Harlott by the Side of the Road

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The Harlot by the Side of the Road Forbidden Tales of the Bible, by Jonathan Kirsch, was one of the most interesting and explicit collections of biblical stories that I have ever encountered. I spent much of my earlier years in bible lessons and listening to Sunday sermons, but never was I exposed to the sex and violence that the stories of this book tells.

Obviously, I was charged to write a rather lengthy paper detailing my thoughts about this book, and to find some commonality among the stories and expound upon those commonalties.

Although I am not a very deep thinker, and an even poorer writer, the two themes that seemed to be very obvious throughout these stories were (1) Women always seem to be at the center of or the cause of a major controversy, i.e. war, murder and death and () Women had the innate ability to scheme and connive to get what they wanted or what they felt they were justly entitled too. I will attempt to cohesively address both of these themes in the following pages.

Let me take the latter of these themes first, as I find it to be the most interesting and compelling The art of conniving and scheming.

The stories of Lot and his daughters and Tamar and Judah are two examples of how women of ancient biblical times got what they wanted. In addition, the most interesting of these two stories, in my opinion, is the story of Tamar and Judah.

Obviously, I do not need to retell the story, but for the sake of clarity, let me give my take on the story.

Tamar is in a pre-arranged marriage to the eldest son of a wealthy family. Before producing an heir to the family fortune, he loses favor with God and dies. According to ancient custom and law the next oldest son would then take Tamar as his wife and provide the family with an heir. However, in his greed he fails to do so and falls out of favor with God and dies. This leaves only one son left to perform the duty and provide and heir, but he was too young. So Judah, send Tamar to live with her father until the son becomes of age.

Judah knows completely that he has lied to his daughter-in-law and has no intention in allowing his son to enter into a relationship with this woman, because he has already lost two of his sons. Tamar, eventually learning of her father-in-laws deception, decides to take what is rightfully hers and ultimately, she conceives a child with none other than Judah himself.

Tamar uses a remarkable vindictive ploy, which consist of seducing her father-in-law to regain her status in society and in the house of Judah.

One might ask why Tamar felt the need to concoct such an elaborate scheme. My interpretation provides the following For reasons easy to surmise, Tamar's feelings of utter despair, helplessness and hopelessness are obvious reasons. We have cultural and historical sources that provide us with detailed accounts of the hellish existence of the ancient widow completely at the mercy of social control. She was a body in morning, forbidden, degraded, marginialized, and ultimately forgotten. It is easy to imagine what Tamar's, or any woman in that situation, life might have been like after she was sent back to live at her father's house with a vague promise, which Judah does not honor.

Ultimately, Tamar's scheming allows her to gain control of her life and she finds her place in the house of Judah. This is much the same scenario with the story of Lot and his daughters. Although incest, in today's society, is the most incomprehensible act that anyone can perform, in ancient times, it was not as taboo as never baring children.

Lots daughters, after retreating to the mountains, must look to the future. With the realization that they are the only three people left on earth, the daughters scheme to lay with their fathers so that they could each bare a child and continue the family name.

In this story, as well as the story of Tamar, women seem to have little significance in society, other than baring children. In addition, in the unfortunate circumstance that this task becomes inconceivable, then women take matters into their own hands. Planning and conspiring to do what ever is necessary to fulfill their needs wants and desires.

The second theme of these stories, controversy, has a much more profound statement, but I have little to offer in the way of substantial data. All of the remaining stories of the book, with the exception of the Jephthah and His Daughter and Zipporah and Moses, have women at the center of controversy and ultimately murder and/or war.

I do not feel that women intentionally caused the controversy that centered around them. Women were treated as objects of possession or personal property. Therefore, violation of their rights seemed to happen often in ancient times. Men would offer up their daughters, wives or concubines to anyone that may be causing a disturbance. Then once these women were violated, the men would become anger and rebel against those that violated their property.

This scenario seemed to run in circles. King David sent his daughter to tend to his ailing son, knowing or at least having a hint that he was lusting for her and wanted to lay with her. After she was violated sexually, he seemed to ignore that it happened and her brothers took him into the wilderness and murdered him. No one, including King David, questioned the sudden disappearance of Amnon.

This situation was similar in the Traveler and His Concubine. The mob intended to sodomize the Levite man, and instead his concubine was offered. She was then gang-raped to death. This ultimately caused war. Again, the property of man was violated and this caused controversy.

I could continue to list other examples in the bible, outside of the stories in this book that would lend support to the controversial issues of women and men. Although this argument may seem weak, I would continue to argue that women as objects or property are used by men to get them out of a tight jam and then the men stage their revenge at a later date and usually in the terms of war or individual killings.

The argument of controversy seems weak and I am sure that further examination and study of this topic would provide more evidence to support my claim.

In closing, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is interesting that over thousands of years that women have changed very little. The difference in ancient times and modern times is that women are more forthright with their scheming and conniving and the issue of controversy, centered around women, still exist.

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