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My claim must not be misunderstood as a sort of standard modern apologetic interpretation of rabbinic Judaism (often reified into "Judaism") as unproblematically "accepting" or ''affirming'' of This World, the flesh and no devil. I argue that a culture adopting the ideological position that sexuality is a benefit given by God to humans, both for procreation and for other positive ends, acquired problems as well as solutions. Indeed, I am arguing that there was much social conflict within the societies which rabbinic Judaism helped form, precisely owing to the strength of this position, for the insistence on embodiment and sexuality as the foundational primitives of human essence almost ineluctably produces gender and sex-role differentiation as dominant characteristics of the social formation. Some Christians (whether Jewish or Gentile) could declare that there is no Greek or Jew, no male or female. No rabbinic Jew could do so, because people are bodies, not spirits, and precisely bodies are marked as male or female, and also marked, through bodily practices and techniques such as circumcision and food taboos, as Jew or Greek as well.

Reading Sex

Since the major form of discourse in this book will be close readings of literary texts of various types, the question arises: In what sense can I be said to be reading "sex" here? In what sense can I be said to be reading anything other than some literary texts? The question of the relation of the literary text to the rest of culture has always been a live one in the modern interpretation of rabbinic texts. In traditional positivistic historiographical approaches to the study of rabbinic literature, the biographical narratives of the Rabbis were considered to be legendary elaborations of "true" stories, that is, stories that contained a kernel of biographicalhistorical truth, which could be discovered by careful literary archaeology.
¹⁸The biographical stories about the Rabbis were treated as the "historical background" for the study of both their halakhic (ritual law) views and midrashic interpretations of the Bible. In my work, in direct contrast to that approach, these will be treated as the least transparent of texts, as fictions requiring foregrounding to explain
them
. Many critics have realized


18. One still finds such methods being employed occasionally, as in, e.g., McArthur (1987).

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own right, and it is that practice which I seek here to understand. There are major differences between the Bible and the texts of Greek culture that were canonical, or at any rate were transmitted as canonical to the world of late antiquity, especially the Pandora story (Panofsky and Panofsky 1956, 313).

The role of women in biblical literature is subordinate, dominated, and non-autonomous, but the functions of women, whether social or sexual, productive or reproductive, are valued highly and represented not as an evil that has befallen "man" but as a mark of God's benefice to man. In Hesiod's version of Greek culture (which, while not universal there, was the one transmitted to late antiquity and the Middle Ages), woman is a mark of evil and a source of danger for man and indeed essentially evil in her very nature. The economy is male in both cases; the difference is the place of woman in that economy. I argue, then, that in rabbinic literature this biblical cultural pattern and ideology were essentially retained, while in Hellenistic Judaisms the essential components of the Hellenistic ideology of women were accepted and even abetted. I postulate that at the root of Western ideologies of woman lies Pandora superimposed on Eve.

Women's Ornaments: Divine Gift or Divine Trap?

The distinction between Eve and Pandora as the signs of two different configurations of androcentrism can be delineated sharply in the contrast between the Rabbis and Tertullian on clothing and cosmetics. In contrast to the categorical denunciation of feminine adornment typical of the Fathers, in the rabbinic culture, ornamentation, attractive dress, and cosmetics are considered entirely appropriate to the woman in her ordained role of sexual partner. Thus a bride even in mourning is permitted to use makeup, for otherwise she might become unattractive to her husband. Women are also permitted to put on makeup on holidays, although painting and drawing are forbidden, because the use of cosmetics is considered a pleasure for them and not work (Babylonian Talmud Moed Katan 9b). In the view of Rabbi Akiva, even a menstruant may wear her makeup and jewelry. That is to say, her sexuality and the external signs of her sexual allure are not suppressed even when menstruating. This is hardly a discourse of "atavistic fear of women," as a recent writer has characterized it,

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but it is one of subordination of women almost entirely to the needs of men.

According to legend, the same Rabbi Akiva wishes to give his beloved and self-sacrificing bride a "golden tiara in the shape of Jerusalem" as they lie together in a hay-barn (see Chapter 5). Almost as if in direct contradiction, Clement of Alexandriathe most "pro-marriage" of all of the early Fatherswrites, "Just as the serpent deceived Eve, so, too, the enticing golden ornament in the shape of a serpent enkindles a mad frenzy in the hearts of the rest of womankind, leading them to have images made of lampreys and snakes as decorations.'' The opposition between the discourses could not be clearer. In the Father's view, the jewel is identified as having the shape of the very noxious beasts that are the symbols of Eve's allure, while in the rabbinic formation that exemplary female ornament is the Holy City.

A passage of the Palestinian midrash on Genesis, Genesis Rabba, brings this out elegantly, as it provides an almost exact analogue for a Hesiodic (in fact, generally Greek and Hellenistic) motif and yet, once more, reverses its valences. I will begin by quoting the Hesiodic text:

And the goddess gray-eyed Athena girdled and dressed her
in a silver-white gown and over her head drew a veil,
one that was woven with wonderful skill, a marvel to look at;
and over this a garland of spring flowers, bright in their freshness.
Pallas Athena set on her head, a lovely adornment;
and a gold crown, encircling the brow, she put in its place,
which had been made by the famous Lame-legged One himself.
Using the skill of his hands, gladly obliging Zeus Father.


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When he had finished this beauty, this evil to balance a good, Hephaistos brought her among the other gods and men, glorying in her adornment by the gray-eyed daughter of Great Zeus. Then the gods and mortals were struck with amazement when they beheld this sheer inescapable snare for men .


(Frazer 1983, 66; emphasis added)

We have in the midrash exactly the same motif that is found in Hesiod's Pandora story, divine adornment of the first woman:


R. Aibo and some say it in the name of R. Banaya and some in the name of R. Simeon the son of Yohai, "He ornamented her like a bride and brought her to him. There are places where the braid is called a

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