Texts of Terror: reviewed

Texts of Terror by Phyllis Trible is book which seeks to highlight and explore four biblical stories which often go ignored by mainstream Christianity. The author specifically focuses on stories of women who are abused, neglected, raped, and killed for various reasons. Trible shows how these women are figures that would traditionally be viewed as simply tragic stories that are explained away by the suffering of the cross. She seeks to demonstrate how they, like Christ, can serve as figures of redemption for the faithful. This is an unabashedly feminist reading of scripture. As Trible puts it, “As a critique of culture and faith in light of misogyny, feminism is a prophetic movement, examining the status quo, pronouncing judgement, and calling for repentance.” She shows how these women are made vulnerable by the patriarchal human systems of their cultures, by the chauvinism and misogyny of their contemporaries of both genders, and by deity’s response to their various plights. Ultimately, the main goal of this text is to create a discussion about disturbing topics which need to be explored. “These familiar passages receive, however, unfamiliar applications. Women, not men, are suffering servants and Christ figures. Their stories govern the use of leitmotifs. Scripture thus interpreting scripture undercuts triumphalism and raises disturbing questions for faith.”

Chapter 4 focuses on the story of Jephthah's daughter. In Judges 11, a warrior named Jephthah vows to Yahweh that if Yahweh delivers the Ammonites in battle he will sacrifice the first person to come out of his door in a burnt offering. in Jephthah’s word, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” Trible highlights a perceived ambiguity of the vow, saying it is unclear if this is supposed to be a human or an animal, but the text seems clear that he means a human being. This could be a shocking thought until one considers God’s famous command to Abraham about Isaac, and also the story in 2nd Samuel 21 in which David sacrifices Saul’s sons to Yahweh in order to make the crops grow again. It seems that early Israelite culture was not entirely averse to sacrificing human beings to Yahweh. When Jephthah returns home after Yahweh does indeed deliver the Ammonites to him, his daughter greets him and he realizes that his own teenage child will have to be the burnt offering to his God. Jephthah’s daughter is vulnerable in this text because she is a victim of her culture’s penchant for sacrifice and her father’s desire to secure victory by controlling the hand of God. She is caught between duty to her patriarchal society and a desire to serve the Lord as she sees fit. I have known women like Jephthah’s daughter. Women who have given up their plans for a bountiful life to satisfy the desires or the goals of a loved one, a spouse or a family member. I have seen women at the shelter who have suffered at the hands of a man they loved, a man who has failed to trust that God will provide and has taken out his frustration on her. She is eventually sacrificed and God does not reach out a hand to save here. Unlike Isaac, he does not provide a replacement. Oftentimes, when we think a person is in dire need of divine rescue, God does not show up and that person meets a grisly fate. It is almost as if God accepted Jephthah’s daughter as sacrifice with His silence on the matter. Trible sees her death as a kind of type or model for all the faithful who have not seen victory in this life, “In her death, we are all diminished; by our memory she is forever hallowed. Though not a ‘survivor,’ she becomes an unmistakeable symbol for all the courageous daughters of faithless fathers.” She is a reminder that sometimes life, even a life of faith, is tragic. 

Chapter 3 focuses on the woman raped, killed, and dismembered in the book of Judges. In Judges 19, a Levite man sacrifices his unnamed concubine to a gang of rapists rather than let his guest be the victim. She is brutalized to death and he takes her body, cuts it into twelve pieces and ships it all over Israel. The woman is vulnerable because she is less valued than the Levite’s guest. Again cultural strictures play into this vulnerability. Because he is a woman, she is worth less than the guest. Because the Middle East places a huge emphasis on hospitality, the guest’s life is apparently worth more than her’s. Like Christ, this woman’s body is broken to raise Israel to righteousness. Again, she is typified by Trible, “Woman as object is still captured, betrayed, raped, tortured, murdered, dismembered, and scattered. To take to heart this ancient story is to confess its present reality. The story is alive and all is not well.” She is making the point that womanhood is often abused by patriarchal culture and this woman’s tale should serve as a call to repentance for all who would give heed. I have known vulnerable people who are cast aside and exploited for the ends of stronger figures. I have known both men and women who have been used and abused by people with no care but for their own lusts. Like the woman in this tale, our streets are filled with people whose bodies and spirits have been broken down by many of our cultural strictures, and used as nothing more than fodder for an agenda of some kind.

Chapter 2 focuses on the rape and abandonment of Tamar, a daughter of King David. Her brother Amnon becomes inflamed with lust for her virginity and takes it from her. He then becomes sickened with himself and casts her aside. The proper thing given their culture would have been for him to marry her, he had taken from her a thing of great value as far as her ability to marry well in that culture. She became a desolate woman in her brother Absalom’s house. Tamar is made vulnerable by her brother’s selfish passions. He thinks that he loves her but really he simply wants to conquer her sexuality. Amnon was a deeply troubled person and Tamar suffered because of his strength and inability to control his sexual drive. Further, she is made vulnerable by Tamar’s refusal to marry her after he had taken by force her most valuable marriageable commodity. Here she is victimized by her lack of cultural mobility as a woman. Without a good spouse, she loses a lot of respect and security within her culture and must depend upon her brother’s kindness. Tamar is typified by Trible as wisdom, as she notes, “...who will protect sister wisdom from the loose man, symbolized not by a foreigner but by her very own brother? Who will preserve sister wisdom from the adventurer, the rapist with his smooth words, lecherous eyes, and grasping hands? In answering the question, Israel is found wanting-and so are we.” Trible’s analysis shows that Tamar’s story shines a lot on much of our sin today. Many people are victimized and exploited by the selfish passions of others. Many people refuse to heed wise counsel and destroy their lives and the people around them. I have known many women at the Mission who have had their innocence stolen from them by people who simply wanted to use them for their own gratification. This is a common theme for people who end up in a homeless situation. Tamar’s tale will hopefully inspire the Church to heed wisdom’s voice over their own passions more often.

Trible’s work is unsettling and highlights many stories which are not commonly focused on. It shows that the life of faith is sometimes tragic, and that the people of faith will often behave horrendously. It also shows how vulnerable we all are the constructs within our cultures. Her analysis demonstrates greatly affected the people in the scriptures were by their cultural context, and how the vulnerable are not always liberated and rescued in this life. Further, she shows how the scriptures are heavily male centric and we must learn to read between the lines to get the feminine aspects to show through. Her typology and observance of symbology in these various stories were also very enlightening. Overall, her work will cause my reading of scripture to be more perceptive of the influence of cultural context, and more aware of the various symbolic levels of the tales it contains. 

Sam Bolton - June 2015

Sources:

• Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.