Sexual Hospitality in the Hebrew Bible

Patronymic, Metronymic, Legitimate and Illegitimate Relations

Thalia Gur-Klein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317545668
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

A woman's life in the ancient world was constrained by her social and economic status. As a daughter she was firmly under the aegis of her father and brothers, who would later allocate the woman to another man as his wife. The power of fathers and husbands extended to using their wives and daughters as sexual gifts to gain favour. Yet, alongside this, woman had certain socio-economic rights notably concerning inheritance and property - which they could use to protect themselves. 'Sexual Hospitality in the Hebrew Bible' examines sacred sexuality and ritual fecundity from patronymic marriage - where the husband claims exclusive rights over his wife's sexuality and attributes her offspring to his line and kin - to metronymic conjugal systems which allow a woman to remain in her home where the male consort joins her and her kin. Ranging across abstention, promiscuity, and holy offering, the sexual lives of women in biblical times reveal not only restriction but also female agency and resistance.

1.	Patriarch hospitality and sexual hospitality

In his modest book, Sex and Family in the Bible and the Middle East (1959), Raphael Patai offers a survey of customs and traditions regarding family values and sexuality in both ancient Middle East and biblical times. Relevant to my subject, Patai brings to the fore symbolic codes concerning patriarchal hospitality and sexual licence. The two codes seem to generate uncompromising imperatives; the rules that generate them, however, may infringe on one another.

Patai opens his discussion by presenting the conventional viewpoint that patriarchal hospitality was so highly regarded that it could override strict considerations of women’s chastity. Obliged by hospitable codes, a host might sacrifice the chastity of his wife, concubine or unmarried (virginal) daughters to safeguard his guests’ honour and protection. Initially, Patai presents Genesis 19 and Judges 19 to showcase that virgin daughters and a concubine might be offered to outsiders when the safety and honour of a male guest are at stake (Patai 1959: 139–45). This nodal point has been presented by many critics as the denominator of patriarchal praxis, encompassing the quintessential wrongs that male bonding and dominion inflict on women (Bach 1999a: 389–403; Bal 1993a; Jones-Warsaw 1993: 172–87).

However, Patai proposes an additional hypothesis suggesting that these stories may have survived residuals of cultural templates other than the conventionally patriarchal one. One such custom could refer to sexual hospitality. Patai proposes that while the host offers protection and provision to his guests, offering his daughters alludes to customs that oblige the host to provide sexual gratification to strangers and outsiders as part of a boundless hospitality. Patai surmises that offering women to outsiders reveals atavist customs that may coexist alongside or as part of patriarchal values of hospitality. From such perspectives, the stories of Genesis 19 and Judges 19 survive motifs of sexual hospitality: “This custom which has been reported from various Arabian tribes, throws additional light on the preconception that sets hospitality versus female chastity, which constitutes the background the sexual incidents described in Genesis 19 and Judges 19’ (Patai 1959: 140). Patai’s proposition has not received the attention it deserves, if any at all. In the following, I venture to appropriate Patai’s assumptions into a full thesis.

While relying on comparative approaches, my analysis will be mainly textual; yet I shall also invoke anthropological data of tribal life around the world in order to show motifs of the custom of sexual hospitality in the Hebrew Bible. I cannot ascertain that indicative traces of sexual hospitality exist; isolating and deconstructing characteristics of the custom from selected biblical texts, my reading is interpretive. We cannot prove for certain that such assumed residuals point to ancient Hebrew customs of sexual hospitality; such residues could constitute a negated, adopted, adapted or inverted transposition of such customs practised by the Israelites, or even only by the surrounding cultures. Could the custom resurface as merely a literary representation of a template, or can it be a reaction to another culture? Resurfacing as a literary representation, can it be anything more than an allusive narrative component?

Following the historical comparative approach, we could infer that customs reflect their contemporary reality; while at the same time customs are also culturally contingent proving to be migratory, passing beyond communities’ borders. Customs of sexual hospitality could have been practised by ancient Israel, tolerated by socio-cultural consensus commonly shared by the surrounding cultures. Even if sexual hospitality were but partially practised, or not at all among the Israelites, it could still resurface in the Hebrew Bible as a literary theme transposed from neighbouring cultures. Drawing on the second type of comparative approach, the typological one, we could highlight the custom of sexual hospitality through recurrently confluent motifs. If we concentrate on typological signs, biblical texts could allude to an encoded behaviour and symbolic system of a custom. It is a typological sign that turns a random case into an indicator of a signified, deducible and symbolic system; and it is a symbolic system that allows us to deconstruct an encoded custom with its functionally generative rules, revealing a network of ideas that ensues a signified behaviour.

Appropriating anthropological data to biblical texts, Patai contends that sexual licence has until recently been practised as a form of hospitality in the Middle Eastern regions. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Patai relates travellers’ reports dating from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries (Patai 1959: 139–40).¹

From the angle of historically anthropological and comparative approaches, sexual hospitality valorizes customs of communality among kinsmen and clan brothers. Tribal communality is rooted in atavist kinship where kindred groups are small and pressed by harsh conditions and scarce commodities remain undivided. Under such conditions, it may not have been uncommon to practise sexual communism where a kin group share a wife under a polyandrous marriage or group marriage (Robertson Smith [1885] 1907: 147–63; Westermarck 1921: 123–4). Other researchers consider confluent customs of wife-sharing as a proof of conjugal communality of women where members share consorts in their lifetime and inherit them posthumously alongside communality of other possessions and where visiting strangers may receive temporary prerogatives as kin brothers. Researchers also contend that sexual hospitality has been known to be practised by atavist societies worldwide (Westermarck 1921: 225). The frequency of customs related to sexual hospitality shows them to be a typological template rather than isolated events, confirming the practice among tribes from Arabia, Yemen, Central and North Africa, Australia and India. Relating to tribal life, the origin of the custom seems to be rooted in ancient times, and surviving into and often tolerated during the Islamic era (Briffault 1927: vol. I, 635–40; Patai 1959: 139–45; Robertson Smith [1885] 1907: 139; Wake [1889] 1967 : 82–5, 141, 143, 167, 392; Westermarck 1921: 117–225).

Typologically, the custom of sexual hospitality concerns a stranger, or a kinsman who resides outside the tribe and on being received as a guest benefits from boundless hospitality that may ramify to sexual communism like a tribe brother. Precipitating communal organization of kinship, sexual hospitality attests to the ramifying nature of kinship that abides by the boundless sharing that is expected between clan brothers. Such tribal organization regards the outsider as either foe or ally, with no intermediate category; and tribal perspicuity demarcates between affiliated brothers and foes. If a stranger is not conceived as a threat or enemy, he is received as a clan brother, which entitles him recourse to protection and provision by the insider/host. Such boundless hospitality is offered to him as a value of brotherhood (Briffault 1927: vol. I, 635–40). Germane to harsh conditions of tribal life, hospitality attests to the fact that survival may depend on fraternal reciprocity. Hospitality offers temporary privileges of ‘brotherhood’ even to a blood foe, conventionally for the duration of three days in Arabia. Boundless hospitality invokes the idea that sharing food runs parallel to kinship that has sprouted from common ancestors and communally shared source of means. Here we see an atavist affiliation between sharing nourishment and blood believed to be physically running in the veins of consanguine kin (Robertson Smith [1885] 1907: 177). Sexual hospitality also invokes communality among tribe brothers and originally small kin groups. It is also set off by circumstances of death inhering in ancient tribal life that precipitates sharing of food and women to survive. By inference, guests are rendered rights of kin membership on hospitable visitation which may include access to women (Westermarck 1921: 224). Politically, hospitality pre-emptively neutralizes the threat embodied in outsiders by converting a stranger into an allied brother.

As the insider/host is obliged to offer protection and provision to the outsider/stranger, as if he were a clan brother, the host’s honour depends on the protection and satisfaction offered to guests. Likewise, a guest’s negligence would conceive as a host’s loss of face. As privileges of atavist brotherhood ideally entail familial communality, provision and women may be equally offered to guests as part of the host’s honour. Here we return to Patai’s proposition that patriarchal honour and women’s chastity may not always conceive as conflicting imperatives (Briffault 1927: vol. I, 635–40; Patai 1959: 139–45).

From other perspectives, an atavist culture bases its codes on familial religion and eponymous god(s). As a corollary, a stranger could be conceived as a divine avatar or a god in the flesh who, on visiting a family, brings blessings or curses from the metaphysical world. Offering a stranger boundless hospitality becomes imperative. The stranger is believed to endow fertility, blessings and protection onto the host in return for hospitality. However, like everything that comes from the unknown, a stranger also arouses superstitions and fears and is believed to possess evil powers to bring curse and affliction to a host for inhospitable reception. These beliefs attribute mystical values to hospitality towards strangers inducing tribesmen to hand over women to them (Briffault 1927: vol. I, 118–22, 331sq, 635–40, 717, 754, 750; vol. II, 35, 37, 66, 67, 99, 105–7, 123, 127, 284; vol. III, 203, 221sq, 378 sq, 408sq, 414; Westermarck 1921: 226, 284). Subsequently, connecting strangers to the mystical sphere, religious and folk beliefs hinge on hospitable customs. Some tribes that practise sexual hospitality believe that abiding by the custom brings blessings, while failing to perform it precipitates nature to show its displeasure by way of a catastrophe (Patai 1959: 143). As strangers are affiliated with the mystery of the unknown, they connect with divinely blessed persons and holy people; intercourse with them is commonly found in atavist beliefs. Westermarck finds that supernatural benefits are believed to be induced by intercourse with holy men, whether heterosexual or homosexual (Westermarck 1921: 224). These beliefs connect sexual hospitality with cultic mysteries that propagate magical correspondence between human sexuality, nature and divine blessings or predicaments.

We have postulated that as a symbolic code, a custom comprises functional signs, roles and rules of behaviour. Eventually, the practice maybe selectively and optionally actuated according to culture, time and place. In practice, sexual hospitality may vary from one community to another, its interpretation fluctuating accordingly. In some tribes, sexual hospitality concerns unmarried daughters, while in others, only married women practise it. A family member would lead the outsider and guest to the woman, thus playing the part of procurer; while under different circumstances, independent sexual initiative on the part of either a man or a woman could meet with serious repercussions and sometimes death. In some tribes sexual hospitality could endorse complete consummation, while in others any sexual pleasure is tolerated except penetration, or the offended husband maybe in his right to kill the guest. We also see that in some tribes the custom survives in merely symbolic gestures (Briffault 1927: vol. I, 635–40). In addition, the custom may entail pertinent preliminaries. Once alone with the guest, the hostess may initiate the custom by rubbing the guest’s feet with butter (Patai 1959: 139–45).

Sexual hospitality seems intrinsic to male-oriented hospitality. The custom purports gratification of a male guest by a female family member of a host, while also establishing bonds of brotherhood between outsider and host. However, some aspects of the custom favour women’s interests. While a stranger is received as a kin brother and sometimes as a deified avatar of gods, a woman’s offspring from such hospitable union will be fully and respectfully accepted by the hosting family and tribe. On being sometimes even regarded as divinely blessed, children of such unions eventually enhance the status of their mothers and families. Other aspects of the template seem favourable to women as well. Both the guest and the woman concerned have to comply and may not refuse each other. Implying a mutual obligation, the guest may not refuse the hostess, disregarding her age or appearance. Accustomed among the tribe of Merekedes of Yemen, if the hostess finds the guest agreeable, the host will discharge him with honour, furnishing him with provisions for his further journey. If however, a guest displeases his hostess, she will leave a tear in his garment. On exiting the woman’s tent, the tribeswomen and children waiting outside to inspect the guest will shame him on seeing a tear in his clothing and chase him away with yelling and abusive cries (Briffault 1929: vol. I, 635–40; Patai 1959: 139–45). In some tribes of Arabia, a woman may look for a guest herself outside restraints of patriarchal hospitality altogether.² We could contend that while the custom implies the obligation to gratify a guest, a guest has to oblige the hosting woman, and she may demand her gratification. In a cultural atmosphere where a woman’s status rises and falls with sexual relations and procreation, such customs may work in a woman’s favour, enhance her chances to conceive and increase her familial and socio-economic status.

Accepting that sexual hospitality operates as a symbolic code, it maybe both generating texts and generated in them. Resurfacing in functional signs, we should be able to subtract both the characteristics and rules of the custom. Isolating signs of sexual hospitality will elucidate the custom as a systematic code, yielding subliminal signifiers and functional behaviour that enunciate a custom. Subsequently, I shall be developing my analysis as follows:

1. A sexual offer is made in the context of hospitality where an outsider, stranger and guest are received by an insider and host.

2. A family member plays the role of intermediary or procurer.

3. Patriarchal hospitality intersects female chastity.

4. Women’s sexual ‘participation is coerced, objectified, negated or emphasized.

5. Sexual hospitality subjectifies or objectifies an outsider.

6. Preliminaries are displayed in offers of sexuality.

7. A tear in one’s clothes demonstrates shame and weakness.

8. Divine blessings are associated with sexual licence and hospitality.

9. A disaster follows and/or is removed in conjunction with sexual licence and hospitality endowed or denied.

10. Continuity is endangered and/or secured in conjunction of hospitality and sexuality.

11. The offspring may be blessed.

Coming to close analysis, I shall synchronically decode functional signs in various texts to show pertinent relations to sexual hospitality. I shall be searching for components that paradigmatically relate to the custom of sexualized hospitality, even when texts seem remotely affiliated. In highlighting signifying components, I shall analyse the way they operate in texts both on the surface level of presentation and on the paradigmatic level where deep structures are generated.

In the wake of Patai’s thesis I shall open with his hypothesis that Genesis 19 and Judges 19 allude to sexual hospitality.

Sexuality and hospitality in Sodom

The subliminal pattern of sexual hospitality poses the following formulaic roles: an outsider, an insider and a female family member whose chastity is compromised. It can be portrayed in the following role partition:

Insider/resident

Outsider/stranger

Sexuality of a female family member

The outsider is a stranger in need of shelter and provision; the insider is a local resident who offers boundless hospitality to the stranger, which according to the template entitles him to sexual gratification by one of his host’s female family members.

The story of Sodom reveals the functional roles of sexual hospitality in permutation. It regenerates the formulaic roles, both preserving and transposing them into new contexts. The stable role resurfaces in Lot, who functions as an insider and resident obliged to offer boundless hospitality to strangers and outsiders. Lot’s daughters are affiliated with the hosting family. Their relation to sexual hospitality resurfaces as their sexuality is offered by their fathers to outsiders within the context of hospitality.

The main transposition emerges in the role of stranger and outsider. The story redistributes this role in two groups of outsiders; the angels and the townsmen. Each group represents reduced features of the same recurrent function of outsiders and guests. The angels play the formulaic role of strangers and outsiders in need of shelter and provision. As angels in disguise, they invoke beliefs that connect strangers with theophanic visits of divine avatars and gods in human flesh. Intersecting the roles of an outsider, guest, deified stranger or god in the flesh, the three strangers are entitled to prerogatives of boundless reception befitting both strangers received as kin brothers and as surrogates of gods. This motif resurfaces in Lot’s offering boundless hospitality, meal and protection to them. On the subliminal paradigm, such reception may include offering his daughters to them as well. However, the sexual offer is diverted to other outsiders instead. The story problematizes the formulaic function of the stranger by redistributing the role of outsiders to the additional group of outsiders, the townsmen. While angels are strangers from out of town and qualify for the role of guests, the townsmen are local residents and they do not qualify for prerogatives of hospitality. Notwithstanding their residence, however, they are conceived as outsiders in space in relation to Lot’s house.

In their reduced figuration, both groups are outsiders. While representing a stable function, the story transposes the narrative roles of bo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Patriarch hospitality and sexual hospitality
• 2. Marital and non-marital systems
• 3. Baal marriage of dominion
• 4. Metronymic marriage: remaining with kin – counter-patterns of baal marriage
• 5. Intersecting patterns and conflicting imperatives
• 6. Widow marriage, land and kin surrogacy
• Epilogue: moral imagination
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index