Читать книгу Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman - Nancy Werking Poling - Страница 4

When I was a child, my parents read to me from Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible, a 723-page volume I still own. Later I read for myself the many stories that were to instruct me. I kept trying to understand the lessons I was supposed to be learning, for I sincerely wanted to grow up to be a good woman.

But some of the narratives never made sense. In Genesis, for instance, I worried about the story of Cain and Abel. Why was God so picky about whether people sacrificed animals or plants? If God was a loving father, why had he deliberately flooded the earth and killed the people and animals? And there was the story of Jacob, who cheated his brother out of his birthright. I had been taught not to lie or cheat, yet Jacob seemed to have been rewarded for both. David killed a giant. Wasn’t killing a sin?

Not until midlife did it occur to me that Bible stories were men’s stories. As a girl, I was not supposed to identify with the heroes. Neither literally nor metaphorically was I supposed to lead my people, slay giants, wrestle with angels, or have a special relationship with God.

Nowadays preachers search the scriptures for biblical women, lifting them up for illustration: Ruth, Hagar, Deborah, Esther, Rahab among them. A few, such as Deborah, are the central character of a story, but nearly always men get the exciting roles while women make up the supporting cast. Biblical times were, after all, quite different from our modern era.

Yet the ancient stories can speak eloquently to women struggling with contemporary issues: leading victims of violence to a safe place (Moses); starting a new life in an unfamiliar land (Abraham); selling our sister/brother into slavery (Joseph’s brothers); God despairing over the corruption of humanity (Noah and the flood).

These observations led me to wonder, how might the story of Noah been different had he been a woman? Had Moses been born female, whom might she have rescued and led?

As a result of my musings, I felt inspired to rewrite some of the old favorites, using women as the main characters. At first I feared taking blasphemous liberties, but then remembered preachers’ variations on the themes: Jeremiah as a twentieth-century man, taking on the corporations; Job as the man who is unemployed, and his wife has left him, and the mortgage payment is due; Noah as the man mocked by his Midwestern suburban neighbors for heeding God’s instructions to build a submarine. So why not imagine some of the protagonists as women?

I am not a biblical scholar. I am a story teller, bringing my imagination to many of the situations and characters I grew up hearing about. So I have not gone back to original texts (not that I have the ability to), but read and reread passages from modern translations. In some cases I have loosely followed the biblical narrative, trying to capture the tone an elder storyteller might have used around an evening fire. At other times I have veered more boldly from the text. In a few cases, as with the bond between David and Jonathan, I have decided there is power in simply substituting women for men and letting the story stand.

When I finished writing this collection, I realized that the God I have imagined differs in many ways from the one I have heard about most of my life. The God on these pages is flexible, able to listen and be dissuaded. As my daughter pointed out, like many an effective CEO, God may value those who challenge more than those who meekly follow orders.

As much as I wanted God always to be benevolent, I was not able to bring my own wishes to every text. Just as God’s actions in Hebrew scripture can be harsh and undeserved, women too are not consistently moral and upright people. So not every story leaves us loving God or women more.

To better discern the parallels, you might want to first turn to the Bible passage on which each narrative is based. Or you may simply choose to read the stories for their own sake. In either case, I hope they speak to you in a way that affirms your experience and inspires you to probe the relationship between God and Woman.