THE JEWI SH QUARTERLY REVI EW, Vol. 96, No.

1 (Winter 2006) 6594

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Bilhah the Temptress:
The Testament of Reuben and
The Birth of Sexuality
I SHAY ROSEN- ZVI
THE TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS espouse some of
the most sweepingly misogynous rhetoric in ancient Jewish literature.
The testaments of Reuben, Judah, and Joseph especially contain vitriolic
warnings against the evil sexual threat that women represent and provide
advice as to how to avoid succumbing to their dangerous power. It is
surprising, then, that modern scholarship on the Testaments
1
has, by and
large, avoided the issue.
2
In sharp contrast to the ourishing research on
I wish to thank Carol Bakhos, Daniel Boyarin, Sergei Dolgopolski, Menachem
Fisch, Hindy Najman, Adi Ophir, Adiel Schremer, and Dina Stein for reading
previous drafts of this essay and for challenging me to rethink it. I am also greatly
indebted to Daniel Birnbaum for his editing assistance.
This essay is part of a larger project, dedicated to identifying the roots of
rabbinic sexual discourse. Through a series of local readings, like this one, in
Second Temple as well as in early Christian texts, I hope to relocate the rabbinic
yetser discourse, and with it to retell the still mostly unclear story of early Jewish
sexuality. For an initial sketch, see I. Rosen-Zvi, Evil Inclination, Sexuality and
the Prohibition of Seclusion (yihud) in the Talmud: A Chapter in Rabbinic An-
thropology, Teoria u-bikoret 14 (1999): 5584.
1. H. Dixon Slingerland, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical His-
tory of Research (Missoula, Mont., 1977); Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of
the Twelve Patriarchs: Central Problems and Essential Viewpoints, ANRW
2.20.1 (1987): 359420. The most updated bibliography on the Testaments is to
be found in Robert A. Kugler, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Shefeld,
2001).
2. The broad acknowledgment that fornication occupies a central (maybe
even the central) theme in the Testaments exhortation seems to have led, ironi-
cally, to overlooking the issue. The Testaments suffer from the fact that, for most
scholars, it is immediately apparent that morality centering on questions of sex
life is an ever-recurring theme (Martin Braun, History and Romance in Greco-
Roman Literature [Oxford, 1938], 45). Thus, for example, while acknowledging
that amongst the sins porneia stands up in the Testaments, Hollander and de
The Jewish Quarterly Review (Winter 2006)
Copyright 2006 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.
66 JQR 96.1 (2006)
sexual ethics and gender economy of biblical and many postbiblical Jew-
ish texts,
3
the Testaments have remained, from this perspective, largely
neglected.
Many reasons could be offered to explain the gap,
4
but part of it at
least seems to owe to the supposed triviality of the issue. Misogyny is a
well-known element in Hellenistic culture, and its existence in Jewish
Hellenistic as well as Jewish wisdom writers, such as Philo and Ben Sira,
is well documented.
5
Nonetheless, misogyny is not a uniform phenome-
Jonge dedicate no more than one short paragraph of the long introduction to
their commentary on this issue (Harm W. Hollander and Marinus de Jonge, The
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary [Leiden, 1985], 44). Several
works touch on issues of sexual ethics in the Testaments: either in the course of
dealing with biblical sexual motifs in various postbiblical texts (see especially
Braun, History and Romance, chap. 2; Esther M. Menn, Judah and Tamar [Genesis
38] in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics [Leiden,
1997], 16674; Alice Bach, Women, Seduction and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative
[Stanford, Calif., 1997], 99127) or as part of broader discussion about the Testa-
ments ethics in general (Howard C. Kee, The Ethical Dimension of the Testa-
ments of the Twelve as a Clue to Provenance, NTS 24 [1978]: 260; H. W.
Hollander, Joseph as an Ethical Model in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
[Leiden, 1981], 3839, 5152). I am aware of only one (short) paper dedicated
fully to this issue: M. de Jonge, Rachels Virtuous Behavior in the Testament of
Issachar, Greeks, Romans and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe,
ed. D. Balch et al. (Minneapolis, Minn., 1990), 34052.
3. The bibliography on these issues is vast; sufce it to point to several recent
monographs dedicated to such issues in texts that are close to our own: Claudia
Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs (Shefeld, 1985); idem, Wise,
Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible (Shefeld, 2000);
Warren C. Trenchard, Ben Siras View of Women: A Literary Analysis (Chico, Calif.,
1982); John R. Levison, Is Eve to Blame? A Contextual Analysis of Sirach
25:24, CBQ 47.4 (1985): 61723; Jon L. Berquist, Controlling Daughters Bod-
ies in Sirach, Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity, ed. M. Wyne
(Oxford, 1998), 95120; Richard Baer, Philos Use of the Categories Male and Female
(Leiden, 1970); David Winston, Philo and the Rabbis on Sex and the Body,
Poetics Today 19 (1998): 4162; C. Conway, Gender and Divine Relativity in
Philo of Alexandria, JSJ 34 (2003): 47191; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian
Body (New Haven, Conn., 1995); Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The
Hellenstic Background of 1 Corinthians 7 (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2004).
4. See Hollander, Joseph, 612, lamenting the poor treatment given in scholar-
ship to the parenthesis parts of the Testaments prior to the publication of his book
in 1981. As de Jonge clearly shows in Central Problems, the major directions
of research on the Testaments were determined by the textual, literary, and form-
critical methods, which governed scholarship during most of the twentieth cen-
tury.
5. See, for example, Kuglers explanation that T. Jud.s design of Tamar and
Bath-shua as temptresses is a common Hellenistic conception of the feminine
gender (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 58). So also Menn, Judah and Tamar,
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 67
non. Just as themes more widely researched in the context of the Testa-
ments such as messianism, demonology, or religious ethics have been
shown to vary according to their function in various texts, so too misog-
yny should be expected to alter its specic character as it reveals itself in
varying contexts. It is not enough for scholarship to denounce the Testa-
ments as misogynous, or even to identify it as belonging to wider historical
context. The unique character of Testaments demands that greater atten-
tion be paid to exactly how misogyny functions in the specic composi-
tion and what precise purpose it serves. In what ways is it similar to or
different from that of Ben Sira, Philo, or Paul? And how is it related to
the larger sexual ethics and religious ideals developed in this text?
6
This essay will explore these issues through an analysis of several bibli-
cal stories of sexual misconduct as retold in the Testament of Reuben
(henceforth T. Reuben) and other related testaments. A close reading of
these narratives will allow us rst to identify the nature of the Testaments
misogyny more clearly. I will show how, in contrast to the biblical narra-
tive, the Testaments tend to expand the female characters responsibility
for causing the forbidden acts. This trend will be revealed as but part of a
much broader transformation in which internal thoughts and inclinations
rather than actions become the focus of the religious struggle. The misog-
yny of the Testaments, I will claim, rather than merely a commonplace to
be noted, represents the institution of a whole new era of sexual dis-
course, one which carries with it a new economy of gender. This will,
nally, lead us to rethink Foucaults thesis regarding the Christian origins
of sexuality in Late Antiquity.
7
BILHAH S NAKEDNESS
T. Reuben 3.1115 presents an extended version of the biblical episode of
Reubens transgression with Bilhah (Gn 35.22):
8
168, n. 153. The generic nature of the sexual ethics of the Testaments is indeed the
main thesis of de Jonges famous paper on this issue, concluding with the words
The Testaments themselves testify to the continuity in ethical thought in Helle-
nistic-Jewish and Christian circles (Rachels Virtuous Behavior, 352).
6. In other words, the main methodological problem with the common schol-
arly use of misogyny as an explanatory tool is that it tends to isolate only one
component of a broader discourse (compare also my review of Judith Baskin,
Midrashic Women: Formation of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature [Prooftexts 25
(2005): 198208]).
7. On the long debate regarding the origin of the Testaments and my under-
standing of these issues, see nn. 10910 below.
8. Quotes from the Testaments are based on the critical edition of M. de Jonge,
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (Leiden,
1978). All English translations are from Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary. I
68 JQR 96.1 (2006)
(11) [For]
9
if I had not seen (eidon) Bilhah bathing in a sheltered (skep-
eino) place I would not have fallen into the great iniquity (anomian).
(12) For my mind (dianoia), comprehending the female nakedness
(gymnosin), did not allow me to sleep until I had done the abominable
thing (bdelygma). (13) For while Jacob our father was absent (having
gone) to Isaac his father and we were in Gaer near to Ephratah, house
of Bethlehem, Bilhah lay uncovered (akalyphos) in her chamber, drunk
(methyousa) and sleeping. (14) And I, having entered and seen her na-
kedness (gymnosin), I did the impiety (asebeian), and leaving her sleep-
ing I went out. (15) And immediately an angel of God revealed to my
father Jacob concerning my impiety, and when he came he mourned
over me, and he touched her no more.
This paragraph, as was well argued by Marinus de Jonge and James
Kugel,
10
displays signicant similarities to the parallel story recounted in
Jubilees 33.19. In both accounts, Bilhah is described as bathing in a shel-
tered place when Reuben rst sees her, and she is further presented as
sleeping when he nally comes to commit his transgression.
11
Whether we
accept Kugels claim that T. Reuben here is directly dependent on Jubi-
lees,
12
or adopt de Jonges more moderate version of a shared literary
source,
13
the textual parallels are undeniable. One might further suppose
have also consulted R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament (Oxford, 1966); James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigra-
phy, vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (Garden City, N. J., 1983);
H. F. D. Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testaments (Oxford, 1984); Abraham Kahana,
Ha-sefarim ha-hizoniyim (Tel Aviv, 1937); A. S. Hartom, Sipure Agada, vol. 1 (Tel
Aviv, 1969). Translations from Jubilees are taken from James VanderKam, The
Book of Jubilees (Leuven, 1989).
9. The connection between the narrative and the lesson preceding it (marked
here by the word for, gar) will be discussed below.
10. Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of Their
Text, Composition and Origin (Assen, 1953), 7173; James Kugel, Reubens Sin
with Bilhah in the Testament of Ruben, Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in
Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Mil-
grom, ed. D. P. Wright et al. (Winona Lake, Ind., 1995), 52554. See also Avigdor
Shinan and Yair Zakovitch, The Story of Reuben and Bilhah (Hebrew; Jerusalem,
1983).
11. De Jonge and Kugel also discuss two other motifs shared by the two
compositions: Jacobs journey to his father before the crime and his refraining
from touching Bilhah after it.
12. This thesis was further supported lately by Michael Segal, Sefer ha-yo-
velim (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 2004), 71.
13. De Jonge, Study, 71.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 69
that, like Jubilees, T. Reubens intention is to call attention to Bilhahs non-
participation during the whole scene. Thus Kugel, after noting the afore-
mentioned details, could conclude: T. Reuben seems to have arranged
everything so as to argue Bilhahs innocence.
14
Two small details, however, appearing in the midst of T. Reubens ver-
sion, seem to subvert this thesis. Verse 13 presents Bilhah not only as
sleeping, as in Jubilees, but also as drunk and naked when Reuben comes
to her. Kugel, faithful to his thesis, explains: [And indeed] the rest of
the passage in T. Reuben makes explicit Bilhahs noninvolvement in the
affair: she is drunk and asleep when Reuben enters and (apparently still)
asleep when he leaves. But this reading ignores the way that the motifs
of drunkenness and nakedness function generally in the Testaments and
especially their strong connection to sexual immorality. T. Judah warns
time and again against the negative consequences of drunkenness: And
now, my children, be not drunk with wine: for wine turns the mind away
from the truth, and throws in (it) the passion of lust and leads eyes into
error (T. Jud. 14.1). Wines most fatal effects appear clearly in the con-
text of fornication: For the spirit of impurity (porneia)
15
has wine as min-
ister (T. Jud. 14.2). The testament also has Judah comment on the error
of his sexually corrupt ways: After I had drunk wine, I did not respect
the commandment of God (T. Jud. 14.6). Judah speaks from experience,
of course: his tendency toward intoxication with wine led him twice down
the path of sexual immorality, both in his affair with Bath-shua (T. Jud.
13.6) and with Tamar (T. Jud. 12.3). In fact, nowhere in the Testaments
do we nd the motif of drunkenness in a different context.
16
The same
holds true with regard to nakedness. Indeed, the connection between na-
kedness and porneia, quite obvious in and of itself,
17
is made explicit by
14. Kugel, Reubens Sin, 534.
15. Since the concept of porneia is central to my reading, and Hollander and
de Jonges translation of it as impurity could be misleading (compare promis-
cuity in Charlesworths edition [trans. H. C. Kee] and fornication in Sparkss
[trans. de Jonge]), I will leave the word untranslated. The meaning of porneia,
and its function in T. Reu., will be discussed below.
16. Kugel is well aware of this reservation but claims that it is apparently
necessary here to have Bilhah drunk in order to make clear that she is not even
conscious of the sin (Reubens Sin, 534). I examine this claim further below.
Compare also de Jonges remark: The author of T. Reu. may have changed the
original story in order to draw attention once more to the evil effects of drunken-
ness (Study, 73), totally ignoring the implications of this change on Bilhahs
image in the testament.
17. Compare also T. Jos. 9.5, where Potiphar wifes nakedness is an integral
part of her efforts at temptation. See also Braun, History and Romance, 8586.
70 JQR 96.1 (2006)
presenting Bilhahs nakedness as the direct cause of Reubens misdeed
(T. Reu. 3.12, 14).
Further comparison with Jubilees exposes the drunkenness-as-inno-
cence thesis
18
in T. Reuben to be even more unconvincing. The Jubilees
version has Bilhah wake up during the act, struggling and screaming
until Reuben ees (33.5).
19
Jubilees continues to advocate for Bilhahs
innocence in a long paragraph which details her reaction to Reubens
deed: She was ashamed because of him. Once she had released her grip
on him, he ran away. She grieved terribly about this matter and told no
one at all. When Jacob came and looked for her, she said to him: I am
not pure for you because I am too contaminated for you, since Reuben
deled me and lay with me at night. I was sleeping and did not realize
(it) until he uncovered the edge of my (garment) and lay with me (Jub.
33.57). All this is totally absent from T. Reubens version, in which Bilhah
remains asleep and in which it is the angel of God who reveals the story
to Jacob. Thus, whereas the Jubilees narrative consistently goes out of its
way to maintain Bilhahs innocence, T. Reubens narration of this episode
leaves room to see Bilhahs nakedness and drunkenness as an open invita-
tion to iniquity.
In addition to neglecting (or underestimating) the signicance of these
details,
20
scholars have overlooked the unique way that T. Reuben adapts
the earlier literary traditions to a new context.
21
A sharp contrast, for
example, may be drawn between the function of nakedness in Jubilees and
T. Reuben. Although both picture Bilhah as bathing in a hidden place,
22
18. Even Menn, who is sensitive to the Testaments special economy of gender
(e.g., Judah and Tamar, 146), nds only passivity in T. Reu.s description of Bil-
hahs behavior: Bilhahs passivity and complete lack of consciousness contrasts
markedly with Reubens compulsive wakefulness (Judah and Tamar, 170). The
presentation of Bilhah as temptress in the exhortation that follows (17172) has,
according to her, no basis in the narrative itself. Compare to Shinan and Zako-
vitch, Story of Reuben, 21.
19. Compare Dt 22.24, 27, in which the girls screams function as an indica-
tion of the involuntary nature of the sexual act.
20. These objections hold true also with regard to Hollander and de Jonges
explanation: The element of drunkenness . . . explains why Reuben could do
what he did so easily, and was not recognized (Commentary, 99). Here, too, the
links between the two motifs, as well as their specic sexual connotation, are
totally ignored.
21. While de Jonge does emphasize the very different lessons that T. Reu. and
Jub. attach to this story (Study, 73), he barely connects it to the different designs
of the stories themselves.
22. Kugel, Reubens Sin, 52831, is indeed convincing in reconstructing the
possible exegetical ground for this bathing motif. Compare Shinan and Zako-
vitch, Story of Reuben, 19.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 71
the two compositions depart signicantly in the placement and signi-
cance of this detail. Jubilees brings the bathing image at the very begin-
ning of the story, completing it with the words he loved her (Jub. 33.3).
The story then moves directly to Reubens actions (At night he hid . . .)
and their consequences. Neither Bilhahs nudity nor Reubens gaze is
ever mentioned again. They operate only as the narrative trigger leading
to the sinful deed, moving aside to clear the stage for narrative focus: the
forbidden act itself. The format found in Jubilees is thus faithful, mutatis
mutandis, to the typical biblical narrative of sexual sin: a man sees a
woman, desires or loves
23
her beauty, and acts on this desireas in
the stories of Shechem and Dinah (Gn 34.3), Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam
13.1), and, most notably, David and Bat Sheva (2 Sam 11.2).
In T. Reuben, on the other hand, things work rather differently. Here,
far from disappearing and clearing the scene for the real action, Bil-
hahs nakedness is mentioned four times in the course of a four-verse-
long description: verse 11 describes Reubens gaze as Bilhah bathes; verse
12 depicts him contemplating her nakedness at night;
24
verse 13 pictures
Bilhah again as naked and drunk in her own bed; and verse 14 has Reu-
ben see her nakedness once more, and, as a result, commit the sin. Rather
than Jubilees one-time deployment of nakedness as the initial trigger to
the act, T. Reuben focuses the narrative repeatedly on the fact of Bilhahs
nakedness.
T. Reuben changes another small yet signicant detail: in approaching
Bilhah, Reuben does not hide himself deceptively as in the Jubilees ver-
sion. Instead, the act is presented as the direct result of his seeing Bilhah
naked in her bed (T. Reu. 3.14). Thus, in place of the well-planned am-
bush described in Jubilees, T. Reuben has Reuben react immediately to the
lure of female temptation.
The special character of T. Reubens version of the Bilhah story becomes
even more salient in light of the lessons attached to it. In Jubilees, the
episode ends with a long and detailed warning against incest, threatening
violators with death (Jub. 33.1020).
25
T. Reuben, in contrast, uses the
23. For the meaning and function of love in this context, see G. Johannes
Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids, Mich., 1974), 1:10709; for love in the Bible in general, see Yo-
hanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law Language and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York,
1992), 12164; Moshe Weinfeld, The Decalogue and the Recitation of Shema: The
Development of the Confessions (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 2001), 13031.
24. On seeing as the source of inclination, see T. Reu. 2.4 and below.
25. On this paragraph and its (problematic) relations to the preceding narra-
tive, see Segal, Sefer ha-yovelim, 6777.
72 JQR 96.1 (2006)
story to teach a lesson about the dangers of women generally.
26
In fact
the lesson is repeated twice almost verbatim, after the episode (T. Reu.
4.1)Pay no heed, therefore to the beauty of women, and do not set
your mind to their affairas well as in the introductory verses:
And now, children (tekna), love the truth and it will guard you, I teach
you, listen to Reuben your father. Pay no head to the face of a woman
nor be alone with another mans wife, nor meddle with the affair(s) of
women. For if I had not seen Bilhah bathing . . . (T. Reu. 3.911)
27
These verses reinforce the command to avoid women categorically by
alluding to the opening chapters of Proverbs in which the father urges the
youth (tekna) to love and embrace wisdom as a shield from the strange
woman.
28
The Bilhah narrative in T. Reuben, framed as it is by warnings
26. The testament combines lessons and narratives in a meticulous way, creat-
ing a pattern in which almost every teaching (except for, of course, the rst and
the last one) both summarizes the narrative that preceded it and, at the same
time, introduces the next one. Thus, for example, the teaching in T. Reu. 4.1
serves both as a lesson to the story of Reubens sin and an introduction to the
narrative about his repentance. Therefore, both the lesson that precedes the nar-
rative on Reubens sin (3.910) and the one that comes after it (4.1) should be
read in connection with this story. See on this issue also n. 85 below and P. H.
Aschermann, Die Paranetishen Formen der Testamente der zwolf Patriarchen
und ihr Nachwirken in der fruhchristlichen Mahnung (Ph.D. diss., Humboldt-
Universitat-Berlin, 1955).
27. These verses have surprising parallels in rabbinic literature. On the com-
mandment not to mingle with women, compare mKid 4.12. Even more signicant
in this context, though, is the testaments list of techniques for ghting female
temptations (T. Reu. 4.1) Marriage as a solution to womens temptation (found
also in T. Levi 9.10) echoes the Mishnahs assertion that a married man is exempt
from the prohibition of seclusion with other women since his wife will guard
him (mKidd 4.12; compare Prov 5.1820). The idea that study can function as
protection is also shared by T. Reu. and the rabbis (on literature [ grammasi]
as referring to holy books here, see Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary, 99),
but whereas the rabbis explain the dynamic of protection as an inherent merit of
the Torah, T. Reu. speaks of it simply in terms of hard work. Indeed, at the end
of this essay, I suggest a possible way to contextualize the parallels between
rabbinic and Jewish Hellenistic sexual ethics. See also Rosen-Zvi, Rabbinic
Anthropology.
28. Prov 11.9. Compare especially our verses to the opening of Prov 7 (LXX),
warning the foolish lad from the dangers of the strange woman: My son . . .
keep ( fylaxon) my commandments and live . . . that they may keep you from the
strange woman ( gynaikos allotrias). See also Prov 5.1520; 6.2026 (compare
the phrase another mans wife [theleias hipandrou] in T. Reu. 3.10 to Prov 6.24,
29 [ gynaikos hipandrou]). On this strange gure in Proverbs, and its unique
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 73
against the dangers of female sexuality, can thus be read as an archetypal
morality tale in which the young man is entrapped by the dangerous
temptress, as in Prov 7 and, indeed, as we will see, as in many other
stories in the Testaments.
Against this background, the unique description of Bilhah in this nar-
rative takes on a new signicance. Drunk and naked, Bilhah becomes
herself a temptress, even while sleeping. With a series of minor changes,
the author of T. Reuben thus succeeds in preserving the traditional motifs
of Bilhahs sleep and secret bathing while dramatically altering the sig-
nicance that the elements take on in their new literary context.
Hollander and de Jonge thus give a wrong impression by summarizing
the episode with the words Bilhah behaved modestly. Reuben does
not.
29
In the same manner, it is hard to accept Kugels reading of Bilhahs
innocence.
30
Nonetheless, I do not simply wish to imply the opposite: that
T. Reuben deliberately strives to incriminate Bilhah in order acquit Reu-
ben or absolve him of responsibility.
31
Rather, my claim is much broader:
amalgamation of literal and metaphorical qualities, see C. Camp, Wise, Strange
and Holy, 4071; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 19 (New York, 2000), 13441; 252
61. Compare also the clear allusion to this chapter in a Qumranic hymn (4Q184;
Daniel J. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran [London, 1996], 3135). Com-
pare also the intentional allusion to Prov 4.1 in the Hebrew translation of T. Reu.
3.9 (A. Kahanas edition). Other parallels between the Testaments and Proverbs
are discussed in Hollander, Joseph, 73. On the special parallels between the Testa-
ments and the Septuagints wisdom books in general, see Kee, Ethical Dimensions,
26869; de Jonge, Central Problems, 359420, 397.
29. Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary, 99. Referring to the biblical gures
of Bat-Sheva and Susana, they add: this literary motif is universal. This last
claim is even harder to accept then the former. If any, it is the image of Potiphars
wife, the ultimate temptress, and not that of Bat-Sheva or Susana, that serves as
a biblical model in our testament. It is, moreover, exactly the universality of
this biblical motifsetting the offending man against the righteous womanthat
I will question below.
30. Kugel, Reubens Sin, 534. Notwithstanding my argument with his read-
ing of this story, Kugels work remains an instructive example for any scholar
wishing to study the postbiblical career of biblical texts in order to uncover trans-
formations in sexual and gender ideologies, themes, and concepts. See, for ex-
ample, J. Kugel, In Potiphars House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San
Francisco, 1990), 2126, which pursues a similar agenda without using this termi-
nology.
31. The description of Reubens severe (and almost deadly) punishment in
T. Reu. 1.78; 4.14 does not allow for speculation about any such deferral of
responsibility onto Bilhah (Pace Segal, Sefer ha-yovelim, 71, nn. 16,19). Note
that the testament sees no contradiction between the traditions emphasizing Bil-
hahs innocence and those shaping her gure as temptress.
74 JQR 96.1 (2006)
the key to T. Reubens narration of this story is to be sought in the gender
economy built in the testament as a whole in which man struggles to
control his sexual desires and woman represents the origin and instigator
of these desires. Bilhah does not become temptress because she is being
deliberately incriminated or in order to lessen Reubens responsibility.
Her role is determined by the way in which T. Reuben constructs an all-
embracing economy of gender. T. Reubens logic of narration transforms
both Bilhah and Reuben, making them conform to their respective roles
in the struggle for internal sexual purity.
Inner thoughts and internal conicts, rather than external deeds, stand
at the center of the T. Reuben narrative. T. Reuben presents Reuben as
a gure struggling with inner desire and as one who cannot resist his
inclinations. Thus, whereas Jubilees needs no more then one verb in order
to describe Reubens feelings,
32
in T. Reuben, Reubens inner struggle
takes up a large portion of the narrative: rst he sees Bilhah, then he
cannot sleep contemplating the female nakedness, then he goes back
once more, and seeing Bilhah again he nally acts on his desires. Bilhahs
temptation and Reubens inclination are, in this context, closely linked to
each other; they appear in the story in fact as but two sides of the same
coin. In more theoretical terms, which will be discussed in the last section
of this essay, the T. Reuben narrative introduces a new discourse of desire
accompanied by a new economy of gender.
Reading the story in its broader context, then, leads me to the conclu-
sion that its characters are determined less by the narrators wish to in-
criminate or justify their deeds than by a broad conception of the nature
of men and womenand their respective roles as desirer and tempter
which lies at the heart of T. Reubens presentation of gender relations.
Indeed, the following sections will discuss other narratives from the Testa-
ments that display the same binary structure I have uncovered here in
order to demonstrate that the pattern extends well beyond the local con-
text of the Bilhah episode.
33
THE WATCHERS
T. Reuben 5.67 presents a story about the Watchers (Egregoroi) of the
divine palace. The basic tradition, based on a cryptic verse in Gn 6.2, is
32. If these are feelings at all (see n. 23 above).
33. In what follows I read T. Reubens sexual ethics together with other testa-
ments which deal with these issues (namely, Judah, Joseph, and Issachar). The
basic unity of the Testaments (at least in the level of redaction) was demonstrated
convincingly by de Jonge, Study, and again by Hollander, Joseph, and has since
become almost common knowledge. Compare also de Jonges criticism of the
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 75
well known from the Enochic circles (1 En. 136; Jub. 35)
34
and goes
back probably to the third century B.C.E., if not earlier.
35
It tells the story
of the fallen angels who conspired to take human wives, thus creating the
giants on earth. But T. Reubens version of this tradition contains two
interesting variants, unparalleled in any other known source. First, it is
the daughters of men themselves who tempt the Watchers. This is the
only known version which presents the events as a result of the womens
own initiative; in all other versions it is the Watchers who plot to seduce
or capture the women.
36
But this unique inversion is also the link that
connects the story to the rest of the testament. Appearing at the end of a
chapter dealing exclusively with the dangers of women, the story is pre-
sented as but further proof of those dangers: For thus they bewitched
(thelgein)
37
the Watchers (T. Reu. 5.6).
Apart from the opening line, however, the story itself is not very differ-
ent from most other versions. The ow of events, presented in verse 6,
presents the Watchers as the sole initiators of the whole plot: they looked
at the women, conceived the act in their mind, and as a result, change
themselves into the shape of men, appearing in front of the women
when they were together with their husbands. It is thus a one-sided
plan, not a shared conspiracy. Nonetheless, a few words in the opening
line transform the traditional narrative of the Watchers into another ex-
ample of womens bewitching inuence.
This structure mirrors the one we have already encountered in T. Reu-
bens narration of the Bilhah episode. Both passages point to women as
responsible for bringing about sin. More specically, both texts portray
women as bringing upon themselves the male gaze
38
that opens each
deconstructive tendency of the (then) ruling literary-critical method, Central Prob-
lems, 390.
34. This mythological fragment embedded in the Torah naturally attracted
the fancy of readers . . . One version described the Sons of God as Watchers
(that is, sentinels) of the celestial palace. Led by Azazel . . . the Watchers de-
scended to earth at Gods command, in order to teach men craft . . . But, falling
in love with the daughters of men, the Watchers forgot their mission, and, as a
result, lost their celestial rank. Elias J. Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 182.
35. Bernard J. Bamberger, Fallen Angels (Philadelphia, 1952). For general
survey and bibliography, see also John J. Collins, Watcher, Dictionary of Deities
and Demons in the Bible, ed. K. van der Toorn et al. (Leiden, 1995), 168185.
36. For the different traditions, see Bamberger, Fallen Angels; Segal, Sefer ha-
yovelim, 95130.
37. Hollander and de Jonge (Commentary, 103) note that the same verb is
used to describe the Sirens in the Odyssey!
38. T. Reu. 3.11; 5.6.
76 JQR 96.1 (2006)
story, thus re-interpreting the gaze and its consequences as the womens
own fault. Just as T. Reuben presents Bilhah as a temptress, drunk and
naked, in the very midst of her sleep, so too the women in the Watchers
tale bewitched the angels to lust after them. Although in both cases the
male gures ultimately act on their desires (the women remain relatively
passive), both texts serve as illustrations of the power of female tempta-
tion. Men are victims even in their active plots. Thus, these texts do not
make a specic judgment about the particular female gures of Bilhah or
the daughters of men. Rather, they make a general statement about
women qua women.
39
Bilhahs passivity, even her righteousness (as em-
phasized by Kugel and de Jonge), cannot prevent her from acting like a
woman; Evil are women, my children (T. Reu. 5.1).
The similarity between the two episodes becomes even more evident in
light of the second variation in T. Reubens version of the Watchers story.
In the traditional version, appearing already in Genesis, it is the sexual
contact between the fallen angels and the daughters of men that engen-
ders the hybrid creatures known as giants. In T. Reuben, however, there
is no physical contact between the daughters of men and the angels. The
women did no more than lust (epitymeo) after the Watchers in their mind
(dianoya) in the course of engaging in the sexual act with their legitimate
partners. Mental desire alone is what gives rise to the famous giants.
In an attempt to explain this unique phenomenon, Bamberger writes:
Apparently these notions were inserted into the text by a scribe who
objected to the idea that angels can enter into the sex relation. Then,
however, he adds, But he solved no problem: the angels as he pictured
them are lustful, even though they do notperhaps cannotact upon
their desire.
40
The internal, mental quality of the sin, not unique to the
Watchers story, is, in fact, an essential element in T. Reubens conception
of sin in general.
Furthermore, the shift of the narrative focus from the male gures
external action to their internal lust parallels the transformation of the
daughters of men from victims to temptresses. Mans inclinations and
female temptations appear here, just as in the case of Reuben and Bilhah,
39. Indeed, it seems that there could be no better candidate to teach this
woman qua woman lesson than the daughters of men (banot ha-adam), a title
which species no other characteristics than their feminine identity itself! Com-
pare also to Joshua Levinsons note regarding the generic quality of Potiphars
wife in the Testaments: J. Levinson, An-Other Woman: Joseph and Potiphars
Wife: Staging the Body Politic, JQR 87 [1997]: 269301; 273.)
40. Bamberger, Fallen Angels, 31.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 77
as two sides of the same coin. In both cases T. Reuben preserves traditional
motifs,
41
while at the same time integrating them through a series of rela-
tively small changes into a new economy of gender.
42
The same dual structure appears also in the two other major sexual
stories in the Testaments: those of Joseph and Potiphars wife and of
Judah and Tamar. The story of Joseph and Potiphars wife occupies the
rst half of T. Joseph and is narrated in the fashion of a Hellenistic novel.
43
In a series of ten episodes, Potiphars wife, a Phaedra-like gure, employs
a host of tricksfrom love potions to threatening suicide
44
in order to
seduce Joseph, who continually endures the suffering and resists tempta-
tion. Josephs resistance is referred to also in other testaments, serving as
the ultimate ethical model for self-restraint, endurance, and righteous-
ness.
45
One of these references appears in T. Reu. 4.810, immediately
after the story of Reubens sin and its lessons. Josephs endurance ap-
pears here as a counterexample to Reubens sin; a model of the righteous
man, who, unlike Reuben, could control himself despite all the tempta-
41. This is so even when they did not serve as a specic teaching, as the in
presentation of Bilhah as bathing in secret or the Watchers as planning the plot
all by themselves. Compare also Menns remark: The person or persons respon-
sible for this testament were familiar with a large number of Jewish traditions
and incorporated them freely, at times with little concern for the discrepancies
that this incorporation created (Judah and Tamar, 112, n. 117, emphasis added).
42. Both transformations, though, appear in a more forceful and explicit way
in the Watchers story: the daughters of men are presented as seducers, while
Bilhah is only indirectly characterized as such. Moreover, only in this story is the
forbidden sex act totally absent from the scene. It seems that the author was freer
to reshape the Watchers story according to his will than the Bilhah story. This
is no surprise: Bilhahs innocence is a central theme also in the Jubilees version,
and the forbidden sexual act is presented explicitly already in the biblical original
of the Reuben narrative.
43. M. Braun, History and Romance. For full bibliography, see Kugler, Testa-
ments, 81. On the gure of Joseph in ancient Jewish literature in general, see
Kugel, In Potiphars House, and Maren Niehoff, The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical
Jewish Literature (Leiden, 1992). As Kugel clearly shows, the episode of Potiphars
wife, which is quite marginal in the context of the biblical narrative, becomes the
major (and sometimes only) focus of most postbiblical writers.
44. Potiphar wifes various attempts to seduce Joseph (among them her sug-
gestion to kill her husband and marry Joseph if you do not want to commit
adultery, 5.1) leave no doubt that it is her feminine seduction in itself, rather
than any specic actual consequence of it (i.e., adultery), that endangers the righ-
teous man (pace Kugel, Potiphar, 24). Compare this to the clear reference to adul-
tery in Jubilees version of the story (Jub. 39.6).
45. Hollander, Joseph.
78 JQR 96.1 (2006)
tions: The Egyptian woman did many things to him, including using
magic and love potions,
46
but he succeeded in resisting. The nature of
Josephs resistance in T. Reuben, though, differs signicantly from the
biblical source: But his disposition of his soul (diaboulion tes psyches) did
not admit an evil desire (epithymian poneran)(T. Reu. 4.9). Joseph did not
even think about it!
Rather than praising Joseph for his abstention from committing a for-
bidden act, T. Reuben celebrates his ability to guard his soul from the
forbidden desire (epithymia); to purge his thoughts (ennoias) from all por-
neia (4.8).
47
Porneia is, rst and foremost, a matter of mind, not deed.
The concluding verse stresses this lesson: For if porneia does not over-
come the mind (ennoian) also Beliar will not overcome you (4.11). Thus,
it is hardly surprising that the title given to our testament, in most manu-
scripts, is The Testament of Reuben concerning thoughts (ennoion).
The same structure appears in T. Jud. chapters 1012. These chapters
preserve a unique version of the biblical story of Judah and Tamar (Gn
18). Unlike the rst half of T. Judah, which preserves many traditional
materials in describing Judahs and his brothers battles, with regard to
chapters 8 and 1012 we cannot point to parallel traditional material.
48
T. Judah adapts the biblical narrative signicantly in order to demonstrate
the major lessons of the testament regarding the dangers of drunkenness
and love of money. Thus, for example, in this version, Judah fails to
recognize Tamar, his daughter-in-law, not because she has covered her
face, as in the biblical story (Gn 38.15), but because he is drunk.
49
T. Judahs narrative reconceives the female gures, Bath-shua and
Tamar, in an especially original manner. The biblical Bath-shua is an
anonymous,
50
marginal gure who disappears from the scene immediately
46. Compare T. Jos. 6.1. On this popular Hellenistic theme, see Braun, History
and Romance, 5772.
47. Compare T. Jos. 9.2: And not even in thought (ennoios) I ever inclined to
her (Kugel, Potiphar, 23).
48. Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary, 186 (see n. 41 above).
49. T. Jud. 12.3. T. Reu. 5.5 possibly alludes to the biblical version of this epi-
sode, by forbidding women from adorning their head and faces in order to de-
ceive (apaten) the mind. But this version is uncertain (see Hollander and de
Jonge, Commentary, 102, n. 23). Compare also T. Reu. 5.3, by their adornment
they deceive (planosin) rst their minds.
50. The biblical story only identies her as bat-ish kenaani u-shemo shua (Gn
38.2) and, later, in short bat shua (38.12). Only in the postbiblical versions (Jub.
34.20; LXX ad loc., etc.) does it become her proper name.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 79
after giving birth to Judahs three children.
51
The same holds true in most
other versions of the story.
52
Tamar, on the other hand, appears as a
round, developed, and positive heroine gure, acting to achieve the
legitimate goal of offspring unjustly denied to her.
53
T. Judah presents the two characters as but different manifestations on
one and the same gurethe temptress. In a similar manner, they both
entice Judah with the irresistible combination of wine, female adornment,
and charm.
54
Indeed, the beauty, adornment, and even drunkenness are
51. On the function of secondary gures in biblical narratives, see Uriel
Simon, Reading Prophetic Narratives, trans. L. J. Schramm (Bloomington, Ind.,
1997), 26369.
52. Bat-shua appears quite seldom in postbiblical literature, and almost exclu-
sively in the context of the problem of intermarriage. We can identify roughly
three different attitudes with regard to Judahs marriage to a Canaanite in an-
cient Jewish literature: criticizing Judah for his actions (already in Mal 2.11),
explaining his act as meant for the sake of creating messianic lineage or as part
of Gods hidden plan (ySot 1:8 [17a] and parallels), or denying Bat-shuas Canaa-
nite identity altogether (Aramaic Targums). See Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakov-
itch, The Story of Judah and Tamar (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1992), 1723. Note,
however, that even the sources that condemn the intermarriage direct their criti-
cism at Judah rather than at Bath-shua. The only tradition, apart from T. Jud.,
that holds Bath-shua responsible for some of events in the story is to be found in
Jub. 41.2, 7 (and T. Jud. 10.3, 6), where she is blamed for her childrens avoidance
of copulating with Tamar. But even here the Testament is more consistent than
Jubilees in presenting the mothers intervention in her sons deeds (Shinan and
Zakovitch, Story of Judah, 235; compare John C. Endres, Biblical Interpretation in
the Book of Jubilees [Washington, D.C., 1987], 186; Menn, Judah and Tamar, 144,
n. 92).
53. On postbiblical versions of the story, see Shinan and Zakovitch, Story of
Judah, 89107; Cecilia Wassen, The Story of Judah and Tamar in the Eyes of
the Earliest Interpreters, Literature and Theology 8.4 (1994): 35466; Menn, Judah
and Tamar. Generally speaking, these versions do much to improve the image of
Judah and Tamar (Shinan and Zakovitch, Story of Judah, 248). Tamars positive
presentation in these sources is partially a result of the biblical (see Ruth 4.12,
1822) tradition connecting her to King David (and thus ultimately to the ex-
pected Messiah). On the messianic allusions in biblical and postbiblical refer-
ences to this story, see Shinan and Zakovitch, Story of Judah, 197, 243. On the
parallels between the gures of Tamar and Ruth, see ibid., 22426. In this context
also, as Shinan and Zakovitch have noted, T. Jud. stands out as a clear exception:
unlike most other early interpretations, the Testament of Judah makes no at-
tempt to minimize the sexual aspects of the narrative. Instead the augmented
episodes depicting Judahs relations with the women of Genesis 38 dominate the
version of the biblical narrative embedded in this testament (Story of Judah, 108).
54. Tamar: 12.3, Bath-shua: 13.45.
80 JQR 96.1 (2006)
all presented within the context of the two womens seductive inten-
tions:
55
Bath-shua poured Judah the wine (T. Jud. 11.2), while Tamars
beauty deceived him through the fashion of her adorning (T. Jud.
12.4).
56
Indeed, Judah, the man, is totally helpless, passively caught
57
in
the carefully laid female traps.
Judahs confession in T. Jud. 13.3 explicitly connects the two seduc-
tresses: the spirit of jealousy and porneia arrayed itself in me, until I met
(sympiptein) Bath-shua the Canaanite and Tamar who was espoused to
my sons.
58
The opening of the verse explains this double temptation as a
divine punishment for Judahs behavior in the past, thus introducing Bil-
hah into the story as well: [For] I [too] boasted of the fact that in wars
no comely womans face had deceived me, and reproved Reuben my
brother because of Bilhah my fathers wife. The verse casts all three
female characters in the same role as temptress, for all, as we will see, are
55. On the theme of wine and womens seduction in biblical literature, see
Bach, Seduction and Death, chap. 6. On the strange tradition in T. Jud. 12.2, ascrib-
ing Tamars act to an Amorite custom regarding brides, see Martha Himmelfarb,
R. Moses the Preacher and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, AJS Review
9 (1984): 5578; Menn, Judah and Tamar, 15153.
56. Even if we accept Shinan and Zakovitchs (Story of Judah, 19, 24950)
explanation that the unique design of Bath-shua is a result of the testaments wish
to justify both Judah (for marrying her) and God (for killing her), it is far from
accounting fully for this phenomenon. My reading uncovers a pattern in the Tes-
taments presentation of female gures that goes beyond the specic context of
the Judah and Tamar narrative. Tamars image is not different, by and large,
from that of Bilhah, Potiphars wife, and the daughters of men. Their presentation
(along with that of Judahs passivity and Reubens suffering on his bed) is part
of a broad gender economy in the Testaments.
57. Judahs passivity is most evident in the episode describing his three sons
(lack of) relationship with Tamar in chap. 10, as Menn justly notes: This passage
from the Testament of Judah consistently alters the biblical story to present the
patriarch as a passive and anguished observer of his family behavior . . . Judahs
Canaanite wife, not the patriarch himself, controls the behavior of their sons. The
sons disobedience is particularly striking in the context of this testament, where
Judah distinguishes himself as an obedient son to his own father (Judah and
Tamar, 14446).
58. This comparison becomes more evident in light of Menns meticulous
study of the T. Jud., showing that the story is reshaped and made into two parallel
narratives of temptation. The testament achieves this by deleting the biblical link
between Judahs false promise to Tamar and her daring act: Since Judah has
left no explicit promise to his daughter in law for an appropriate sexual partner
unlled, Tamar has no motive for extracting justice through deception. Instead,
the Testament of Judah bifurcates the biblical story into two separate illustrations
of Judahs . . . fall to temptation, each revolving around his sinful relations with
one of the women from Genesis 38 (Judah and Tamar, 149).
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 81
but different representations of the same spirit of porneia that ensnares
man.
Judahs weakness in the face of female power contrasts with his
strength and bravery in battle against the Canaanites (chaps. 37) and
against Esau (chap. 9) in the rst part of the testament. This rst part
was considered by many scholars to be a series of unrelated stories, based
for the most part on older traditions, without an attempt to rework them
to serve any clear ideological agenda.
59
Quite recently, though, Esther
Menn has suggested an original reading of the two parts, in which T.
Judah, rather than simply presenting two discrete and unrelated narra-
tives, invites us, through its dual structure, to contrast the two sides of
Judahs character: the undefeated warrior depicted in the rst part and
the twice-defeated sinner depicted in the second. The two women of
Genesis 38, one a Canaanite and the other a relative, accomplish this
defeat, succeeding where their male counterparts failed.
60
Two kinds of
war are suggested here, the second more dangerous then the rst. The
female threat of sexual temptation provides the ultimate test of mans
powera threat from which no one is safe, not the most manly (andrei-
ous)
61
nor even the most righteous. The true war is thus located not on an
external battleeld
62
but rather within mans soul.
59. The two halves of T. Jud. are used as a classic example of the tendency of
the Testaments to collect existing traditions about the patriarchs, even when they
do not t (or even contradict, n. 41 above) the texts lessons (de Jonge, Study,
6071; Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary, 185186; Kugler, Testaments, 57
58).
60. Menn, Judah and Tamar, 163. Menn further demonstrates that the compar-
ison between the two parts is emphasized by the testaments special structure,
which intermittently combines the two battleelds.
61. On Judah as a symbol of perfect manliness (andreia), see Menn, Judah and
Tamar, 134.
62. Compare the tannaitic homily (referred to by Menn, 141, n. 86) on the
biblical law of captive woman (Dt 21.1014): For the nations are cursed, and
their daughters adorn themselves in war in order to cause others to go awhoring
after them. (SifreDt 213) , and see David Stern, The Captive Women: Helleni-
zation, Greco-Roman Erotic Narrative and Rabbinic Literature, Poetics Today 19
(1998): 91127; 105. As Stern shows, this concept of the real war, against ones
inclinationswhich begins after the regular battle endsis exactly what brings
R. Akiva to read the biblical text contrary to its plain meaning and to the common
tradition (found in the Temple scroll, the Septuagint, Philo, Josephus, and R.
Eliezer in the midrash) according to which the captive woman and not the man
is in need of protection. Following Menns analysis of T. Jud.s double structure,
it is possible, though, that R. Akivas reading is not a total innovation (as Stern
presents it) but rather represents an existing (albeit marginal) tradition regarding
the war after the war, shared also by T. Jud. Indeed, the comparison between
82 JQR 96.1 (2006)
The drama of porneia described in these three testamentsmans strug-
gle with evil inclinations embodied by female charactersleaves little
room for variety in the portrayal of women: Tamar, Bath-shua, Bilhah,
and the daughters of men all represent various incarnations of the tempt-
ress archetype, epitomized most completely by Potiphars wife.
63
As the
stories about Reuben, Judah, and the Watchers show, female temptation
appears in the Testaments wherever male inclination is vulnerable; no
other precondition is required. The Testaments famous misogyny, there-
fore, represents but one component of an altogether novel discourse of
sex-as-inner-struggle or porneia as a matter of the mind; a discourse which
also carries with it a new economy of gender in which female temptation
becomes the ultimate source of mans inner struggle.
64
It is this struggle
and especially its anthropological and metaphysical background that I
wish to examine further below.
the tannaitic midrash and T. Jud. seems to point to the basic discourse of sexuality
in these two texts. See I. Rosen-Zvi, The Ritual of the Suspected Adulteress
(Sotah) in Tannaic Literature: Textual and Theoretical Perspectives (Hebrew;
Ph.D. diss., Tel-Aviv University, 2004), chap. 8.
63. While Hollander, Joseph, is fully convincing in his claim that Joseph serves
as the model for mans virtues, I would add that his female counterpart, the
Egyptian Woman, serves also as a model of female characters. All men, in other
words, are urged to imitate Josephs behavior, because they all confront, mutatis
mutandis, a temptress like his. The only other possible feminine gure in the
testament is the ascetic, righteous Rachel, who despised intercourse with a man
and chose contingency (T. Iss. 2.1; see also 2.3 and de Jonge, Rachel). Indeed if
Potiphars wife embodies the negative aspect of every woman, the matriarch Ra-
chel function as her antithesis, but only because she ceases to function as a
woman: According to this paradigm a woman may achieve virtue only through
disembodimentthe virtuous woman is no woman at all (J. Levinson, An-
Other Woman, 273). Note, however, that in T. Naph. 1.6 even ascetic Rachel
cannot escape womens fate as mens deceivers; see Hollander and de Jonge,
Commentary, 199; Menn, Judah and Tamar, 173, n. 166.
64. These two complementary sides can be best exemplied by looking at a
text from a later phase of the same sex-as-inner-struggle discourse. The Babylo-
nian Talmud (bMeg 15a) lists the seductive powers of several feminine biblical
gures: Rahav whored (zintah) by her name; Yael by her voice; Abigail by her
memory; and Michal, daughter of Saul, by her appearance. This list, as is made
clear by the context, discusses the manifestation of male sexual arousal caused
by evoking biblical heroines memory or even their names, with no real woman
necessarily present (indeed, one of the sages testies that he has tried it himself,
calling Rahav, Rahav, but that nothing happened!). Nevertheless, the event is
presented (linguistically at least) as a female act (zintah). Mens inclinations are
automatically translated into womens temptations; so automatically, in fact, that
no one even asks how a woman can play the whore without even being present.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 83
EVIL SPIRITS
T. Reu. 23 presents two lists: the seven (or eight)
65
spirits (pneumata) of
man, given to him at creation (T. Reu. 2.3), and the seven spirits of
deceit, which are mingled with them (T. Reu. 3.2). Scholars have long
noticed that the two lists most likely originated elsewhere: the rst is
similar to an early Stoic list of the seven parts of the soul,
66
whereas the
second seems at odds with the vices that function in other testaments
(envy, anger, falsehood, etc.). These two lists, moreover, seem to inter-
rupt the ow of the testaments presentation, causing a break between an
initial description of Reubens sin (T. Reu. 1.710) and its later elabora-
tion (T. Reu. 3.94.1). No wonder, then, that many scholars considered
these lists to be later interpolations.
67
But, as de Jonge has convincingly
proven,
68
the two lists, whatever their original source, were not just in-
serted into the testaments as is but were carefully adapted to them.
69
This is most evident in the series of additions attached to the rst list of
spirits, specifying the faculty or function ascribed to each one of them.
Most of these functions are positive, or at least natural (knowledge
attached to speech, teaching to hearing, strength to taste, etc.), with two
clear exceptions: the spirit of sight (horaseos), with which desire (epi-
thymia) comes (T. Reu. 2.4), and the spirit of procreation (sporas) and
intercourse (synousias), with which, through love of pleasure ( philhedo-
nia), sin comes in (T. Reu. 2.8). The source of these two unique additions
is not very hard to trace. They concisely summarize the dynamic of sexual
sin found in the T. Reuben narratives.
The origin of sin, suggested by these two additions, as in the narratives
I have already examined, is the gaze, sight,
70
which in turn affects the
65. On the eighth spiritsleepin 3.1, 7, see de Jonge, Study, 76.
66. De Jonge, Study, 150, n. 188; A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), sec. 53H; B. Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in
Early Stoicism (Oxford, 1985), 2930.
67. For short summery and bibliography on the scholarship regarding these
chapters, see Kugler, Testaments, 42.
68. De Jonge, Study, 7577.
69. While de Jonge does not exclude the possibility that these lists are later
interpolations (the rst even later then the second), he concludes that it is per-
haps more likely that the author of the Testaments himself added this passage
(77; compare Kugler, Testaments, 42). My analysis of the strong connections be-
tween these lists and the sexual ethics presented in T. Reu. seems to add strength
to this hypothesis.
70. See n. 38 above.
84 JQR 96.1 (2006)
soul.
71
Sin does not dwell in procreative action itself but in the desire and
pleasure that accompanies it.
72
Gaze, sight, and even intercourse only
serve as mediators for the real struggle taking place inside the soul. The
second list, the spirits of deceit, also shows its afnity to T. Reubens over-
all agenda by placing the spirit of porneia at its very beginning (T. Reu.
3.3).
73
But despite these series of additions, allusions, and hints that further
connect the lists to their current place in T. Reuben, their presence still
seems somewhat puzzling.
74
The current reading of the dynamic of sexual
sin in T. Reuben may shed further light on the function of the lists place-
ment at the beginning of a text dealing with the dangers of porneia. Taken
together, these two lists form, in fact, a vital introduction to the structure
of the human soul. Reubens thoughts (dianoia: 3.12) on his bed, Josephs
purication of his thoughts (ennoia: 4.8)
75
, and the daughters of mens lust
in their mind (dianoia: 5.7)
76
all depict the drama of porneia as occurring
71. By soul I refer to the whole psychic realmof which mind, the think-
ing faculty, is only one part (the hegemonikon; see Inwood, Ethics and Human Action,
2741)called here pneumata (spirits); on this term and its technical Stoic mean-
ing, see Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 5051. In most of T. Reu. (including the
title) it is specically the thinking faculty (annoia, dianoia) which is the site of the
mans struggle with porneia (3.12, 4.1, 4.8, 4.9, 4.11, 5.3, 5.6, 5.7, 6.1, 6.2). Other
terms, however, are also used from time to time (e.g., soul [psyches] in 4.9, heart
[kardia] in 5.3, conscience [syneidesis] in 4.3). An attempt to locate the struggle
specically in one faculty may be an oversophistication of T. Reu.s claim. Sufce
it to point to the clear internal, psychic character of the struggle against porneia
in the testament.
72. Scholars cite T. Iss. 2.3 as a proof that the Testaments, like Philo, allow sex
only for the sake of procreation (Kee, Ethical Dimension, 265, de Jonge, Issachar).
This comparison seems to me misleading. Unlike Philo, the Testaments do not
show any contempt for the physical side of intercourse (pace Menn, Judah and
Tamar, 173; see, for example, T. Naph. 8.8), but only for its mental implications.
T. Reu. 2.8 does not mention intercourse as a sin but only as the faculty that leads
to the sin of love of pleasure. The same structure is repeated in the stories of
the Watchers and Joseph: the daughters of men engage in a totally legitimate
sexual act (5.6), with only their mind-set making it into a sin. Joseph avoided the
same sin by purifying his inner thoughts (4.811).
73. Another clear connection between these lists and the rest of T. Reu. is the
dual reference to behavior of youth as the source of sin (2.2; 3.8), alluding to
Reubens own ignorance of youth (1.6).
74. This puzzle is more severe in the case of the rst list than the second,
which shares with the testament its emphasis on porneia. At least with regard to
the rst list, it is unclear why it was brought here in the rst place.
75. Also in 4.11.
76. Compare the description of the Watchers in the previous verse: conceived
the act in their mind (dianoia), (5.6).
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 85
in the inner realm of mans mind.
77
Description of the structure of the
human soul, along with the different faculties responsible for desire (2.4),
pleasure (2.8), and, ultimately, porneia (3.3), are thus well placed at the
beginning of this text.
The two lists, moreover, are complementarymans sin being a result
of both.
78
Porneia, after all, is seated in the nature and the senses (T.
Reu. 3.3), stemming from natural faculties of the soul (more specically,
from the eyes and the procreative organs), but becoming active only
through the intentional intervention of Beliar and his spirits.
79
Thus, only
when taken together, can these two liststhe internal parts of the soul
and the external evil spiritsaccount for the origin and dynamic of sin.
Mans struggle, as presented in the Testaments, is not purely internal. It
includes the involvement of a variety of external forces, spirits, and
demons.
80
As P. Macky has shown, the evil spirits in the Testaments (the
rst of which is porneia) are not merely inner psychological entities or
personications of inner passions but extrahuman powers ruled by Be-
liar.
81
Man alone cannot free himself from the spirit of porneia (or any other
spirit sent by Beliar). He can only struggle to purify his mind, thus facili-
tating the way for God to dwell in him and ultimately to liberate him from
porneia altogether. Man, says Mackey, is free, but free only to choose
whether God or Beliar will be his lord.
82
This was also, according to the
testaments version, Josephs path to liberation from Potiphars wife: the
Egyptian woman did many things to him . . . But the disposition of his
soul did not admit an evil desire. Therefore the God of my fathers deliv-
ered him from all visible and invisible death (T. Reu. 4.1011). Man may
77. See also 6.12, presenting purity (kathareo) of mind (dianoia) as the ulti-
mate goal.
78. This point was noted by Boyarin, who wrote, Although, to be sure, this
text maintains a structure of opposing sets of spirits, nevertheless, it emphasizes
that the two are commingled and indeed recognized sexual desire as problematic
but nonetheless belonging per se in the rst set (Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel:
Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture [Berkeley, Calif., 1993], 69).
79. The full dynamic is described by P. W. Mackey, The Importance of the
Teaching on God, Evil and Eschatology for the Dating of the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1969), 20405: Beliar acts
via his spirits by exceeding the natural faculties until they are expropriated from
the minds control.
80. Compare T. Jud. 13.3: the spirit of jealousy and porneia arrayed itself in
me, until I met (sympiptein) Bath-shua the Canaanite and Tamar.
81. Macky, Dating, 199222.
82. Ibid., 221.
86 JQR 96.1 (2006)
struggle with his mind, but only God can deliver him from Beliars rule,
and from his chief power, the spirit of porneia (T. Reu. 3.3).
83
The process of liberation reaches its nal stage in a metaphysical strug-
gle between God and his rivals. But it begins with mans inner struggle
to purify his thoughts, as is emphasized again in the testaments summary
of the Joseph episode: For if porneia does not overcome the mind, also
Beliar will not overcome you (T. Reu. 4.11).
84
PURITY OF MIND: GOOD FOR MEN AND WOMEN?
The most direct reference to the role of women in mans struggle against
porneia, appears in T. Reu. 5.15.
85
These ve verses, containing some of
the most misogynous descriptions in ancient Jewish literature, open with
the conclusive statement Evil are women, my children. They present
womens constant temptation of man, not as an effort to fulll their own
sexual desire but as a cruel struggle for dominion. Their real goal is to
trap and defeat men, if not by force then by subterfuge: because having
no power or strength over man, they use wiles trying to draw him to
them by gestures. And whom she cannot overcome by strength, him she
overcome by craft (T. Reu. 5.12). A similar claim appears in T. Judah.
Referring to the biblical episode of Judah giving Tamar his girdle and
diadem (Gn 38.15)which the testament interprets as symbolic of Ju-
dahs power and kingship (T. Jud. 15.3)it concludes: Women have
dominion over king and beggar alike forever, and from the king they take
away the glory (T. Jud. 15.56).
T. Reuben presents women not just as a danger or temptation but as the
83. Philo and 4 Macc also hold that victory over ones passions demands di-
vine aid, but they take it to be rst and foremost an intellectual process, based on
ones training in the divine law. See D. M. Hay, The Psychology of Faith in
Hellenistic Judaism, ANRW 2.20.2 (1987), 881925, 901.
84. This claim may solve another puzzle with regard to these interpolated lists.
While the rst list repeats almost exactly a common Stoic list of the different
parts of the soul, there is one clear difference: one sense, touch (aphe), is omitted
from T. Reu.s list (de Jonge, Study, 75; compare to Philos similar structure,
which does include touch, in Hay, Psychology of Faith, 896, n. 75. Indeed, the
missing eighth spirit was later completed in T. Reu. by adding the spirit of sleep,
n. 65 above). In light of the thesis argued here, this omission makes perfect sense:
touch is not relevant to T. Reu.s discussion of porneia, since its all in the mind!
85. The location of this teaching, between the story of Joseph and Potiphars
wife (4.811) and that of the Watchers (5.67), suits the general structure of
exhortations in the T. Reu. described above (n. 26). It serves as a lesson for the
preceding story about womens wiles (compare 5.1 to 4.9) and at the same time
introduces the next one, regarding the dangers of womens beauty (compare 5.5
to 5.6 for thus [outos] they bewitched the Watchers . . .).
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 87
enemy in a constant war between the sexes.
86
Since, moreover, the war
against porneia plays a crucial role in mans choice between God and Be-
liar, the struggle against women is in fact the ultimate struggle against
Beliar and his authority.
87
Women do not endanger mans sexual purity
alone; they jeopardize his religious identity as a follower of God, and,
ultimately, his very life.
88
In the midst of this passage, however, a statement cited in the name of
an angel
89
seems to blur the clear gender division presented so far:
For also concerning them the angel of the Lord told me, and he taught
me that women are overcome by the spirit of porneia more than man,
and in their heart they plot against man. (T. Reu. 5.3)
86. Here again the testament refers clearly to the minds of men and women
as the site of this struggle: in their heart (kardia) they plot against men and by
their adornment, they deceive rst their minds (dianoias) (5.3). The story of the
Watchers, cited right after, as an example of this lesson, repeats this dynamic
succinctly: the Watchers planned the plot in their mind (dianoia) (5.6) and as a
result the daughters of men lust for them in their mind (dianoia) (5.7)from
mind to mind! Note, however, that in the Watchers case the dynamic appears in
a reversed form (from the mind of men to that of women), which probably led
the narrator to add the opening statement blaming the women for the whole
event.
87. See especially 4.6, where porneia is described both as a destruction of the
soul and as separating man from God and bring it near to the idols. Compare
also 4.1, which presents beauty of women and singleness of heart (haploteti
kardias) as two opposite alternatives. Haplotes here does not designate only sim-
plicity of life (as in T. Iss.s Hellenistic rural ethos) but has to do with the ultimate
choice between God and Beliar: Haplotes becomes something more like integrity
or integration, since it is a quality which enables a person to overcome the polari-
ties of existence. It is the only way to overcome a divided mind and completing
loyalties (Kee, Ethical Dimensions, 265). On haplotes in Jewish Hellenistic ethics,
see also David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon (New York, 1979), 101. The same
idea seems to be expressed also in SifreDt 32: With all your heart (Dt 6.5): that
your heart should not be divided with regards to God (al ha-makom).
88. Porneias central place as the basis of the Testaments ethics can explain its
appearance at the end of general moral exhortations, which have nothing to do
with sexual ethics, such as in T. Sim. and T. Benj. In both cases it is evident that
porneia does not appear simply as a specic vice (like jealousy or hatred). Rather,
purifying ones mind from porneia, thus allowing God to dwell in it, serves as the
basic characteristic of the ultimate ethical ideal (compare Hollander and de
Jonge, Commentary, 413). Furthermore, T. Benj.s reference to porneia closes the
Testaments with the same topic with which they were opened (in T. Reu.), thus
making it into one of the interweaving topics of the whole composition (Menn,
Judah and Tamar, 169).
89. The statement regarding womens dominion in T. Jud. 15.5 is also cited in
the name of an angel.
88 JQR 96.1 (2006)
According to the angels teaching, women are also but victims of Beliars
spirits. Their seductive behavior is not their own initiative but results
from their greater vulnerability to Beliars dominion. The structure of the
excess of evil, according to this addition, thus starts from Beliar, passes
to the minds of women, and through their sexual persuasion to the minds
of men.
It is noteworthy, however, that this angelic revelation, presenting
women as victims of Beliars evil spirits, is unparalleled; in all other
places, the Testaments present women as victimizers, not victims. Al-
though we cannot exclude the possibility of two competing ideologies
combined here, it seems more likely a question of focus. When viewing
the complete picture, we nd that women, just like men, are indeed but
victims of external forces. However, the main focus of the Testaments is
not Beliars inuence on humanity in general but rather his inuence via
women on men. This is especially evident in T. Reuben, whose ultimate
goal is to save men from porneia. Thus, women come to represent Beliars
earthly manifestation. After all, it is they who cause mans struggle for
purity of heart to fail. No wonder, then, that warnings against porneia
and against women are completely intertwined throughout the Testaments.
Run away from porneia and run away from women appear, in many
lessons, almost as synonymous.
90
Let us turn now to the last lesson in T. Reuben, which can be seen, given
its content as well as location, as summarizing T. Reubens sexual ethics:
Beware, therefore, of porneia, and if you wish to be pure (kathareuein)
in mind (dianoia), guard your senses (aistheseis) from every woman.
And commend the women likewise not to associate with men, that they,
too, may be pure in mind. For the continuous meetings, even though
the impious deed is not performed ( prachthe), are to them an irremedia-
ble disease and to us an eternal reproach from Beliar. For impurity has
neither understanding nor piety in itself, and all jealousy dwells in its
desire. (6.14)
Both men and women can attain purity of mind but only through a com-
plete separation of the sexes; a separation which the text advises for men
90. Compare the language of T. Reu. 3.910; 4.1; 5.1 (warnings against
women) to 4.57; 6.14 (warnings against porneia). The comparison is made ex-
plicit twice: rst in 5.5: Flee, therefore from porneia, my children, and command
your wives and daughters that they do not adorn . . . and then in 6.1: Beware,
therefore, of porneia, and if you wish to be pure in mind, guard your senses from
every woman. The same structure can be seen in T. Jud. 15 and 17.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 89
and women alike. It seems, thus, that this nal teaching also softens the
overall presentation of women as a purely evil, corrupting force, and that
here too the full dynamic of porneia is taken into account.
Nonetheless, two considerations must qualify such a reading. First, this
text, like all the other teaching in the Testaments, does not address itself
to women at all. Instead it calls men to command (enteilasthe) women
not to mingle with them.
91
Moreover, womens purity of mind is por-
trayed here as necessary to mens own safety (T. Reu. 6.3). Porneia in
women affects us (hemin), not only them (autais). By thus presenting
female purication as a means to male purication, this concluding pas-
sage reveals itself to be in line with the dynamic presented all through T.
Reuben. It elaborates, in fact, a process of purication which involves an
exact reversal of the ow of impurity from Beliar through the mediation
of women to mans thoughts: it suggests that man begin by cleansing
the female mind as the source of porneia, which will lead to mans inner
purication and thus to the overcoming of Beliar. In other words, if
their mind is the source for porneia in our mind, then theirs should
be healed rst.
Porneias introversion is fully realized in this passage, which emphasizes
the need to act only as a means of protecting ones inner purity: if you
wish to purify your mind, guard your senses. The ultimate goal is curing
the mind from irremediable disease thus freeing it from Beliars rule.
92
The texts further condemnation of undesirable inuences even though
the impious deed is not performed ( prachthe)
93
suggests that external
deeds have indeed become secondary.
Now we can view the full dynamic revealed over the course of T. Reu-
ben. The rst narrative in the testament, while still containing external
deeds, already shifted the focus from Bilhahs bed to Reubens, and thus
from action to inner desire and intention. The next story, Josephs and
Potiphars wife, concentrates the narratives focus solely on Josephs
avoidance of any evil desire. His inner purity, not his deeds, becomes
the new locus of his righteousness. Finally, in the story of the Watchers,
91. Compare T. Reu. 5.5: command ( prostassete) your wives and daughters
that they do not adorn.
92. To this we may add the slippery slope of desire, leading from porneia to
other forbidden desires, as described in 2.9 and 3.6. Philo presents the same logic;
see Decal. 173, Spec. 4. 84.
93. Compare, For I was thirty years when I did (epraxa) the evil thing before
the Lord (1.8). The development of the sin from an evil deed ( praxis) at the
beginning of the T. Reu. to its explicit avoidance at the end summarizes, in a
nutshell, the whole argument of the testament.
90 JQR 96.1 (2006)
there is no forbidden deed at allneither committed as in the case of
Reuben nor even attempted as in the Joseph story. Forbidden thoughts
alone endanger the giants. The nal lesson thus only articulates the fully
developed message already expressed in the content and structure of T.
Reuben as a whole.
Finally, it should be noted that the anthropological structure uncov-
ered here deviates signicantly from the early Stoic theory of mind, which
does not allow the separating of desire from action. As an impulse
(horme), desire (epithymia) is intimately connected, according to the Stoic
model, to the actions it leads to, so much so that, in fact, one cannot
have an impulse without acting on it.
94
However, T. Reubens model of
desire must also not be confused with the modern Freudian approach in
which desire functions as a substitute for actionsa fantasy that cannot,
by denition, become real.
95
Rather, the testament presents desire as an
action that occurs in the sphere of the mind, God and Beliar, not in inter-
personal relationships. Porneia can thus dele the mind and delivers man
into Beliars control, even without the performance of external deeds.
96
AFTERWORD: T. REUBEN AND FOUCAULT S JEWISH LACUNA
In a recent article,
97
D. Boyarin and E. Castelli discuss the fourth, unn-
ished volume of Foucaults project on the history of sexuality. This vol-
ume, of which only fragments were actually published, planned to discuss
the new discourse of sexuality that appeared with the rise of Christianity:
Foucaults central argument in these lectures is that confession, in a
very different sense from its pre-Christian use, is the heart of the new
Christian subjectivity . . . it is not the problem of a relationship to other
people, but the problem of the relationship of oneself to oneself . . . The
94. Tad Brennan, Stoic Moral Psychology, The Cambridge Companion to the
Stoics, ed. B. Inwood (Cambridge, 2003), 25794; 267. See also Inwood, Ethics
and Human Action, 12932, presenting the extreme implications of the old Stoic
decision to treat passions within the framework of the general psychology of
action, 129.
95. For an analysis of this model in Freud and Lacan, see Judith Butler, Gen-
der Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990), 91100.
96. The nature of the Testaments ethics goes hand in hand with the confes-
sional genre in which it is written. If sin occurs inside ones dianoia, rather then
in the interpersonal sphere, then it is best accounted for in the form of rst-
person confession. On the Testaments genre, see Hollander, Joseph, 16.
97. Daniel Boyarin and Elizabeth Castelli, Foucaults The History of Sexuality:
The Fourth Volume, or A Field Left Fallow for Others to Till, Journal of the
History of Sexuality 10 (2001): 35774.
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 91
task of the monk was the perpetual self-control of his very thoughts,
which required his investigating hidden (ultimately unconscious) moti-
vations in an unending search for sexual purity . . . Foucault theorized
a shift from a Platonic notion of purity . . . For Socrates, the struggle
is not to do what he knows he desired to do; for Cassian (and his
monastic siblings), it is not to desire.
98
This new discourse was, according to Foucault, the rst crucial shift,
which led, ultimately, to the birth of sexuality.
99
The emergence of sex
in the monastery and the confession cell, as the seismograph of our sub-
jectivity,
100
is what will, much later, be transformed into the sciences of
sexology and psychoanalysis, giving rise to the modern sexual sub-
ject.
101
Toward the end of the article, Boyarin and Castelli speculate on the
results of bringing other literary corpora into Foucaults conceptual
scheme. One of these absent literatures is the Jewish one: But how
would consideration of the Rabbinic material have forced him to modify
his explanatory mechanism?
102
Not an easy task, but they conclude that
the time has come to begin this work.
103
This essay can be read as an
initial attempt to meet this call.
104
Even without committing ourselves
98. Ibid., 36061 (emphasis added).
99. See, however, Boyarins and Castellis presentation of the tension within
Foucaults own sketches in regard to the novelty of the Christian discourse
(Foucault, 36263).
100. Boyarin and Castelli, Foucault, 360.
101. It is, according to Foucault, the gure of the desiring man that con-
nects the early Christian discourse of the esh and the early modern scientic of
sexuality: While the experience of sexuality, as a singular historical gure, is
perhaps quite distinct from the Christian experience of the esh, both appear
nonetheless to be dominated by the principle of desiring man (Michel Fou-
cault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure [trans. R. Hurley, New
York: 1985], 5). Note that it is exactly the discovery of this connection that
brought Foucault to change his original plan to begin his history in the eigh-
teenth century.
102. Boyarin and Castelli, Foucault, 367.
103. Ibid., 368.
104. This is not to say, of course, that Foucaults methodology in The History
of Sexuality was not applied in the past to ancient Jewish texts, including, of
course, by Boyarin himself; see especially his Unheroic Conduct: Heterosexuality and
the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley, Calif., 1997); see also A. Bach, Seduction
and Death; Charlotte Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstruc-
tion of Biblical Gender (Stanford, Calif., 2000); Cynthia M. Baker, Rebuilding the
House of Israel: Architecture of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford, Calif., 2002), but
92 JQR 96.1 (2006)
fully to all of Foucaults historical ndings,
105
we can adopt his concep-
tion of the new Christian discursive formation as an appropriate model
for characterizing the transformations that I have uncovered in the Testa-
ments. The shift of sex from an inter- to intra-personal issue, its location
inside ones mind, and its becoming the major seismograph, as well as
the ultimate test of ones personality, are all phenomena that I have identi-
ed in the course of my reading in T. Reuben. In fact, in my reading of the
testament, Reuben himself becomes the paradigm of the desiring man
which Foucault had identied as the major innovation of early Chris-
tianity.
The Testaments, moreover, may also give us some clue as to the roots
of this new discourse. The Testaments present here a fascinating amalgam-
ation of the traditional biblical concept of porneia (znut)
106
and the Helle-
nistic ethos of control over ones passions,
107
a union that leads to the new
these works did not, by and large, use the Jewish material to question Foucaults
historical narrative and to suggest an alternative one.
105. For criticism of Foucaults history of Greek and Roman sexuality, see
David Cohen and Richard Saller, Foucault on Sexuality in Greco-Roman Antiq-
uity, Foucault and the Writing of History, ed. J. Goldstein (Oxford, 1994), 3559,
but compare Boyarins and Castellis apologia in Foucault, 36365. See also
Arnold Davidson, Ethics as Ascetics: Foucault, the History of Ethics and An-
cient Thought, in Foucault and the Writing of History, 6380; 64; compare Fou-
caults own apology for being neither a Hellenist nor a Latinist in Use of
Pleasure, 7. The various problems and biases (and sometimes, as Cohen and Saller
show, simply mistakes) that classicists identied in Foucaults history, serious
as they are, testify only to a defect of interpretation, not of conceptualization
(Davidson, Ethics as Ascetics, 69). It is this conceptualization that I use here
as my methodological framework.
106. On the centrality of porneia to biblical ethics and its religious signicance,
see Rosen-Zvi, Sotah, chap. 7; Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros,
Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley,
Calif., 2003), 11989. As Gaca (14, n. 38) shows, porneia appears in most Jewish
Hellenistic and Christian writers (the Testaments, Philo, Paul, Pseudo Posilydes,
the Didache) as a major vice, but, at the same time, it is totally absent from
their contemporary non-Jewish Hellenistic writers. Gacas basic argument is that
Jewish Hellenistic and early Christian sexual ethics should be seen as directly
inuenced by biblical law and prophecy rather than by Hellenistic philosophy.
The analysis of the metaphysical and anthropological basis of sexual ethics, rather
than of sexual legislations and prohibitions per se (Gaca, Fornication, 6), led me
to a more balanced conclusion, emphasizing both the biblical heritage and its
Hellenistic transformationthe shift of biblical Znut into a soul-centered eth-
icsas sources of this new sexual discourse.
107. On the clear (middle) Stoic avor of the Testaments teaching about con-
trol over the passions, see Kee, Ethical Dimensions, 25970. On the Stoic attitude
BILHAH THE TEMPTRESSROSEN-ZVI 93
conception of porneia of the mind. Thus, by transplanting the major
biblical struggle for correct action into a new Hellenistic psychic context,
the Testaments reconceive the religious drama. It is this amalgamation that
moved porneia into the center of the Testaments ethics and redened the
ideal of the good man and the choice between belief and apostasy, God
and Beliar.
Taking the logic of the Judaized Foucault one step further, one
might add that this amalgamation in itself is not unique to T. Reuben but
can be found, in many different forms, in Philo, 4 Maccabees, Paul,
Pseudo Phocylides
108
and other Jewish Hellenistic writers.
109
Foucault is
thus correct in identifying a new discourse,
110
but one that can hardly be
to the passions (pate), see Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 12781; J. E. Annas,
Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), 10320.
108. Philo, Spec. 3.711; 4.7994; 4 Macc 2.14; Rom 1.2427; 1 Cor 7.17
Pseudo Phocylides 18595. On the soul as the new center of Jewish Hellenistic
religious ethics, see Hay, Psychology of Faith. Compare Yehoshua Amir, Measure
for Measure in Talmudic Literature and in the Wisdom of Solomon, Justice and
Righteousness: Biblical Themes and their Inuence, ed. H. G. Reventlow and Y. Hof-
man (Shefeld, 1992), 2946; 38. Although the ethos of controlling ones passions
appears in variety of contexts in these texts, the sexual one is dominant among
them (4 Macc being a possible exception), as was noted by John Collins, Between
Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (Grand Rapids,
Mich., 2000),15859.
109. Although there is no consensus regarding the origin of the Testaments,
there is a common assumption that it represents some kind of Jewish Hellenistic
ethics. See de Jonge, Central Problems, 38586; J. Collins, Between Athens and Jeru-
salem, 17483; M. Stone, ed., Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (Assen,
1984), 344: On various Hellenistic inuences on the Testaments, see Kee, Ethical
Dimensions, Braun, History and Romance, Bach, Seduction and Death, 7281, Menn,
Judah and Tamar, 177211, to mention but a few examples. Note that even de
Jonge does not oppose the identication of the Testaments ethics as Jewish Helle-
nistic (see n. 5 above). His famous thesis denies only the possibility of isolating
Christian interpolation from the Jewish kernel by methods of textual or literary
criticism. See his The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Christian and Jew-
ish Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs: Collected Essays of Martinus de Jonge (Leiden, 1991), 23343. As for the
ongoing debate on the origin of the Testaments, see Slingerland, A Critical History
of Research; de Jonge, Central Problems; Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary,
8285; Menn, Judah and Tamar, 11112; Kugler, Testaments, 3138. In 1985, after
more than a hundred years of critical efforts to solve this question, Hollander and
de Jonge soberly wrote: The search for the historical circumstances reected in
the text, and for the group(s) responsible for the Testaments is apparently
doomed to failure for the lack of really clear convincing evidence, 7.
110. Among many phenomena suggested by scholars as reasons for the failure
in making a clear determination as to the Testaments historical setting, an espe-
94 JQR 96.1 (2006)
considered a Christian innovation. Thus, the birth of sexuality, if it did
indeed occur in Late Antiquity,
111
did not wait for Christianity for its
emergence.
112
The new discursive formation appeared already in the
Christian fathers forefathersthe Jewish Hellenistic writers. T. Reuben
can serve as a condensed, even radical, example of the novel fusion of
the biblical porneia with the Hellenistic notion of self-fashioning which
ultimately nds its way into the rabbinic discourse of evil inclination
(yetzer) as well as into early Christian asceticism.
This essay represents only an initial exploration of this discursive for-
mation. Other focused readings in postbiblical and rabbinic writers
guided by a similar agenda are needed in order to provide us with a
better sense of the genesis of late ancient sexual discourse, practices, and
subjectivity. The time has come to begin this work, indeed.
cially interesting one is the generic nature of its ethical teaching (i.e., its resem-
blance to many Hellenistic, Jewish-Hellenistic, and Christian sources,), which
foils any attempt to locate it with the help of literary critical methods (de Jonge,
Central Problems, 397). This historiographical failure, however, does not necessar-
ily diminish the potential value of the document (Slingerland, A Critical History
of Research, 1). On the contrary, in the context of my endeavor to locate the Testa-
ments in a discursive, rather than purely historical, context, the generic nature of
the Testaments is more an advantage than an obstacle. The fact that the Testaments
preserve, in clear and condensed manner, characters that appear in many other
texts in a diluted form makes it an ideal candidate for such an effort. Moreover,
after so many years during which scholarly efforts focused almost exclusively on
identifying authorship, a different attitude toward the Testaments which would
analyze it in wider discursive context seems to be in place.
111. Since every shift in discourse can be considered as some kind of birth,
we have to admit that, even in Foucaults terms, sexuality was born more than
once, in Late Antiquity as well as in early modern times.
112. Foucaults insistence on Christianity as the source of this new discourse,
besides being a result of his general ignorance of Jewish material, seems also to
be connected to the special emphasis he gives to new technologies (i.e., the
monastery and the confession cell) in his search for discursive transformation.