And They Took Themselves Wives
Maly, Eugene A.
relish of Storytelling and Mythmaking. One can squabble with McConnell over priorities, but essentially he achieved what he set out to do--to add a worth-while chapter to the (slowly)...
...But once he acts, there is a new, theological meaning that can no longer be reduced to a psychological insight...
...26 September 1980:539...
...is working on a critical study of Evelyn Waugh...
...15: 21-28...
...thelinking of Paul with Hebrews, with some significant consequences (pp...
...the poetry lies in the telling of events, not in the events themselves...
...Eugene H. Maly AQUF_~TIONI often ask my students is whether an atheistic scholar can understand the Bible better than a barely literate Christian...
...p~,~c,6 Price$4.95"~,./ Allowtwoweeks Paperback...
...131...
...The scholar has obvious advantages: knowledge of languages, of the history of religions, of archaeology, and especially of all the kinds of criticism that contribute to good exegesis...
...The Genesis passage from which the book's title is taken is a case in point...
...From the viewpoint of biblical scholarship it is weak: Bakan is dependent on eclectic secondary sources (especially c. 5...
...It deals with the sons of God who "took themselves wives" fromamong the daughters of men, a traditionally difficult pericope...
...I , daylit truth I been describing...
...SFaCqARDMc¢~E teaches in the English department of Tufts University...
...FATHEREUOENEX.MALVis a member of the faculty of Mr...
...DiPIEROis a poet and translator, and teaches at Northwestern...
...One result of tiffs is the proliferation of affectations which are responsible for much of the smugness in contemporary verse...
...The Benjamin War (Jdg...
...9:22...
...Too often in this book it does not...
...But he opens himself to that invitation when he states that precisely because the biblical stories are so unreal or inconsequential the reader can "play" with them...
...W. S. Di Piero ONe_,of several populist misconceptions about poetry is that it must be immediately viscer0 in its intent and appeal, and that it should have obvious designs on the reader...
...Let me be clear: I do not question Masterson's sincerity, but I must ask myself whether or not thepoem confirms and authorizes sincerity...
...By interchanging "r" and "d" in Sarah's name, one can read it as meaning "field," the place where the seed (or "male sexual exudate") is deposited (p...
...If, as biblical faith has it, God really did act in history, I Shellacked perfection I ON tJUITII AS IT IS Dan Masterson University of Illinois, $7.95, 84 pp...
...Even theologoumena are made to cede to psychologoumena...
...TO ORDER: Mail~or mom~orcier to~ Credo Pfil~cation=" "~+"~" DepL CW :', - +~ P.O.,Box124 w~sto~,M...
...Any serious and believing biblicist would have to challenge the invalidation of obvious theological meanings, intended by the biblical authors as revealed in both text and context, by the use of possible, underlying psychological insights, even while admitting that those insights may "constitute an important part of the cultural context of biblical history...
...The Survivors," for example, tells the destiny of an Irish immigrant family...
...One hears editors speak of how they must be "grabbed" by a first line, a subject, a "voice...
...The order of letters in a text can be changed "to produce new words and new meanings" (p...
...Masterson obviously places great value on dramatic incident, but he allows plain incident to swamp the deep metaphoric tale which is the real story poetry is meant to tell...
...100...
...Neither is the faith element apparent, however...
...144-5...
...Rather, it is because they are proposed~as biblical interpretations...
...w.s...
...The poem, as Masterson treats it, seems more a strategy for avoiding emotion than for confronting its necessities...
...Noah, "the major progenitor of all the rest of humankind," was possibly a female figure (so, matrilineal) before the text was tampered with...
...One can squabble with McConnell over priorities, but essentially he achieved what he set out to do--to add a worth-while chapter to the (slowly) developing study of the debts film owes literature and the fascination of the "stories" they share...
...It is the manner in which the biblical text is so frequently manipulated in order to arrive at selfserving conclusions...
...The Christian has one advantage, the insight of faith, not available to the atheist...
...The illustration is not a perfect parallel to our case since the author professes no atheism...
...FATHER JOHN L. McKENZIEo a distinguished biblical scholar, is the author of several books, most recently, The New Testament Without Illusion (Thomas More Press...
...A CarroII/|-terpriN, C...
...in the original text "Ham took sexual advantage of his mother in her drunken state" (p...
...The Greek text of Luke suggests that the angel had sexual intercourse with Mary (p...
...Poetry seldom inheres in a subject...
...So, by the stratagem of divine impregnation there are explained the retention of matrilineality along with the introduction of patrilineality,thenecessityof monotheism because of the latter, and Christianity's universalism through Mary's virginal (?) conception of Jesus...
...Commonweal: 538 elsewhere to Benjamin (p...
...FATHER DAVIDTOOLAN, S.J., is assistant editor of Commonweal...
...It is not this basic thesis with which I necessarily quarrel...
...The interpretations he offers are far more dependent on psychological eisegesis than on theological exegesis...
...HDS Gibbons Ruark Texas Tech Univ., $5.95, 57 pp...
...He is a dramatist for the Williamstown Theatre Festival and a producer for the Dick Caven Show...
...Hence, my opening question.Here are just a few illustrations of Bakan's "playing" with the texts...
...Bakan admits that "a license for speculation can also be an invitation for wild or self-serving interpretations...
...A license for speculation l MIlDTBEYTOOKTMENSELVESWIVES DsvJd ILakan Harper and Row, $10., 224 pp...
...A good discussion usually follows...
...forcle~-/'~ OttO0 West Stockbndge...
...122-3) he argues, in line with that interpretation, that Sarah had a visitor in her tent after the promise of a child...
...I raise these issues because one of the books under review here, Dan Masterson's On Earth as It Is, his first collection, suffers from the weaknesses I'veit can be assumed that he would act in accord with basic psychological tendencies...
...Ifit had been theological rather than psychological "play," it would at least have been truer to the Bible's overall nature...
...FmLWTERZ~Nhas written for Commonweal, The New Republic and other journals...
...Circumcision symbolizes both castration and sexual fertility(the glans of the penis is exposed as in an uncircumcised erect penis...
...This explains the strange reaction to Ham's seeing his father's nakedness (Gen...
...From the viewpoint of theological understanding the book is almost completely deficient...
...The losses they endure are presented factually, almost as reportage: The trip to Ward's Island was long, but he ran the gravel road to the hospital, stopping out of breath at the desk to be told the third floor office would have that sort GROOMING YOUR CHILD FOR m~EmII III TOM McEIJEEL such increase~a ~ ~ nofthecausesfor~ ' mMcEhaeelpresentsa theok...
...Later (pp...
...The subjects of most of Masterson's poems are overwrought, supercharged, newsworthy...
...Another result is that young poets often feel compelled to go in search of subjects which because of their strangeness or exoticism will make immediate claims on a reader's (or editor's) attention...
...A book that is pertinent and timely...
...ST~VELAWSONhas writtenfor Horizon, The New Republic and the New York Times...
...The "precise moment of the birth of Christianity" is when · Jesus "changed his mind" with regard to the Canaanite woman (Mt...
...172...
...Thus, from a psychological viewpoint the book is rich in fascinating interpretations...
...that only the groom in a Catholic marriage takes the vow is simply not true...
...provocative pncl'mr~nal: Atandmark in suicidolos...
...Mass...
...In an earlier version of the LotSodom story the sin may have been "a violation of the emerging principle of patrilocality" (p...
...Bakan sees it as a key text in the (canonical) development ofpatrilineality, as it still allows for the continuation of matrilinealitythrough divine impregnation...
...Bakan's basic thesis is that, while proposing an explicit patricentrism, the Bible has many traces, both explicit and implicit, of matrilineal, matrilocal, and matriarchal elements...
...e 6fl~as wellas an orl~ ps3tebologic.altheorythat c h ~the theories operative i~ suicide prevention...
...murder, suicide, disease, natural disasters--these are his materials, and despite his efforts to cool these torrid subjects by adoptingan aloof, knowing tone, the subjects call too much attention to their own (apparen0 importance...
...20-21) "may be interpreted as a story of victory over matrilocality" since the women must be moved from REVIEWERS ~O.RGARETWIMSATrlives in New Haven, Connecticut...
...GROOMING YOUR CHILD FOR SUICIDE" was written for ~he9eneralreader as well as the I~and theological communities...
...Mary of the West Seminary in Ohio...
...his mission then became "catholic" (p...
...Thus the male becomes a "fertile castrate, analogous to the normal female" (pp...
...The greater concern for children, which patrilineality was designed to foster and did, should not lead to a blind imitation of biblical patterns, which can lead to the major sin of idolatry...
...If these interpretations are deemed bizarre, it is not because the psychological insights ~all necessarily invalid...
...It may very well be, he argues, that these could be helpful in taking on ourselves anew "the burden of social design" and "fashion appropriate arrangement among ourselves so that we may live...
...136-7), is difficult to imagine in a scholarly book...
...J.V.LONG,In...
...Also, divine impregnation, in the case of Mary, "served the purpose of Christianity, which sought to transcend the particularity of the more limited kinship of the Israelites...
...And the ultimate ascendancy of patrilineality, with its imposition on the father of greater concern for child-rearing and so involving an effeminization of the male, leads to the male's relationship in fidelity to a single God, much as the wife is faithful to the husband...
...Because of this a good deal of American poetry these days consists of realistic anecdote or coy surrealism or stoical melodrama...
...Both circumcision and baptism are substitutes for child killing and so redemptive (p...
Vol. 107 • September 1980 • No. 17
