Women of the Book

By James Cortese

What were the women of the Bible really like?
Eve’s smooth-talking snake. Delilah’s haircut.
Jezebel ‘s bad rap. Mary’s family drama. The
men had their say, but a story always has two
sides if we just know where to look.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Cortese
• Release date: Feb 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9780982896006

Book preview

Women of the Book

Real-Life Stories from the Bible

James Cortese

Smashwords Edition

© Copyright 2010 by James Cortese

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-0-9828960-0-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010933063

Cover art: Adam and Eve (1932), Tamara de Lempicka

Also by James Cortese

Year of the Slug

Freak House

Being Zoe

The Very Last Thing

What the Owl Said

For Romana

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

—Hannah Arendt

CONTENTS

Foreword

I. FEMMES FATALES

Delilah

Judith

Susanna

Salome

II. MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

Eve

Dinah

Mary Magdelene

Mary

III. DAVID’S WOMEN

Michal

Tamar

Bathsheba

Abishag

IV. QUEENS

The Queen of Sheba

Jezebel

Drusilla and Berenice

Afterword

Glossary of Names

Appendices

FOREWORD

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

—Elizabeth Bowen

IN ROME’S MUSEO GALLERIA BORGHESE, there is a luminous painting called Lady with a Unicorn by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. For one reason or another—perhaps because people were puzzled by the realistic picture of a young woman holding an imaginary animal—the original was painted over to convert it into a portrait of Saint Catherine. Something uncanny and mysterious was changed into something ordinary and obvious. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the over-painting was removed and Raphael’s original—unicorn and all—was restored. This book grew out of a vague notion that I might be able to perform a similar kind of restoration on certain well known stories of the Bible.

It’s true that instead of pleasure, some might find the differences annoying. That’s fine, too. I take both responses as evidence that I’ve done my job as a writer.

The stories are divided into four groups. Those in the first group are about seductive women who, knowingly or not, lure men into compromising situations that end with their demise.

Delilah (Judges 13-16) is one of the most famous figures in the Old Testament and perhaps its most familiar woman, even to non-Christians—no doubt as a result of at least six feature films that have been made about her, beginning with a 1903 silent picture and reaching a kind of trashy apotheosis with Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949). Delilah, of course, is the Philistine temptress who beguiles the Israelite hero Samson into revealing the secret of his strength and thus becomes responsible for his eventual downfall.

Judith has a book all to herself, but only in the Roman Catholic version of the Bible; in the Protestant version, the book of Judith is considered part of the Apocrypha. The mirror-image of Delilah, Judith is a scheming but pious biblical heroine in the style of Mata Hari who uses her considerable charms to undo the mighty Holofernes, the Assyrian general who has besieged her town in the process of conquering the land of Israel.

Like Judith, Susanna also appears only in the Roman Catholic Bible and in the Protestant Apocrypha. The story takes place in Babylon at the time of the Exile. The beautiful, married and, of course, pious Susanna is actually an inadvertent femme fatale. It’s not really her fault that she manages to excite the lust of two judges, who surprise her as she is taking an outdoor bath in her private garden and demand that she have sex with them. She refuses, and the men proceed to accuse her of adultery with a young man, claiming they are witnesses to the act, which happens to be punishable by stoning. She tries to defend herself, but no one believes her story except the young prophet Daniel, the chief advisor to the Babylonian king.

Salome appears in the gospels of Mark (6:14-29) and Matthew (14:1-12). Unnamed, she is simply referred to as the alluring daughter of Herodias and Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. We know her name because of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. It’s Salome who performs the seductive dance for Herod in exchange for a promise to grant her a single request, but it’s her malicious mother who insists that she ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

The second group of stories deals with two mothers and two daughters.

Eve (Genesis 1-4) is everyone’s original mother, whose poor judgment in eating the forbidden fruit got the human race in trouble with its maker. Most people imagine Eve as no different from young women they see every day at the supermarket—except that Eve, like Adam, went around famously naked. This story imagines Eve as someone radically different from us—the first of our species to create language.

Dinah (Genesis 30-34) is the young daughter of the patriarch Jacob, whose twelve sons (from four different women) are destined to become the twelve tribes of Israel. A teenager with a lighthearted skepticism of adult ways, Dinah makes an abrupt transition from girlhood to womanhood when her brothers decide they don’t much care for the young man who wants to marry her.

Little of anything is told of Mary Magdalene in any the four gospels, where she appears as one of a group of women who follow Jesus, having been cured by him of a particularly nasty case of demonic possession. Although she must have been someone’s daughter, that bit of information is omitted in the gospels, along with every other detail of her past. In my story, it’s a central fact of her life.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is an important woman in all four gospels but is not necessarily among the most influential figures in her son’s life, all of whom are men. My story corrects that defect and tries to understand her in the way nearly all sons see their mothers—as the one person who, for either good or ill, has done the most to shape their lives.

The third group consists of women closely associated with David, whose life is chronicled mostly in the two books of Samuel. This is essentially David’s story as witnessed by women who were close to him.

Michal is the courageous, straight-talking daughter of Saul, who had been anointed Israel’s first king by the prophet Samuel. She’s the only woman in the Bible described as being in love with someone—in this case, with David. She becomes David’s first wife—a literal trophy wife for his having killed Goliath. Michal’s story covers the period of David’s life from the time when he is first brought to Saul’s court, to the time when he himself is anointed king of Israel.

Tamar is one of David’s daughters who has the misfortune to be raped by her half-brother Amnon, an event that nearly costs David his throne when his son Absalom avenges the crime against his sister by killing Amnon and then seeks to overthrow his father to become king. The story of Tamar is told by her mother Maacah and covers the middle period of David’s life.

Bathsheba is another man’s wife when David catches sight of her taking an outdoor bath while her husband Uriah is away fighting the Philistines. David commits adultery, is found out, and marries Bathsheba, but the rest of his reign is blighted because of Yahweh’s displeasure with him. It’s Bathsheba who gives birth to David’s successor, Solomon. Bathsheba’s story covers David’s life from the middle to its end and beyond.

Abishag, the young beauty brought in to revive an old and decrepit David by sleeping in his bed and imparting her warmth to him, brings the story of David to a close and then plays an important role at the very beginning of Solomon’s reign.

The final group of stories deals with women of power.

The Queen of Sheba makes her brief appearance in 1 Kings 10:1-13 where she displays suitable admiration for Solomon’s wealth and wisdom, and asks him a number of hard questions. In my version, she also advises him on a certain woman’s matter, and turns down an invitation to join his well-stocked harem.

Jezebel, the foreign-born wife of King Ahab, comes to us with a severely tarnished reputation, her name now meaning an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman (according to Webster). In 1 and 2 Kings, where the story of her undoing is told, the writers of the Bible mainly dislike her for promoting the worship of Baal in Israel. Her chief antagonist is the prophet Elijah, whose gruesome prophecies predicting her fate if she fails to shape up eventually come true—a case of divinely ordained comeuppance.

Only the briefest appearances are made by Drusilla and Berenice in Acts (24-26). Drusilla is the wife of Marcus Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judea, and her sister Berenice rules over Galilee with their brother Agrippa. The three siblings are the great-grandchildren of Herod the Great (king when Jesus was born). The sisters are mentioned as being present when Paul is interrogated by the authorities for his unwelcome proselytizing activities in Jerusalem—probably the least significant event in their colorful lives, which are documented in some detail by Josephus and several Roman historians.

Femmes Fatales

DELILAH

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

—Muriel Rukeyser

SO MUCH HAS CHANGED. I must have been someone else. No one remembers me, who I was, and what I did. Before even I forget, let me tell it here in front of the scribe, who has sworn he will not change a word.

I was living with my father when we heard about the great slaughter. The slaves came running with the news from the fields where they had been binding sheaves of barley. A thousand of our young men were dead. From as far away as Gath, you could hear the cries of the mothers, coming to claim their sons, whose broken bodies were already rotting on the rocky plain, a feast for jackals. They said Samson had killed them all—armed only with the jawbone of an ass.

They would believe any wild story, no matter how outrageous. They said Samson was as strong as a hundred men. They said he had killed lions with his bare hands. They said he had lifted the gates of Gaza on his shoulders and carried them to a hill near Hebron. Yes, he was very big, very strong. And he believed with all the venom of a prophet that the Philistines unjustly ruled the land his god had promised the Israelites. None of our warriors could stand against him. But in truth he was a man like any other man. He had a mother and a father, brothers and sisters, and he once had a wife—a Philistine woman who had betrayed him. He loved fighting and he loved women and wine, and when he was drunk, he said his god spoke to him, telling him, Slay my enemies, smite them hip and thigh, destroy them utterly! For Samson, the blood feud was a calling from God.

After my husband died, I had gone to live with my father, who had a large house with fields and vineyards. I had no desire to marry a second time, although there were many men who wanted me for their wife. I did not wish ever again to become a man’s property.

Then it happened that during the wheat harvest, at the time of threshing, Samson came to our house. He came alone and unarmed, in his short tunic, and spoke with my father. He stood in the courtyard, his small black eyes dark as pitch, squinting in the sun, his big thighs twitching, a gold earring in one ear, his hair that hung in ringlets below his shoulders and his beard, long as a prophet’s, blowing in a hot breeze of summer. Never once did he look at me.

Afterward, my father called me to him and said that Samson had come to ask his permission to take me for his wife.

Why doesn’t he take one of his own kind? I said. We are Philistines. He is an Israelite. Surely he can find a suitable wife among his own people.

My father’s eyes seemed to stare out over a field of desolation. I told him I will consider his offer.

Why are you afraid of him? You are a counselor to the lords of Philistia, I said. Their soldiers are at your bidding.

By himself he killed a thousand soldiers, my father replied.

Why do you want to believe such tall tales?

If the soldiers believe it, then it might as well be true.

I would rather die than marry this oaf, I said.

The next day my father journeyed to Gath, where he summoned the lords of the five cities to a council and sought their aid. The lords heard him out and were sympathetic to his plight but said they were in no position to help. If Samson wanted to take a Philistine wife, there was nothing to stop him. Then one of the lords said that far from being a calamity, why couldn’t such a marriage be the means by which all of Philistia might be saved? Let the marriage take place, the Lord of Ascalon said. Hold a great celebration at which both Philistines and Israelites would attend. Let Samson fall under the spell of his beautiful Philistine wife, who would then be in a position to learn the secret of his strength. And once that secret is known and given to us, our soldiers would be able to destroy the giant once and for all and save our country from this terrible scourge.

All the lords agreed that this was a most excellent plan. For this great service, the lords said they would give me eleven hundred pieces of silver.

Such a service, my father said, is inconceivable for any amount.

Go home and consider our offer, the Lord of Gath said. I’m sure that you will come to see the wisdom of it.

I told my father, I am not a whore for the lords of Philistia.

You refuse, then?

I refuse.

You can refuse the lords of Philistia but not me, not your father, he said, his body stooped in sorrow as he abruptly walked away.

When Samson came again asking for a reply to his suit, my father tried to dissuade him, but when that failed, he reluctantly gave his permission.

It was evening and the sun was setting when I was brought before Samson in the garden. At first there was mostly silence, then we began to speak—idle conversation, which he was not used to, and so he stumbled and avoided my gaze and grew embarrassed. Finally I said, My father says you wish to marry. A man does well to marry. But why do you wish to marry me?

He said simply, I am burning with love for you.

And so it seemed, for the sun had fallen lower in the sky behind him, making him appear all aflame.

I am a Philistine, I said. You should be burning with hate for me.

Our God has delivered us into the hands of the Philistines for the wrong we have done in his eyes, he said. But these days of shame are almost over. God has heard our prayers. Today, the Philistines oppress us; tomorrow, we shall be your masters.

I said, But surely there are many Israelite women who would make you a better wife than I.

The Israelites are ignorant peasants, he said. They live in huts. Our women are coarse and brown from working in the fields. They stink of dung. There is not one of them like you—beautiful and wise and learned in the ways of the world. You see, I am speaking the plain truth. God gave me my strength to slay our enemies. I must do his will, for it would be death to disobey the God of Israel. But my heart is my own, and if I choose to give it to a Philistine, then that is my own affair. God’s will be done!

The wind blew, tossing his hair like the leaves of the yew trees of the garden. I said to him, I am pleased I find favor in your eyes, but should it not be that, likewise, a man should find favor in a woman’s eyes?

He replied, It is true that your father is rich, and it is true that you are a noble lady. And who am I but the poor son of a farmer? But I tell you this: my birth was announced by an angel of God, who has foretold my destiny to deliver my people from the oppression of the Philistines. The time will come when I will one day rule over them as their king.

He came close to me and as gently as he could, he took me into his huge arms and pressed me to his chest. I thought I would die of fright, but in his embrace I felt no fear, no danger, only his strength—a strength that might protect me from the harm of a cowardly father and the folly of my people.

When I asked Samson about the terrible things he had done to the Philistines, he said his god had commanded him in his own voice to do these things. I asked him how he knew it was the voice of a god. It could just as well have been the voice of a demon. What’s it to me? he said. No matter which god’s plaything we are, we have no choice but to obey.

I told him that my Philistine gods demanded obedience, too. What if Dagon commanded me to plunge a dagger into his heart while he slept? Then you would be a fool not to do it, he said. I asked him if he would kill me if the god of Israel commanded it. His words caught in his teeth. Tears sprang from his eyes, and in the pitiful voice of a little boy, he said, I would kill myself before I would ever harm you!

No suitor, not even my own husband, had ever spoken such words to me.

After a time, an emissary sent from the lords of Philistia came to see me. It is known that you are engaged to Samson, he said. We have heard that he comes here nearly every day, meek as a lamb. The lords are exceedingly pleased with you. They say you must be very brave. We have men already chosen, our finest soldiers. As soon as you have discovered the secret of his strength, they will come to your father’s house and take Samson captive.

I told the emissary I had no intention of trying to make Samson divulge the secret of his strength. I would never betray a trust, even the trust of an enemy.

Remember who you are, the emissary said. Samson has caused great suffering among our people. If his strength grows, if he arouses the Israelites to rebellion, he could one day rule over us and make us all his slaves. This is our land. When the Israelites were still slaves of the Pharaoh, we had built our cities, planted our fields, raised our cattle, sent our merchants to Nineveh and Thebes and even across the great sea to Mycenae and Knossos, our homeland. We are the children of Minos. These Israelites, who are they? Wild tribes of the desert, ruled by a mad god who tells his people to slaughter all those opposed to them!

Later, I told Samson about the emissary. He laughed and said he wasn’t afraid of the lords and their soldiers. Everyone wants to know the secret of my strength. Do you want to know what it is?

I told him I didn’t want to know. There were some things we must keep forever locked in our hearts.

But if a man truly loves a woman, then he must be willing to share all the secrets of his heart with her, he said.

I told him that sometimes love can blind us and make fools of us.

But he wouldn’t listen to me. I am what I am! he said with all the pride of his power and his belief. God made me strong. God gave me my courage. As long as I believe in him, nothing can harm me. That is the secret of my strength!

That night I led him into my bed. I kissed the hands that had killed a thousand Philistine soldiers, that had ripped apart lions, that had carried the gates of Gaza to Hebron. The blood in my veins turned to fire and my heart trembled.

Are you afraid? he asked me, his voice in anguish.

I’m not afraid of the man I love above all men, I said. Never had I felt so completely possessed, following the rush of feeling down and down and down, until he gasped and his body shook and he cried out. Afterward, when I took his head and held it against me, he sobbed with childish joy, his hot tears flowing over my breasts.

I was happier than I had ever been, but then my father came to me, saying that charges of treason would soon be brought against us because I had refused to do what the lords of the five cities had commanded. The lords would take away our land and our cattle and our slaves and all our gold and silver. My father fell on his knees and wept, begging me to save us from doom. He said he had seen Samson in my presence—how completely he had fallen under my spell. Surely by now I must know the secret of his strength.

And what if I did? I said. Do you think that would be enough to destroy him?

So you know it! he said. And if you know it, then you must do your duty. Don’t set your heart against your own blood! Only you can remove this evil from the heart of Philistia!

He’s just a man! Soon he will be my husband!

He’s a man who would destroy us all so his people can take our land!

He’s a man who fights the injustices against his people!

My father shook his head. It is murmured among the Israelites that he gains his strength from his hair and his beard.

I laughed. How can you believe such nonsense? There is no magic, no secret. Samson gains his strength from our weakness. His belief is stronger than ours. That’s all it is.

Our learned priests and diviners have told the lords they are certain his god’s power comes through his hair and beard, my father insisted. They all agree it must be so!

I laughed at the absurdity of what he had just said.

What else could it be? my father asked.

I was sick of arguing. I told you what it is!

My father stood in silence and then said, So be it, and hurried away.

A few days later, the lords of the five cities sent a man who crept into my room where Samson slept the deep sleep of a child. The man stealthily cut off Samson’s hair and beard, waking neither of us.

Hearing a noise of feet upon the floor, I awoke and saw soldiers heading toward our room. I cried as loudly as I could, Samson, the Philistines are upon you!

Samson jumped from the bed. Armed soldiers burst in and laughed when they saw him. Samson looked down at the pile of hair on the floor. He felt his head and face, offering no resistance when the soldiers seized and bound him. The captain of the soldiers made a show of thanking me. No! I shouted and I called out to Samson, but he only looked away and said nothing. Then the soldiers laid him down and, taking a sharpened stick, gouged out his eyes. That’s for the jawbone of the ass, the captain said.

They took Samson away to Gaza, where he was bound in chains and set to grinding grain in the prison. There was great joy in the country, and people came from every part to Gaza, where they could see the blind giant and mock him, shouting, Where is your strength now, Samson?

Later, in the spring before sowing, a celebration was arranged: everyone was to assemble to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon in the temple at Ashdod. That day, the crowds filled every corner of the temple, climbing even to the roof and clinging to the beams. I was given the place of honor beside the High Priest. Below us in the sunken court, under the black head of Dagon, Samson was made the sport of the crowd. I could not stand to look. The High Priest said to me, This is a great day in our history. Your name, Delilah, will be written down and remembered to the end of time!

Down below, blind and broken, nearly naked, his face and head covered with stubble, Samson warded off the blows of boys beating him with sticks. Then the High Priest asked me how I had made the giant give up his secret. Was it the guile of magic or the guile of women? I told him the truth: There was no guile. My father pressed me, but I refused.

The High Priest couldn’t believe it. But still Samson was tamed!

It seemed so clear—that long mane, that beard—not a single hair cut since birth. Samson knew it and didn’t know it. We all knew it and didn’t know it. There was no secret. There was only betrayal.

Samson gave a great cry. What did he say? people asked. He called your name, someone told me. He called the name of his god, someone else said. I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up from my place and went out of the temple. I called for my servants. The city was empty and silent. A short time later, as we made our way through the empty streets, the ground shook beneath our feet. There was a loud roar behind us. When we turned to look, the temple was no more. We rushed back and saw the dust and rubble that had once been the temple of Dagon. A few people had survived, but most lay dead beneath the heavy stones and timbers, half the men, women and children of Ashdod, slaves and lords, even the high lords of Philistia and their wise counselor, my father. Samson, too, was killed. We all knew it was an earthquake. Among the Israelites, it was said that Samson had pulled down the temple with his own hands. But that was something we expected them to say. They had wanted a champion—now they would have to settle for a martyr, someone they could say had killed at his death more than those he had killed in his life.

But what glory does a god find in such death?

A few days later, Samson’s kin came down and carried him to the grave of his father. They buried him on the plain between Zorah and Eshtaol, beneath the dark hills of Judah, restless with the sons of Abraham, who looked down with longing upon this great green land, where but for the quarrelsome gods, all men might live together as brothers.