Clines, Final Reflections, p. 1 FINAL REFLECTIONS ON BIBLICAL MASCULINITY David J.A. Clines This volume, probably the first of its kind in being focussed on the construction and representation of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible, is demonstration enough that the study of masculinity in this sphere has come of age. It still has a long way to go to match the range and depth of feminist biblical criticism, but it has not been starting from scratch: it has been able to model itself on the progress of feminist criticism of the Bible. This volume develops some important methodological frameworks. In the first paper Susan Haddox introduces the simple but important distinction between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. The hegemonic construction of masculinity in a society is likely to be a single one, a recognized norm, a dominant factor in the power structures of the society; the subordinate masculinities will be many, more commonly attested than the hegemonic, and inevitably in conflict with them. Looking at the depiction of the patriarchs in Genesis, Haddox arrives at the somewhat surprising conclusion that not one of them (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) represents hegemonic masculinity; indeed, it is often their rivals (Ishmael, Esau) who do. The case seems undeniable. How then to explain the less than hegemonic-style masculinity of Israel’s revered male ancestors? Here the proposed answer is less certain, that there is a theological reason. Haddox infers that according to Genesis ‘God favors the less masculine’ (p. 15). I am not so sure that we can move so readily from the observation that the favoured leaders are the less masculine to the claim that they are favoured because they are less masculine, that they ‘model a proper relationship with God’ (p. 15). Still less am I convinced that their less hegemonic masculinity reflects the comparatively subordinate position of Israel vis-à-vis other nations, and offers Israel strategies for survival in the world of conflicting powers. Nevertheless, Haddox has rightly raised an interesting question, to which others will have to attempt an answer of their own. The narratives would certainly be much less attractive if their heroes were uniformly exemplars of hegemonic masculinity, and one wonders if this aspect of the patriarchal narratives, that makes them such imperfect men, is much more than an ancient self-deprecating Jewish joke. And there still remains the headache whether we have done rightly in so defining hegemonic masculinity as to exclude the masculinities that are actually best attested in reality. Roland Boer, who is always so sure-footed in the realms of theory, further refines the concept of hegemony, noting how in the social sphere it is ‘inherently uncertain and shaky’ and ‘continually undermined from within and without’ (p. 21). Chronicles is for him an example of the undermining of Israelite gender politics, in this case by the Levites, a sub-class secondary to the priests. Unreconciled to their subordinate status, they find a fulfilling outlet for their energies and ambition in the invention and maintenance of the minutiae of religious observance. This religious observance, we must note, takes place within an entirely male sphere, at the centre of which stands the ‘phallic’ temple—a figure for the books of Chronicles themselves (p. 24). This ‘priapic’ temple, with its tower 120 cubits high (as against the mere 30 in Clines, Final Reflections, p. 2 Kings) is ‘the image par excellence of the overwhelming if desperate effort to assert a male-only world’ (p. 25). Yet there are strains of a subordinate masculinity in this Levite arrangement, the ‘campy machismo’ (p. 28) of ‘foppish dandies’ (p. 29) fixated on matters of interior design, household furnishings and musical performance. Chronicles ‘consistently undermines the masculine hegemony it so desperately seeks to establish’ (p. 30). I do wonder, however, whether this very interesting polarity rests upon a prior decision that ‘interior design’, for example, is definitionally non-masculine. Did any ancient Israelite think of Levites as defective males or camp or representative of an subordinate masculinity because they were into music and incense? From what materials was the concept of Israelite masculinity constructed that Chronicles is subverting?, I ask myself. I am equally puzzled to know whether all tall structures, like church steeples and spires, lamp-posts, skyscrapers and perhaps also trees, are also phallic, and what benefit would come to me from detecting such a proliferation of symbolic phalluses everywhere I go. Brian DiPalma moves in the same area as the foregoing papers in proposing that the Pharaoh of Exodus 1–4 is depicted as ‘a failed man’ (p. 36). He is right that Pharaoh fails to act wisely even when making wisdom his explicit goal (in 1.10), that he fails to act independently of women by making his success hang upon the obedience of the midwives (1.15), and that he fails to exemplify masculinity as a persuasive speaker, a killer, and a womanless man (1.22–2.10). The Pharaoh is being depicted as less than a real man in his failure to achieve traditional expectations of masculinity. However, in the narratives about Moses these traits of masculinity are by no means uncritically endorsed: while he is depicted as a killer, killing is shown to be an ineffective means of resolving conflict; being detached from women is not desirable, but actually dangerous for Moses; in functioning as a persuasive speaker, who can win an argument with God, he asserts his masculinity, but at the same time he negates the value of rhetoric by claiming that he is not ‘a man of words’. These chapters therefore both reinscribe and undermine normative masculinity. Nevertheless, the worry lingers in the mind that the contrast between normative and non-normative masculinity may be in need of a rethink. Mark George takes a different tack with Deuteronomy, offering some fresh analytic categories for masculinity. In Deuteronomy, he argues, key elements are the male body, a man’s place in society, how time is categorized, the spaces and place a man passes through, and a man’s religion. Taking as his starting point the fact that Deuteronomy is addressed to the Israelite male, he is able to relate everything said in Deuteronomy to the Israelite conception of masculinity. So, for example, food is brought within the sphere of masculinity. The organization of time is a regimen for men, space is classified in according with male norms, and in general the myriad of classificatory systems endemic to Deuteronomy are tokens of Israelite masculinity. This is a valuable challenge to how we profile masculinity in the Hebrew Bible, but I do wonder whether the classificatory drive of Deuteronomy is not an end in itself and only incidentally related to masculinity. But I will then ask myself, Can anything be related to masculinity ‘only incidentally’? Ovidiu Creangă sets himself the task of analysing the masculinity of Joshua in the Conquest Narrative of Joshua 1–12, distinguishing when necessary between the representations of masculinity in the pre- Clines, Final Reflections, p. 3 Deuteronomistic and in the Deuteronomistic strata. In general, in the earlier (pre-exilic) stratum Joshua is a warrior figure, in the later (exilic or postexilic) a religious leader in the mould of Moses. The two portraits are not necessarily at odds: the warrior Joshua commands and the Joshua who is a spokesman for Moses reasons, but they are both exemplars of efficacious speech (p. 94). Interestingly, Creangă does not label the latter portrait an example of subordinate masculinity, but regards both as representative of hegemonic masculinity (marginalized men, like the Gibeonites, however, are to be encountered in the narratives). He is intrigued by the absence of any reference to a wife or children of Joshua, which he is tempted to think ‘cast[s] a shadow of doubt over the heterosexuality of the military-autocratic figure of Joshua’ (p. 93), noting especially the possible homoerotic undertones in the nocturnal meeting of Joshua with the Captain of Yhwh’s Hosts in 5.13-15. It might suggest that Israelite masculinity could accommodate sexuality outside heteronormativity. On the theoretical front, Creangă introduces into the discussion a further refinement of the distinction between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. Following Connell, he also identifies ‘complicit masculinity’ and ‘marginalized masculinity’ (p. 86), both of which can be observed in the Joshua narratives. In their paper on the narrative of Naaman, Cheryl Strimple and Ovidiu Creangă introduce a significant new dimension into the discussion of masculinity by focussing on ‘disability’ as a means of reinforcing a version of normative Israelite masculinity. Disability in itself does not necessarily cast a man outside hegemony (p. 112): Naaman is a ‘mighty warrior’ as well as suffering from a virulent skin disease (2 Kgs 5.1). The narrative exhibits a subtle play between the differing male statuses of the two protagonists, Elisha and Naaman. Maria Haralambakis takes up the figure of Job in the Testament of Job, identifying his roles as father, husband, a wealthy king, a wrestler in combat and a benefactor of the poor. Central in this portrait is the idea of Job as a man in charge—even on the dung heap, which does not represent a loss of his masculinity, but serves as an arena in which he wins his victories (p. 140). This paper helpfully introduces new material into the discussion of Israelite masculinity. Sandra Jacobs advances the novel claim that the Priestly representation of masculinity bases itself on perceptions of fertility and virility; masculinity is above all the capacity to procreate (I had thought it was strength and violence, but I was not focussing on the Priestly writing). For the midrashic sages, ideal masculinity is defined quite differently, as the chosen object of divine desire, realized in the form of the circumcised male. It would be interesting to explore this further in relation to other strands of Hebrew Bible thought. Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska turns to the Samson tales, bringing to the surface the concern of the narratives for honour. Such honour is constantly in danger, and the Samson narratives depict how his honour is first challenged and temporarily reasserted, then lost, and then finally regained (p. 184). The theme of masculinity at risk runs through the paper, and is an important reminder of how masculinity is constantly under negotiation. Jeremiah’s masculinity is the topic of Patrick Davis’s paper. the question is raised whether his lamentations, so commonly regarded as Clines, Final Reflections, p. 4 characteristic of him, were perceived as threatening to his masculinity, since lament was typically a female activity. Davis notes by contrast the singularly aggressive language of Jeremiah and his ‘disdain for women’ (p. 204), arguing that the prophet’s call to lamentation was at least sometimes an attempt to feminize his audience. The familiar image of the weeping prophet seems to have been transferred from the speaker of the Book of Lamentations to the prophet Jeremiah. The prophet of the Book of Jeremiah is a traditional male, who makes no concessions to any ‘female side’. The final paper, by Andrew Todd, takes an unusual but rewarding empirical turn in shifting the focus from texts to readers, and considering how masculinity influences the way the Bible is read by modern readers. Especially notable in the discussion groups he monitored were the differences between male and female readers of the Bible over authority in interpretation and the values of biblical teaching. He concludes that, although a traditional pattern of male dominance in interpretation may have been given up in the circles he studied, a parallel pattern has to some extent taken its place, ‘the tension between the ordered, rational interpretation, authorized by historical continuity—seen as characteristically “male”, and the intuitive, experiential, risk-taking (even dangerous) hermeneutic, rooted in personal authority, sometimes labelled “female”’ (p. 230). So much for the contents of this volume. A word finally about its omissions. 1. The theoretical basis of masculinity studies has yet to be broadened. It is not surprising, and even forgivable, that even if masculinity studies in the Hebrew Bible has come of age, it still lacks theoretical refinement. Until the range and scope and weight of expressions of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible are recognized and nailed down there is not a lot for theory to get its hands on. We need a hundred such studies as those in the present volume before we can begin to think we have an adequate supply of data to theorize. Of course, without any theory at all, we will hardly know what to call evidences of masculinity, and theory must inevitably develop along with the identification of data. 2. Especially by comparison with the beginnings of feminist biblical criticism, masculinity studies in the Hebrew Bible seem strangely lacking in passion. One gains no impression from the articles in this volume that masculinity studies is a movement, to which people have a commitment. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps there is no agenda in masculinity studies, other than intellectual curiosity. If indeed that is so, I am disappointed. I regard the ubiquity of masculine thought and language in the Hebrew Bible as a problem, or rather an outrage. I regard its casting of the whole of its contents, its poetry and its narratives, its ideas and its religious opinions, in the forms and dress of the masculine as a crime. I want to urge that there is an injustice, damaging to women and men alike, in the Hebrew Bible’s assumption of the normativity of masculinity. The people who should be noticing it, writing about it, and protesting against it, are biblical scholars. No one else in such a good position to speak with understanding and discernment about the situation. Our first task, as it was with the feminist movement, is consciousness raising. Our second task as I see it, is apology; we are doing a lot in our professional lives to keep the biblical books alive, and it is our duty as academics to distance ourselves from Clines, Final Reflections, p. 5 unlovely aspects of what we teach and research, and not to give the impression that because we are experts on these texts we subscribe to them warts and all. Our third task is to constantly refine what it is about masculinity that is objectionable. Masculinity is not a vice, and it is no part of a proper study of the subject to smear all expressions of masculinity with the wrongs and excesses of some of its manifestations. I want to urge, in short, that it should not be possible to remain ‘objective’ about the issue of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible. It is a political matter, and a refusal to speak out about it is a dereliction of our moral duty. I want to urge a masculinity movement, not, as with feminism’s project to assert the rights of women and to redress inequality, but to assess, critique and row back from the kinds of unthinking masculinity that are spread all over the Hebrew Bible. 3. Most conspicuous by its absence in this volume is the elephant in the room, the quintessence of masculinity, Yahweh. In one figure, the Hebrew deity incorporates the masculinity of Hebrew culture: he is strong (supremely so), a killer (from the Flood onwards), womanless (consort-free, and approachable only by holy men), beautiful (‘glorious’), and persuasive (forever speechifying). If we once begin to seriously unpick the masculinity of Yahweh, we might well wonder what will remain. Yet this is a fundamental task for the history of religion, theology, Jewish self-identity, Christian worship, and everyday popular religious belief and practice. What language exists that can be used about Yahweh that is non-masculine, or at least not offensively masculine? To repair the omissions of this volume will take a generation at least. Not every Hebrew Bible scholar in sympathy with the work of this volume is represented in its pages, no doubt, but it is noticeable how both the authors here and those they cite do not generally come from among the most senior and established scholars of the guild. We shall have to wait and see what the landscape looks like when that is what they have become.