The Daughters of Zelophehad

According to Jewish Tradition, Moses received two Laws on Mount Sinai:  the Written Law, which was inscribed on tablets of stone, but also an Oral Law, which was transmitted orally and which interpreted and expanded upon the former.  This Oral Law was eventually written down around the year 200 CE and became the foundation for the Talmud.

This Oral Law was necessary because, although the Law as written may seem like it goes on forever when you’re trying to read the Bible cover to cover and hit Leviticus, there’s a lot of stuff the Written Law doesn’t cover; and even more areas where situations arose that Moses never dreamed of.

I have to admit, when I first heard about it, the idea of altering the Law of Moses as written in the Bible seemed pretty strange and possibly sacrilegious.  Which it shouldn’t, because certainly Christians have been selective about which portions of the Law we consider binding to us today.  But the Bible itself gives us an example of this kind of modification, in the story of five girls who stood up to demand their rights.

Their names were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah; and yes, unlike many women of the Bible, we are told their names.  Their father was a man named Zelophehad, of the tribe of Manasseh, who had died during the period of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness.

The Israelites were now preparing to enter the Land of Canaan, and the plan was to divide the land between the Twelve Tribes and then divide the tribal lands among the families and clans of that tribe.  Perhaps it might seem presumptuous for them to be thinking of this before they’ve actually conquered Canaan, but it never hurts to plan ahead.

These girls, however had a problem.  Under the existing Law, whatever property Zelophehad was entitled to would be inherited by his sons, and it was understood that the sons would bear responsibility to take care of any unmarried sisters.  But Zelophehad had no sons; just lots of girls.  (It’s been suggested that both Teyve’s five daughters in Fiddler on the Roof and the five Bennett girls from Pride and Prejudice owe a bit of inspiration to Zelophehad’s family).  So under the system as things stood, the Daughters of Zelophehad got nothing.

So the five girls went to the Tent of Meeting to put their case before Moses and Eleazar (the High Priest after the death of Aaron) and the whole assembly:

“Our father died in the desert.  He was not among Korah’s followers, who banded together against the LORD, but he died for his own sin and left no sons.  Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son?  Give us property among our father’s relatives.”  (Numbers 27:3-4 NIV)

Korah was a guy who had challenged Moses’ authority some time earlier and led a revolt against him.  God put down the revolt by having the earth open up and swallow the rebels.  The girls want to make clear to Moses that their dad was not one of these malcontents.

But what does it mean that “…he died for his own sin”, (or “…in his own sin” as the King James puts it)?  Some rabbinical commentators have suggested that he was guilty of some other sin like gathering sticks on the Sabbath for which he was punished.  I think the daughters are simply saying that, whatever sins their father might have committed, they had nothing to do with the treasonous Korah and that their father certainly didn’t deserve to have his family name blotted out.

And note that this is the girls’ chief argument.  They aren’t asking it for themselves; they are asking Moses and the leaders of the people to think of their father and of his family name.

Two things are noteworthy here:  The first is that these girls, (and since none of them were married at this time, even the oldest of them was very likely a young woman), had the chutzpah to come to Moses demanding justice. The other is that Moses did not reject these pushy dames out of hand.  He listened to their plea and felt it worthy of consideration.

Moses brings their case before the Lord.  The Zohar, a collection of Jewish mystical works that includes commentaries on the Torah, says that Moses asks God to rule on the issue rather than deciding himself out of humility; (and Numbers 12:3 assures us that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” which to many readers proves that whoever wrote the book of Numbers, it wasn’t Moses).  Or it could be that Moses realized this was a potentially divisive issue, and he preferred to let God handle it.

In either case, God confirms the justice of the girls’ request:

“What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right.  You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and turn their father’s inheritance over to them.”  (Numbers 27:7)

The Lord goes on to extend the principle.  If a man dies and leaves no son, his inheritance will be passed down to his daughters.  Only if he has no children at all will his inheritance go instead to his brothers; and if he himself has no brothers, then it shall go to his father’s brothers, or lacking that, to the nearest relative in his clan.  That seems to cover every contingency.

No it doesn’t.  Several chapters later, several family heads from the clan of Gilead, (to which Zelophehad belonged), came with another beef.  They are worried that if the Zelophehad girls marry outside of their tribe, that the other tribe will get the family lands they inherited.  They cite the laws connected with the Year of Jubilee, when all lands must revert back to their original owners; (Leviticus 25:8-17).  This economic reset button was intended to prevent the wealth gap between rich and poor from becoming too great and to ensure that tribal lands stayed within the tribe and family lands within the family.

The Lord agreed with the Gileadites and further amended his previous edict to say that the Daughters of Zelophehad were still free to marry whoever they wished, as long as it was someone from their own tribe.  Non-inheriting daughters were not bound by this restriction, but ones like the Daughters of Zelophehad, who are carrying on their father’s name and inheriting his property, must marry within their father’s tribe.

The Daughters of Zelophehad seem to have been okay with this.  After all, had their father lived, they probably would have been married off to men of his choice with no say in the situation at all.  Mahiah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcha and Noah wound up marrying cousins of theirs, sons of their uncles from their father’s side.  Unusually enough, we do not get their husbands’ names.

Jephthah's Bargain

There have been times where I needed to make a decision about something, and so I would sort of leave things to fate.  If such-and-such happens, I would tell myself, I’ll do this; and if the thus-and-such happens, I’ll do the other thing.  In a way, I was leaving the matter in God’s hands; which might sound very pious and worthy, except that almost invariably events always fell out so that I’d wind up having to make the decision for myself anyway.  It was as if God was saying, “Oh no, you don’t!  You aren’t getting out of it that easily!  It’s your decision, YOU make it!”

So I pretty much know better than to try making those sorts of deals with God anymore.  They never turn out they way I expect.

Although they’ve never gone as badly as they once did for a guy named Jephthah.

During the period in the history of Israel prior to the establishment of the Monarchy, the individual Tribes of Israel were ruled by Judges, leaders who seem to have mostly served as arbiters and lawgivers, but who sometimes would lead their tribe, or on rare occasion a coalition of tribes, into battle.

The Book of Judges describes successive cycles in which the people would fall into apostasy, worshiping the local Canaanite gods; then face attacks from hostile nations; then ultimately be delivered by hero.  Samson is probably the most famous of these heroes, followed by Gideon, who has a nice, adventurous story that goes over well in Sunday School.  Many of the Judges get only brief mention.  In the middle of these, though, we have Jephthah, whose tragic story is alluded to briefly by Hamlet, but who mostly gets overlooked.

Jephthah lived in Gilead, the territory east of the Jordan river, and belonged to the tribe of Manasseh.  His father was named also named Gilead and might have been a person of some importance in the region.  His mother, mother, though was a prostitute, and Jephthah bore a social stigma because of this. Gilead seems to have adopted his illegitimate son, but Jephthah’s half-brothers drove him out of the family so that they wouldn’t have to share their inheritance with him.

Jephthah settled in the land of Tob, which I assume was near Gilead, and gathered a group of fellow outcasts around him.  The King James Version calls his followers “vain men”; other translations call them “worthless” or “empty” men, or even "outlaws".  The NIV diplomatically calls them “adventurers”.  His band of mercenaries must have been successful, though, because Jephthah gained a reputation as a mighty warrior.

This is why, when the tribes of Israel found themselves beset by the Ammonites from the East, the elders of Gilead sought out Jephthah asking him to lead them in battle.

Jephthah said to them, “Didn’t you hate me and drive me from my father’s house?  Why do you come to me now, when you’re in trouble?”The elders of Gilead said to him, “Nevertheless, we are turning to you now; come with us to fight the Ammonites, and you will be our head over all who live in Gilead.”  (Judges 11:7-8 NIV)

Jephthah takes some convincing, but once he is assured that the elders are serious about their offer, and the offer is ratified by the populace, Jephthah agrees to become Commander-in-Chief of Gilead. 

Here the story takes an unusual digression, something we don’t usually see in these Bible stories about battles.  The first thing Jephthah does upon taking command of Gilead is to engage in some diplomacy.

Then Jephthah sent messengers to the Ammonite king with the question:  “What do you have against us that you have attacked our country?”

The king of the Ammonites answered Jephthah’s messengers, “When Israel came up out of Egypt, they took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, all the way to the Jordon.  Now give it back peaceably.”

 Jephthah responds with a rather lengthy message, stating the case for his tribe’s right to possess the Transjordan.  The gist of it is that to begin with, Israel took this particular territory from Sihon, the king of the Amorites, not from the Ammonites, who moved into the region later.  Secondly, that the Israelites had conquered it fair and square.  (“Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you?  Likewise, whatever the LORD our God has given us, we will possess.” (Judges 11:24))  Lastly, Jephthah observes that the Israelites had held these lands for three hundred years now.  “Why didn’t you retake them during that time?”

“I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me.  Let the LORD, the Judge, decide the dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.”  (Judges 11:27)

The king of the Ammonites isn’t impressed by Jephthah’s argument and simply ignores it; or perhaps he likes the idea of fighting it out and letting their respective gods settle the matter.  In either case, the die is cast, and Jephthah advances his forces to meet the Ammonites.

Before the battle, Jephthah makes a vow unto the Lord:  “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph form the Ammonites will be the LORD’S and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” (Judges 11:30-31)  And then Jephthah proceeds to kick Ammonite butt.  “The LORD gave them into his hands” the text tells us, and Jephthah devastated twenty Ammonite towns.

Happy ending, right?

You might recall I said that Jephthah is brought up in Hamlet, didn’t I?  Well, Hamlet wouldn’t have mentioned him if he wasn’t tragic.  “O, Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!” Hamlet says to Polonius.  “One fair daughter and no more / The which he loved passing well.”

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

When Jephthah returns home to the town of Mizpah after his victorious campaign, the first one to come out of his house to greet him is his daughter, his only child, who is dancing in celebration. 

When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh!  My daughter!  You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break.”  (Judges 11:35)

His daughter bows to the inevitable.  Since he has made a promise, he must fulfill it.  She only asks her father one thing:  “Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.” (v. 37)  And so he does.  And two months later, she comes back.  And then, the text simply says, “he did to her as he had vowed.”

What kind of a God makes demands like that?  Well, strictly speaking, God didn’t; Jephthah made the vow himself and has only himself to blame.  But couldn’t God have intervened and prevented the daughter from being the first one to meet Jephthah?  Maybe.  But if we’re going to go that route, God also could have intervened and prevented Jephthah from making the stupid vow in the first place, or prevented his stepbrothers from kicking him out of his family, or prevented king Sihon from attacking the Israelites three hundred years previously. 

There are places where the Bible depicts God as the micro-manager, fiddling with the lives of his people and laying down precise rules and regulations; but in other places, the Bible seems to show God sitting back and letting people deal with the messes they’ve made by themselves, and try to work out for themselves what he wants them to do.  And this seems to be one of the latter.

This story seems to me like a relic from a transitional period, between a more barbaric era in which human sacrifices were common, or at least not unheard of, and a comparatively more humane one in which sacrifices were limited to livestock and agricultural produce.  The story has some parallels with the story of how Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son, Isaac; and perhaps the Isaac story reflects the same kind of transition.  But more than Abraham and Isaac, I see parallels between the story of Jephthah and his daughter and the Greek legend of Agamemnon and his daughter Iphigenia. 

Did Jephthah have no options?  The Learned Rabbis who wrote the midrash commentaries on the Scriptures pretty much agreed that it is no sin to break a vow if fulfilling that vow meant performing an immoral act.  One midrash states that Jephthah was an ignorant man with an unsophisticated understanding of God, and that if only he had gone to consult Phineas, the high priest at that time, he might have been better advised.  But Jephthah was too proud to go to the priest; and Phineas was too proud to go to Mizpah to visit the Gideonite bastard; and so both men suffered tragedy.

But some interpreters have tried to give the story a happier ending.  Just as the Lord provides a ram as a substitute for Isaac in the story of Abraham and Isaac, (and as a fawn is used as a substitute in the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia), it’s been suggested that Jephthah also found a way to fulfill the letter of the vow.  The idea is that Jephthah kept his daughter in seclusion rather than allowing her to marry, or that she dedicated the rest of her life to serving God.  Essentially, she becomes a nun; either way, she remains a virgin.

Perhaps this seems like something of a stretch in order to get a happy ending (such as it is), but one point in its favor is that the vow  “whatever comes out … will be the LORD’S, and I will sacrifice it…” could also be translated as “… will be the LORD’S, OR I will sacrifice it;” meaning that Jephthah has the option of either sacrificing his daughter, or dedicating her to the Lord.

The text is vague; it gives no details, other than to mention a tradition that arose from this episode:

From this comes the Israelite custom that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. (Judges 11:39-40). 

This verse is the only mention of such a custom, either in the Bible or in any other Jewish sources, so perhaps it was a local tradition in Gilead that fell out of practice.  But in this custom, the innocent and blameless girl received more honor than her rash and warlike father.

Mrs. Cain

“You’re a Pastor’s Kid,” a friend once said to me; “Maybe you can answer this one.  Where did Cain get his wife?  I’ve never gotten a straight answer.”

“The Bible doesn’t say,” I replied.  “Anyone who gives you a straight answer is Making It Up.” 

I’m not sure if it was the answer she wanted to hear, but I think she appreciated my honesty.  Often when Christians are arguing with skeptics we feel a need to have an answer for everything.  We forget that “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer if we truly don’t know something.  There are a lot of places in the Bible where information is left out; presumably because the writer of that part felt it was unimportant; or perhaps just overlooked it because it was less important than something else, or perhaps most likely, because the writer didn‘t know either.  Cain’s Wife is one of these.

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from speculating.

There are two possible explanations I can think of for where Cain got his wife.  One is that she was specially created for him, as Eve was for Adam.  This, to me, seems overly complicated.  The other is that Adam and Eve had other children besides the ones specifically mentioned in the Bible and that Cain married one of his sisters.

But wouldn’t this technically be considered incest?  Yes, that’s probably a big reason why people don’t like to talk about Cain’s wife, and why Bible skeptics like to bring it up.  The explanation I’ve read is that the prohibition against brother and sister marrying had not yet been established.  Besides, what the hell else were they supposed to do?

But what about inbreeding?  Wouldn’t family members intermarrying that close together result in all sorts of genetic problems?  The Author of Genesis is as silent on the subject of genetics as he is on the name of Cain’s wife.  My own idea is that the first couple generations after Creation still possessed a greater measure of the Divine Creative Force, resulting in a kind of innate biodiversity which made it possible for them to interbreed without the problems of inbreeding.  And if this sounds like the purest moonshine, yes it is.  Like the Author of Genesis, I know little about genetics either; probably even less, since Moses used to herd sheep and would have had some idea of practical animal husbandry.  This is just a piece of whimsy on my part, and I don’t expect anyone to take it seriously.

But did Cain have a sister?  The Bible doesn’t mention one.  If you think about it, though, Adam and Eve lived together, according to Genesis, for something like 900 years.  And although the Bible doesn’t go into details about it, you have to assume they invented sex.  Do you really think they would have stopped at two kids?

The Jewish Midrashic tradition says that Cain and Abel each had twin sisters and that these were the women they were going to marry.  The Midrash is a tradition of biblical commentary which explores the text to plumb deeper meanings.  In some cases the midrashim  are interpretations of the Law or applications of Mosaic Law to situations Moses never dreamed of.  Sometimes they take the form of parables illuminating some aspect of the text.  And, as in this case, some Midrash are stories that expand upon existing Biblical narratives.

The sister Abel was promised, Aclima, was the more beautiful of the two and Cain wanted her.  Their father Adam suggested they both offer sacrifices as a means of letting the Lord decide.  When God favored Abel over him, Cain’s jealousy deepened into murder.

The apocryphal Book of Jubilees, thought to be written around the 2^nd Century BC, tells a similar story.  Here, the girl the two quarrel over isn’t a twin but their younger sister, named Awen.

Another midrashic version says that Abel had two sisters – that they were triplets –- but that Cain only had one.  Abel felt that he should get both, but Cain argued that, being the older brother, he should get the spare.  How the sisters felt about this doesn’t seem to be mentioned.  However many sisters Cain and Abel had, the one Cain married is the only one who gets mention in the text; what might have happened to the others is unknown.

Cain took his wife and went out into the Land of Nod, which means “Wandering”, so it doesn’t necessarily mean a geographic designation.  Referring to sleep as the “Land of Nod” is an unrelated pun.

According to Genesis, Cain eventually settled down long enough to build a city so that his son, Enoch could have a home.  Presumably, that’s where his wife ended up.  Legend, however, insists that Cain himself was doomed to wander the earth, and wanders still.

If you look up at night and look at the full moon, the shadows on its face might resemble a man with a bundle of sticks on his back.  Or it might look like a rabbit; but in medieval folklore it’s a guy with some sticks, and this burdened traveler is Cain, cursed to wander through all eternity.

The Other Shoe -- Ruth conclusion

The Other Shoe

(Ruth conclusion)

After Ruth has left Boaz, he goes to the town gate; a common meeting place since everybody passes by sooner or later. He finds the kinsman he mentioned earlier to Ruth, the one who is more closely related to Naomi's family than himself and whose rights and obligations take precedence over his own, and invites him to a friendly meeting. Boaz also snags ten elders of the town, older men respected for their experience, to serve as formal witnesses.  

He tells the nameless kinsman (and he never is named; interesting point) that Naomi has a piece of property belonging to her late husband Elimelech that she wishes to sell. Since the unnamed kinsman is Elimelech's closest relative, he has first dibs on the property. 

Where did this property come from? It's never been mentioned before? My NIV commentary has two possible interpretations (not necessarily the only ones):   First, that Naomi owns the land but is so destitute that she is forced to sell. It was the duty of the kinsman-redeemer to buy any land in danger of being sold outside the family.  Or, that Naomi does not own the land -- it had been sold by Elimelech before the family left for Moab -- but by law she retains the right of redemption to buy the land back. Lacking funds to do so herself, she is dependent on a kinsman to do it for her. It is the right of redemption that Naomi is "selling". 

A better question is, how did Boaz know Naomi was entering the real estate market? The account doesn't mention him talking to her. Possibly Boaz had done some research and learned about the existence of the property because he was interested in Ruth. Or possibly he and Naomi did cook up this scheme behind Ruth's back. The text doesn't say. 

The kinsman is all in favor of buying the property, until Boaz drops the (heh heh) other shoe:

   "On the day you buy the land from Naomi and from Ruth the Moabitess, you acquire the dead man's widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property." (Ruth 4:5 NIV) 

This makes the deal less attractive. That meant any children he sired by Ruth would be entitled to a portion of his estate. (Whether any anti-Moabite prejudice has any bearing on his decision is not mentioned). In any case, the kinsman declines the offer. "You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it." 

To make the deal official, Boaz and the kinsman do an interesting piece of business with the kinsman's sandal. The text explains that this is a custom in old times, no longer in practice, to seal the deal in property transactions. (The fact that the writer feels a need to explain the practice to his readers is another piece of evidence suggesting a latish date of composition).  The Nuzi Tablets, Akkadian inscriptions from the 2nd millennium BC, mention a similar custom and this tradition might be what the prophet Amos refers to when he writes: "They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals." (Amos 2:6 NIV) 

But there's another possible reason for the shoe transaction. I've mentioned the Levirite law which required a man to marry his dead brother's widow in order to preserve the dead brother's line. (Deut. 25:5-6). The passage has an interesting addendum:

However, if a man does not want to marry his brother's wife, she will go to the elders at the town gate and say, "My husband's brother refuses to carry on his brother's name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me." Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying "I do not want to marry her," his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, "This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line." That man's line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled. (Deuteronomy 25 7-10 NIV) 

So perhaps the transaction with the sandal was a face-saving way to follow the forms of the Levirite law without publicly humiliating the putz (which might persuade him to marry Ruth after all!) Or perhaps it was just what the text says, a common formality in real estate transactions of the time.  In either case, the kinsman does not gain the stigma of being called “Unsandaled.”  But then again, neither does he gain the recognition of even having a name.  

And yes, through all this Ruth is being treated like a piece of property. Not only that, but she's being treated like an unwanted piece of property.  All I can say is that the Levirite law was intended to protect the rights and interests of the woman, who in that culture had no legal rights except as a wife.   Also, had Boaz approached the Nameless Kinsman saying "I'd like to marry the widow of Elimelech's son, is that okay by you?", then the kinsman might suspect he was playing a fast one with the property attached to her. The matter of the property had to be dealt with first. 

Now that that is settled, Boaz is free to announce his intention to marry Ruth. The witnesses all offer their best wishes: 

"May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah." (Ruth 4:11-12) 

The mention of Tamar and Judah is an interesting one with parallels to this situation; it's an earlier example of the Levirite law in effect (although before Moses codified it). It's also one of those stories you won't hear in Sunday School. We’ll be getting to it in a future essay.

Boaz and Ruth are married and she gives birth to a son, thus completing the joy of Naomi, now no longer bitter. The son, Obed, becomes the father of Jesse, who becomes in turn the father of a kid you might have heard about: King David.

Playing Footsie -- Ruth part 3

Naomi and Ruth have been living fairly well, thanks to Ruth's perseverance and the generosity of Boaz. He has allowed Ruth to glean in his fields, made sure that she has grain to take home and seen to it that she isn't harassed by his workers. The harvest is coming to a close now and Naomi is thinking about Ruth's future.  She tells Ruth to make herself pretty and go down to the threshing floor, where Boaz will be supervising the winnowing. And here’s where things start to get steamy.

During the threshing season it was customary for the landowner to spend the night near the threshing floor to protect his grain from theft. Ruth is to wait until Boaz is asleep, then uncover his feet and lie down. "He will tell you what to do," Naomi advises. 

I think one reason why Naomi sent Ruth to Boaz at night was so that she could make her request in private. If she had approached him during the day, she'd be publicly accusing him of failing to live up to his family responsibilities and demanding her rights. He'd be under a lot of pressure and no matter how Boaz answered the request, he would be publicly embarrassed. This way, Boaz could make a decision without the whole town watching him. 

Then again, perhaps Naomi was trying to set up a romantic situation.  Some commenters have said that the Hebrew word translated as “feet” is sometimes used as a euphemism for a different, more private part of the body.  They suggest that Naomi’s plan is to have Ruth wait until Boaz passes out drunk from partying and then crawl into bed with him.

I don’t think I agree with this interpretation, though.  The wording of the text, “When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits,” (Ruth 3:7); or “…his heart was merry” as the King James Version puts it; to me suggests happy and mellow, rather than staggering drunk.  Then again, maybe I’m reading into the story what I want to see.

But when I try to envision how the scene might have taken place, I just can’t picture it.  Ruth pulling back Boaz’s robe enough to expose his toes, and then backing off to wait and hope is subtle.  Ruth hitching up his garment to expose his feet, legs and dangly bits is less so.  It makes you wonder how Boaz managed to sleep through that.  Maybe he was passed out after all.

No, I prefer to interpret Boaz’s feet as feet.  I don’t doubt that Naomi hoped the intimate setting would give Boaz ideas; but a one-night stand with Boaz would not have helped Ruth’s or Naomi’s situation any.  Yes, she might have been able to shame him into marrying her.  Or she might have prompted him to denounce her as a fornicator and slut.  And if Naomi really wanted the two of them to have sex, she might have done better advising Ruth to uncover her own “feet”.  Instead, Ruth does something different.

Ruth is careful to maintain deference to Boaz. She does not lie by Boaz's side, the way a wife would or a lover. She lies at his feet, like a servant, or even a dog. Our egalitarian society finds this repellant, or at least strange. Maybe that’s why we’d rather have the feet mean something else and have Ruth act in a more sexually aggressive manner.

I don't think her behavior is due solely to the position of women in the culture of the time; part of it is a matter of class. Boaz is a wealthy landowner, and Ruth is a poor relation and a foreigner at that. She's aware that she has a lower status. 

In one of his parables, Jesus advises not to grab the seat of honor next to the host when you go to a party, because if a more important guest shows up, you'll get bumped and look like a dork. (Luke 14:7-11)  My translation does not actually use the word "dork", but I’m sure that’s what Jesus meant.  How much better, Jesus says, it is to choose a lower, humbler seat for yourself and have the host urge you to move to a better place.  

This is what Ruth does. Instead of presuming upon her family connection, she assumes a servant's place and waits for Boaz to make the next move. We might find her attitude submissive, but she's not too humble to make a fairly brazen request, nor to remind Boaz of his duty to honor that request. 

Boaz wakes up in the middle of the night (probably his feet were cold) and finds a girl, lying at his feet!  "Who are you? he asked.  "I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer." (Ruth 3:9, NIV) 

The word translated as "corner" and in the RSV as "skirt" literally means "wings", so in a sense she is asking him to "spread his wings over her," and become her protector. She is asking him to marry her. That’s how the phrase is used in Ezekiel 16:8, in which the relationship between God and his People is compared to a Bad Romance.  

Or, as has been suggested, Ruth might have been saying, “Open your robe so that we can Get Jiggy.”  Sexual intimacy is indeed implicit in the garment metaphor, but Ruth is asking for more than just sex.

She reminds him that he is next-of-kin, or the "kinsman-redeemer" as the NIV puts it. Boaz has a family responsibility to look after his relatives. This goes back to the Levirite Law mentioned a while back. (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). If a man dies without a son, his brother is obligated to marry the man's widow to provide him with an heir to carry on the family line and to take care of the widow. 

Boaz is pleased and flattered by her request. He has been impressed by her character and is more than willing to take her as his wife. There's just one obstacle: another kinsman who is more closely related to the family than he is, whose rights and obligations take precedence over Boaz's. But the wheels are turning in his mind, and he's probably already working on a plan. 

Why does Boaz send Ruth away early before anyone else can see her? My guess is that he did it to protect her reputation -- and his own as well. If people knew the two of them had spent the night together... well, some people might think they were, ahem, playing footsie. 

The next morning, Naomi hears Ruth story with satisfaction. Boaz is clearly interested in the girl.   "Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today."  

"Who's That Girl?" -- Ruth part 2

Naomi and Ruth have settled down in the town of Bethlehem, but they are jobless, without a protector and dependent upon friends and neighbors. It's harvest time, and Ruth takes the initiative and offers to go gleaning in one of the nearby fields.  

The harvesting process went something like this: First men would go into the fields with hand sickles. They'd cut down the ripened grain and leave them lying in the fields. The next crew, usually of women, would come behind them and bind the cut grain into sheaves. The sheaves would be transported, either by donkey or by cart, to the threshing floor where cattle would tread the grain in order to loosen the grain from the straw. Next winnowers with large forks would toss the threshed grain into the air. The wind would blow away the lighter straw and chaff and the heavier grain would fall at the winnower's feet. Next the grain would be gathered up and sifted to remove any remaining foreign matter and then bagged. 

Now when the harvesters and binders went through the field, they generally left some grain standing and a few loose stalks lying around. Usually, the owner of the field allowed gleaners to follow the binders and pick up any leftovers. In fact, the Law of Moses required them to do this. 

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19:9-19 NIV) 

Modern business practices emphasizes efficiency to increase production by eliminating waste, but Moses commanded that a certain amount of leftovers be preserved to provide something for the poor.

The same charity, incidentally, was extended to the animals too: Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. (Deuteronomy 25:4) 

This is what Ruth decided to do: she would go into one of the nearby fields where a harvest was going on and follow the harvesting crew, picking up whatever scraps of stray grain she could.  It just so happens that the field she goes to belongs to a kinsman of her father-in-law Elimelech; a man of standing named Boaz. 

Boaz was a prosperous landowner and decent, godly man.  We get a glimpse of the type of man he is by how he treats his employees.  Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, "The LORD be with you!" "The LORD bless you!" they called back. (Ruth 2:4 NIV)  A blessing and response that is echoed in churches every Sunday.  We get the picture of a decent, pious man on good terms with his workers.

He notices Ruth working in the field and asks his foreman, "Whose young woman is that?" The foreman explains who she is.  Now one thing that interested me is that the text never tells us that Ruth is beautiful; (or that Boaz is handsome for that matter). We can speculate that she was -- after all, something must have called her to Boaz' attention -- but the Bible doesn't tell us that. It does suggest that Boaz was touched by the story of Ruth and Naomi's plight and impressed by Ruth's diligence in working in the field.  He gives Ruth special permission to do her gleaning right after the girls who bind the sheaves and to drink from the water jars set aside for the workers when she needs to. He gives his workers special instructions not to harass her, as they might some other unfamiliar single girl.  He even goes as far as to offer her lunch and he goes on to instruct his harvesters to make sure they leave plenty behind for her to pick up. 

Thanks to Boaz's generosity Ruth returns home with quite a haul for a day's gleaning. Naomi rejoices in their change of fortune.  "The LORD bless him!" Naomi said to her daughter-in law. "He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." She added, "That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers." (Ruth 2:20 NIV)  This is a big change from "I went away full but the LORD has brought me back empty!" 

Naomi calls Boaz a "kinsman-redeemer" in the NIV translation. King James reads "one of our next kinsmen" and Revised Standard Version says "one of our nearest kin." Likewise, the New English Bible calls him "our next-of-kin." The NIV rendering suggests something more than just a relative; a kinsman-redeemer had a greater responsibility to his immediate family: to protect the interests of needy members of the extended family, to provide an heir for a brother who had died (that, you'll recall, was the levirate law); to redeem a relative who had been sold into slavery and to avenge the killing of a relative. (The Hebrew word translated here as "kinsman-redeemer" may also be translated as "avenger"). 

Ruth's meeting with this kindly relative renews Naomi's hope, and she tells Ruth to stay with her benefactor. Ruth continues to work in Boaz's fields through the barley harvest and after that the wheat harvest.

But when the harvest is over, what will she do then?

"Call Me Bitter" -- Ruth part 1

Last week’s piece on the Council of Jerusalem wound up taking longer than I intended, so this week I’m going to cheat and recycle a four-part examination of the Book of Ruth I wrote some years back for a different online community.  And no, the Story of Ruth is not exactly an obscure one, but I hope that maybe I can touch on some points you might not have heard.

The Book of Ruth is set during the period of the Judges; the time between the Israelites' entrance into the Promised Land and the establishment of a monarchy. At this time, the Israelites did not have a central government, but rather each individual tribe ruled itself. The closest thing they had to a king were the judges, who for the most part were arbitrators and sometimes spokesmen for God who occasionally led the people in time of war.

Jewish tradition claimed that the prophet Samuel was the author of the Book of Ruth, but this seems unlikely, since the book refers to David, who did not become king until after Samuel's death. Some scholars believe the book was written during the monarchy, perhaps during the rule of David's son Solomon. Other scholars point to some words in the text that suggests influence from the Aramaic language, which would have come much later; say, in the time following the Babylonian Captivity.  Some commentators have suggested that the book was written as a rebuttal to the Book of Ezra, which condemns the practice of intermarrying with foreigners, by telling the story of a Moabite girl.

In the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, Ruth is placed near the end.  The Tanakh is divided into three categories:  The Torah, or Law of Moses; the Prophets, containing both the books of the prophets and the more important books recording the history of the Kingdom of Israel; and the Writings,  which is sort of everything else, containing poetry, wisdom literature and a few shorter narratives. The Book of Ruth, having neither Moses nor any prophets, gets stuck in the back with Esther, Job and Nehemiah. 

In the Christian Era, Jerome reorganized the books of Jewish Scriptures, subdividing the categories and placing the books in rough chronological order by setting, if not necessarily by composition.  In Ruth’s case, at least, I like this arrangement better, because the Book of Ruth provides a welcome respite between the dark and grim Book of Judges and the bloody, battle-filled books of Samuel.

There are no flashy miracles in the Story of Ruth and no exhortations of Divine Wisdom. It's just a sweet romantic story about a young widow who is a stranger in a foreign land and who finds happiness in a kind and loving benefactor. Perhaps that is miracle enough. 

A man named Elimelech travels to Moab with his wife Naomi and his two sons to escape a terrible famine. Elimelech means "(My) God is king" and Naomi means "pleasant." They came from Ephrathah, an old name for the town of Bethlehem. You might remember from Christmas programs the prophecy of Micah:

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, Out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel... (Micah 5:2 NIV)  

Moab was a neighboring country on the east shore of the Dead Sea, about a fifty mile journey from Bethlehem. Moab and Israel had bad blood between them ever since the time of Moses. (Numbers 22:1-4; 25: 1-3) In fact, in Deuteronomy it states:   

No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation. -- (Deuteronomy 23: 3 NIV) 

Despite this enmity, Elimelech and his family found a home in Moab and his sons married Moabite girls; one named Orpah and the other Ruth. (And yes, Orpah is whom Oprah Winfrey was named after; the spelling just got messed up). Then tragedy struck. First Elimelich and then his sons died, leaving Naomi and her daughters-in-law alone.  This was a major catastrophe. In the culture of the time, women had little to no rights of their own. The Man of the Family, either the woman's father or her husband or her son if her husband was dead, was head of the household; he was responsible for taking care of the women-folk. A widow with no sons was a pitiable creature forced to rely on the charity of friends and neighbors.

Was the death of Naomi's husband and her sons divine punishment for letting the boys marry wicked Moabites?  Ezra probably would have said yes; but the author of Ruth makes no such suggestion.  On the contrary, Ruth is praised by the text as a virtuous woman, and the ancestress of... ah, but we'll get to that.

Even though Naomi had lived in Moab for ten years, she undoubtedly felt she would do better in her homeland. She heard that the famine in Judah had ended, so she decided to return to Bethlehem.  Her daughters-in-law wanted to come with her, but Naomi tried to dissuade them. They were both young enough that they could possibly find another husband; Naomi was not. What's more Naomi could not provide a new husband for either of them. 

This is an important point, touching on what's called the levirate law. When a man died without a son, his brother was legally obligated to take the widow and provide her with an heir to take care of her. This happened in the weird and sordid story of Tamar and Judah (Genesis ch. 38) which we’ll get to another time.  It is also the basis of the hypothetical question the Sadducees pose to Jesus regarding marriage at the Resurrection (Matthew 22: 23-33) The levirate law becomes important later in this story. 

Naomi tells her daughters-in-law to go home. They'd be better off among their own people than sharing in her bitterness and misery. Orpah decides that she's right and bids Naomi a tearful farewell. Ruth, however insists upon staying with Naomi. 

"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you star I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17)

This passage is sometimes used as a wedding text, especially in churches which perform same-sex marriages.  I’m not sure how I feel about this; does every expression of affection between two people have to be about sex?  But it is a beautiful passage.  And it also provides a rare example of a Bible story that passes the Bechdel Test.

The test was devised by a character in cartoonist Allison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, and has gotten some popularity as a tool to look at gender relationships in popular culture.  A movie which passes The Test is one which (1) has at least two women in it – preferably named characters – (2) the women talk to each other, and (3) they talk about something other than men.

The books of the Bible were written largely by men in a male-dominated culture, and it probably didn’t occur to them to write much about what the women were doing.  In a couple of places, though, we get these moving, personal looks at the women of the Bible.  Not many; the only other story passing the Bechdel Test that comes readily to mind is the scene between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth in Luke chapter 1; but the ones we see are special.

The formula “May the LORD deal with me ever so severely…” is one which occurs frequently in the Books of Samuel, which suggests to me that they might have had the same author. (Which I think would mean it was written earlier; or that the author of Ruth was simply imitating the style of Samuel)

Interesting to note that the word Ruth uses here, rendered in most English translations as "the LORD" and in the KJV as "Jehovah" is YHWH, or "Yahweh", the special Hebrew name for God. This is the only place in the book where Ruth says this word and the fact that she swears by the Name of the Jewish God is a sign that she's serious about adopting her mother-in-law's religion.

Naomi returns home and her old friends and neighbors are excited to see her.  But Naomi takes no joy from her return . “Call me Mara.” (bitter), she says. 

"I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. ...The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." (Ruth 1:21 NIV) 

The word translated "afflicted" here can also be translated "has testified against", as it is in the King James Version. The New English Bible renders this passage: "The Lord has pronounced against me; the Almighty has brought disaster upon me."  The Anchor Bible, likewise renders it: "For Yahweh has testified against me / And Shadday has pronounced evil sentence on me." ("Yahweh" of course is the Holy Name of God as declared to Moses. "Shaddai" is an archaic term for God, apparently used in patriarchal times and the time of the Judges; it's usually translated as "the Almighty").

In the Anchor Bible's notes, the translator comments:  “She portrays herself as a defendant in a legal action in which the charges and testimony are in effect unknown to her, in which she has been deemed guilty, in which punishment has already been meted out. Worst of all, her antagonist is God.”  In this Naomi has a lot in common with Job, framing her complaint against God in legal terms. The prophet Jeremiah does the same: You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease? (Jeremiah 12:1 NIV)

But for all her self-pity and complaint, Naomi already possessed a great blessing in her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who is kind and devoted, and as we will see in the next chapter, bold and resourceful as well.  

Naomi may be bitter now, but are going to change.

The Spy Who Hid On My Roof

(Originally posted as part of the D'var Torah series at Daily Kos, June 15, 2012) 

The Gospel of Matthew starts out with a lengthy genealogy of Jesus, tracing his line back to Abraham.  It seems likely that the author of Matthew was writing for a predominantly Jewish audience, because he frequently connects events from the Gospel narrative to prophecies in Scripture.  As a kid, I found the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1 both boring, (there are a awful lot of "begats" in there) and fascinating, (trying to pick out the names I recognized from Sunday School).

The genealogy, not surprisingly, is mostly a male one, with Fathers begetting Sons begetting more Sons after that unto the umpteenth generation.  But the author of Matthew does pick out four women to mention in the lineage of Christ.  And these aren't necessarily the ones you'd expect.  He makes no mention of Rebekah, or Rachel, or even Sarah the Mother of Nations.  

No, the ones Matthew chooses to honor are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.  One an adulteress.  One a prostitute.  Two are widows, one of which pretended to be a prostitute.  And all of them foreigners.  Four Inconvenient Women of the Bible, women who don't seem to fit the expectations we have of The Virtuous Woman.

We get Rahab's story in Joshua chapter 2.

Forty years have passed since the Children of Israel paused just outside the Promised Land and Moses sent spies to scout out the Land of Canaan.  The spies had given a discouraging report, (“Those guys are freakin’ Nephilim, man!  They’re huge!”) which dismayed the Israelites, and the people’s lack of trust angered the Lord. Now Joshua, one of the original twelve spies and one of the two who gave the land a good report, leads Israel and sends another pair of spies into the city of Jericho.

The spies come to the home of a woman named Rahab, whom the text tells us is a prostitute.  Or was she?  Some scholars have argued that the word used to identify Rahab can also mean “innkeeper.”  This may be true. I suspect, though, that these scholars are chiefly looking to sanitize the story.

When soldiers show up looking for the spies, Rahab hides them and gives the soldiers a false trail to follow.  She offers to help the spies sneak out of the city and asks them to promise to protect her and her family when the Israelites attack.  

Why did Rahab hide the spies?  Perhaps as prostitute she was considered a social outcast and therefore had little loyalty to the city she lived in.  And I have to admit, the romantic in me likes to think that something happened between her and one of the spies.  That's the way it would work in a James Bond movie.

The reason she gives the spies is a pragmatic one:  she has heard about how the Lord had led the Israelites through the Red Sea and defeated the Amorites, and she recognizes that the people of Israel have divine backing.  In fact, she tells them that the whole city is terrified of their approach, which is why the king of Jericho has his men searching for spies.

The spies arrange for Rahab to tie a scarlet cord to her window and have it hanging out, so that the Israelites will know which home to spare.  They want to make sure nothing goes wrong.

It occurs to me that Rahab's scarlet cord parallels the blood the Israelites were commanded to place on their door and lintels the night of the First Passover, so that the Angel of Death would spare their homes.  Which was probably where the spies got the idea.

Thanks to Rahab, the spies make it safely back to their camp and give Joshua their report.  And later on, when the walls come a-tumbling down and the Israelites conquer the city, Joshua honors the vow his men made and spares Rahab's family.  The text tells us that she lives among the Israelites to this day.

That's the last mention we have of Rahab in Joshua.  According to the genealogy in the Book of Matthew, Rahab married Salmon, who was the great-great grandfather of King David.  I don't know where Matthew got that.  The only genealogy I can think of covering that period is the one in 1 Chronicles, and that one only traces the male lineage.  Perhaps he was following an oral tradition about Rahab not written down in Scriptures; or perhaps he inserted her into the genealogy for other reasons.

She is mentioned two other places in the New Testament.  The author of the Book of Hebrews includes her in the epic chapter listing the heroes of faith in Israel's history (Hebrews 11:31), and the Apostle James cites her as an example of a person whose actions demonstrated her faith (James 2:25).

And who was this heroine of faith?  A harlot and an outsider; but also a loving woman protective of her family, and a woman who recognized the hand of the Almighty; and ultimately she became a part of the community of Israel.

Conservation of Marys

Personally I blame Pope Gregory the Great. 

Don’t get me wrong; Gregory did some remarkable things during his papacy.  He was a prolific writer and made important contributions to the Catholic liturgy, including, it is said, inventing the Gregorian chant.  He sent St. Augustine (the other one) to Britain as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons.  John Calvin, not an easy man to impress, called him “the last good pope”.  On top of that, Gregory was an able punster; a rare quality in pontiffs.  But against his notable accomplishments, there is one I have to question.  He was the one who decided that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute; an accusation which has hung on her ever since.

Why would Gregory want to malign this woman, whom some have called “the apostle to the Apostles”?  What did she ever do to him?

The answer is complicated and has a bit to do with what I call the Conservation of Marys.

There are several Marys mentioned in the Gospels, most of them popping in and out of the Passion and the Resurrection narratives.  There’s Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary the mother of James; I guess the name was popular then; almost as popular as it later became among Catholics.  And, as George M. Cohan once observed, It’s A Grand Old Name.

Still, the plethora of Marys can get confusing.  I once wrote a puppet play for our church’s Sunday School about the Resurrection story and I found it challenging to deal with all the Marys running around; so I can understand the impulse to combine some of them into a kind of Marian Composite.

But who is Mary Magdalene?

She is mentioned in Luke chapter 8 as one of a number of women who had been healed by Jesus and who helped support his ministry by their own means.  Luke says that she is called Magdalene; which most interpreters have assumed means that she came from Magdala, a large town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee; and that she had been afflicted by several demons.

People tend to forget about these women, except when they turn up again in the Resurrection account; but woman had a greater role in the early Christian Church than a lot of us realize.  The first Christian convert in Macedonia was an independent businesswoman named Lydia.  Priscilla and her husband Aquila were close friends of Paul’s who worked with him in Corinth and then later in Rome.  The personal greetings in Paul’s epistles suggest that women were key organizers in the congregations he founded.  And Luke’s mention here of Mary Magdalene and these other women show that this was true for Jesus’ ministry as well.

Mary Magdalene was one of the women present at the foot of the cross when Christ was crucified and when his other disciples were in hiding.  She was also among those who went to his tomb the following Sunday to finish the funerary preparations they didn't have time to complete before the Sabbath.  Mary was the first to see the Risen Lord, and returned to tell the Disciples, which is why she has been called “the apostle to the Apostles.”

The story told in John 20:10-18 of how she encounters the Risen Christ in the garden and at first mistakes him for a gardener is a touching and familiar one; but it also provides storytellers with something the Gospels otherwise lack:  a Love Interest.

The sorrow Mary felt upon the death of Jesus, the way he made a special trip to reassure her, and particularly the enthusiastic glomp she gave him when she discovered he was alive, have all led many readers to suspect that Jesus and Mary were particularly close.  All right; I’ll come out and say it.  They suggest that Mary Magdalene was the Girlfriend of Christ.

A lot of people would find that sort of blasphemous; and I have to admit that the idea of Jesus boinking one of his groupies doesn't really fit with how I envision the Pure and Sinless Son of God.  Then again, we are also taught that Christ became incarnate as True Man, meaning that he was subject to the same joys and sorrows, the same temptations and the same experiences as ordinary folks.  By that reasoning it’s not that implausible – in fact it’s quite likely – that Jesus might have been in love at some point in his life as well.  And either way, I hardly find it heretical to suppose, as many dramatists have, that Mary might have been in love with him.

Some have taken it even farther, speculating that Jesus and Mary were married in Milwaukee, secretly, and ran off to Gaul; but that this fact has been suppressed, first by patriarchal Church Fathers wishing to downplay Mary’s role in Jesus’ ministry, and later by a Bourbon conspiracy in order to deny that her children by Jesus are the Rightful Rulers of France.  The former might be somewhat plausible; the latter, not so much.

Personally, I've sometimes entertained the notion that Mary was carrying on a romance on the side, but that she was really fooling around with the Disciple John.  But I don’t think even Dan Brown would buy that idea.

The Resurrection account is the last mention we have of Mary Magdalene in the Gospels.  But wait, you perhaps are thinking; wasn't there a story about her and her sister Martha?  And the Raising of Lazarus?  And there was hair involved somewhere, right?

Now we get to the Second Mary in our composite.

In Luke chapter 10 we find the familiar story of Mary and Martha, two sisters living in the town of Bethany, who were friends of Jesus.  One time while Jesus is visiting them, Martha becomes annoyed with her sister because Mary is sitting and listening to Jesus teach instead of helping her with the housework.  Jesus tells Martha to cut her sister some slack:

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”  (Luke 10:41-42 NIV)

I suspect that Jesus might have been thinking of the time he got chewed out by his family because he got so caught up in listening to the learned rabbis discussing Scriptures in the Temple that he stayed there for three days.

Mary and Martha appear again in John chapter 11 when they summon Jesus because their brother Lazarus is deathly ill.  By the time Jesus gets there, Lazarus has already died; but Jesus raises Lazarus from death.

Shortly after the Lazarus incident, Jesus is again visiting the family.  Mary takes a container of nard, an expensive perfume, and uses it to anoint Jesus’ feet, then wiping them off with her hair.

Judas disapproves of this display of devotion, grumbling that the perfume would be better used if it were sold and the proceeds given to the poor.  John didn't like Judas and never misses an opportunity to remind the reader what a jerk he was.  Jesus replies with one of the more misused quotations from the Gospels:  “The poor you have always with you.” (John 12:8 KJV).

This verse is sometimes used to deride secular attempts to fight poverty, but in its context I don’t see Jesus saying that at all.  He recognizes that Mary has done this out of devotion to honor him and that her sincere act of love deserves no rebuke.

Mary of Bethany is not mentioned as one of the women at the cross; that is, unless she is also Mary Magdalene.  But is she?

Well, both women are named Mary.  It’s an obvious point, but I might as well make it.  And both women seem to have dearly loved Jesus.  And Jesus seems to display a certain amount of affection to them both.  So why shouldn't we combine the two?  It would make the cast of characters a little less confusing.  And Mary Beth is so cute; she’s like the Kitty Pryde of Jesus’ followers.  The Mary Beth who anointed Jesus’ feet would fit so well in the story of Mary Mags in the Garden.

I might be willing to buy it, if not for that Luke 8 passage.  Luke is the one, remember, who introduces us to Mary Magdalene.  Then a couple chapters later he tells about Mary and Martha.  If the two Marys were the same woman, wouldn't Luke have told us so?

But let’s waive that point.  By his own admission, the author of Luke got his material second-hand; perhaps he got the story of the Mary with the Seven Demons and one of the Mary with the Bossy Sister from two different sources and didn't realize the two women were the same person.

More significantly, as I read it, the Mary Magdalene described in Luke 8 is an independent woman with her own income, or at least a sizeable nest egg, who can afford to help support Jesus’ ministry and who can accompany his other followers.  The Mary of Bethany described in Luke 10 is a stay-at-home, the dependent younger sister of an older, more responsible sibling.  I don’t see the two portraits matching.

But why would Pope Gregory think that either Mary Beth or Mary Mags was a harlot?  Especially since Mary Beth seems like such a nice girl.

If she was such a nice girl, then where did she get the money for that perfume?  A pint of nard doesn't come cheap.  And nice girls keep their heads covered.  And for that matter, where did Mary Magdalene get her money?  We tend to get the impression that women didn't own property back in Bible times, they were property; so if Mary Mags had that much disposable income, it must have come from someplace disreputable, right?

Well… maybe not.  I don’t think that society in First Century Judea was quite that rigid, even if perhaps some of the more conservative element wished it were.  She could have been like Susanna, another woman mentioned in Luke 8, who was a member of an affluent household; or she could have been a single woman, widowed or otherwise, who was able to run her own business, like Lydia of Philippi.

Another more subtle point is that perhaps Gregory found the Marys’ affectionate attitude towards Jesus suspect.  The Church has a long tradition of looking with disapproval at anything remotely hinting of sex.  I’d like to blame St. Augustine (of Hippo, not of Canterbury) for this, but some of it can be found in Paul’s epistle as well. 

My Dad was once pastor in a small town that was equally divided between German Lutherans and Polish Catholics.  The previous Lutheran minister, who had served for something like twenty years, had been a life-long bachelor, so a lot of people in town regarded the idea of a Pastor’s Wife as something unusual, and my Mom always got the impression that some of her Catholic neighbors regarded her as a Scarlet Woman somehow for marrying a man of the cloth.

Likewise, I can imagine Gregory feeling uncomfortable with the public displays of affection both Marys show to the Son of God.  But perhaps I’m reading too much in here.

More significant is the story of the Anointing.  There is a parallel account of a woman anointing the feet of Jesus in the other three Gospels.

The accounts in Mark (Mark 14:3-9) and Matthew (Matt 26:6-14) are pretty similar to the story John tells, except that the woman who anoints Jesus is unnamed and the incident is said to take place at the home of a guy named Simon the Leper.  (Was that another name Lazarus went by?  Although in one of Jesus’ other parables he gives the name Lazarus to a fictitious leper).  Luke, however, tells the story differently.

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.  When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town leaned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.  Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.  (Luke 7:36-38 NIV)

The Pharisee, whose name is also Simon, looks at this scene with disapproval and mutters to himself that if this Jesus was as hot a prophet as he was made out to be, he’d know what kind of woman was fondling his feet.

Jesus hears his muttering and responds with a mini-parable; and then goes on to add:

“Do you see this woman?  I came into your house.  You did not give me water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.  Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much.  But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”  (Luke 7:44-47)

When we get multiple parallel stories like this in the Bible, there are a couple ways we can treat them.  One is to assume that they are separate events that just happened to be similar in some ways to each other; the other is to assume that they are accounts of the same events and chalk any discrepancies to a different writer telling the story from a different point of view and emphasizing different elements.

This latter view is how Gregory chose to interpret the stories of the Sinful Woman and of Mary at Bethany.  And so we have the following chain of reasoning:

If: 

Mary Magdalene = Mary of Bethany 

And: 

Mary of Bethany = the Sinful Woman of Luke chapter 7 

Then: 

Mary Magdalene = a Whore 

Q.E.D.

And people say that the Church has no place for Reason.

But as logical as Gregory’s argument looks when lined up in syllogistic form like that, I still don’t buy it.  For one thing, it depends on identifying Mary Mags with Mary Beth; and as I said before, I think there’s good reason to doubt it.  Neither do I think we have to identify the woman of Luke with the story in John.

Luke places his story near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry; and the Anointing at Bethany takes place nearly at the end.  Luke sets the story at the home of sanctimonious Pharisee; John has Jesus visiting friends.  The one story emphasizes the woman’s sorrow and her sinful past; in the other, Mary is simply performing an act of love.

None of these arguments, I’ll admit, are conclusive; and the other accounts in Matthew and Mark don’t really clarify things.  They name the host Simon, which links their version to Luke’s story; but they also place the incident in Bethany and include the criticism about wasting the perfume when it could be donated to the poor, which links it to John’s version.  And isn't it too much of a coincidence that the same thing would happen on two separate occasions?

Not necessarily.  Remember, this was a time when everyone wore sandals and traveled by foot on dusty roads.  It was customary for hosts to have a servant wash the feet of guests as they entered their home, or to at least provide water and a towel for that purpose.  Jesus alludes to this in the Luke account; and he uses the custom to make a point later in John chapter 13 when he washes the feet of his disciples.

It’s not surprising that Mary Beth, the youngest member of her household, would have been the one to wash the guests’ feet and might have wanted to do something special for Jesus.  It’s even possible that she had heard of the previous incident and used the perfume in imitation of the other woman’s gift.

And even if Mary of Bethany was the Sinning Woman of Luke 7, neither one of them was Mary Magdalene.

Nevertheless, thanks to Gregory, for something like fifteen hundred years Mary has been regarded as a prostitute and the term “Magdalene” synonymous with “whore”.  It was only in 1969 that the Vatican officially separated the three women comprising the Composite Mary.

I guess I’m of two minds about this.  On the one hand, I hardly think it fair that Mary Magdalene be tarnished with a reputation she doesn't deserve.

On the other hand, Jesus taught and ministered to and associated with all sorts of outcasts and sinners whom the Gospels never named:  the Sinning Woman of Luke 7; the Samaritan Woman at the Well; the Afflicted Woman who touched his garment; the Canaanite Woman with the sick daughter.

With his identification, whether right or wrong, Gregory gave a name to these women, upon whom Jesus shared his love and compassion.  I suppose that is worth something.