Moments later, the child noticed his sister playing in the other room. A thought occurred to him … a light went on, as it were. He turned back to his mother with an expression somewhere between accusation and perplexity.

“You did it twice?!?!?”

It makes sense that Christians would believe that Jesus was born of a virgin. Christianity itself is all about child psychology, punishment and reward, the bogyman and nectar (candy) of heaven, and so on. A virgin birth would mean that Mary, mother of Jesus, could be a woman who never did it. Not once, certainly not twice.

It turns out that the idea of virgin birth is not clearly part of early Christian lore, and in fact there is a considerable amount of evidence that the contemporaries of Jesus, or those who came soon after, did not really consider the possibility. In fact, there were claims at the time that Jesus was a descendant of David. This would have been through Joseph, as this is how lineage was constructed by the Jews of the time (this business of inheriting Jewishness from the mother is a much, much later construction).

The other reason that it would be convenient if Mary, mother of Jesus was a virgin is the simple fact that all the women in the Bible are prostitutes. This, of course, leads us to consider the very nature of prostitution in relation to the early scriptures of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Let’s have a look at that idea from an ethnographic perspective.

I want to ask you a question. Is Maria a prostitute? Wait, don’t answer yet … you don’t know Maria. I’ll tell you a little about her.

Maria is sexually active. Now and then, she will spend the night with a man she has only recently met, but only if he pays. He does not pay her, but rather, he pays another adult male, who gives Maria a cut. He will sleep with her several times, paying each time, until he tires of her or she tires of him or the man who takes the payment tires of them both. Later, Maria will find another man.

In some societies, a woman who had this sexual and economic arrangement would be considered a prostitute. Indeed, in the US, she could be charged with the crime of solicitation.

The Maria I know, however, is not from the US. She is just a teenager who is unmarried living in roughly the same region of the world where this Bible story played out. Eventually, one of the men will click with her and visa versa, and the man who takes the payment … Maria’s father … will not object, or at least not object too much, and Maria and this man will be married. Thereafter, Maria will not have sex for money for the rest of her life, or until she becomes unmarried, or unless her marriage kinda goes on the rocks and her husband does not mind her becoming an actual prostitute.

In the society I’m describing, there are prostitutes. The difference between an unmarried woman and an actual prostitute is how many times you sleep with a man for a particular amount of money, and if there is any expectation of marriage.

This is a very common pattern in many areas of the world, and I suspect it applies to the times and places represented in much of both the so-called “Old” and “New” testaments of the Bible (wherever those tests refer to day to day life, anyway).

A virgin, in those times, would have been a woman not without sexual relations, but rather, without sexual uncertainties. She would have been a woman who would be married to a particular lineage, perhaps a semi-royal or chieftain’s lineage, by arrangement. Such as a young girl married to a “son of David.” Not a sexless female, just a female who is not available, for payment, on a trial basis or in any other way.

I do not mean to assert that anything at all related to the Christ story is true (or not true). There is only mixed evidence to assert that a story involving specific named individuals … Mary, Joseph, Christ, the three wise men, etc. … actually existed as stated in the stories, and did the things the stories tell us. I do suggest, however, that it is possible to understand this story in the ethnographic context we can loosely reconstruct for the times.

Other Bible as Ethnography Posts

The Bible as Ethnography Posts

• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 01 ~ Introduction
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 02 ~ In The Beginning…
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 03 ~ Sometimes a Snake is Just a Snake. But not in this case….
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 04 ~ Agricultural Transitions
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 05 ~ The Virgin Birth

Origin stories sometimes refer to origins of sexual relations, sometimes prescribing and sometimes proscribing certain practices. The origin story for the Efe (Pygmies) and Lese (horticulturalists) of the Ituri Forest has the first Efe man teaching the first Lese man about sex. He does this by having sex with the first Lese woman. That is an incredibly outrageous concept. Efe men are not allowed to have carnal relationships with Lese women under any circumstances (though Efe women can marry Lese men). This, the Efe/Lese origin story is a kind of beginning and a kind of end for a certain sort of relationship.

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From a purely ethnographic perspective, the snake is interesting. The snake is found in various origin myths. It may be the harbinger of a spirit or an ancestor. For example, among the Efe Pygmies, there is an entity known as “Njou” (pronounced, in – joe – oo), which is an animal linked to a clan, a totem in anthropological parlance that, from the perspective of any individual, may be an embodied ancestor. So if you are in a certain clan, your Njou might be a blue duiker (a kind of antelope), so any blue duiker you run into could be an ancestor. Therefore, you can’t ever kill or eat a blue duiker. The majority of Njou are snakes.

Snakes are rarely vilified to the degree they are in Genesis. Indeed, very few entities of any kind have ever been as vilified as the satan/snake of Genesis. But many of the instances where snakes are cast in a negative light (in mythology) tend to be European, including Greek, Roman and Norse mythologies. The intelligence of the serpent in Genesis is fairly typical of snakes in myth globally.

A particular species of tree having magical or spiritual importance is probably widespread, and is clearly seen in a lot of African belief systems. Having a particular tree play a special role (not a species or variety of tree, but a specific, individual tree at a certain location) is something I have encountered in the Ituri Forest and that I’m aware of from many parts of East Africa. I do not want to exclude other regions of the world from this pattern of mythology, however. The “tree of life” theme is probably largely Judeo-Christian, transplanted to many other belief systems, but there are many other trees in many other contexts.

The role of Genesis 3 seems to be two part, from a male perspective: 1) find a way to blame women for something really bad, and 2) work out a justification for sexual control of women and thus, indirectly for reproductive rights. These closely linked functions are found in Maasai origin stories, as well as origin stories in some Congolese groups. Again, I’m not suggesting a purely African phenomenon at all, just pointing out some cases where Africa pertains.

Another interesting aspect of this text is the specific reference to intensive male labor in agriculture. Various agricultural societies can be categorized by the degree (and kind) of male labor, ranging from very little to a great deal (ala Boserup’s work). Typically, traditional agriculture that involves a lot of male work also involves irrigation.

This text also makes a more specific connection between god and the two sacred trees in the Garden of Eden. It is reasonable to assume from this text that god obtains the power of knowledge, as well as the power of eternal life, by eating the fruit from these two trees. (This is yet another contradiction, because god had made these trees, among the different origin stories represented mainly in Genesis 1 and 2.)

If you ignore Genesis 1, and integrate Genesis 2 and 3, it is reasonable to suggest that God had been living off the land, and produced the Garden of Eden and humans to upgrade to irrigation (with the humans getting to do all of the work). This theme is parallel to the Sumerian stories, except that those stories start with higher and lower level gods, and the lower level gods do all the work, until they think up inventing humans to do it for them. If we look to origin stories as justification, we see in this scenario justification for a working or labor class (or role) related to irrigation.

The Bible as Ethnography Posts

• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 01 ~ Introduction
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 02 ~ In The Beginning…
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 03 ~ Sometimes a Snake is Just a Snake. But not in this case….
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 04 ~ Agricultural Transitions
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 05 ~ The Virgin Birth

Genesis 1 is very systematic, resembling a post-hoc construction of events, and its main practical purpose may be to justify the sabbath. Genesis 2 gives some meaty ethnographic details, including specific geographical reference points (though reconstruction based on this is probably beyond the realm of possibility), reference to irrigation as a practice, and reference to sex. Both of these texts make reference to “seeds” and “fruit” as key features of plants, to an ocean and to whales, and to a variety of other animals. The second text makes specific reference to cattle.

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In the absence of absolutely any contextual information (such as language or the histories of the documents themselves) these texts are origin stories related to a people who have agriculture, likely some connection to irrigation agriculture, and cattle.

Everyone knows that god makes woman (Eve) from Adam’s rib. There are controversies in translation and meaning of this “event.” Indeed, when Vesalius produced a human anatomy indicating that males and females had the same number of ribs (normally), in the early 16th century, some people became fairly upset. The original Hebrew word used in the bible is like a Sumerian term, and together these may refer to either a rib (as in a particular rib from one side of the body) or a side (like a side of beef?).

The concept that men should have one fewer rib than women because god removed Adam’s rib is of course deeply flawed for two reasons that are usually not discussed .. aside, that is, from the fact that this never actually happened and it is just a story. And in fact, I should say that I’m trying to refrain from discussion of these kinds of specifics (like, how the order of creation of different things in Genesis 1 is actually physically impossible … that’s fun stuff to throw at literal young-earth creationists but that is not the point of this series of posts!). But I do want to discuss the ribs because there is ultimately a tenuous ethnographic connection that is far fetched but fun.

But first, the inconsistencies. If god did what it is said to have done, then men and women would have the same number of ribs. First, god removes the rib from Adam, so now Adam has a reduced number of ribs. Then god uses this rib to create Eve more or less like Adam but with some obvious differences (viva la difference, and all that). So Eve is like a transgender clone. Thus, since she is a clone of the the partially de-boned Adam, she then would also would be short-ribbed. The second inconsistency is that, as you must have figured out by now, the idea that men would have fewer ribs than women is Lamarkian. Adam would still contain the genetic code for that rib. So the only short-ribbed man is Adam himself, which is how we will recognize his skeleton once it is located by archaeologists.. (These inconsistencies are of course inconsistent with each other, keeping with a long-practiced tradition of biblical scholarship, I suppose.)

But the rib is still interesting, and here I fully admit I’m going way out on a limb… In hunter-gatherer societies, most animals that are obtained through hunting go through a process called “distribution and redistribution.” This involves butchery of the animal into certain parts, these parts posessed by selected individuals who had a certain role in the hunt, then those parts are passed on one more time, usually to the resident women, who cut the meat up and redistribute it on the basis of need. This is a very common pattern found as far as I know in all groups. Also found in all hunter-gatherer groups is a specific pattern of butchery, whereby there is a certain piece of the animal, including mainly lumbar vertebrae and the meat along side it, that has a special role in this system. This is the piece that goes to the individual who had the most critical role in the hunt. Often this piece includes Adam’s rib, the last, or lowermost rib.

A “side” (actually, middle, or piece) of meat with Adam’s rib thus plays a special role in forager lifeways. The bible is about non-foragers, but this is the origin story. Perhaps Eve is not made from Adam’s rib, but rather, Adam’s rib (the “side of beef” including this rib) is used to induce an interest by “Eve” in Adam, or (shall we get Freudian???) the slayer of Adam. The cloning of Eve is actually the wooing of Eve. Which, eventually, will lead to sex.

Next installment: Snakes and sex.

The Bible as Ethnography Posts

• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 01 ~ Introduction
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 02 ~ In The Beginning…
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 03 ~ Sometimes a Snake is Just a Snake. But not in this case….
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 04 ~ Agricultural Transitions
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 05 ~ The Virgin Birth

In graduate school, I was lucky to have Irv DeVore as my primary advisor (eventually … it did not start out that way). In fact, I was his the last student for which he was primary advisor. I learned a lot of things from Irv (still do now and then). One of the unique aspects of DeVore, who is famous for his Hunter-Gatherer studies, and before that, his seminal work with baboons, is that he comes from early beginnings as a child preacher and student of religion. Largely because of this religious training, DeVore tends to make use of the bible as a source of metaphor and aphorism. (In other words, it is a text with which he is familiar, so he uses it.)

One day we were co-teaching a class on Africa, and in lecture he held up a copy of The Maasai, an ethnography written as a PhD thesis by a woman who herself was a Maasai, but “off the reservation” and pursuing an academic career. Irv noted the fact that this book read lot like the bible … it contained origin stories that held together key aspects of the modern Maasai culture, and it documented the key patrilines (so and so begat so and so, and so on) relevant to the modern socio-political landscape among the Maasai. DeVore pointed out that much of the bible (Old Testament) is actually an ethnography of a pastoral nomadic people. Indeed, much of the course we were teaching (and pretty much making it up as we went along) involved investigation of kinship systems in various societies, and we ended up making quite a bit of reference to the Old Testament (Levirate marriage, and so on). To this day, I use this reading of the bible on a regular basis.

Later, while working in South Africa, I spent some time with Tom Huffman, an archaeologist who has worked in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Tom has put together ethnographic and historical information gleaned form the Shona and Venda people (and elsewhere) and developed compelling interpretations of the architecture-rich sites of Great Zimbabwe and contemporary settlements.

As I learned more of the ethnographic record, and did more work in African archeology, the very apparent fact loomed that archaeologists in general and to some extent other scholars had a habit of drawing a line, somewhere in Egypt typically, and treating “sub-Saharan” Africa as a reality unto itself, largely unrelated to Eurasian prehistory and history. This included shelving all apparent innovations on the African continent as some kind of Eurasian introduction. It also included ignoring the fact that one of the largest (geographically), longest run, and in many ways most impressive “civilizations” to emerge on this planet was an African one …. in Ancient Egypt, and that this was part of a larger set of phenomena that did not find that boundary… between Black Africa and Non-Black (or Less-Black, anyway) Eurasia, to be a factor.

I began to formulate a new way of thinking of prehistory in the region that explicitly ignored any racial or perceived cultural, or modern political, boundaries. I began to see a region, running from somewhere in India, across the Middle East and a little bit of Eastern and Mediterranean Europe, across the northern Sahara, and down the coast of Africa, for some periods in prehistory, as a single (yet internally diverse) continuum of cultural form and ecological adaptation, with certain things held in common, including: 1) The interior/hinterland relationship to the Indian Ocean Basin, as a trade route, route of movement of people and ideas, and movement of technology; 2) A region where the keeping of cattle tended to be common, with varying degrees of nomadism, and ancient, and a diversity of relationships to non-cattle keeping people; and 3) A common set of climates, dominated with grasslands and interspersed forested highlands. There was a certain degree of linguistic continuity, with a couple of language families dominating, and a great abundance of key mineral resources, such as iron ore and gold, as well.

Taking all of this together, it occurred to me that a good chunk of the old Testament is telling a story about nomadic pastoralists much like the Shona that Tom Huffman had worked with. My saying (or repeating what DeVore said) that large parts of the Old Testament is an ethnography of a nomadic cattle keeping people is not a very new idea. What is new is the particular link between the Southeast African cultures, which are documented ethnographically, and the biblical model of society. There is not a one-to one-correspondence between the two, and in fact, they are very different, but there are some important commonalities.

This has allowed me to reinterpret parts of the bible in a new way. I won’t make this into a mystery novel: The single most important aspect of this interpretation is one that most people will find odd and perhaps startling, and if you happen to accept the bible as the word of god, and god as your deity, you will find this blasphemous. So if that’s going to happen, stop reading now, and go somewhere else on the Internet! (You can even have your price of admission back, in full, if you just fill out this form…)

The idea is simple. God existed, alright, but he was a king. In this African tradition, the royal lineage lives apart and speaks a separate language from the rest of the people. There is a second special lineage of interpreters, people who learn the language of the king, which is essentially a sacred language, as well as the language of the people, and who acts as a go-between. No one speaks to the king. You only speak to the interpreter. Most of the time, the interpreter is delivering the word of the king, with a certain amount of communication the other way round.

In this interpretation, Moses, for instance, would be a member of the interpreter’s lineage.

This is the traditional Shona way, and it also happens to be the way of Pharonic Egypt, give or take a detail or two. It’s an African thing. I am always very surprised how learning that the bible may be about an African thing drives people nuts, even the non-religious. Sorry if I’m driving you nuts but, well, that’s what I’m here for.

There’s more, but it is not as easily described or concise as the idea that the biblica god was a king, and Moses is a mouthpiece. Also, I don’t think god works out as a king in all of the biblical texts. In fact, I think the Torah can be divided into a few different parts, with genesis literally being the origin story for the people ethnographically described in Numbers and Deuteronomy. Exodus is the “civilization story” for these people, and Leviticus is the law. In other words, the Torah is a Social Studies Curriculum, running from origins, to history, including law, and contemporary society, for a social studies class taught in the time of Moses.

My long term goal is to write something intensive and extensive on this view of the Old Testament. My short term goal is to write a series of posts for this weblog, a blog epic (which should be said with a French Accent … Le Blog Apeec) on the topic. And you have just read the introduction to it.

The Bible as Ethnography Posts

• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 01 ~ Introduction
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 02 ~ In The Beginning…
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 03 ~ Sometimes a Snake is Just a Snake. But not in this case….
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 04 ~ Agricultural Transitions
• The Bible as Ethnography ~ 05 ~ The Virgin Birth