside from feeling
pretty good, it’s associated with all kinds of medical and psychological
benefits such as lowered stress, higher reported happiness, even lower prostate
cancer rates. That’s right: it fucking
prevents cancer and priests are demonizing it because they fail at reading
comprehension! I mean, it would be a stupid prohibition even if the Bible
actually said it, but this just means it’s doubly stupid.
By the
way…in what way was Er wicked in God’s sight such that he deserved to die? Bible
never says. Guess the author was too anxious to get to the coitus interruptus
portion of the story to worry about giving credible explanations for what led
to it.
Anyhow,
to get back to the story. After Onan dies, Judah tells Tamar to go back to her
father until his youngest son is old enough to give her Er’s babies. But since
two of his sons have already died while married to her, Judah’s afraid to lose
the third and so when Shelah grows up he doesn’t send him to fetch Tamar.
Sometime
after Judah’s wife dies Tamar gets sick of waiting, so she disguises herself as
a prostitute (by putting on a veil) and waits by the road where she knows Judah
will be passing by. Judah sees her, and decides to hire her. They settle on a
young goat as her payment, but since he doesn’t have one on him at the time he
agrees to leave his signet ring, cord, and staff as collateral. So Judah does
the deed with his daughter-in-law (thinking she’s a prostitute), and she gets
pregnant. Later Judah sends a friend of his to deliver the goat to the “prostitute,”
but of course she’s not there. And Judah decides not to pursue it because he’d
be ashamed to be seen asking around and trying to track down a prostitute.
“Gen 38:24 About three months
later Judah was told ‘Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover,
she is pregnant by immorality.’ And Judah said ‘Bring her out, and let her be
burned.’”
Given
that he’d sold his own brother into slavery, is it any real surprise that Judah
is such a fucking hypocrite? Let her be burned? For having sex? From a guy who
was out visiting prostitutes? Seriously?! And what kind of society does he live
in where just some guy could give such an order and seriously expect it to be
followed?
But
anyhow, Tamar sent him the staff, signet, and cord he’d given her as collateral
on the goat, with a note saying “I’m pregnant by the guy who owns this stuff.
Recognize it?” Then he at least had the decency to realize he was a douche. But
while he apparently let her live, nothing is ever said of him doing anything to
make up for being such a jerk.
Tamar
gave birth to twin boys. During the birth one of the babies reached out a hand
first, and the midwife tied a scarlet thread around his hand to mark him as the
firstborn, but then the hand drew back and the other twin was actually born
first. I’m not sure if that’s medically possible – it’s not like the birth
canal is a roomy place, and I’m fairly certain that once you’re far enough
along to get a hand out into the air there’s no turning back.
Whew!
Long post today! I hope it was at least interesting to read. Next one gets us
back to the Joseph story.
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