Exodus and Deuteronomy

Chapter 16. Terms of Endearment? The Desirable Female Captive (אשה יפה האר) and Her Illicit Acquisition

237 Sandra Jacobs ChAPtEr 16 terms of Endearment? The Desirable Female Captive (r)t tpy t#)) and Her Illicit Acquisition Personal and Other Interests The search for “historical truth,” when sought as a single neat package with no nagging loose ends, seems closer to recent definitions of myth rather than to an informed description of our distant past.1 In his confessional account, “The Burdens of Memory,” Shlomo Sand acknowledges the elusive nature of this quest: “It is no secret that scholarly research is often motivated by personal experiences. These experiences tend to be hidden beneath layers of theory: here are some proffered at the outset. They will serve the author as the launch pad in his passage toward historical truth, an ideal destination that, he is aware, no one ever truly reaches” (Sand 2009: 1). Such journeys seem locked tight in a hazy mirage, ever distant to any determined traveler—inaccessible and often beyond an even superficial understanding. I wish to thank Lynette Mitchell for her time and thoughts, initially at the joint SOTS/ EABS Summer 2009 Meeting, held at the University of Lincoln on 26–30 July 2009, and again at the International SBL Meeting, held on 25–29 July 2010, at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Further acknowledgments also to Father Lucien-Jean Bord, Bernard Jackson, Shula Medalie, Shani Tzoref, and Nick Wyatt. English translations of the Hebrew Bible are by the (1999) JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh unless otherwise stated. 1. “Myth is an arrangement of the past, whether real or imagined, in patterns that reinforce a culture’s deepest values and aspirations.... Myths are so fraught with meaning that we live and die by them. They are the maps by which cultures navigate through time” (Wright 2005: 4). 238 Exodus and Deuteronomy There is also the further unsuspected complication that any voyage in the company of the Masoretic Text is handicapped by the fact that it was never intended to document the objective, chronological record of the Judeans or early Israelite settlement. Rather, its role was to provide a national and authoritative legacy for its future beneficiaries: specifically one that would serve to forge their identity and lifestyle, carrying them through the political turbulence of the Second Temple period and into exile.2 Equally inconvenient is the significant discrepancy between the biblical record and the disparate archaeological finds, which cannot be easily reconciled, if at all.3 And as for the case of the present writer, there is further accompanying (excess?) baggage : I am an observant Jewish daughter, wife, and mother. Hence, rabbinic exegesis always provides an important frame of reference in my research and is highly colored by an underlying, if not deeper concern: the defense and survival of my own people. I ought also to add that my reluctance to embark on the historical trail belies my personal preference for what I consider to be the most intriguing traditions in the Hebrew Bible, namely those witnessed in its laws, as I shall now explain. Written law is clearly the most powerful, if not enduring, of all the biblical traditions in that these provisions continue to be valued and observed in faith-based communities still today.4 The study of biblical law sheds light on two (not insignificant) contexts: Firstly, it reflects the social, economic and political circumstances that were relevant at their time of writing, and secondly, it describes the ideological preference of the law-giver. Thus as a prescriptive text, each law conveys what was ideally meant to happen, or to be done, in a given situation. This is self-evident, irrespective of whether we can ascertain whether the biblical requirements were actually implemented 2. As Peter Machinist (1991: 196–212) earlier emphasized. 3. This may be an inevitable consequence when examining the records of “those groups of people who constantly and consciously toy with the past and manipulate its memories” (Mendels 2008: 134), where Mendels includes (among other “ideological communities”) ancient Greek intellectuals, all royal propaganda (but particularly that of the kings of Commagene), specific writers such as Hecataeus of Abdera, Manetho and the circles from which Jubilees emerged. 4. In Jewish tradition, those biblical laws that remain in active use (such as circumcision, the observance of sabbath, and the dietary laws) are mediated through the process of halakha, or normative rabbinic law. 239 Terms of Endearment? or not.5 Accordingly, the genre of law was highly meaningful to the...