|
|
 |
 Of
Virgin Births and Eunuchs
I want to start by acknowledging that we are standing on Aboriginal
land, stolen during the colonial occupation of this country. As
a gay man I also want to acknowledge my own queer elders. All of
those lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people whose
past struggles in this country and around the world have made it
possible for me to stand here before you tonight in order to ask
if we labour under the spell of a heterosexual Christianity.
Now I know that for tonight billing has been given to my queer
readings of a number of biblical stories but it's the notion of
a heterosexual Christianity that I want to put under the spotlight
and deconstruct. I want to do this by focusing on a couple of biblical
narratives and some biblical characters. I want to stress that I'm
using Christian biblical narratives here. Christian bibles include
their New Testament and so Christian bibles are different to the
Jewish bible, not only in their extra length. In particular I want
to look at Sarah, sister-wife of Abraham and foremother of Israel
and I want also to look at the Virgin Mary. Sarah has a central
role in the preamble to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis,
the story at the centre of my own work. As for Mary, well I have
been thinking about Mary a lot lately and I suspect that for a long
time now something very queer has been overlooked in her story.
I'm starting to think of Mary as a kind of proto-lesbian figure
or at least as a signifier that, rather than heterosexuality, there
is something very, very queer at the foundations of the Christian
religions.
Now I'm not saying that the historical Mary was a lesbian. I don’t
think we can ever know anything definitive about a historical Mary,
except that if there was a historical Jesus she was his mother and
that they were both Jewish (whatever that meant two thousand years
ago). No, what I'm interested in instead is the character/s and
the associated symbolism we find in the texts of Christianity. I'm
wondering about the politics of sexuality and gender that are involved
in these constructions. I suspect that the idea of the virgin birth
contains within it a critique, if not a rejection of, the notion
of heterosexual marriage which represents the rule of the male over
the female and legitimates a hierarchy based on penetration, in
the ancient world at least, and probably still, in our own.
So let's turn to Sarah. The doom of Sodom and Gomorrah is narrated
in Genesis 19 however the preceding chapter serves as a preamble
to these events. In chapter 18 the deity informs Abraham of what
is to befall the cities at the close of a strange visitation to
Abraham's tent. He receives three visitors who come to his tent
in the heat of the day, two of which are subsequently identified
as angels who will go on to stay the night in Sodom. Abraham's hospitality
thus contrasts with the subsequent abuse of hospitality by the Sodomites
who attempt to rape their angelic visitors. However this visit is
not just a parable of hospitality it is also an annunciation. The
visitors declare to Abraham, in earshot of Sarah who is within the
tent, that in a year's time she will have conceived and given birth
to a son. As both Sarah and Abraham are very old, she laughs in
incredulity thereby also naming the son who is to be born. Isaac
is derived from the Hebrew word for laughter. Isaac is a haunted
figure. He will be taken by his father to be offered in sacrifice
to god, an act of homicidal delusion for which Abraham has been
oddly praised. When I first heard that story in my childhood I employed
a child's reading and was horrified and could never look at my father
in the same light again. Isaac was not murdered by his father, the
deity intervening to prevent it, but straightaway after these events
we are told that Sarah died. Jewish tradition holds that she died
of a broken heart appalled at what Abraham was determined to do.
Isaac has no more dealings with his father, either, but lives thenceforward
in his mother's tent. He marries Rebecca who, like Sarah, also cannot
conceive without divine intervention.
 It is this image of divine intervention enabling Sarah's pregnancy
that I want to return to. It is often said that the virgin birth
is a Christian borrowing from pagan cultures to make Jesus look
more like a divine figure and that the idea was alien to Jewish
thought. However there are odd hints in Jewish traditions that Sarah,
especially, was a virgin mother and that Isaac was the result of
a miraculous conception. In the Zohar it is said, "Besides
visiting Sarah, God also did something to her in the region on high"
[1:115a]. Now the Zohar hails from medieval Spain although it contains
ideas and images that go back much further. However I have found
an ancient Jewish author for whom Sarah is a virgin mother. What
intrigues me is the sexual politics encoded in this author's presentation
of the Virgin Sarah.
The author is Philo of Alexandria who lived 2000 years ago at
the turn of the era. He hailed from the city of Alexandria in Egypt,
which was both a major centre of Greek thought and culture as well
as containing a major Jewish community in the ancient world. This
Jewish community was, not surprisingly, Greek speaking and imbued
in Greek culture. It was also very large - not well known is that,
of the three wars waged by the Romans against the Jews in the first
and second centuries, the second one was fought against the Jews
of Egypt and Libya alone. Philo lived some time before the first
Jewish war dying c. 40CE and was a major philosopher, biblical commentator
and theologian. He was clearly from the Jewish elite class in Alexandria
and seems to have held a position of leadership or authority there.
Philo was a philosopher and very much part of the world of Greek
philosophy. Dorothy Sly emphasises that this world that Philo belongs
to, and is shaped by, is one where "men considered intellectual
and spiritual matters to be their domain, and true personhood to
belong to them" [1990: 70]. As for women, they "belonged
to a different sphere, out of sight, and for the most part, out
of mind" [ibid]. And lest anyone misunderstand me and fall
into any anti-semitic notions I want to stress that these are the
constructions of Greek philosophy and culture - the Jews are not
responsible for patriarchy. The ancient pagan world was a thoroughly
patriarchal world in which there was a gender hierarchy of penetrator
over penetrated - the hierarchy starts with men at the top then
women then hermaphrodites and eunuchs down to the monstrous - penetrated
men and penetrating women. Virginity endows women with a quasi-male
status because a virgin is unpenetrated. Philo applies this gendered
hierarchy to his understanding of the individual person and his
reading of biblical stories. Thus there is a hierarchy of spirit
and body, of mind and senses, of reason and desire. The lower and
carnal part of a person is female and the higher spiritual part
is male. These lower elements are "dangerous and potentially
evil" and must be controlled so that "the feminine…
loses its danger, and enhances the masculine" [Sly, 1990: 220-1].
It is only by so doing that "the highest element in the human
soul, the mind," can realise its "essential affinity"
with "the divine spirit itself" [Warne, 1988: 117] and
enter into communion with the deity. Philo believed that the biblical
stories were accounts of historical events but he also believed
that they "had an "undermeaning" (huponoia) by which
Abraham, Jacob, and other biblical figures were understood to represent…
spiritual realities" [Kugel, 1997: 597]. These spiritual realities
were truths applicable to all times and places and it was to decode
and understand these spiritual realities that Philo applied the
tools of Greek philosophy in his interpretation.
I will begin my discussion with Philo's portrayal of Sodom in
the treatise, Abraham. He turns to the story to illustrate his arguments
concerning the essential goodness of the deity. So as to highlight
this essential goodness of the deity, Philo is determined to paint
a portrait of the cities of the plain as absolutely evil. Same sex
desire and homoeroticism are essential elements of this portrait
and I identify Philo as the first person to read this story homophobically.
If, for Philo, true philosophy is the path of communion with the
divine then same sex desire and homoeroticism become markers for
a false or anti-philosophy.
Thus, Sodom "was brimful of innumerable iniquities... such
as arise from gluttony and lewdness (gastrimargias kai lagneias)
and multiplied and enlarged every other possible pleasure"
[Ab. 133]. Sodom had a "never-failing lavishness of... sources
of wealth" being "deep-soiled and well watered" thereby
proving that “the chief beginning of evils is goods in excess”
[Ab. 134]. For Philo, true philosophy is an ascetic path. A superfluity
of riches is a peril to be avoided for they only lead to indulgence
of the senses. He continues that, as a result of this abundance,
the Sodomites "threw off from their necks the law of nature
(phuseôs nomon) and applied themselves to deep drinking of
strong liquor... and forbidden forms of intercourse (ocheias ekthesmous)"
[Ab. 135. Same sex desire thus represents a violation of the law
of nature. The homoerotic rebellion against nature both deranges
the mind and corrupts the body. For the men of Sodom,
(n)ot only in their mad lust for women did they violate the
marriages of their neighbours, but also men mounted males without
respect for the sex nature which the active partner shares with
the passive (alla kai andres ontes arresin epibainontes, tên
koinên pros tous paschontas hoi drôntes phusin aidoumenou);
and so when they tried to beget children they were discovered
to be incapable of any but a sterile seed. Yet the discovery availed
them not so much stronger was the force of the lust (epithumias)
which mastered them. Then, as little by little they accustomed
those who were by nature to submit to play the part of women,
they saddled them with the formidable curse of a female disease.
For not only did they emasculate their bodies by luxury and voluptuousness
but they worked a further degeneration in their souls and, as
far as in them lay, were corrupting the whole of mankind [Ab.
135-6].
It is this type of explicit homoerotic imagery and homophobic
polemic that is missing in references to Sodom in the biblical narratives.
Furthermore, Philo is arguing that male homoeroticism degenerates
the male body rendering it feminised and sterile. Philo is clearly
involving notions of monogenesis - the male provides the seed, the
female is merely the field it grows in. By becoming feminised a
male becomes field-like and his seed loses potency. This spurious
biology serves to both give 'natural' grounds for homophobia and
justify Sodom's fate as the action of a loving deity. Philo continues,
God, moved by pity for mankind whose Saviour and Lover He was,
abominated and extinguished this unnatural and forbidden intercourse,
and those who lusted for such He cast forth and chastised with
punishments not of the usual kind but startling and extraordinary,
newly created for this purpose. He bade the air grow suddenly
overclouded and pour forth a great rain, but fire not of water...
and in one day populous cities had become the grave of the inhabitants
and fabrics of stone and timber had turned to ashes and fine dust.
And when the flame had utterly consumed all that was visible and
above ground it penetrated right down into the earth itself, destroying
its inherent life-power and reducing it to complete sterility
[Ab. 137-40].
In both Dreams and Drunkenness there are further references to
Sodom and once again homophobia and genocide colour Philo's reading.
In both treatises, Philo refers to Deut 32:32, "the vineyards
of Sodom", in his discussion of the Gen 40 account of Joseph
interpreting the dreams of two imprisoned courtiers of Pharaoh [Somn.
2:191-2, Ebriet. 222]. As far as Philo is concerned, these courtiers
are eunuchs. Philo abhors eunuchs as sterile or barren just as the
Sodomites became through their homoeroticism. The discussion in
both treatises is similar however it is in Drunkenness that Philo
becomes quite vituperative, developing the genocidal themes implicit
in his understanding of Sodom’s fate. Philo understands that
Sodom "is indeed by interpretation barrenness and blindness"
and that the vine of Sodom is an image of those “who are under
the thrall of wine-bibbing and gluttony and the basest of pleasures”[Ebriet.
222]. In fact he concludes his treatise on drunkenness thus
In such a soul all that grows is the lust which is barren of
excellence, and blinded to all that is worthy of it’s contemplation...
a vine which proves to be the bearer of bitterness and wickedness
and villainy and wrath and anger and savage moods and tempers,
the vine which stings the soul like vipers and venomous asps,
and that sting none can cure. Let us... implore the all-merciful
God to destroy this wild vine and decree eternal banishment to
the eunuchs and all those who do not beget virtue [Ebriet. 223-4].
Eunuchs, as sterilised males, are interchangeable with the men
of Sodom who were rendered sterile through their surrender to homoeroticism.
Being sterilised, they have renounced their masculinity and are
therefore subject to passions, moods/emotions and lusts. Masculinity
hinges on potency and such potency underpins authority and control
and this control is the avenue to knowing the divine, that ultimate
potency in Philo's universe. Take away that authority and the person
and the society become feminised sites of sensual chaos. Sodom and
Gomorrah are destroyed because they fall into this state and Philo
prays for a similar fate for eunuchs. Banishment for eternity is
the most complete form of destruction imaginable. In Questions on
Genesis Philo gives a detailed commentary on Gen 18-19. It is clear
that Abraham is Philo's hero, held up as a model; he is the perfect,
god-aware man. Abraham is Philo’s model of all that is worthy
and there is nothing he can do in the narrative that would incur
Philo’s reproach. Sarah’s character also partakes in this
quality. Regarding Sarah’s standing behind Abraham in the tent
at Mamre [Gen 18:11], Philo says “Virtue stands behind the
one who is virtuous by nature, not like a slave boy but like a perfect
administrator... who ...directs the entire soul” [Quest. Gen.
IV:13]. Sarah as dutiful wife represents virtue in contrast to the
pederastic image of the slave boy. Being a young male slave is a
particularly feminised situation, for slaves were subject to the
desires of their masters and masters had the right to penetrate
their slaves. Ironically, as befits her representing virtue, Sarah
has ceased the ways of women [Gen 18:11] and is consequently no
longer part of the economy of penetration. Indeed, she has thus
become male, allegorically "absorbed into Abraham as a quality
of his character" [Sly, 1990: 152]. Philo understands Sarah's
menopause as representing the control of the ‘female’
aspects of the soul - “irrational... akin to bestial passions,
fear, sorrow, pleasure and desire” - which “clearly belongs
to minds full of Law” [Quest. Gen. IV:15]. Such minds "resemble
the male sex and overcome passions and rise above sense-pleasure
and desire" [ibid]. Similarly, in Drunkenness, Philo describes
Sarah as representing the virtue loving mind that has fled the customs
of women [Ebriet. 59] and, in Posterity and Flight of Cain, specifically
states that Sarah has been changed into a virgin [Post. 134]. Such
restored virginity illustrates for Philo that the deity will only
converse with the soul when it has transcended its ef/feminate appetites
and become like Sarah, “ranked once more as a pure virgin”
[Cher. 50]. Not even Sarah’s laughter is negatively evaluated
because it shows “a new act... sown by God in the whole soul
for the birth of joy and great gladness, which... is called “laughter”...
“Isaac”” [Quest. Gen. IV:17, see also Ab. 206].
There are two ironies in Philo's construction of Sarah being virgin,
being male. Recall that eunuchs are abhorrent for Philo because
in their sterilisation they are also feminised and subject to the
senses. It is only male potency that can enable male (self-) control
and to remove that potency is to remove that control. However for
women it is only by renouncing their fertility that they can achieve
some measure of (masculine) control in themselves. It is not merely
a renunciation of being a penetratee that is the key here. Philo's
praise of Sarah's menopause as a restoration of virginity indicates
that, for him, women can only achieve the equivalence of male status
by renunciation of their very fertility. A sterile woman becomes
virgin and thus becomes male. Herein lies the second irony in that
by Sarah's becoming male, her relationship with Abraham becomes
implicitly homoerotic, a love story of two men. As Abraham's authority
is grounded in his potency and his ability to penetrate, this contradiction
cannot be sustained. Either Abraham must renounce his penetration
stakes and thus become a feminised eunuch or Sarah must be penetrated
herself thus becoming slave boy or wife. There can be no true virgin
birth of Isaac while Sarah and Abraham are husband and (male) wife.
As long as Philo maintains the patriarchal gender hierarchy then
he cannot maintain Sarah's virgin mother status.
When we turn to Mary, however, a different pattern emerges. In
the gospels of Mark and John, she is a woman without a husband -
no explanation is given for this. In Mark, Jesus is actually described
as "the carpenter, the son of Mary" [6:3], there is no
father, no Joseph, whatsoever. In John, Jesus is twice referred
to as son of Joseph but, as I said, Joseph is no longer around and
neither Jesus nor Mary make any reference to him. Jesus only refers
to his god in heaven as father. Joseph appears as a character only
in the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke. Matthew goes out
of his way to stress that Joseph is not responsible for Mary's pregnancy
and that, while he takes her as a wife, he does not have sex with
her before the birth of Jesus. However Joseph then disappears completely
from Matthew's narrative. His role there is protector and guardian
of the mother and child to save them from Herod's murderous intent.
Having done so he disappears for good from the gospel. Luke first
introduces us to Mary in chapter 1 with the angel appearing to her
announcing her virginal conception through the power of the Holy
Spirit. The next thing she does is set off on her own to visit her
cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant with the future John the Baptist.
So at our first meeting with Mary she is single and her primary
relationship is with another woman. Elizabeth herself is married
but she too has had a miraculous conception more along the lines
of Sarah and the other Hebrew matriarchs. Mary is still at this
stage husbandless and I wonder if Luke is deliberately contrasting
the two women to stress Mary's single status. We do not meet Joseph
until the birth of Jesus in chapter 2. Joseph is a shadowy background
figure who never speaks in Luke and disappears once we leave those
infancy stories in chapter 2. There are references to Jesus as Joseph's
son in Luke but as with the other gospels he disappears completely
from Jesus' and Mary's life. Furthermore, while there are references
to Mary or the mother of Jesus elsewhere in the Christian New Testament,
there is no mention of Joseph or of a human father of Jesus.
We don’t find any detailed portrait of Joseph until the second
century infancy gospel of James. Here Joseph is an old man, a widower
with children from the previous marriage. Mary is a young girl and
she is placed under his guardianship - they are not married at all.
When Mary conceives Jesus, Joseph is out of town, nowhere around.
Mary herself is the product of a miraculous conception if not a
virginal conception because her father is nowhere near her mother
when she is conceived. Now there is no history in this gospel but
the point I want to make is that for someone, some group of people
it was very important that Mary not be touched or involved with
any human male apart from her son. No male can even claim paternity.
Now there are two assumptions made about this untouchability. Firstly,
Mary's virginal status is designed to guarantee the divine status
of her son. Secondly, while she knows no human male, she is wife
to that divine male, god the Father. I want to que(e)ry these two
assumptions as heterocentric and patriarchal and offer an alternative
and very queer hypothesis. I'll start with the second assumption
first and ask - is Mary really wedded to an overpowering male deity.
According to Christian tradition, Mary conceives by the Holy Spirit.
In Matthew's gospel it is said "the child conceived in her
is from the Holy Spirit" [1:20]. In Luke's gospel the angel
tells Mary that "the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the
power of the Most High will overshadow you" and thus she will
conceive [Lk 1:35]. In the Jewish milieu, the Holy Spirit was understood
to be a feminine aspect of the deity and overshadowing is likewise
associated with the Shekina or female face of the divine. So if
Mary conceives by the Holy Spirit then it is more correct to understand
this as a type of human/divine lesbian co-parenting relationship.
Indeed, one 3rd century heretical Christian text questions, Some
said, "Mary conceived by the holy spirit." They are in
error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever
conceive by a woman? [Gospel of Philip]. Of course, Jesus speaks
of his heavenly father and not of his two mummies but if there is
a heavenly father what of his earthly mother. As a virgin then she
is an honourary male and in the Odes of Solomon, Mary is actually
described as giving birth as a man so we have an even queerer transgendering
image here. So whichever way we look at it Mary's relationship with
the divine does not fit that of heterosexual patriarchal marriage.
Philo's honourary male, Sarah the virgin, collapses because she
is still subject to penetration and if she is not a woman then she
must become a eunuch or worse. Mary's virgin status is assured because
she is overshadowed not penetrated, most important is her virgin
impenetrability. When we turn to her son we find something else
that contrasts with Philo, namely the son valourises, instead of
condemns, eunuchs. In Matthew 19:12, Jesus says, "there are
eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have
been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves
eunuchs for there sake of the kingdom of heaven". This statement
is made dismissing the centrality of marriage. Similarly, in Luke's
gospel, Jesus says of marriage "those who are accounted worthy
to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead neither
marry nor are given in marriage" [Lk 20:35]. And it is clear
from the account of the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts
8 that the early Christian movement saw that one of the signs of
the messianic new age was the welcoming and affirming of eunuchs
in contrast to their exclusion and condemnation in the old Law -
and by Philo. This affirmation of the eunuch also contrasts to the
eunuch's low place in the patriarchal gender hierarchy of the day.
Indeed is Jesus a type of eunuch - does he include himself as one
of those eunuchs for the kingdom? A number of queer theologians
have suggested that biblical eunuchs represent sexual minorities,
queer folks like us, and there are odd hints in Jewish traditions
that the homoerotic is a sign of the messianic era. Why isn't Jesus
married and why does he mainly hang around with the men and why
is his primary relationship in John with the beloved disciple, clearly
a type of the younger male beloved in Greek male-male relationships.
If Mary is a male mother or a lesbian co-parent then her son is
pretty queer himself and I wouldn’t be the first person to
make that point.
It strikes me, too, that if Christianity as a messianic movement
is offering a new and egalitarian age then it must offer an alternative
to that fundamental hierarchy, the male over female, that is ancient
(and modern) patriarchy. Ruth Vanita points out that the Virgin
Mary has long served as a powerful sign, for some, of the truth
that a woman needs a man like a fish needs bicycle. However it also
strikes me that the only female/male dyad that can work as an egalitarian
symbol in the hierarchy of penetration in the ancient world, maybe
even our own, is that of mother and son. The image of husband and
wife is irretrievably doomed in a patriarchal economy. Father and
daughter can only work, perhaps, when, as happens after Sodom is
destroyed, the daughter rapes the father. The male privilege of
a brother can easily overshadow his sister. Even female/male friendships
can be flawed by marriage models unless, perhaps, the man is queer,
femminised, a woman's faggy friend, more girlfriend than the girls
(a model for Mary Magdalen and Jesus, perhaps). But with a mother
and son, the male privilege of the son, even a divine son, defers
to that more primordial power, the maternal. The most powerful goddesses
in the ancient world were either the virgin warriors, Diana/Artemis,
later enacted by the Christian virgin martyrs, or the mother goddesses,
Isis or Cybele, the great mother of Asia Minor with her retinues
of eunuch priests. Mary is the Mother of God - you can't go better
than that - and as subsequent tradition knew, a son can’t deny
his mother because, as Norman Bates would say, "a boy's best
friend is his mother". So Mary will become intercessor, mediatrix,
the ultimate sanctuary for sinners.
I have deliberately invoked Psycho and the character of Norman
Bates because I think they are an apt metaphor for the Christian
religions today. When we look at them we see what happens when radical
egalitarian ideas are subsequently appropriated by the ruling structures
they set out to remove. In the Catholic traditions, we find 'mother
church', desperately trying to enact mother but as an agent of suppression;
Norman Bates in mother drag wielding the carving knife against anyone,
like us queers or uppity women, who remind them that their drag
is a parody and not mother at all, and also not son. The Protestant
traditions are a side of Norman that we don’t see in Psycho
but which precedes its events and completes them. Here is the Norman
who killed his mother, a murderous rage that doesn’t recognise
that in killing the mother one kills the son and all that is left
is the rule of the Father with his laws and his police and his prisons
and his psychiatry.
Perhaps that mother-son dyad as ancient gender egalitarian symbol
could not be sustained but I think it was the best available option
for its time. And no symbol can completely convey what it attempts
to represent and thus will always be flawed, problematic. Perhaps,
too, it was a symbol whose time was yet to come - a premonition?
I find it ironic that there are calls to abandon the virgin birth
symbol precisely at a time when virgin births have been made a reality
by the new reproductive technologies. Those calls are made by religious
liberals, like Bishop Spong, who still represent the heterosexual
establishment and would like to conscript us queer folk to those
hetero norms. The conservatives, are trapped, because they want
to maintain those same norms along with the symbol that critiques
them. Ironically, maybe it's only us queers who can salvage it,
to the discomfiture of conservative and liberal alike.
I am reminded of a story of the Spanish Civil War. The workers
of a city draped a statue of Jesus in the main plaza with a red
flag and a banner. Written on the banner was a message, presumably
directed at the local Stalinists who had taken control - "He
is ours, you can't take him from us!" I'm wondering if the
time has come for us to drape Mary and Jesus with rainbow flags
and the message - "They were ours all along but you took them
and kept them from us all this time; now we're coming to take them
back!"
|
