marriage sexuality penalties prejudices & cruelty?

*
"PAUL's ethic
of the BODY"
~*~

~*~

WHAT then
is Paul's ethic of the body,
his picture of the relations
between married men & women,
and HOW does it compare
to the detailed rules for married life
promulgated by the rabbinic
Judaism of the second
& following
centuries?


Careful study
of 1 Corinthians 7
supports the conclusion
drawn by Peter J. Tomson
that Paul's ethic ['halakha']
of sexuality and marriage
and
"Paul's
conception of women
was NOT much different
from his [Jewish]
contemporaries."


THUS
the famous
pronouncement
of verses 3-5:

"Let the husband
give the wife what is due to her,
and let the wife likewise
also give her husband
his due"

is identical to
the provision of the Mishna
which provides
the SAME penalties to
the husband
who refuses sex to
his wife AND to the wife
who refuses
[legal] sex to
her husband
(Tomson 1990,
107).

~*~

SINCE
THIS is the passage
to which Fiorenza's student refers
as where

"he so firmly emphasized the equality of woman and man in marriage,"

then his apparent contradiction
can hardly be seen as

"reverting to rabbinic prejudices."


MOREOVER,
SUCH provision for mutual consideration
of husband and wife
for each other's needs
is hardly incompatible
with gender
hierarchy?


AS I have argued
with regard to rabbinic Judaism
and suggest here with regard to PAUL as well,
the attitude of husband and wife was expected to be one of
benevolent dictatorship, which precluded
any CRUELTY or LACK of
CONSIDERATION!


~*~


WHAT IS remarkable
about the Corinthians passage is rather its rhetoric,
the fact that PAUL addresses MEN AND WOMEN equeally,
whereas the implicit subject of the Mishna is ALWAYS a MAN who owes obligations to his wife and to whom she
is ALSO obligated!


THIS is an IMPORTANT distinction;
however, we should NOT make TOO much of it,
for we do not know WHAT rhetorical form a Pharisaic/rabbinic address to the populace, whether ORAL or epistolary,
would have taken?


PAUL's rhetorical stance
is USUALLY every bit as androcentric as that of the Rabbis:


"It is WELL for a person NOT to touch a woman" -
NOT "It is well for PERSONS not to have CARNAL knowledge of other persons!"


C.'s argument
that he used this form
"due to the formulation of their question" (1976, 115)
represents wishful thinking.


Much MORE convincing is W.'s interpretation:


"The immorality he exposes is MALE!
The solution he calls for
is marriage, and here, for the FIRST time in the letter,
he refers to women as
an explicit group!
Paul is NOT
telling the offending MEN
to marry?
THIS cannot happen
without the cooperation of others
and the others cannot
be MALE!"


THIS
would certainly explain WELL
the shift from androcentric to "egalitarian" rhetoric
in 7:2-3?!


See also
her remark that with regard to the VIRGIN,
"Paul does NOT repeat the same words to the woman
but continues to the MAN,
'But IF you marry, you do NOT sin, and if the VIRGIN marries,
SHE does not sin'
(7:2cool!!
IN THIS WAY
PAUL manages to incorporate the rhetoric of equality,
although the WOMAN is ONLY
TALKED ABOUT,
NOT
ADDRESSED!"



~*~



Karen KING
has contributed some very wise remarks,
which I think worth quoting extensively:


My own work has shown
that quite often a pattern can be discerned
in men's writings about women:
That is,
the way that men view their own bodies and sexuality
as structurally analogous to how
they view women.


In a sense,
men often use women
(or the category of woman)
to think with.


CONTROL
of one's sexuality and the use and control of women
SEEM to be two sides
of the SAME
problem.


For PHILO,
a man's relationship to himself
is one of control pure and simple:
the control of the body
by the mind.


THIS control
constitutes good ORDER and the BEST interests
of the self.


Analogously,
women are to be
under men's
control.


They are
NOT rejected,
but it is understood
that the good of society
and man's spiritual progress
can ONLY be achieved
by the subordination of women,
for their own good.


Women out of control
again and again constitute Philo's primary metaphor
for spiritual and social
disaster ...


For PAUL, however,
the relation to the self is less one of control
and MORE one of reciprocity.


HE
does NOT abandon the BODY,
but expects to see it
transformed.


Sexuality,
body, and spirit are MORE FULLY INTEGRATED
in HIS conceptuality of self
than with PHILO?


YET as you note,
there still exists a clear hierarchical relation
between spirit and body!


CELIBACY models this relation most clearly.


It is also
the inscription on the body of his ideal of UNITY
expressed in Galatians 3:28.


The MODEL for relations
between men and women is similarly one of RECIPROCITY,
NOT equality, as is shown in
1 Corinthians 7 & 11.


To which
my response is:
I would only wish to emphasize,
following W. and the logic of King's own statement,
that this reciprocity of male and female is hierarchical precisely
in the way that spirit and flesh are for Paul,
thus further confirming
King's approach.


King's principle,
which I absolutely endorse,
has been of major importance in development
of my work.


~*~


Rabbinic literature
preserves, moreover, strong polemics against men
who out of desire for holiness cease sleeping with thier wives.
(D. Boyarin 1991 provides extensive documentation and critique on this issue).


There is, however, ONE element in Paul's thought on sexuality
which divides him sharply from the later rabbinic tradition and connects him rather with certain other trends in contemporary Judaism,
and that is the question of celibacy, which, I argue,
is CRUCIAL to solving the problem that I am {trying to write} about in
these 'myDistories'
engel
09 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 18 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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