Miriam, music, miracles

CYNTHIA RAMSAY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

The first biblical theologians may have been women. That was the "radical" message delivered at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver last week by Prof. Carol Meyers of Duke University.

Miriam is one of the most important women in Hebrew Scriptures, according to Meyers, whose lecture was titled Miriam, Music and Miracles.

"She was the first woman to be designated by the term 'prophet,' neviyah in Hebrew," explained Meyers. "She's also noteworthy as one of the few female figures in the Hebrew Bible who was not identified in terms of her marital or maternal status.... Another point about Miriam is that she challenges authority. She contests the exclusivity of Moses' leadership in the famous rhetorical question she asks in the Book of Numbers, 'Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?' No, obviously, the Lord also speaks through Miriam, according to
the tradition."

Meyers examined the female prophetic tradition and how that tradition was grounded in musical performance.

"Miriam's association with music begins with the biblical attribution to her, in Exodus 15:20 and 21, of the so-called Song of Miriam," said Meyers. The passage reads, "Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron's sister, took a hand-drum in her hand; and all the women went out after her with hand-drums and dancing. And Miriam sang to them [the Israelites]: 'Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.' "

Meyers discussed recent scholarship that attributes not just these few lines to Miriam but the 18 verses preceding it, which are usually attributed to Moses. Moses's authorship has seemed appropriate, said Meyers, because of his foremost place in the Hebrew Bible as a spokesperson for God. But some 50-plus years ago, said Meyers, a crack began to appear in this interpretation, in a joint doctoral thesis by two students of a leading biblical scholar of the time.

"Since then, other scholars, both male and female, have reached similar conclusions, based on a whole variety of literary and historical methods of inquiry," said Meyers, who also referred to findings from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"A recently published fragment, or rather groups of tiny fragments of the Book of Exodus, and these fragments date to the middle of the first century BCE ... they show at least seven lines of Song of Miriam ... far more than the single line of the canonical Hebrew Bible," said Meyers.

Miriam's song was part of a broader tradition of "drum, dance and song" in the Hebrew Bible, a genre associated exclusively with women.

In the 16 times that the tof (hand-drum) is mentioned, said Meyers, the drum is alluded to as part of an ensemble in 11 cases. Therefore, if women are the only ones playing the drum, then women performed with men as part of professional groups.

Meyers also examined five verses in which only the drum is mentioned. In all of these cases, there are women, drums and dancing, and in all of the passages, they are celebrating the Divine-aided triumph of the Israelites over their enemies. Song also plays a role, she said.

Meyers then showed slides depicting ancient relief carvings, a wall painting, a sarcophagus and many terracotta figurines. These items showed women in lamentation, women and men playing various instruments and other images. What is notable, according to Meyers, is that none of the art depicts men playing the hand-drum, only women.

One of the implications for Meyers of her findings is that men have not always dominated musical life. In fact, women performed publicly, "so the Israelite Israel women, with this song, dance and drums would have experienced prestige and also, to a certain extent, exerted social control," said Meyers. "That would have been because of the intrinsic esthetic appeal of the music, but also because ... it served political and religious functions."

Meyers concluded her talk by expanding on the idea that female performers in ancient Israel celebrated military victories that were aided by the miracle of God saving them.

The women's songs are, in a sense, a product of the Divine Spirit, said Meyers. "They represent theological statements about God's power to save. If the consensus that the poetry preserved in the Song of Miriam and the Song of Deborah and the others are among the oldest biblical texts, and that their attribution to women is authentic, then my radical claim would be that the first biblical theologians may in fact have been women."

Meyers' JCC lecture took place March 10. She was in the city for the Vancouver School of Theology's G. Peter Kaye Lecture Series.

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