Read Online The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible by Jonathan Kirsch - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan Kirsch
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on the road to Emmaus, walking and talking with them, but they regard him as merely a fellow traveler on the road—“Are thou only a stranger in Jerusalem?”—until he reveals himself as the resurrected Son of God. And even then, like God at Abraham’s tent, Jesus pauses to share a humble meal—a bit of broiled fish and a piece of honeycomb—with his disciples (Luke 24:18,37, 41-43 KJV).
Still, even the disciples are unnerved by the appearance of the Sonof God in the guise of an ordinary man. No one is blinded by celestial light, no herald angels sing, no one’s face is set aglow, and yet the manifestation of God is all the more eerie precisely because it
is
so ordinary: “[T]hey were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit,” the New Testament says of the disciples who suddenly realize that Jesus is standing among them. “Behold my hands and my feet,” Jesus says. “[A] spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:38–39 KJV). The unsettling sensation of seeing God as a creature of flesh and bone is echoed in an emblematic work of our own anxiety-ridden century. “Who is the third who walks always beside you?” muses T. S. Eliot in
The Waste Land
, 48 evoking the subtle and sometimes affrighting experience of Abraham at the terebinths of Mamre and the disciples on the road to Emmaus, all of whom encountered not an angel but God himself as the third man.
Still, the prospect of an unmediated experience of God has always troubled religious authority of all faiths. After all, if God is thought to make a habit of appearing to men and women without going through the proper channels of ritual and prayer, all suitably supervised by rabbi or priest or minister, how can we know whether the guy who claims to have dined on veal roast with the Almighty last night is a prophet or a madman? The high priests of ancient Israel, too, appeared to regard the description of
any
direct encounter between God and humankind as so subversive that the Hebrew scribes may have been compelled to insert an angel or two whenever God himself chose to make a personal appearance.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RAPE OF DINAH
“Should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?”
— GENESIS 34.31
A clamor in the distance roused Jacob in the heat of the late afternoon, and he trudged to the door to see what the disturbance was all about. He heard the shrill keening of women’s voices, and he saw a small cluster of young women heading toward him, followed by a few of the field hands and, finally, one or two of the older women, who struggled to keep up.
“What is the trouble?” Jacob asked wearily, calling out from the doorway as the young women surged up to the house.
The women murmured and moaned, a few of them wept, but no one spoke.
“Well, then?” Jacob asked.
At last, one of the young women, a slender maiden with black eyes whom Jacob vaguely recognized as one of his daughter’s handmaidens, stepped forward and spoke up boldly.
“Our sister—your daughter—has been dishonored,” she announced, and then fell abruptly silent as the shrill cries of the women reached a new crescendo.
“Dishonored?” asked Jacob. “What do you mean?”
And Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her; and he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her
.
— GENESIS 34:1
“Dishonored,” the young woman repeated, “by one of Hamor’s people.”
Jacob frowned. The Canaanites among whom he had settled were none too friendly toward Jacob and his clan, and Jacob had expended many ingratiating words—not to mention rich gifts of food, wine, cloth, and handiwork—to cultivate the man called Hamor, the local chieftain. Jacob had paid one hundred silver coins to Hamor for the parcel of land on which he built his house and raised up his sheepstocks,
Still, even the disciples are unnerved by the appearance of the Sonof God in the guise of an ordinary man. No one is blinded by celestial light, no herald angels sing, no one’s face is set aglow, and yet the manifestation of God is all the more eerie precisely because it
is
so ordinary: “[T]hey were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit,” the New Testament says of the disciples who suddenly realize that Jesus is standing among them. “Behold my hands and my feet,” Jesus says. “[A] spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:38–39 KJV). The unsettling sensation of seeing God as a creature of flesh and bone is echoed in an emblematic work of our own anxiety-ridden century. “Who is the third who walks always beside you?” muses T. S. Eliot in
The Waste Land
, 48 evoking the subtle and sometimes affrighting experience of Abraham at the terebinths of Mamre and the disciples on the road to Emmaus, all of whom encountered not an angel but God himself as the third man.
Still, the prospect of an unmediated experience of God has always troubled religious authority of all faiths. After all, if God is thought to make a habit of appearing to men and women without going through the proper channels of ritual and prayer, all suitably supervised by rabbi or priest or minister, how can we know whether the guy who claims to have dined on veal roast with the Almighty last night is a prophet or a madman? The high priests of ancient Israel, too, appeared to regard the description of
any
direct encounter between God and humankind as so subversive that the Hebrew scribes may have been compelled to insert an angel or two whenever God himself chose to make a personal appearance.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RAPE OF DINAH
“Should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?”
— GENESIS 34.31
A clamor in the distance roused Jacob in the heat of the late afternoon, and he trudged to the door to see what the disturbance was all about. He heard the shrill keening of women’s voices, and he saw a small cluster of young women heading toward him, followed by a few of the field hands and, finally, one or two of the older women, who struggled to keep up.
“What is the trouble?” Jacob asked wearily, calling out from the doorway as the young women surged up to the house.
The women murmured and moaned, a few of them wept, but no one spoke.
“Well, then?” Jacob asked.
At last, one of the young women, a slender maiden with black eyes whom Jacob vaguely recognized as one of his daughter’s handmaidens, stepped forward and spoke up boldly.
“Our sister—your daughter—has been dishonored,” she announced, and then fell abruptly silent as the shrill cries of the women reached a new crescendo.
“Dishonored?” asked Jacob. “What do you mean?”
And Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her; and he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her
.
— GENESIS 34:1
“Dishonored,” the young woman repeated, “by one of Hamor’s people.”
Jacob frowned. The Canaanites among whom he had settled were none too friendly toward Jacob and his clan, and Jacob had expended many ingratiating words—not to mention rich gifts of food, wine, cloth, and handiwork—to cultivate the man called Hamor, the local chieftain. Jacob had paid one hundred silver coins to Hamor for the parcel of land on which he built his house and raised up his sheepstocks,
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