Julian Jaynes and the Biblical Story of Tamar and Judah

 

 The Story of Tamar and Judah as told in the book of Genesis of the Bible is especially interesting for the way it describes how the characters. They move as if they had no feelings, like automatons. It is a kind of view of reality that Julian Jaynes explored in his search for human consciousness. It was a long journey from the time of Tamar and Judah to our times, but the trip is continuing. Where are we going? Will we hear again God's words as told by Google?

 

All we do is the result of how we perceive the world, and the way we perceive the world depends on how our mind works. It is, actually, a two-way relationship (as we relate, so we think). And it is a story that started long, long ago, when our ancestors started developing what we call today "self-consciousness," a way of modeling oneself, just as they would model the external world. Julian Jaynes was a great pioneer in this field with his The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,  (1976)

Now, it seems to me that our so-much cherished self-consciousness is failing us, leading us to believe that, "the world is what we think it is." It is what Donald Rumsfeld noted when he said, "now we create our own reality." That's a consciousness jump comparable to the one that changed our bronze age ancestors into what we are today. But not all changes are good and we may be destined to a harsh rediscovery that the world, out there, is not the same as what we think it is.

As usual, the key of the future lies in the past and we can learn a lot on how our mind works by examining how it evolved over the past millennia. Julian Jaynes explored many ancient documents in support of his idea that our ancestors were not really conscious but acted on the basis of "voices" that they heard in their mind. His interpretation of the Iliad and the Odyssey is especially impressive. Jaynes didn't pay as much attention to the Bible, probably a more modern book than the Iliad, but even there we can find examples of how differently the ancient thought.

I recently commented on the story of Tamar and Judah, as told in the Genesis about the significance for women to wear face veils. But there is much more than that in the story than the creative use of the veil made by Tamar. What's impressive is how the author writes the story in a way that never gives us any hint of what the characters were thinking while they were doing what they were doing. It was especially impressive to think of this after reading a modern rendition of the story written by Francine Rivers in 2009. The story is the same, but the way of telling it has changed enormously in some 3000 years. Let's make a little comparison. 

This is Francine Rivers describing how Tamar came to marry Judah's son, Er. (just skim through this especially bad example of prose)

“Why must it be this way, Mother? Have I no choice in what’s to become of me?”“No more choice than any other girl. I know how you’re feeling. I was no older than you when I came into your father’s house. It is the way of things, Tamar. Haven’t I prepared you for this day from the time you were a little girl? I have told you what you were born to do. Struggling against your fate is like wrestling the wind.” She gripped Tamar’s shoulders. “Be a good daughter and obey without quibbling. Be a good wife and bear many sons. Do these things, and you’ll bring honor upon yourself. And if you’re fortunate, your husband will come to love you. If not, your future will still be secure in the hands of sons. When you’re old, they’ll take care of you just as your brothers will take care of me. The only satisfaction a woman has in this life is knowing she has built up the household of her husband.”“But this is Judah’s son, Mother. Judah’s son Er.”Her mother’s eyes flickered, but she remained firm. “Find a way to fulfill your duty and bear sons. You must be strong, Tamar. These people are fierce and unpredictable. And they are proud.”Tamar turned her face away. “I don’t want to marry Er. I can’t marry him—”Her mother grasped her hair and yanked her head back. “Would you destroy our family by humiliating such a man as this Hebrew? Do you think your father would let you live if you went into that room and begged to be spared marriage to Er? Do you think Judah would take such an insult lightly? I tell you this. I would join your father in stoning you if you dare risk the lives of my sons. Do you hear me? Your father decides whom and when you marry. Not you!” She let go of her roughly and stepped away, trembling. “Do not act like a fool!”Tamar closed her eyes. The silence in the room was heavy. She felt her sisters and nurse staring at her. “ I’m sorry.” Her lip quivered. “ I’m sorry. I’ll do what I must.”“As we all must.” Sighing, her mother took her hand and rubbed it with scented oil. “Be wise as a serpent, Tamar. Judah has shown wisdom in considering you. You are strong, stronger than these others. You have quick wits and strength you don’t even realize yet. This Hebrew has taken an interest in you. For all our sakes, you must please him. Be a good wife to his son. Build a bridge between our people. Keep the peace between us.”The weight of responsibility being given her made her bow her head. “I will try.”“You will do more than try. You will succeed.” Her mother leaned down and kissed her cheek briskly. “Now sit quietly and collect yourself while I send word to your father that you’re ready.”

 And this is how the Bible describes the same story:

And Judah took a wife for Er his first-born, and her name was Tamar

Isn't it impressive? Let me show you another example, this one about Er. Here is how Ms. Rivers describes him.

Er was tall like his father and held the promise of great physical strength. He had his mother’s thick curling mass of black hair, which he had drawn back in Canaanite fashion. The brass band he wore around his forehead made him look like a young Canaanite prince. Tamar was awed by her husband’s handsome appearance but filled quickly with misgivings when she looked into his eyes. They were cold and dark and devoid of mercy. There was pride in the tilt of his head, cruelty in the curve of his lips, and indifference in his manner.

And here is what the Bible says

But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of God and God put him to death.

You see the difference. 

The fact is that the character in the Bible story behave in ways that would make us describe them as robots or automata. Another example is Abraham who blindly obeys when God tells him that he must sacrifice is firstborn Isaac. Not that they are stupid, not at all. The ruse that Tamar devises in order to bend the Levirate law in her favor is clever by all means. But there is not a trace of feelings or of consciousness in their behavior. Nor there is a hint of compassion for the death of Er and Onan, nor for the distress of Tamar. And when Judah orders Tamar to be burned at the stake, he seems to be no more concerned about that than if he were ordering a sheep to be roasted. These people are all autistic or what?

The book of Genesis was probably written around the 6th century BC, but the stories it tells about the patriarchal age are certainly older, quite possibly their core lies in the bronze age, more or less when the Acheans were besieging the city of Troy on the Western border of Anatolia. So, it makes sense to apply the considerations that Jaynes had developed for the Iliad also to this section of the Bible. Indeed, in the story of Abraham, we read of how he received from God the command to kill his son, Isaac -- probably heard as a voice in his head just like it happens to the heroes of the Iliad. That raises an interesting questions, were the characters of the patriarchal age just portrayed as automatons, or were they automatons? That's a question we cannot answer: we cannot enter the minds of people who lived some three thousand years ago -- we cannot even enter the minds of the people who are alive today. But one things is sure: the human mind has changed a lot in a few thousand years.

The Bible may actually gives us some idea of this gradual evolution. While Abraham obeys God's orders that he hears in his mind, in the case of Tamar and Judah, we are not told that anyone heard voices. God enters the story only as a mischievous element, smiting Judah's sons without paying any attention, apparently to the results of his actions. It doesn't seem that God cares at all about Tamar or about anyone else and nobody in the story asks God's advice. 

It may well be that the story of Tamar and Judah is about the transition phase from the bicameral age to the modern way of thinking. Indeed, just as an example, there is another Tamar in the Bible, the son of David, who is raped by her brother Amnon, whose feeling are clearly described in the Book of Samuel as "Amnon hated her with a very great hatred; for the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her."

So, it is a long journey that we made from Abraham to Ms. Francine Rivers. And perhaps the most interesting part of it is that it is continuing. Just examine any on-line discussion on the Web, don't you have the impression that some people have gone too far in their travel to self-consciousness? They are so self-conscious that they tend to think that the world has to adapt to the way they see it, rather than the opposite. Do you note the knee-jerk reaction when you tell them something that doesn't fit with their internal model of the world? 

Imagine that the story of Tamar and Judah were told today: would you believe what this woman said? What proof do we have that the objects she showed were really Judah's ones? Was it all a ruse by Judah to have sex with her daughter-in-law? Besides, who killed Onan and why? Who is this Tamar, anyway? Is she a Canaanite agent spying on the good Hebrews? Maybe Tamar is all part of a conspiracy by the Canaanite king to invade us because they are envious of our freedom?

In those times, truth was somehow solid, enshrined in a story. Now, truth has become fluid, as you think you hold it, it flows away from your hands. In a way, even truth has been marketed, just like many other commodities. And once it is marketed it becomes a product that comes in various gradation, from extra-value to run-of-the-mill. It is even overproduced, like candies or toys. 

The book by Ms. Francine Rivers is a good example of this over-production of a supposed truth. It is no more about truth, but about a version of the truth for the cheap end of the market. Among other things, you can note how Rivers has slashed away from her story all the potentially upsetting elements found in the Bible. The core of the story, that Tamar prostitutes herself to force his father in law to respect the Levirate law, is just not there. Zero: not even mentioned. Truly amazing: it is like writing a biography of Abraham Lincoln and never mention that he was President of the United States. Apparently, Ms. Rivers thinks that this part of the story would be hard to digest for modern Christians. So, what is left is something like a TV soap opera of the 1960s. Which is, after all, our current way of interpreting reality. 

Yet, for everything that exists, there has to be a reason for it to exist. If we moved from being automatons to being "self-conscious," it means that there was a reason for moving in that direction. There must have been advantages for people who were self conscious in comparison to those who weren't. Maybe being able to model oneself led to better relations with one's social group. 

But the most fascinating thing is that the journey of consciousness is continuing. Where are we going? If we continue building up models of reality in our minds, we risk detaching ourselves from reality, "we create our own reality" as Donald Rumsfeld notes. But that's not a good thing: we risk losing track of the real world and that may be bad. Very bad. Maybe the direction of the travel will be reversed and one day we'll hear again God's voice in our heads, although maybe by then God's name may well be "Google."

Why Face Masks May be Here to Stay Forever

 

Wearing a mask may be a burden but, in some cases, also an advantage, especially for women in a patriarchal society. Traditionally, a mask allowed a certain anonymity and a chance for occasional sexual license. Could it be that the current diffusion of the habit of wearing face masks is a reaction to the more and more invasive "surveillance state" in the West? In this post, I explore this issue also in relation to the biblical story of Tamar and Judah 

(above, Tamar and Judah in a painting of the Rembrandt school)

 

 

The fashion of wearing face masks in the West is surprising, especially in view of the previous campaigns against the Islamic veil in the name of dignity. Yet, Westerners cling to their masks as if their life depended on them, even in conditions when they are not needed, as in the open air.

 

This fashion is all the more surprising if you consider that practically no known society in history has ever enforced wearing face masks or veils for everyone, except in areas where protection is needed against the cold or against sand blown by the wind. In the standard Western iconography, someone who wears a mask is a criminal or an outlaw. Who would need to hide his face if not for some evil purpose? True, sometimes a mask is worn by good characters in fiction, such as Batman, but there is always a dark side to the story.

The only exception to the rule is the veil worn by married women. It is sometimes said to be an Islamic tradition, but there is nothing specifically Islamic in it. In Southern Europe, up to less than one century ago it was common for married women to wear a veil in public and, even today, a Western bride sometimes wears a veil at her marriage. In general, it is typical for women to be veiled in public in patriarchal societies, as it is still the case in some Middle Eastern and Asian countries.

I would argue that the veil can be seen as a burden, but also as an advantage for women. Nothing exists if it doesn't have a reason to exist and, over history, women accepted to wear veils because it gave them some advantages. A certain degree of anonymity that allowed them to occasionally indulge in behaviors that were not allowed by their society. Indeed, wearing masks remains a characteristic of the Western carnival festivities, where a certain tradition of free sexual encounters remains alive to this day. 

So, could it be that the current explosion of face masks in the West is the result of the diffusion of the "surveillance state"? With more and more oppressive ways to control people being deployed, with face-recognition techniques, surveillance drones, spy cams, and all the rest, wearing a mask provides a certain advantage for the wearer. It is not a coincidence that the "anonymous" hackers are represented as wearing a mask. Anonymity is an advantage and there is safety in numbers.

If this is the case, then, that face masks are likely to become a stable feature of the Western society, independently of their usefulness as anti-virus barriers. They are uncomfortable, but if they can hide you from those pesky drones, well, it may be worth wearing them. Masks as a form of freedom from oppression? Maybe.

To understand more the meaning of wearing masks, let me discuss an ancient story where a face mask played a fundamental role: the biblical story of Tamar and Judah. I already discussed this story in a previous post, but here let me go into some more details.

 

Tamar and Judah: The Veil as a Life-Saving Tool

 by Ugo Bardi, Aug 2020

 

 

In the book of Genesis of the Bible, we read how Tamar prostituted herself in order to have children from her father-in-law, Judah. It is a fascinating story that tells us of remote times, but not so remote that we can't understand the plight of the people who lived and struggled in a world very different from ours. 

 

The story of Tamar is often commented for its moral and religious meaning, but let me retell it with a more down to earth purpose: understanding how the habit of married women to wear a veil affected ancient patriarchal societies and, occasionally, could be a definite advantage for women.

So, let's start with the protagonists. Judah was one of the patriarchs of the Israelites, the great-grandson of Abraham in person. He was endowed with a certain degree of wickedness and we are told of how he attempted to kill his brother, Joseph. Later on, he seemed to have gained some of respectability, he got married and had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah.

 

Tamar enters the story when she marries Er, the oldest son of Judah. We are not told much about the origins of Tamar. Sources other than the Bible say she was a Canaanite, others that she was the daughter of a high priest. The Bible doesn't mention a dowry, but it is unthinkable that Tamar wouldn't have brought one to Er. Dowries are typical of patriarchal societies were men are considered more valuable than women. In these societies, a woman can gain access to a high rank man by paying for the privilege. 

 

So, Tamar marries Er and everything seems to be going well in the best of worlds, when Er suddenly dies. The Bible explains to us that God was angry at Er for some reasons, but the real issue is that Tamar is left as a childless widow. In this case, patriarchal societies had a tradition called the "Levirate" that favored, or even imposed, that the younger brother of a deceased man would marry the widow. The law applied when the widow was childless, as it was Tamar's case. 

 

The Levirate laws are grounded in financial matters, as most marriages were in antiquity, and still are. In a patriarchal society, a woman would gain access to a high-rank man by paying a dowry. But if the man died before having children, the woman would have paid for nothing, because being female she couldn't inherit the possessions of her deceased husband. The levirate law protected the widow, making sure that she would have a husband and a chance to have male heirs. It seems that the children sired by the brother of the deceased husband would be considered as sons and daughters of the first husband in regard to inheritance matters. 

So, we read that Judah's family followed the levirate customs and that Tamar's brother in law, Onan, married her. That might have settled all issues, but there is a new problem: Onan is not interested in having children from Tamar. We are told that he "spilled his seed on the ground," something we would call today "coitus interruptus." Why Onan did that is probably still related to the financial implications of the levirate. If Tamar had sired a male heir to Onan, his own inheritance would have been diminished because the son would have counted as Er's son. The story may have been much more complicated than this, anyway what happens is that Onan dies, too. Maybe he was smitten by God for his bad behavior, but the point is that Tamar finds herself a childless widow for the second time. 

At this point, things become really complicated. The levirate law says that Tamar should now marry Judah's remaining son, Shelah. But he is too young, and so Tamar finds herself betrothed to a child with the perspective that when he will be grown up enough, he will behave like Onan, for the same reasons. Then, after having buried two husbands, we may imagine that Tamar's reputation would be a bit tarnished, to say the least. Maybe she is a witch? Don't forget that the Bible says in the Exodus "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." About Shelah, he must not have been so thrilled at the perspective of having to marry a woman who may have been 10 years older than him. And Judah, what could he do? Maybe he could send Tamar back to her family, but then he would have had to pay back the dowry he had received -- not a perspective he would relish, of course. 

 

Thus being the situation, we seem to have a classic no-win situation. But then something happens that changes everything. Let's read the story from the book of Genesis

 

From the book of Genesis

¹³ And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep.

¹⁴ And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife.

¹⁵ When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.

¹⁶ And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?

¹⁷ And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?

¹⁸ And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.

¹⁹ And she arose, and went away, and laid by her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.

²⁰ And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not.

²¹ Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no harlot in this place.

²² And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place.

²³ And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.

²⁴ And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

²⁵ When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.

²⁶ And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.

Now, this story has such big holes in it that you could pass a caravan of a hundred camels through them. Let's see to explain. 

First, the idea that a prostitute awaits for customers in "an open place by the way to Timnath" is already suspicious. Prostitutes tend to frequent busy places and for one of them to sit and wait for customers in an "open place" would be dangerous if they were to meet a rough customer. In ancient times, prostitutes operated mainly in temples as "hierodules." That gave origin to the legend that Tamar was a sacred prostitute of some cult. But hierodules were not sacred, they were just a service provided by the temple that also guaranteed their safety and that they were paid. I describe that in a previous post. This is mostly a detail, but one of the many weaknesses of the whole story. 

Second, we are told that Judah "thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face." This is totally absurd. In ancient times, prostitutes did not veil their face. That was a no-no. Period. Here is how I discuss this point in a previous post

According to Michael Astur (1966), a Babylonian hierodule was strictly forbidden from wearing a veil and harshly punished if she did. So, how could Judah mistake a veiled woman for a prostitute? Astour, here, goes through a truly acrobatic leap of logic, noting first that a woman could abandon her hierodule status and marry and, in this case, she was allowed to wear a veil. Then, assuming that Tamar had been a hierodule before marrying, her wearing a veil could be "a privilege evidently extended into widowhood." Even if we were to agree on this perilous chain of assumptions, the explanation still makes no sense. How could Judah know that the veiled woman he had met was a former prostitute when her aspect, instead, was that of a married woman?

Third, we are asked to believe that Judah has sex with his daughter-in-law who has been living in his family for at least a few years and that he doesn't recognize her because she wears a face veil. Now, this is reminding of how Lois Lane in our "Superman" stories is so dumb that she can't recognize that her fiancée Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, just because Kent wears glasses. Maybe Judah wasn't the sharpest pair of scissors in the shearer's toolbox, but the story that the Bible tells us is supposed to be a true story. And Judah cannot have been that dumb. According to some sources, he said he was drunk. Yeah, sure.

Finally, there is the story that the supposed "prostitute" asks Judah for a pledge in the form of "Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff." That's another no-no: from the earliest days of monetary history, prostitutes have been paid in cash. It is unthinkable that Judah would go to the market of Timnath without taking at least a little silver with him. He was there to shear his sheep, and what would he have paid the shearers with? That silver could also have been used to pay for whatever he would have needed while there, including the services of a prostitute. That the supposed prostitute, Tamar, had asked for such a degree of commitment from Judah as to leave something that made him recognizable was weird at least, even suspicious.

So, how do you explain this series of apparently unsolvable contradictions? Well, as Captain Kirk of the Starship "Enterprise" would to say, there are always ways to avoid to put oneself in a no-win situation. And that was what may have happened. 

Let's go back to the impasse: Judah doesn't want to give Tamar to Shelah but he doesn't want to send her back to her family, either. In the meantime Judah's wife dies and suddenly there appears an obvious solution for Judah: take Tamar as his own wife. A good idea that keeps the money at home and still gives Tamar a chance to bear a heir to Judah's family. Besides, it is not hard to imagine that that a woman in full flower, such as Tamar, would have been attractive for a widower, such as Judah. But for Judah to marry her is legally impossible: Tamar is betrothed to Shelah and for Judah that would be seen as adultery, a grave sin, punishable even with death. 

But let's imagine that Judah and Tamar have an affair well before the Timnath story. Then, let's imagine that Tamar gets pregnant. Ouch, big problem: now they are adulterers, sinners, and both punishable by law. Of course Judah could deny being the father of Tamar's child, but that would condemn Tamar to death as a harlot and bring upon Judah the wrath of Tamar's family.

Then, before Tamar's pregnancy becomes obvious, a theatrical performance is organized. Tamar doesn't even need to go to Timnath disguised as a prostitute. Judah just comes back from there without his signet, bracelets, and staff. Then he goes through the charade of sending a friend to Timnath with a goat, supposedly to pay for a prostitute, but well knowing that there has never been one there. When the scandal breaks up, Judah's staff and stuff miraculously reappear in Tamar's hands, lending substance to an otherwise unbelievable story.

See how things fit together? Tamar did misbehave, but her father in law cannot punish her because she carries his child (actually, children, twins will be born). Then Judah is not an adulterer because he didn't know he was having sex with his daughter in law (oh, yeah, he was drunk!!). Tamar's relatives, then, are happy because Tamar's children will inherit Judah's wealth. And everyone his happy to pay no attention to the many inconsistencies of the story. The only one who may not be so happy is Shelah, who has lost the privilege of being the oldest son to Judah because Tamar's children will be considered heirs to the deceased Er. But so is life and you can't have everything.

You see how many details click together in this fascinating story. It is so fascinating because it describes the plight of normal people who weren't so concerned about grand things such as the house of David, but about their own survival in a difficult moment. And we can understand them and their plight, even millennia afterwards. But the most fascinating detail of the story is the role played by the veil. Had there not been the use for women to wear a veil, Judah couldn't have convincingly argued that he didn't know whom he was having sex with. The veil literally saved Tamar's life and ensured that her children would become the founders of the Davidic line of the tribe of Judah. And, as I said at the beginning, for everything that exists, there is a reason for it to exist

__________________________________________________

In this 1969 song by the Italian singer Lucio Battisti, we hear the story of a man who is told that his wife, Francesca, has been seen with another man. He says that it cannot be, that the woman they saw looked like Francesca, dressed in the same way and with the same hair color. But that cannot be because, he says, "Francesca lives for him." If veils had been worn by Italian married women in the 1960s, this song couldn't have existed.

Lucio Battisti - It's not Francesca (English translation)

you're wrong, who you saw is not
is not Francesca
she's always at home waiting for me
it's not Francesca
if there was a man, then
no, it can't be her
Francesca never asked for more
who's wrong, I'm sure, it's you
Francesca never asked for more
'cause she lives for me
like the other one, she's blond but
it's not Francesca
if she was dressed in red, I know
it's not Francesca
if she was hugging(him) then
no, it can't be her
Francesca never asked for more
who's wrong, I'm sure, it's you
Francesca never asked for more
'cause she lives for me
she lives for me
she lives for me

_____________________________________________

Astour, Michael, Journal of Biblical Literature, 85,2 (1966) 185-196.

Money and Prostitution in the ancient world: the Biblical story of Tamar and Judah

Horace Vermet's interpretation of the biblical story of Tamar seducing her father in law, Judah. Practically all modern painters have shown the seduction scene as taking place somewhere in the desert or in the middle of nowhere. But they were missing the point of a story rich of hidden meanings and that may tell us much about the role of money in the life of the past, and in our times. 

Have you ever thought about how a world without money could be? Today, it looks impossible, but there have been times, in the ancient past, when money just didn't exist - it had not been invented yet. Surely, life must have been very different in those times and an interesting story that seems to come from that age is the one that we can read in the Bible about how Tamar seduced her father in law, Judah, to force him to obey the Levirate law. The story says that Tamar met Judah as he was traveling in the city of Enaim. She was wearing a veil, so that he didn't recognize her, and she convinced him to send her a goat in exchange for her sleeping with him. As pledge, he left with her his "staff, seal, and cord." When, later on, Judah sent the goat to Enaim, she was nowhere to be found. Months later, Tamar was found to be pregnant and Judah ordered to put her to death on the sin of harlotry. But Tamar could produce Judah's pledge, the staff, seal, and cord, showing that he was the father of the child (actually, twins). According to the Levirate law, these children were legitimate, since Judah had refused to give to Tamar as husband his third son, after that the first two had died. So, one of Tamar's sons was the ancestor of King David and, later on, of Jesus of Nazareth.

Independently of whether you are a believer or not, you can't avoid feeling the fascination of this story that has generated a large number of comments; often centered on how it could be that the ancestry of Jesus can be found in a woman whose behavior was at least questionable. Other interpretations have been centered on understanding the historical roots of the story, generating dozens of learned papers in the scientific literature. Here, however, I'll focus on the "monetary" elements of the story.

At first sight, it seems that we have to understand the story as implying that money - intended as currency - didn't exist at that time. Otherwise, how could it be that Judah accepted to engage in a transaction that involved that kind of personal pledge? The way things are, today, the customer of a prostitute pays in cash, the transaction leaves no traces, and that's the quintessential kind of cash transaction. So, how could prostitutes - whose job is said to be "the oldest profession" - exist before money had been invented?

However, if we examine the question in more detail, it is clear that the monetary elements of the story are not so simple as they appear. First of all, what do we know about prostitution in those times? The story is supposed to take place around mid-first millennium BCE and there is a vast literature on prostitution at that time (see e.g Astour 1966 and Morris, 2008). It is clear that there existed prostitutes in the Middle Eastern region at that time, people whom we would describe today as "sex workers," providing sexual services in exchange for a compensation. In many cases, however, it seems that these sex workers were associated to temples, and if female they were referred to as "hierodules." There are no "cultic" implications in this term; in the sense that temple prostitutes would perform religious rites or services. It meant simply that they performed their job as one of the many services provided by temples. Why was  that? Mainly because of the kind of currency used at that time.

About money, at the time of Judah and Tamar several metal-based media of exchange had been available already for a long time (Powell 1996). The main currency was based on silver in chunks of variable size, while standardized coins were available, although probably not common. Now, if currency is in the form of silver chunks of variable weight, then every transaction requires weighing the silver. As a guarantee of honest weighing, an intermediary would have been normally needed, and that was surely a service that the temples could provide. Temples, indeed, were not just religious institutions but acted as corporations, warehouses, and commercial centers (Sterba 1976). So, it is not surprising that they provided also sexual services to their customers; quite possibly, they would pay the temple rather than the prostitute herself. The Church of England did something similar in Medieval times (Karras 1996). In later times, the diffusion of cash made these services unnecessary and, therefore, the temples as service providers disappeared.

We even have some idea of the prices of prostitution at the times of Tamar and Judah, from an Old Babylonian text reported by Morris (2006).

"When I am standing by the wall, it is one lamb.
When I am bowing down, it is one and a half shekels"

In terms of silver, "one and a half shekel" correspond to 12.5 grams, considering that one shekel makes 8.33 g (Powell, 1996). This is about the weight of a single modern silver coin; for instance the U.S. silver half dollar. At the current silver prices (ca. 1.5 $/g) a shekel and a half correspond to $19. However, silver was much less common in ancient times and Powell (1996) remarks about a shekel that "even this small amount of silver constituted about a month's pay for labor throughout a large part of ancient Mesopotamian history."  One shekel of silver seemed also to correspond to the price of approximately one lamb or one goat according with some data we have about ancient Egypt (reshafim.org). It is clear that, if these were the prices, peasants and workers could hardly afford the services of a prostitute. But that wasn't the case of Judah, likely a wealthy landowner, and he could afford to pay the equivalent of a goat for the deal; finding it nothing unusual. After all, no one in the story seems to find strange that Judah was sending one of his friends with a goat as payment for a prostitute.

So, we are back to the first question: why didn't the transaction between Judah and Tamar involve currency? Is it possible that Judah wouldn't have carried even at least a little silver with him in his travel? If not for a prostitute, he would have needed it for food and lodging. Of course, there may have been reasons we can't easily understand today. But I would like to propose an explanation based on the fact that Judah understood very well that the woman he met in Enaim was not a prostitute. And that, even if he had silver with him, he didn't consider appropriate to use it for that occasion.

The key element of the story, here, is Tamar's veil. The question is, why should a prostitute veil herself? In ancient times, just as in modern ones, the veil is almost always a sign that a woman is married, or anyway unavailable for marriage. And not just that; according to Michael Astur (1966), a Babylonian hierodule was strictly forbidden from wearing a veil and harshly punished if she did. So, how could Judah mistake a veiled woman for a prostitute? Astour, here, goes through a truly acrobatic leap of logic, noting first that a woman could abandon her hierodule status and marry and, in this case, she was allowed to wear a veil. Then, assuming that Tamar had been a hierodule before marrying, her wearing a veil could be "a privilege evidently extended into widowhood." Even if we were to agree on this perilous chain of assumptions, the explanation still makes no sense. How could Judah know that the veiled woman he had met was a former prostitute when her aspect, instead, was that of a married woman?

So, we can imagine that Judah understood perfectly well that the woman he met in Enaim was not a prostitute; but that the circumstances made it possible to have a sexual encounter with her; something akin to what we call today an "affair" or, maybe, a "one night stand". We know that the meeting of Judah and Tamar took place in correspondence with a festival related to the shearing of sheep. We don't know what were the uses of festivals in the town of Enaim at that time but, still, sheep are normally sheared at the beginning of spring, and that is also the time of some typical fertility festivities that in our times we call "carnival". In these festivities, masks could be worn, and may be worn even today, allowing wearers a certain degree of anonymity, and hence of sexual license. In the case of Tamar and Judah, it may well be that the veiled woman would have found offensive to be paid in silver currency, like a prostitute. But she would maybe have accepted a gift in the form of a goat. Surely, she asked Judah a certain degree of commitment in the affair; not just a monetary payment. Hence the requirement of  his staff, seal, and cord, something that a normal prostitute would never require from a customer.

Then, why does the Bible insist that Tamar was a prostitute? Well, in ancient times, for a man to engage in an affair with a married woman was not only morally condemned, but also legally sanctioned. And Judah had done exactly that while, at the same time, leaving to the woman the means to identify him if she wanted. So, it is understandable that Judah was worried about the possible consequences of what he had done and that he wanted back his seal, staff, and cord, as soon as possible. At that time, frequenting a prostitute doesn't seem to have been under the same kind of moral blame that is typical of our times. Hence, Judah may have invented the story of the "prostitute" to justify sending a goat to Enaim. That explains the surprise of the people of Enaim when asked about a "temple prostitute" that - they said - had never been there. It was true, she was not a prostitute.

This story tells us a lot about how the availability of a certain kind of currency affected people's habits. There is no doubt that the invention of coinage - or "cash" - around the 7th century BCE, generated the possibility of commercial exchanges that would lave no traces; hence making possible many activities that would be considered illegal, then as today, including that of a certain kind of prostitution. In our times, most Western countries seem to be engaged in a war against cash - trying to replace it with electronic means of payment. The idea is to avoid exactly the anonymity that makes cash so useful for illegal transactions. So, in a world without cash, most scams, thefts, and the like have moved to the internet. But how about the world's "oldest profession?" Will we return to temple prostitutes, as they were common at the time of Tamar and Judah? Hard to say, but never underestimate people's creativity when it is a question of engaging in something illegal.



References

Astour, Michael, Journal of Biblical Literature, 85,2 (1966) 185-196.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

Lipiński, Edward, Biblical Archeological Society, 2014. http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=40&Issue=1&ArticleID=10

Morris, Silver, Temple/Sacred Prostitution in Ancient Mesopotamia Revisited: Religion in the Economy." Ugarit Forschungen, 38, 2006 (published 2008), 631-63.

Powell, Marvin A, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Vol. 39, No. 3, Money in the Orient (1996), pp. 224-242

Sterba, Richard L. A.  The Organization and Management of the Temple Corporations in Ancient Mesopotamia, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp. 16-26