Redemption - Teaching the Bible in Public Schools

Judah and Tamar, a painting by Horace Vernet

by Zvi Baranoff

A good story, a clean piece of fiction has a beginning, a middle  and an end. The characters have understandable motivations and they follow through in logical and believable patterns. A hero will act heroically. A villain will be defeated. In the end there will be redemption. In a movie it will all wrap up in around an hour and a half. Riding into the sunset as the credits run and thematic music plays we are pleased by the sense of balance and truth and goodness. A novel may take longer but the effect is the same. The last page turns, the cover is closed.

Life, however is a lot less orderly, a lot more messy. Time warps in on itself. One may be in the right place at the wrong time. Certainty and uncertainness coincide. We seek pleasure. We try to avoid pain. We try to make amends. We bring about new harms.

Religious or not, we seek redemption. Individually and collectively we strive. We marry and then marry again, sure that this time we will get it right. We overthrow monarchies and install dictatorships. We topple dominant orders and replace them. We move from place to place or from job to job. Like legendary knights seeking a Holy Grail we are unlikely to find what we seek.

For certainty we turn to faith, for many Biblical. If Redemption can be found, why not through Baptismal Immersion? Individually we seek out moral leaders with trustable instructions. Some call for a Biblical societal approach, a theocratic governmental hand and Biblical education in our public school systems. I can only assume that those that want the public schools to teach the Bible to young impressionable minds have never actually read the Bible, are unfamiliar with Biblical stories and may never have stepped into a public school either.

Redemption through a Messiah is a physical matter dependent on the proper bloodlines and the actions of all the predecessors. We set our moral compass and count on the salvation of our immortal souls for Redemption through the line of David, through Perez, via Divine intervention. The Bible tells us so. The Bible also speaks of another form of Redemption, that is the Redemption of a bloodline by a brother or close relative.

The bloodlines that lead to the Messianic possibilities is most troubling if we seek to understand it through a Biblical study, as sketchy the information is that we can draw from that source. We are offered at times what seems to be excessive details and at other times insufficient details or motivations. The predecessors to what promise perfection are deeply flawed, clothed in deception and manipulation.

David, a war hero and king, peered from his rooftop over at Bathsheba bathing and he wanted her bad. He has an illicit affair with her and impregnates her. David conspires to bring about her husband's death so he can marry Bathsheba. This is the line of Redemption through David. David's lineage of course comes about through the actions of his forbearers.

The Royal Messianic line is dependent on the key actions of Ruth, the Moabite, Tamar, Judah's daughter in-law and the elder of Lot's two virginal daughters. Each of these women were seeking Redemption in their own way.

The line of David is traced back through Ruth, the Moabite. Ruth sought Redemption. When her husband died leaving her childless, she followed her mother in-law back to the land of the family's origin. Her mother in-law encouraged her to find Redemption in the bed of Boaz, a relative of Ruth's father in-law's line. She crawled into his bed while he was sleeping. That particular bloodline is the line of Perez, Tamar's first or second son, depending upon prospective. The Moabite line is derived from Lot's eldest daughter.

Tamar's tale is sad and tragic. She was married to Judah’s oldest son. When her husband died, leaving her childless she was married to his brother, as was the custom of the day. The brother was reluctant to impregnate her and chose to spread his seed elsewhere. His name has become synonymous with masturbation. He died without impregnating her as well. There was one more son left but Judah feared that poor Tamar was cursed, the possible cause of death for his sons so Judah has her sent away from his youngest son. Tamar was seeking Redemption when she disguised herself as a prostitute and seduced her father in-law. The Messianic line is dependent on this manipulative misrepresentation and seduction.

Tamar becomes pregnant with twins as a result of this liaison with her father in-law. When the time of birth comes the infants inside her struggle. A small arm emerged and a red thread is tied to it. The arm withdraws and the other brother is birthed followed by the second, deemed legally first, we would assume, by the red thread, or maybe not. Perez is the name of this child, the name signifying a breach. This is the bearer of the Messianic line, the direct line of Judah. The one with the red thread is named Zerah.

Lot was tipped off by a pair of undercover angels to the imminent destruction of the City of Sodom. He was granted the opportunity to escape along with his family. His oldest daughters and their husbands blew off his appeals to flee with him into the wilderness. Sodom and the neighbouring town of Gomorrah are totally annihilated, including the family left behind. The two younger daughters along with Lot and his wife escape. The Divine messengers told the refugees not to look back but Lot's wife could not resist and winds up a pillar of salt.

With two virginal daughters, Lot settles into a cave and lives there. How long this arrangement lasts we do not know but the daughters fear they will never have families. They may have believed that there was no one else left on Earth.

The daughters, never named in the text, conspire to assure their destiny and lineage. They get their father drunk two consecutive nights and each take turns bedding Lot and each become pregnant. The older of the two names her son Moab meaning of my father while the younger of the two names her son Ben Ammi meaning son of my father. The Bible does not say what form of family life was practiced or when they chose to live beyond the cave. Two great nations result from the exertions of these young women. From the first one's son Moab eventually derived Ruth and the Messianic line. The younger daughter's lineage also plays a role by being the nation that assures the death of Bathsheba's husband, freeing her up for marrying David and birthing the Royal and Messianic line.

How the virginal daughters of Lot managed to get their father drunk enough to not know that he was having intercourse with virgins and yet be sober enough to fulfill his fate is never explained in the text.

One can hypothesize that each of these young women could possibly see into the future and understood the role they played in our collective Salvation and Redemption. Perhaps they carefully plotted their actions for a greater good, a sacrifice for the future. Perhaps the seductions were a form of religious sacrifice like the blood sacrifices of the Temple that is built by their very future descendant, David's son Solomon.

Or, perhaps they were blinded by lust and driven by forces beyond their understanding. The story is ambiguous. There is no explanations of the actions but only the stated results. What we suppose that Lot's daughters were thinking as they straddled their father in carefully calculated and timed erotic performance is left for each of us to devise on our own. Were they imaging the future birth of a Messianic Redeemer or seeking a more immediate and personal redemption and completeness, we do not know. We do not even know their names but we know that their carnality is an essential element in our ultimate Salvation.

I wonder how those that think of the United States as a Christian Nation would have these tales taught in our schools. There seems to be no beginning, middle and end but only a continuous loop of seduction and destruction and desolation and desperation with the hope for completion and satisfaction delayed or disrupted.

From these beddings we map our Salvation so surely they are Divine acts. The Messianic age is not to be trifled with, not to be undone. If we are a Christian Nation, or as some would have it a Judeo-Christian Nation, then the origins of our moral structures need to be understood and surely taught in our schools.  Will the seduction of Lot be performed in school plays? Will Tamar's prostitution be used as a role model? Do we want our daughters to seek out the beds of wealthy relatives as Ruth does? If we believe this to be true and God's will then surely these lessons should be taught. If not Divine will and actual history, then these thematic tales are nonetheless foundational in our collective cultural consciousness.  I am unsure if most elementary students are ready for these classes or that very many public school teachers are capable of teaching the lessons. I would be interested in the opinion of local school board members concerning these matters.