Those of you who are familiar with this blog may be familiar with my series of posts aimed at preparing the Atheist camp for using Biblical Chemical Warfare back on Thumpers. If not, here: Genesis 1: 6-10 and Genesis 1: 26 And those of you familiar with me from twitter ( @adriananyway ) have undoubtedly seen my back and forths with my favorite twitterer (sorry @pooroldkilgore ) known ironically as The Fierce Humanist ( @humanistfury ). The most ironic part is that he really is fierce about his humanism. In this post, that bad, bad dude was willing to knock out The Book of Ruth for me. And he did so in miraculous fashion. Enjoy.
If it weren’t for the Bible, church services would’ve been
unbearable. As my faculties of reason
matured, it became clear that actually participating in worship services did
not impact my happiness or chances of success.
As a teenager, the only acceptable diversion was reading one of the
Bibles placed along the ancient oak pews.
Doing so, I didn’t have to feign Give-A-Fuck for the gospel reading, the
prayer requests, or the preacher’s strained, awkward attempt to make Bronze Age
Jewish folklore pertinent to our suburban lives in what was probably the most
boring decade of the past century.
I rarely read the Bible, but when I do, I go for the Good
Stuff. Fortunately, the Old Testament is
dense with dick jokes, instructions on how to fuck, and all sorts of advice on
how to manage willful women. The most
absurd stuff – apart from all the magic – was the casual exchange of women,
almost as a denomination of currency. Of
course, the objectification and devaluation of women in the Old Testament is
widely acknowledged, even among many conservative Christians. Usually, they use the topic as a springboard
to discuss the New Testament’s “grace” and “salvation,” whatever that is.
Whatever. It’s still
there, it’s still vile, and it’s still the inspiration for immeasurable human
misery over the past two millennia.
There’s a reason the Council of Nicaea, or King James, or the Holy See,
or anyone else hasn’t edited out that shit: They believe it. They accept it as the revealed Word of
God. Pointing out misogyny in the Bible
is to religious scholarship like T-Ball is to Major League Baseball:
Insultingly easy.
Far more difficult, of course, is the converse: Identifying
Old Testament stories that celebrate female independence and agency. I’m familiar enough with the first five books
of the Old Testament to know looking there would be a fool’s errand. Since I’m not afflicted with the intellectual
masochism necessary to read the entire awful, jumbled anthology of myths, I
decided to focus my efforts on the first book of the Bible titled after a
member of the fairer sex: Ruth.
Truth be told, the most attractive aspect of the Book of
Ruth is its brevity. The entire text can
comfortably be read over the course of a lunch break, or during a protracted, leisurely
bowel movement. There is no God Magic, a
bare minimum of Who-Gives-A-Fuck genealogy, and absolutely zero genocides or
attempts at genocide. There are only a
few deaths and just one instance of sexual assault (Canaanite Date Rape? You
decide.) The story reads like an
uninspired, formulaic chick flick: women find themselves alone, support each
other, form a deep friendship, and eventually help each other get laid. I’m surprised the Lifetime Network hasn’t
adapted Ruth as a mini-series.
Summary: Lady (Naomi) gets married, has two sons who grow up
and get married. Naomi’s husband and
then her two sons die in short succession.
Naomi seems to inherit her dead sons’ wives, her daughters-in-law. The book seems to imply that the two women
are in some sort of status of indentured servitude to their mother-in-law. Naomi decides her best bet is to return to
her ancestral homeland in Judah, and she departs with the two young widows in
tow. Soon after, she decides to release
them from their apparent obligation to her.
One splits soon thereafter, but the other, Ruth, wants to stay with her
mother-in-law. Naomi pleads with Ruth to
abandon her:
Turn
again, my daughters: why will ye go with me? Are there yet any more
sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?
So, we need to understand that one of the possible courses
of action for the women was for the mother-in-law to get herself pregnant and
give birth to two sons, who would presumably be betrothed to grow up and marry
their dead brothers’ wives, who’d be at least 15 – 20 years older than
them. In comparison to the rest of the
Old Testament, this is some heavy, RadFem thinking. Where else can we find a woman independently
offering sons as “payment” to fulfill an obligation to two other women? Admittedly, Naomi doesn’t think the scheme is
viable, given her old age, but it’s remarkable nonetheless.
Accepting the unlikelihood of Naomi’s ability to manufacture
her a new husband, Ruth nevertheless opts to accompany her on her return to
Judah. Here, our story becomes more…
involved. Consider:
And
Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or
to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and
where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I
die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
Remove this passage from the context of the story. Were we to erase the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law
background, how would we characterize the speaker’s feelings towards her
subject?
She’s in love. Ruth
1.16-17 is a tender, unequivocal expression of one person’s lifelong commitment
to another. She will follow her
anywhere. She wants to start a new life
with her. She wants to become part of
her family. She will change the most
fundamental aspects of her identity to become part of her life. Ruth wants to be with Naomi for the rest of
her life, and in death: Absolute, Eternal Commitment.
The sentiment hasn’t gone unnoticed. Ruth 1.16-17 is a popular scriptural reading
in Christian weddings. Somewhat
amusingly, this includes those between believers holding staunchly
“traditional” (read: “bigoted”) positions in our “debate” over “same-sex
marriage” (read: “marriage”). The fact
that this striking expression of undying love is expressed from Ruth to a much
older woman is apparently lost on those whose politics would have Ruth and
Naomi’s love remain invisible, denied, and sequestered on the fringes of
society.
Our Traditional Marriage neighbors need not despair. A mature, wealthy male capitalist soon enters
the story. Boaz is ostensibly a farmer,
though he almost certainly hasn’t pulled a weed in his adult life. In her characteristically submissive
dedication to Naomi, Ruth volunteers to find work at one of the nearby farms. She meets a group of women working on Boaz’s
farm, and they let her work alongside them in return for a portion of the
harvest. Making his rounds, Boaz notices
the young woman, and asks,
Whose damsel is
this? And the servant that was set over the reapers answered and said, It is the Moabitish damsel that came
back with Naomi out of the country of Moab. And she said, I pray you, let me
glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she came, and hath
continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the
house.
Ah, yes. There’s that
Good Ole’ Testament Misogyny: “Whose damsel is this?” Ruth is a commodity. It’s not difficult to imagine Boaz as a
warehouse manager asking a foreman, “Where’d this extra forklift come from?” Boaz is, after all, a successful businessman. He’s a job creator. He keeps track of his resources. Boaz allows Ruth to stay at his farm and work
with his servants. She’s understandably
grateful, but confused. She doesn’t
understand his compassion for her:
Then
she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why
have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me,
seeing I am a stranger? And
Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast
done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy
mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou
knewest not heretofore.
The relationship between Ruth and Naomi already makes the
Book of Ruth plenty awkward for social conservatives. Boaz certainly doesn’t make it any easier on
them by using his personal wealth to promote socially responsible
behavior. Ruth made personal sacrifices to
care for a “senior citizen.” Boaz
recognizes her sacrifice and effectively gives her a job on the condition that
she continues to do so. Furthermore,
he’s actually thanking Ruth for immigrating to Judah. Take a moment to fully digest that: A
wealthy, prominent citizen is thanking an unemployed recent immigrant for
coming to start a new life in his homeland.
Ruth recounts her fabulous day to Naomi, who’s
delighted. Boaz, it turns out, is one of
her close relatives. Even better, he’s
unmarried. Being the devoted in-law she
is, Naomi gives Ruth detailed instructions on how to fuck Boaz while he’s
drunk, seemingly obliging him to marry her.
In contrast with the rest of the Old Testament, all the relationships in
this story thus far have been uncharacteristically consensual. Carefully following Naomi’s instructions,
Ruth waits until Boaz is good and sloppy drunk, then sneaks into the “threshing
floor” where he’d passed out.
And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was
afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said,
Who art thou? And she answered,
I am Ruth thine handmaid:
spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.
If you interpreted “spread therefore thy skirt over thine
handmaid” to mean “Fuck me now,” you got it right. That does seem to be the consensus. Shockingly, the old, rich, drunk man actually
is willing to lay his impoverished
young employee. In a touching love
scene, they fuck in a barn in the middle of the night.
The rest of the story consists of a dull and confusing real
estate deal between Naomi and Boaz that’s somehow contingent upon his marriage
to Ruth. The only interesting aspect of
the transaction is that we learn that Old Testament women – Naomi, in this case
– are just as willing to use other women as a form of currency as are men. An ad-hoc commission of village elders
validates the transaction and the marriage, and Boaz and Ruth get hitched. Ruth gives birth to – you called it! – a son
less than a year later. While we might
assume that a rich dude like Boaz wouldn’t have any trouble arranging child-care
for his young bride, such turns out to not be necessary. In an act of civic generosity that has
absolutely nothing to do with wanting to remain an indispensable part of Ruth’s
life, Naomi volunteers to be the nurse to Ruth’s son. Everybody seems fine with this arrangement. Boaz scores a hot, loyal young wife that’s
somewhat out of his league, Ruth has a son and lives out her life in comfort
with the constant, devoted companionship of her… dead first husband’s
mother? Right. That’s the story, and they’re sticking to it.
Acknowledgements:
The Skeptics Annotated
Bible, annotated by Steve Wells, is an absolutely invaluable resource for
anyone at all interested in understanding the Good Book past the various party
lines. You can buy it on Amazon
or access it online at http://skepticsannotatedbible.com. I used it as my primary biblical reference in
writing this post.
Adrian Fort is a good dude.
I appreciate his invitation to write this guest post. If you’re reading this, you know he writes
about humanism, secularism, reason, and other worthwhile stuff at The Secular Superhumanist. You should also follow him on Twitter at @AdrianAnyway.
All images are understood to be in the public domain. If that’s not the case, please contact me at humanist.aggressor@gmail.com,
and I’ll remove them promptly.
RELATED CONTENT:
CONTENT ON THE SECULAR SUPERHUMANIST
