Performing the Purification Ritual -- Italy, 2020.
In a recent post, Dr. Sebastian Rushworth asks the question, "Why did the world react so histerically to covid?" His answer is that it is China's fault for having sent the global media in overdrive with over-dramatized images of the epidemic.
Personally, I think this is not the explanation. China has nothing to do with what's happening in the West, it is something way deeper. I came to the conclusion that what we are witnessing is nothing less than a worldwide ritual of purification. All the trappings well-known to be involved in these rituals are present: from the ritual ablutions to the wearing of special clothing, including the believers being involved in various forms of penance in order to purify not just the body, but also the spirit.
The correspondence is nearly perfect: face masks, compulsive hand washing, isolation of the cathecumens and the generalized punishment of all the "ludic" activities, from restaurants to tourism. If you read the piece below, written by prof. Sherry B. Ortner and published on "Britannica." You could be thinking that you are reading a description of the current Covid-19 pandemic, yet it was published more than 20 years ago, in 1999.
So, we are going through this ritual just because we have to. The only problem is that the rituals observed in "primitive" societies tend to last for a short time and to end with the believers ready to restart their normal life. Here, there is no end in sight for this series of rituals that seem to be going on forever.
Every culture has an idea, in one form or another, that the inner essence of man can be either pure or defiled. This idea presupposes a general view of man in which his active or vitalizing forces, the energies that stimulate and regulate his optimum individual and social functioning, are distinguished from his body, on the one hand, and his mental or spiritual faculties, on the other. These energies are believed to be disturbed or “polluted” by certain contacts or experiences that have consequences for a person’s entire system, including both the physical and the mental aspects. Furthermore, the natural elements, animals and plants, the supernatural, and even certain aspects of technology may be viewed as operating on similar energies of their own; they too may therefore be subject to the disturbing effects of pollution. Because lost purity can be re-established only by ritual and also because purity is often a precondition for the performance of rituals of many kinds, anthropologists refer to this general field of cultural phenomena as “ritual purity” and “ritual pollution.”
The rituals for re-establishing lost purity, or for creating a higher degree of purity, take many different forms in the various contemporary and historical cultures for which information is available. Some purification rituals involve one or two simple gestures, such as washing the hands or body, changing the clothes, fumigating the person or object with incense, reciting a prayer or an incantation, anointing the person or object with some ritually pure substance. Some involve ordeals, including blood-letting, vomiting, and beating, which have a purgative effect. Some work on the scapegoat principle, in which the impurities are ritually transferred onto an animal, or even in some cases (as among the ancient Greeks) onto another human being; the animal or human scapegoat is then run out of town and/or killed, or at least killed symbolically. Many purification rites are very complex and incorporate several different types of purifying actions.
Ritual purity and pollution are matters of general social concern because pollution, it is believed, may spread from one individual or object to other members of society. Each culture defines what is pure and impure—and the consequences of purity and pollution—differently from every other culture, although there is considerable cross-cultural overlapping on certain beliefs. Cultures also vary greatly in the extent to which purity and pollution are pervasive concerns: Hinduism, Judaism, and certain tribal groups such as the Lovedu of South Africa or the Yurok of northern California in the United States seem highly pollution-conscious, whereas among other peoples pollution concerns are relatively isolated and occasional. Even within the so-called pollution-conscious cultures, attitudes toward the cultural regulations may vary considerably: the Yurok, on the one hand, are said to consider their purification rituals to be rather a nuisance, albeit necessary for the success of their economic endeavours; but Hindus, on the other hand, seem to incorporate and embrace more fully the many regulations and rituals concerning purity prescribed in their belief and social systems.
Pollution is most commonly transmitted by physical contact or proximity, although it may also spread by means of kinship ties or co-residence in an area in which pollution has occurred. Because purity and pollution are inner states (though there usually are outer or observable symptoms of pollution), the defiled man—or artifact, temple, or natural phenomenon—may at first show no outward features of his inner corruption. Eventually, however, the effects of pollution will make themselves known; the appearance of a symptom or disaster that is culturally defined as a consequence of pollution, for example, may be the first indication that a defiling contact has occurred. Common cross-cultural, human symptoms of pollution include: skin disease, physical deformity, insanity and feeblemindedness, sterility, and barrenness. Nature also may become barren as a result of pollution; but, on the other hand, the natural elements and magical or supernatural forces may run amok as a result of pollution.
It is rare that an author is given the privilege of creating a work that defines a whole age. It happened to Dante with his "Comedy," but I think that Ursula Le Guin had the same privilege when she wrote his "EarthSea" cycle, starting in 1968. It is a cycle that encompasses and defines the whole 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
It is especially impressive how in the last volume of the first series, "The Farthest Shore," Le Guin managed to describe exactly the current situation, where humans are so desperate to avoid death that they can renounce to everything that makes them human for a false hope of immortality
They came then into the
streets of one of the cities that are there, and Arren saw the houses
with windows that are never lit, and in certain doorways standing, with
quiet faces and empty hands, the dead.
The marketplaces were all empty. There was no buying and selling there, no
gaining and spending. Nothing was used; nothing was made. Ged and Arren
went through the narrow streets alone, though a few times they saw a
figure at the turning of another way, distant and hardly to be seen in
the gloom.
All
those whom they saw -not many, for the dead are many, but that land is
large- stood still, or moved slowly and with no purpose. None of them
bore wounds. They were
whole and healed. They were healed of pain and of life. Quiet were their faces, freed from anger
and desire, and there was in their shadowed eyes no hope.
Instead
of fear, then, great pity rose up in Arren, and if fear underlay it, it
was not for himself, but for all people. For he saw the mother and
child who had died together, and they were in the dark land together;
but the child did not run, nor did it cry, and the mother did not hold
it or ever look at it. And those who had died for love passed each other
in the streets.
In
the end, all literature, all science, all knowledge, are travel
reports. Sometimes reports from remote lands where one has actually
been, sometimes from lands of pure fantasy, sometimes from realms that
science can create although nobody could ever go there: the inside of
stars, remote galaxy, the great black holes.
And here is a story
of a travel of these strange days of Christmas of 2020. This travel meant walking
in a this foggy city, nearly empty of people, with the few Christmas lights
looking lonely and useless. And the people: all masked, all looking at each other suspiciously, all
walking on as if they had nowhere to go. It was a place that looked very
much like the description of the Land of the Dead that Ursula Le Guin
gave us in her "Wizard of Earthsea."
That real fog and that
real silence that enveloped the city were just the background of a
virtual travel to another foggy land: the land of truth that doesn't
seem to exist anymore. I started this trip by looking at the scientific
literature about the coronavirus pandemic. Reviewed scientific
papers are supposed to be the very source of truth. What I found were plenty of contradictions, of contrasting results, of evident bending of
the interpretations, of attempt to be politically correct to appease the all powerful watchers who take the
form of editors and reviewers.
There is a kind of fog that
pervades everything in the scientific literature. You are always under
the suspicion that it would take so little to corrupt scientists. And I
know it happens. I have seen it happening. Scientists turn out to be so cheap to corrupt, all what
it takes is the promise of a research grant, but let me not tell you a
few sad stories I know. In any case, this is what science is today, and
that is supposed to be "Science" starting with a capital letter and on
which you must believe. And if you don't, you are, what? A conspiracy
theorist? A science denier? An enemy of the people?
It is a fog that surrounds
everything in science. And even if you can trust the authors, when the data look good, the conclusions sound, you see that what we call science has no impact on the debate on the pandemic. Have you tried to argue in a public debate on the basis of data and rational arguments? You know what happens: you find
yourself pelted with links by people who use them as if they were stones
launched by medieval catapults. It is not just fog: you find yourself in a house of
mirrors, you see multiple reflections of everything staring at you from
all directions. And every reflection claims aloud "I am the truth! I am
the truth!"
Surfing the web, I stumbled into another case of mirrors reflecting into each other. Do you remember the Rwandan
massacre of 1994? You probably remember it as the story of how the evil Hutu (the
majority) massacred the poor Tutsi (a minority), as told in the emotional film "Hotel Rwanda." But I found myself facing a report
titled "Hotel Propaganda" that proposed the exactly opposite
interpretation. The ones massacred were the Hutu when Rwanda was invaded from Uganda by an army led by the Tutsi and
supported by the Western powers in order to gain control of the mineral
resources of central Africa.
Did Cain really kill Abel, or was it the opposite? How can we know? What
do we know about Rwanda? Could you pinpoint Rwanda on a world map? Have you ever met a Rwandan? Have you ever seen
anything of Rwanda that didn't appear in one of the Western propaganda
channels? What is truth, as Pilate said? Mirrors everywhere, the truth is everywhere and nowhere, and the fog
pervades everything.
Still roaming a strange and foggy land, I stumbled into something even stranger and foggier -- an article by Thorsten Pattberg on the Saker blog
-- (Yes, I know that it is one of the most subversive sites of the internet) It is
strange how I arrived there: I was writing something about
Caligula, the Roman Emperor. You know, the pervert, the madman, the one
who made a horse a consul and who forced people to worship him as a God.
Yes, we all know that, but is it true? And as I was asking myself that
question, I stumbled into Pattberg's post that mentioned exactly the
same subject: was Caligula a monster or a maligned hero?
The
fog of history is truly thick if we try to pierce it across the nearly 2
thousand years that separate us from Caligula. And yet, we think we
know something about Roman Emperors, don't we? But what do we know about Roman Emperors? How do we know that
such people even existed? How do we know that there existed such a thing
as the Roman Empire? Sure, you can find great walls and half-crumbled
buildings, but what are they for? Who built them?The Romans? The
Atlanteans? Aliens from Betelgeuse? Or who?
Pattberg's piece is a
nice trip into the land of nihilism. Who are we? What are we doing?
Where are we going? It contains such gems as
"Since something can exist without being existent (interest rates, gross
domestic product, French cuisine, the billion-year commitment and
unicorns), soon our planners will introduce the realm of non-existence –
and harvest it accordingly. It is a bit like discovering the concept of
negative numbers. The notion of humans who are actual burdensome
“minus-people” will capture imaginations. We will compute trillions of
them."
And so it goes. In these foggy days, in a city
populated by masked ghosts walking while suspiciously watching each other, the impression is
that nothing is real, except for the fact that maybe we do live in Le
Guin's Land of the Dead as she describes it in her Earthsea cycle. And
maybe Earthsea really exists somewhere, except that we, the dwellers of
the Land of the Dead, cannot see it.
It is more than just a similarity,
because the way Le Guin describes her fictional world, she seems to have
been prescient of what would have happened to the world we deem to be
real: the refusal of death leads to nothing but the loss of life. In the story, Ged
the Archmage says to the sorcerer Cob:
You exist:
without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot
see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save
yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is
yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to
draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your
nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not
all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.
And that's how a promise of immortality had become worthless in the fictional (or maybe real) world of Earthsea. And so it is for us, in our ghostly world of today
that we think is real. We sold everything we had, including our freedom and our dignity, for a
false promise of immortality.
But, as
the Japanese poets would say, the world is made out of dew, just
condensed fog. And as long as we can walk, we walk with our feet and we walk with our
minds. Someday, maybe we'll get somewhere. Or maybe not. But we keep
walking.
Detail of a Fresco by Masaccio (1401 –1428) in the Church of S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. This painting, just like many others depicting the same scene, shows Adam covering his face when chased away from the Garden of Eden. Other paintings show Eve covering her face, or both her and Adam's face. Where they trying to hide from God? Of course not. They were hiding from themselves.
One of the most dramatic moments of the Genesis, perhaps of the whole Bible, is when God searches for Adam and calls him saying, "Adam, where are you?" It is so dramatic because it is obvious that the omniscient God of the Bible knows very well where Adam is. And you can almost feel the surprise of God in seeing his creature hiding from him in a bush.
It is Adam who doesn't know anymore where he is. He has lost his bearing. He has lost his dignity and he is now ashamed of himself. So much that in most pictorial representations we have of the scene, we see Adam (or Eve, or both) covering their faces with their hands. They were ashamed of showing themselves to God for what they were. They didn't have face masks or veils, but if they had had them, they would have shown themselves to God with their faces partly covered.
This scene of the Genesis is part of the human cycle. We tend to see ourselves sometimes as Gods, sometimes as earthworms. It is there, in the Bible: Adam and Eve are the jewel of the creation, but they fail to live up to the expectations of their creator. They ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but it was not what they knew that doomed them, it was what they thought they knew. It was lack of humility that led them to true humiliation.
The opposite side of the cycle is the Promethean exaltation. The fire bringer, the Titan God who who represented human striving for scientific knowledge and embedded in a single cycle the success and the failure of the attempt. Here is how the proud Prometheus of the Rockefeller Center, in New York, sees his own doom, humiliated in a scene that brings much more meaning than those who performed the act probably intended. (Image source).
And there we stand: ridiculous as it may be to force a mask onto a lifeless piece of statuary, it is not so bad as doing that to a real human being. A creature created in the image of God as the true jewel of creation. But look at how this poor creature is reduced:
Doesn't this woman remind you of Eve running away from Eden? She is ashamed to raise her glance to the sky, ashamed to look at her fellow human beings, afraid to touch anything and anyone. A sad, humiliated larva, an earthworm, a snake. Yes, the Biblical snake was nothing but ourselves.
I think the best depiction of this contradiction -- man as a jewel and a snake at the same time -- comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in the widely known speech "What a piece of work is man".
What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty!
in form, in moving, how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
(on Prometheus, see also this post by Miguel Martinez)
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
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?
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.
