After Women's History Month

What will you expect?

     After I speak at high schools [in the US], girls approach me to say that they have been raped, or they want to run away from home, or that they have a friend who is anorexic or alcoholic. At first all this trauma surprised me. Now I expect it.
     --1994: from Mary Pipher, Ph.D., "Saplings in the Storm," Reviving Ophelia

What will you do?

The TCU Police Department is offering a RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) class to all women in April. RAD is designed to help empower women by teaching simple, realistic self defense tactics and techniques. We also teach risk reduction and prevention through a system of personal safety and threat assessment skills.

Below are the dates, times and locations of the classes. YOU MUST ATTEND BOTH DAYS!Saturday, April 2 , 2011 1 – 7pm Rec Center, Room 44

Sunday, April 3 , 2011 1 – 7pm Rec Center, Multi-purpose Room 2

The 12 hour RAD class is offered at NO CHARGE.

Notebooks are provided.

Please wear athletic attire.

You may register online at http://www.police.tcu.edu/RADonlineregis.htm. or by calling Officer Christian at 817-257-7276.
     --Saturday, March 26, 2011: from Pam Christian, Crime Prevention Officer, TCU Police Department, 817-257-7276, 817-257-7715 fax

How might we change, if only to redefine some of our male-pre-dom-inant definitions?

Aristotle's treatise of rhetoric [is] gender blind.... [Likewise his treatise on politics is one by which w]omen, slaves, and children were relegated to the category of  "earthly possession" for which men bargained. To redefine women's position, feminist theories of rhetoric must critique this concept of language to determine if, and how, it can be made more inclusive. For how we assume language functions, more than anything else, determines how we read and write the cultural as well as the textual.
     --2006, 1996, from Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness; Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich

blood, sweat, tears, and the ewe-lamb of God

You can't put too fine a point on this.  Female word-images for both Jews and Greeks for centuries have included -

toil,

blood,

sweat,

tears,

milk,

breasts,

virginity,

menstruation,

midwifery,

maternity,

wetness,

births,

touching,

kitchen duty,

meal service,

body washing,

uncleanliness,

sinfulness,

dirtiness

When you read about Jesus in Greek and in Aramaic and in Hebrew and even in Latin, the feminine imagery bleeds through.  This was true long before Anne Carson or any other contemporary feminist read Aristotle in Greek.  It was true before yesterday, when the Dalai Lama of Tibet called himself a feminist.

Reading and listening in English, you can miss much of that womanliness, depending on how phallogocentric your general culture.  We, for example, imagine that not many heard anything much but manly resolve from Winston Churchill in 1940 when he addressed the mainly-male Members of Parliament with his "nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."  In addition, we run through blogger Damian's "lack of feminine language in Jesus' names" this month and without a blink quickly concede that "-Lamb (Rev. 13:8) - Lamb of God (John 1:29) - Lamb Without Blemish (1 Pet. 1:19)" must mean "ram lamb" and not, of course, "ewe."

In the last two posts, I've tried to show how Greek writers about Jesus used feminine images of wetness (tears, toil, sweat, blood and food and touching and eating, passing over a Pesah) when talking about him.

In this post, I want to go back to the Lamb image, and to the Breast image, in allusion to Jesus.  Before I do, the quick aside is this:  no one is claiming that the Jesus of history was a woman, that he as a "virgin" (albeit a male) was some kind of spiritual "eunuch," or that the gospel writers were somehow confused about his sex.  Rather, what I'm hoping to show is that Greek language gives dimensions to gender that aren't as restricted as Aristotle would have them, or as many many many of us today would have them either.  To put a woman in a box is conveniently to demean her; Pandora is the sexist male's nightmare.  And Aristotle the logical realist knew this very well.  We might as well pause another moment to listen to Anne Carson, as she acknowledges:

Aristotle accords to the male in the act of procreation the role of active agent, contributing "motion" and "formation" while the female provides the "raw material," as when a bed (the child) is made by a carpenter (the father) out of wood (the mother).  We might note also that the so-called Pythagorean Table of Oppositions, cited by Aristotle, aligns "boundary" or "limit" on the same side as "masculine": over against "the unbounded" and "feminine" on the other side.

    The assumptions about women that underlie the views of Plato, Aristotle and the Pythagoreans can be traced to the earliest legends of the Greeks.  Myth is a logic too.  In myth, woman's boundaries are pliant, porous, mutable.  Her power to control them is inadequate, her concern for them unreliable.  Deformation attends her.  She swells, she shrinks, she leaks, she is penetrated, she suffers metamorphoses.  (Men in the Off Hours, page 133)

When witnesses and reporters and historians used Greek to portray women and Jesus, the feminine leaks out.

JESUS, EWE (LAMB)

By default in English with Aristotle's logic, Jesus is a ram lamb.  Moreover, and after all, everyone knows that the translator John who writes the Apocalypse and the translator John who writes the Gospel and the Peter who writes the Epistle in Greek each use a grammatically masculine form:  1) τοῦ ἀρνίου τοῦ ἐσφαγμένου - 2) ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ and - 3) ἀμνοῦ ἀμώμου.  Now that should box things up, shouldn't it?

Well, unfortunately, things get lost and found in Greek translation.  Post-Passover, the Hebrew is still clear.  We might as well look at what Greek is used in three examples.

1) In Leviticus 14:10, Moses says and allegedly writes:

And on the eighth day he shall take two he-lambs without blemish, and one ewe-lamb of the first year without blemish, and three tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour for a meal-offering, mingled with oil, and one log of oil.

Then along come followers of Moses back in Egypt using Greek, and they make "ewe-lamb" [ כבשה (kibsah)] read this way:  ἄμωμον.  Notice anything about the gender here?

2) In Isaiah 53:7, the Prophet says this:

He was oppressed, though he humbled himself and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, he opened not his mouth.

Then along comes a follower of Jesus called Phillip helping an Ethiopian who's a eunuch, and Luke translates that into Greek (or just quotes the Greek of the Jews of Egypt) as a direct allusion to Jesus this way:

ὡς πρόβατον ἐπὶ σφαγὴν ἤχθη καὶ ὡς ἀμνὸς ἐναντίον τοῦ κείροντος αὐτὸν ἄφωνος οὕτως οὐκ ἀνοίγει τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ

Notice anything about the gender here?  Sure you do.  In the English translation of the Hebrew, you see "her shearers," a direct allusion to "a sheep," certainly a "she" sheep!  In Hebrew, she's רחל (rachel).  In Greek, she's ἀμνὸς.  Notice anything about the gender here? 

3)  In 2 Samuel 12:2-3, the writer has Nathan beginning the famous parable to the adulterer-murderer-liar David this way:

There were two men in one city: the one rich, and the other poor.  The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and reared; and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own morsel, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

Then along come readers of this parable who are Jews using Greek, and they also make "ewe-lamb" [ כבשה (kibsah)] read this way:  ἢ ἀμνὰς.  Notice anything about the gender here?  That's right, the pure sacrificial lamb is a ewe.

JESUS, BREAST (MILK)

Damian has already quoted Halden quoting Melissa quoting Augustine.  It's Latin translated into English, and Jesus is breast milk (in Confessions 7.18.24).  And there's more of that from the Homily 3 on the First Epistle of John:

Whoso knows that he is born, let him hear that he is an infant; let him eagerly cling to the breasts of his mother, and he grows apace. Now his mother is the Church; and her breasts are the two Testaments of the Divine Scriptures. Hence let him suck the milk of all the things that as signs of spiritual truths were done in time for our eternal salvation, that being nourished and strengthened, he may attain to the eating of solid meat, which is, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 Our milk is Christ in His humility; our meat, the selfsame Christ equal with the Father. With milk He nourishes you, that He may feed you with bread: for with the heart spiritually to touch Christ is to know that He is equal with the Father.

And then there's this equality with the Mother also, from Sermon 369:

Our savior, born of the Father apart from any day.... Go on being filled with wonder; the one who bore him is both mother and virgin; the one she bore is both speechless infant and Word.  Rightly did the heavens speak....  Give suck, mother, to our food; five suck to the bread that came down from heaven (Jn 6:58), and was placed in a manger....  Give your breast to the one who made you such that he might be made in you, who both gave you the gift of fertility when he was conceived, and did not deprive you of the honor of virginity when he was born; who before he was born chose for himself both the womb from which he would be born and the day on which he would be born.

And St. Anselm in his "Prayer to St. Paul" (as mother) says:

But you, too, good Jesus, are not you also a mother?  Is not he a mother who like a hen gathers his chicks beneath his wings?  Truly, Lord, you are a mother too....

And Julian of Norwich in English, our English, in Showings (page 298 of one recent edition) sees Jesus conceiving his offspring, and in labor giving birth, and nursing at his breast, feeding:

But our true Mother Jesus, he alone bears us for joy and for endless life, blessed may he be.  So he carries us within him in love and travail, until the full time when he wanted to suffer the sharpest thorns and cruel pains that were or will be, and at the last he died.  And when he had finished, and had borne us so for bliss, still all this could not satisfy his wonderful love....

     The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life....

     The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven, with inner certainty of endless bliss.

SUMMARY

Feminine language and womanly imagery (in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and even English) can be found and are shown for Jesus.  Much of it comes even from within the pages of the canon called the Bible.  This is the language of real human beings, Jews and Greeks, males and females.

evidence of feminine language in description of Jesus

Suzanne wrote a post today called "More feminine language for God."  She points us to Damian's post today, "Even more evidence of feminine language in description of God."  He points us to a comment from James K. A. Smith who points us to "a further reference in Augustine to ’suckling on the Breast of Jesus’ in his sermons on John or 1 John." Damian says of that last bit "but I couldn’t find evidence of it."  Interesting.

Well I confess I haven't bothered to go looking for the Breast.  And I doubt as many care about Augustine as they do about the New Testament writers.  Therefore, below I do show evidence of how four gospel writers show women and Jesus together.  And eventually one of them shows Jesus behaving like those women, modeling and exemplifying for his apprentices ways of being and of doing (like women, feminine perhaps like God.)

After the gospel writers' Hellene comes my English, which some comes from Willis Barnstone's Hebrew.  It's about as transparent as possible, from Mark 14, Matthew 26, Luke 7, and John 12 & then 13.

Καὶ ὄντος αὐτοῦ ἐν Βηθανίᾳ, ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ Σίμωνος τοῦ λεπροῦ, κατακειμένου αὐτοῦ, ἦλθεν γυνὴ ἔχουσα ἀλάβαστρον μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτελοῦς· καὶ συντρίψασα τὴν ἀλάβαστρον, κατέχεεν αὐτοῦ κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς. Ἦσαν δέ τινες ἀγανακτοῦντες πρὸς ἑαυτούς, καὶ λέγοντες, Εἰς τί ἡ ἀπώλεια αὕτη τοῦ μύρου γέγονεν; Ἠδύνατο γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ μύρον πραθῆναι ἐπάνω τριακοσίων δηναρίων, καὶ δοθῆναι τοῖς πτωχοῖς. Καὶ ἐνεβριμῶντο αὐτῇ.  Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν, Ἄφετε αὐτήν· τί αὐτῇ κόπους παρέχετε; Καλὸν ἔργον ἠργάσατο ἐν ἐμοί.

And while he was in Poverty's House [בית עניא / Beth Anya, bethany], in the house of Shimon [שמעון] the AIDS patient, he was reclining.  A woman came with an alabaster jar of myrrh perfume, that pure and extravagantly expensive spikenard ointment.  Breaking the alabastar jar she poured it on his head.  So, some stir up each of the others by saying, "Why would someone waste the myrrh?  It could've been sold for three hundred Silver Tenths [Denarii, denarion] and given to the poor!" And they provoked her.  So, Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] said, "Let go of her!  Why would someone pour trouble on her?  It's a good, beautiful work she's worked in me."

--Mark's telling & translating, and my translating Mark

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ γενομένου ἐν Βηθανίᾳ ἐν οἰκίᾳ Σίμωνος τοῦ λεπροῦ, προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ γυνὴ ἀλάβαστρον μύρου ἔχουσα βαρυτίμου, καὶ κατέχεεν ἐπὶτὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ ἀνακειμένου. Ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἠγανάκτησαν, λέγοντες, Εἰς τί ἡ ἀπώλεια αὕτη; Ἐδύνατο γὰρ τοῦτο μύρον πραθῆναι πολλοῦ, καὶ δοθῆναι πτωχοῖς. Γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Τί κόπους παρέχετε τῇ γυναικί; Ἔργον γὰρ καλὸν ἠργάσατο εἰς ἐμέ.

So, when Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] was in Poverty's House [בית עניא / Beth Anya], in the house of Shimon [שמעון] the AIDS patient, a woman came with an alabaster jar of precious myrrh perfume, and she poured it on his head, as he's kicking back for dinner.  So, seeing that, his apprentices get stirred up by saying, "Why would someone waste that?  That myrrh could've made an extra excess, and it could've been given to the poor.  So, getting an earful, Joshua said, "Why would someone pour trouble on this woman?  It's a work of beautiful goodness she's worked into me." 

--Matthew's telling & translating, and my translating Matthew

Καὶ ἰδού, γυνὴ ἐν τῇ πόλει, ἥτις ἦν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἁμαρτωλός, καὶ ἐπιγνοῦσα ὅτι ἀνάκειται ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ Φαρισαίου, κομίσασα ἀλάβαστρον μύρου, καὶ στᾶσα ὀπίσω παρὰ τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ κλαίουσα τοῖς δάκρυσιν, ἤρξατο βρέχειν τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ τοῖς δάκρυσιν, καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς ἐξέμασσεν, καὶ κατεφίλει τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἤλειφεν τῷ μύρῳ. Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Φαρισαῖος ὁ καλέσας αὐτὸν εἶπεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ λέγων, Οὗτος, εἰ ἦν προφήτης, ἐγίνωσκεν ἂν τίς καὶ ποταπὴ ἡ γυνὴ ἥτις ἅπτεται αὐτοῦ, ὅτι ἁμαρτωλός ἐστιν....   Καὶ στραφεὶς πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα, τῷ Σίμωνι ἔφη, Βλέπεις ταύτην τὴν γυναῖκα; Εἰσῆλθόν σου εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, ὕδωρ ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας μου οὐκ ἔδωκας· αὕτη δὲ τοῖς δάκρυσιν ἔβρεξέν μου τοὺς πόδας, καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς ἐξέμαξεν.  Φίλημά μοι οὐκ ἔδωκας· αὕτη δέ, ἀφ’ ἧς εἰσῆλθον, οὐ διέλιπεν καταφιλοῦσά μου τοὺς πόδας.  Ἐλαίῳ τὴν κεφαλήν μου οὐκ ἤλειψας· αὕτη δὲ μύρῳ ἤλειψέν τοὺς πόδας μου. 

And look, a woman "in the city," she's certainly there in the city, a sinner.  And knowing that he's going to be kicking back for dinner in the house of the Separatist, she brought in an alabaster jar of myrrh perfume.  And standing behind his feet, she was crying, streaming tears, beginning to wet his feet with the tears.  And with the hair of her head she was moping them.  And she was kissing his feet.  And she was slathering the myrrh perfume.  So, look, the Separatist who'd invited him said to himself:  "This one, if he were a prophet, should know what sort of someone this woman is, someone who "touches" him, that she's a sinner....  And turning toward the woman, Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] said to Shimon [שמעון] the Separatist, "Pay attention to this woman.  I come into your house.  Water on my feet?  There's none given!  So, her tears wet my feet.  And with the hair of her head she mops up.  Kisses for me?  There's none given.  So, she from the moment she comes in, there's not stopping her from kissing my feet.  Oil for my head?  There's none slathered on.  So, she slathers her myrrh perfume on my feet."

--Luke's telling & translating, and my translating Luke

Ὁ οὖν Ἰησοῦς πρὸ ἓξ ἡμερῶν τοῦ Πάσχα ἦλθεν εἰς Βηθανίαν, ὅπου ἦν Λάζαρος, ὃν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν  Ἰησοῦς.  Ἐποίησαν οὖν αὐτῷ δεῖπνον ἐκεῖ, καὶ ἡ Μάρθα διηκόνει· ὁ δὲ Λάζαρος εἷς ἦν ἐκ τῶν ἀνακειμένων σὺν αὐτῷ.  Ἡ οὖν Μαριὰμ  λαβοῦσα λίτραν μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτίμου, ἤλειψεν τοὺς πόδας τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, καὶ ἐξέμαξεν ταῖς θριξὶν αὐτῆς τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ· ἡ δὲ οἰκία ἐπληρώθη ἐκ τῆς ὀσμῆς τοῦ μύρου.  Λέγει οὖν εἷς ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ, Ἰούδας Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτης, ὁ μέλλων αὐτὸν παραδιδόναι, Διὰ τί τοῦτο τὸ μύρον οὐκ ἐπράθη τριακοσίων δηναρίων, καὶ ἐδόθη πτωχοῖς; ....  Εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἄφες αὐτήν·   ἵνα εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ μου τηρήσῃ αὐτό.

Then, Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] six days before Passover [פֶּסַח Pesach] went into in Poverty's House [בית עניא / Beth Anya], where Elazar [אֶלְעָזָר , lazaros] was, raised out of his corpse state by Joshua.  Then, they prepared supper for him there.  And Martha served.  So Elazar was one of the ones kicking back with him.  Then, Miriam  [מִרְיָם , mariam] took a pound of myrrh perfume, that pure and extravagantly expensive spikenard ointment.  She slathered it on the feet of Joshua.  And she moped with her hair his feet.  So, the house filled with the smell of the myrrh pouring out.  Then, there came this statement out of an apprentice of his -  Judah [יְהוּדָה , ioudas] of Keriot - the one about to give him up in betrayal:  "Huh? why wasn't this myrrh of someone's not sold for three hundred Silver Tenths [Denarii, denarion] and given to the poor?!"  Then, Joshua said, "Let go of her!  so that until the day when I'm put in the ground, she keeps it."

Πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα, εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι ἐλήλυθεν αὐτοῦ ἡ ὥρα ἵνα μεταβῇ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, ἀγαπήσας τοὺς ἰδίους τοὺς ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, εἰς τέλος ἠγάπησεν αὐτούς.   Καὶ δείπνου γενομένου, τοῦ διαβόλου ἤδη βεβληκότος εἰς τὴν καρδίαν Ἰούδα Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου ἵνα αὐτὸν παραδῷ, εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι πάντα δέδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ πατὴρ εἰς τὰς χεῖρας, καὶ ὅτι ἀπὸ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν καὶ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὑπάγει, ἐγείρεται ἐκ τοῦ δείπνου, καὶ τίθησιν τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ λαβὼν λέντιον διέζωσεν ἑαυτόν.  Εἶτα βάλλει ὕδωρ εἰς τὸν νιπτῆρα, καὶ ἤρξατο νίπτειν τοὺς πόδας τῶν μαθητῶν, καὶ ἐκμάσσειν τῷ λεντίῳ ᾧ ἦν διεζωσμένος.  Ἔρχεται οὖν πρὸς Σίμωνα Πέτρον· καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ἐκεῖνος, Κύριε, σύ μου νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας;  Ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Ὃ ἐγὼ ποιῶ, σὺ οὐκ οἶδας ἄρτι, γνώσῃ δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα.

So, before the feast of Passover [פֶּסַח Pesach], Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] had the idea that his moment had arrived in order he was stepping out of this world to go to Daddy.  He had loved his own in the world; into "the end" he had loved them.  And as supper time came, the devil had already placed into the heart of Judah [יְהוּדָה , ioudas], son of Shimon [שמעון] of Keriot, that he should give him up in betrayal.  Joshua had the idea that everything had been given him by Daddy into his hand and that from God he had come and to that God he was going.  He raised himself out of his seat at supper, and dropped the robe, and took a towel of linen as his girdle.  Now, he tossed water into the wash pan and began to wash the feet of the apprentices and to mop up with the linen towel which was that girdle around.  Then, he went to Shimon [שמעון], Rock [petros].  And made this statement to him, "Master, you're washing my feet?"  Joshua retorted, and said to him, "What I'm creating, you can't understand yet.  So, you'll know about it after this."

--John's telling & translating, and my translating John