Women In Second Temple Judaism

From The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism:

Women

A discussion of Jewish women in the Second Temple period must first of all take into account the fact that it falls between the biblical and talmudic periods. In both biblical and talmudic times, laws were formulated governing the position and expected behavior of Jewish women, and both were canonized. In some respects these differed one from the other. From the Second Temple period we have some documents reflecting attempts to construct and regulate Jewish women’s lives, but these were not canonized. Thus, this period should be viewed as the “missing link” between the two canonical periods in Jewish history, and it serves as such for many issues relevant to women in Judaism.

The literature about Jewish women in the Second Temple period can be roughly divided into three types: fiction, wisdom texts, and halakah. The following discussion will follow these three branches and then conclude with a few remarks about the historical reality of women.

Heroines in Fiction

Beginning in the Persian period, a new phenomenon developed that made women into the chief protagonists in works of fiction. While the Hebrew Bible does include female heroines such as the matriarchs of Genesis and the women of the book of Judges, they are usually auxiliary figures to the male heroes of these stories. In Second Temple literature this changes. Already two late biblical books are named after women—Ruth and Esther. This phenomenon is further developed with the books of Judith and Susanna. In the book Joseph and Aseneth we find a strong female protagonist, but there is some debate about the date and Jewish or Christian provenance of this book. These women not only give the books their names but are also themselves the heroines and are unexpectedly located at their center. A good example is Susanna. In this book the hero is the young Daniel and the main issue at hand is miscarriage of justice by a corrupt judicial system and leadership. The story of the attempted seduction of Susanna is a subplot within the main story. Yet in this subplot the woman is the virtuous heroine. Neither a women as heroine nor seduction as a topic of miscarriage of justice is necessary, however. A similar story is told in the Bible about Naboth the Jezreelite and his vineyard (1 Kings 21). It employs neither a woman nor seduction as its topic. The choice of a woman heroine and the topic specifically relevant to her are unique to the new interests of Second Temple literature.

The heroines of Second Temple books are some of the most memorable women figures in world literature. Ruth is the widowed, non-Jewish, loyal daughter-in-law who chooses to follow her mother-in-law Naomi into the unknown. Susanna is the virtuous wife who is willing to die rather than compromise her sexual virtue. Esther is the woman who compromises her Judaism and infiltrates the Persian court in order to save her people from annihilation. Judith is the prototype of the zealot, a virtuous widow who changes into a seductress and single-handedly assassinates the enemy general in order to save her city from destruction.

Meaningful female heroines also appear in Second Temple literature in works besides those to which they give their name. In 2 Maccabees 7 the nameless mother of seven sons is one of the first and most memorable Jewish martyrs. Like Judith, she serves as a role model for both men and women, fulfilling the nationalist and religious ideals of Second Temple Judaism. Further, in the book of Tobit we find Sarah, who becomes the ultimate prototype of the killer wife by indirectly causing her seven husbands to die on their wedding night (Tob. 3:7–9).

Many suggestions have been made in order to explain this unusual phenomenon of the new female heroine. A contributing factor was surely the influence of the Greek literary genre of the novel, which became widespread throughout the Hellenistic world from the third century b.c.e. and which indulged in portrayals of powerful women in historical, semihistorical, and purely fictional settings.

Idealization in Wisdom Literature

While the heroines discussed above are, on the whole, virtuous women, Second Temple literature in general views women much more systematically than do biblical texts. Early Jewish writings are inclined to make general, and often very negative, observations on their character. Negative comments of this sort are mainly found in what is usually designated wisdom literature. Much has been said about the biblical book of Proverbs and its portrayal of women. In its first chapters it juxtaposes the highly positive figure of Lady Wisdom, who is a suitable companion to a Jewish man, with the strange, seductive Dame Folly, who is dangerous and should be shunned. At the end of the book, Proverbs presents the woman of valor, who is a diligent and efficient housewife, provider, and paragon of virtue. She is an ideal woman, but it is nowhere suggested that such women do not and cannot exist.

This many-faceted feminine image in Proverbs is condensed in the wisdom literature of Second Temple times to yield the negative, human seductress who represents everywoman. Already in the pessimistic biblical book of Qohelet we read, “and I find woman more bitter than death” (7:26). A similar sentiment is expressed by Jesus Ben Sira, who lived toward the end of the third and beginning of the second centuries b.c.e. He maintained that women in general constitute a threat to the dignity and well-being of men and that the most dangerous threat comes from a man’s own daughter.

Another composition of the same cloth was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and has come to be known as Wiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184). Here a Second Temple author elaborates on and greatly extends the dangers described in Proverbs as those of the foreign seductress.

Portrayal in Philosophically Oriented Works

This pessimistic and negative assessment of women is also found in Jewish literature that is overtly indebted to Hellenistic philosophical discourse. It is already voiced in the Letter of Aristeas (250), but its main propagator is Philo of Alexandria. As has often been shown, Philo accepted the Aristotelian judgment that the female is, in and of herself, inferior to the male. He used this to explain the biblical narratives allegorically. The women of the Bible represent inferior aspects of a person’s psyche, namely the senses, while the male figures represent the superior mind. The creation of woman, for example, is explained as a corruption of the mind by the senses (Opificio Mundi 59).

This short review presents a literature that is indebted to an intensive and unsympathetic male discourse on the very nature and essence of womanhood. Second Temple literature thus displays a sort of internal contradiction where, alongside a large number of virulent diatribes against females and the feminine, we find powerful and sympathetic female figures, some of whom actually save the Jewish people. A middle ground between the two comes in the legal discourse about women evident in Second Temple literature.

Women in Halakah

A large number of issues concerning women, which are clearly formulated in the Mishnah but which have no antecedent in the Bible, have their roots in Second Temple times and are reflected in the literature and documents preserved from this period. This is true of Josephus’ reworking of the biblical laws, Philo’s philosophical discourse on the Special Laws, the reworked Genesis of the book of Jubilees, the New Testament, and the halakic texts from Qumran.

Marriage Contracts

The Mishnah includes an entire tractate devoted to women’s marriage contracts, Ketubbot, even though a marriage contract is nowhere mentioned in the Bible itself. Does this mean that ancient Israelites did not know such a document? A straightforward answer to such a question is not forthcoming, but Aramaic documents from the Jewish settlement at Elephantine in Egypt, dated firmly to the Persian period, include marriage contracts belonging to Jewish women. These documents do not fit the halakic description of a Jewish marriage contract as it appears in the Mishnah (the Mishnah specifies, e.g., that a wife can initiate her own divorce), but they may serve as evidence for a stage in the development of the latter. Another such stage is the marriage contract mentioned in the book of Tobit, written by Sarah’s father to Tobias, giving him his daughter as wife “according to the decree of the law of Moses.” This document is very different from the rabbinic ketubah, because it represents an agreement between father and son-in-law rather than between husband and wife. Yet a similar formulation to the words “according to the decree of the Law of Moses” is found also in the rabbinic ketubah.

Divorce

A similar issue is the question of divorce. Deuteronomic law mentions a bill of divorce which a man writes a woman (Deut. 24:1–4), but this law is not formulated so as to advise male Jews about how to divorce their wives. Instead, it emphasizes a unique case of a man who divorces a woman who in turn goes and marries another man from whom she is then also divorced. The Bible rules that, in such a case, the first husband cannot take her back. Thus, the mention of the divorce document is incidental and does not describe the document or how it functioned as a rule. For example, it does not imply that only a man could write such a document to a woman, but not vice versa. Thus, Josephus informs us that the sister of King Herod, Salome, wrote a divorce bill and sent it to her husband. Josephus is quick to add that this is against Jewish custom, and modern scholars have universally adopted his judgment, claiming that the woman had done this in her capacity as a Roman citizen but not as a Jew. It turns out, however, that Josephus here is voicing his opinion in a debate that was raging at the time, about a woman’s right to divorce her husband, and which was not yet definitively concluded 160 years later, when a certain Jewish woman, Shelamzion daughter of Joseph, wrote a divorce bill to her husband, a document preserved among the scrolls from the Judean Desert. Josephus’ view here probably reflects the fact that he was a Pharisee, as were the forefathers of the rabbis.

Testimony in Court

Divorce is not the only issue on which Josephus agrees with the rabbis against other voices preserved in Second Temple literature. Thus, without having any biblical basis, Josephus states explicitly that women are barred from serving as witnesses in Jewish courts of law “because of the levity and temerity of their sex” (Ant. 4.219). The rabbis, too, exempted women from giving evidence (m. Roš Haš. 1:8); and elsewhere, in another context, also concluded that women are light-headed (b. Qiddušin 80b). Yet this unity of opinion between Josephus and the rabbis is interrupted by the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Qumran Rule of the Congregation, or Messianic Rule (1QSa), we are informed that at the age of twenty, once members of the sect marry, their wives are called upon to bear witness against them in cases where they transgress the ruling of the community (1QSa 1:11). The simple meaning of the text is that in the Qumran community, where members were constantly expected to testify against their fellow members, women were expected to participate in the system as well. This text shows that the exclusion of women from giving evidence was, in Second Temple times, anything but universal.

Presence in Public

One of the issues hotly debated in Second Temple literature is the question of women’s presence in public. Ben Sira maintained that a person should keep his daughter under lock and key. Philo agreed, claiming, “Market places and council halls and law courts and gatherings and meetings … are suitable for men.… Women are best suited to the indoor life which never strays from the house, within which the middle door is taken by the maidens as their boundary and the outer door by those who have reached full womanhood” (Special Laws 31). The ideal voiced by these two Second Temple Jewish thinkers is realized and glorified in the book of Judith. Although Judith is a very public heroine, when she is not required to act in an emergency she secludes herself on her roof, away from the public eye. Rabbinic literature, however, contains no such strictures against women’s freedom of movement. In this respect, the rabbis proved more lenient than their Second Temple predecessors.

Participation in Ritual Life

The issue of women’s position within Jewish society can serve as a test case for the assertion that the rabbis are the direct heirs of the opponents of the Dead Sea sect (Pharisees?). In most halakic cases we find the Qumran covenanters and the rabbis on two sides of the divide. However, when it comes to the position of women, this is not always true. Thus, in rabbinic literature women are often lumped together with slaves, minors, and other underprivileged individuals, such as the bodily impaired, as exempt from performing certain commandments. A closer look at these commandments shows that they exclude women from a significant percentage of Jewish ritual life. This categorization and exemption is a complete novelty. Nothing even remotely resembling it is found in the Bible. Here, however, the Qumran material constitutes a middle ground between the Bible and the rabbis. Thus, in the Damascus Document we find a list that includes fools, the mentally sick, and the bodily disabled together with minors as forbidden entry into the congregation of the elect “because holy angels are present” (CD 15:15–17; 4Q266). Women are not mentioned in this list, an omission probably indicating that they were allowed to participate in the life of the congregation. However, women are excluded in a similar list found in the Qumran War Scroll, one that itemizes all those who may not enter the camp of war, for the same reason of the presence of angels (1QM 7). Also, in a fragment from Cave 4 minors and women are excluded from partaking in the Pesach sacrifice. As in rabbinic literature, so here women are lumped together with minors. In this the Qumran community resembles the rabbis conceptually. However, it may be of interest to note that the rabbis do not exempt, but rather include, both women and minors in the celebration and consumption of the Pesach sacrifice. This is probably an indication of how the rabbis and the Jews of Qumran differed on minor (and sometimes major) points of law but held a common assumption about gender hierarchy, the partial participation of women in Jewish life, and their affinity to both minors and to deformed and maimed individuals. Although the rabbis do not explain the exclusion of persons mentioned in these lists from ritual as the Qumranites do, as a result of the presence of angels in their midst, they find such lists useful.

Women in History

Some of the most powerful historical female figures feature in the writings of Josephus. These include Miriam the Hasmonean, the wife of King Herod, who was tragically executed by her husband in his fight against her royal house; Berenice, the daughter of King Agrippa, who enticed the Roman general Titus while he was laying siege to Jerusalem; and, most importantly, Queen Shelamzion Alexandra, who ruled the Hasmonean kingdom single-handedly for nine years (76–67 b.c.e.). To these portraits one may also add the figure of the scheming Herodias of the New Testament, who through her machinations has John the Baptist beheaded (Mark 6:14–28; Matt. 14:1–11).

The various literary creations discussed thus far show the Second Temple period as a time of dynamic changes in the perception of gender within Judaism. Ideas were tested and discarded or altered and adopted. Various groups voiced differing opinions on women, their worth, and their place in society. What does this say about the real women of the time? It seems that the most we can say is that the Second Temple period was characterized by a fragmentation of Jewish society and by sectarianism, which had a major impact on women’s lives. Sects by their very nature are more egalitarian than established society and more readily welcome women’s participation. Thus, we know that the Jesus movement included female members. The philosophical conclave of the Therapeutae in Egypt described by Philo counted women among its members. It can be argued that the Pharisees, the Dead Sea sect, and even various military zealot organizations counted women among their ranks. It should also not be forgotten that Second Temple times saw the only legitimate queen in Jewish history. It is a great mystery how this ever came about. Obviously such historical realities may have had some impact on the way women were discussed in and presented by the literature surveyed above.

Bibliography

A. Brenner, ed. 1995, A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. • B. J. Brooten 1982, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press. • L. J. Eron 1991, “ ‘That Women Have Mastery over Both King and Beggar’ (T. Jud. 15.5): The Relationship of the Fear of Sexuality to the Status of Women in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha: 1 Esdras (3 Ezra) 3–4, Ben Sira and the Testament of Judah,” JSP 9: 43–66. • B. Halpern-Amaru 1999, The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees, Leiden: Brill. • T. Ilan 1999, Integrating Jewish Women into Second Temple History, Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. • T. Ilan 2006, Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women, Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. • A.-J. Levine, ed. 1991, “Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, Atlanta: Scholars Press. • B. Mayer-Schärtel 1995, Das Frauenbild des Josephus: Eine sozialgeschichtliche und kulturanthropologische Untersuchung, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. • E. Schuller 1999, “Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam, Leiden: Brill, 117–44. • D. Sly 1990, Philo’s Perceptions of Women, Atlanta: Scholars Press. • A. Standhartinger 1995, Das Frauenbild in Judentum der hellenistischen Zeit: Ein Beitrag anhand von ‘Joseph und Aseneth,’ Leiden: Brill. • J. E. Taylor 2003, Jewish Women Philosophers of First Century Alexandria: Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered, Oxford: Oxford University Press. • W. C. Trenchard 1983, Ben Sira’s View of Women: A Literary Analysis, Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press. • L. M. Wills 1999, The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Tal Ilan