{"id":1765,"date":"2021-04-12T20:16:40","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T00:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2021-04-12T20:17:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T00:17:26","slug":"re-visioning-the-bible-in-martha-moody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2021\/04\/12\/re-visioning-the-bible-in-martha-moody\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Visioning the Bible in Martha Moody"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cRe-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.\u201d (Adrienne Rich, \u201c\u2018When We Dead Awaken\u2019: Writing as Re-Vision,\u201d 11)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Martha Moody<\/i> is rich with reimagined Bible stories, both within the story proper and Amanda\u2019s own writing. As Amanda writes her own stories, she combines, alters, and revises biblical stories to give them a new meaning. Between pages 121-124, Amanda presents a story about Martha Moody, Azreal the winged cow, and a group of men outside Martha\u2019s store; this story contains biblical references to the golden calf (Exodus 32), to Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22), and it even presents Martha as a Christ figure at the end. The way Amanda reimagines the golden calf story is especially interesting to me, and it fits well with Adrienne Rich\u2019s claim that the act of \u201cre-vision\u2026 is an act of survival,\u201d as Amanda takes a violent story and rewrites its ending to ensure everyone survives.<\/p>\n

In the biblical account, Moses, leader of the Israelite nation, has gone up to Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, leaving his brother, the head priest Aaron, in charge of the people. As they wait for Moses to return, the people grow impatient and uncertain as to what has happened to Moses, and finally ask Aaron to make them a new god. Aaron commands them to give him all their gold jewelry and proceeds to melt it down and form it into an idol in the shape of a calf. Upon returning to the camp, Moses sees the calf and the people worshipping it; Exodus 32:20 describes his reaction: \u201cAnd he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.\u201d Though harsh, this is not the Israelites’ only punishment. Moses stands at the outskirts of the camp and calls, \u201cWhoever is for the Lord, come to me\u201d (Ex. 32:26). He commands everyone who follows him to \u201cgo back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor\u201d (Ex. 32:27). Three thousand people die as a result. However, this still isn\u2019t enough: \u201cthe Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made\u201d (Ex. 32:35).<\/p>\n

Amanda uses elements from this story in her own writing, but her re-vision of it replaces Aaron with Martha Moody. The Israelites\u2019 demand \u201cCome, make us gods who will go before us\u201d (Ex. 32:1) becomes the men of the town asking Martha, \u201cCould you give us an image of God we could care about?\u201d (Stinson 122). This request is, itself, a desire for re-vision – for a new image of God in a form that suits the people\u2019s wants and needs. Azreal (in Islam theology, the angel of death; in Amanda\u2019s stories, a winged cow) joins Martha and tells her, echoing Exodus, \u201cTell them to take off their golden earrings and bring them to you\u201d (122). In a move that reminds the reader of modern heteronormative gender standards, the sheriff hears this and responds, \u201cUm, Ma\u2019am. None of us wear earrings. If you could wait for us to go home and talk to our wives, we could come up with a pile of gold, I\u2019d guarantee\u201d (122). It is at this point that the two stories diverge in a drastic way. Where the Exodus account shows a horrific massacre and a plague, Amanda\u2019s story diminishes the violence; though the men are still \u2018punished\u2019 for their request in a way, there is no plague, no massacre, no death. Instead, watches, guns, spurs, coins, and belt buckles rise up in the air as if by magnetic force and pull the men into \u201ca squirming pile\u2026 stuck together by the metal on their persons\u201d (123). As they lie stuck together on the ground, the men witness another reimagined Old Testament story, as Martha and Azreal wrestle each other and evoke the image of Jacob wrestling with God. The wrestling match concludes with Martha flying away on Azreal\u2019s back. As the two of them disappear, \u201cthe men found that they could untangle themselves, and they went home with whatever guns and watches they found stuck in their pockets\u201d (124).<\/p>\n

Returning to Adrienne Rich\u2019s idea of re-vision as an act of survival, I think it is significant that Amanda references the story of the golden calf in her own writing. She takes a story set in a patriarchy and replaces the primary male figure with a woman shopkeeper; furthermore, she takes a violent, death-filled story and changes the ending to ensure everyone survives. While Rich\u2019s arguments center around the survival of real women writers in a patriarchal society, her idea can be re-visioned <\/i>to address the way Amanda\u2019s stories are a reimagining of biblical accounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cRe-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.\u201d (Adrienne Rich, \u201c\u2018When We Dead Awaken\u2019: Writing as Re-Vision,\u201d 11) Martha Moody is rich with reimagined … Continue reading Re-Visioning the Bible in Martha Moody<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[37777,169401,1611,169400,169403],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post","tag-adrienne-rich","tag-amanda-linger","tag-bible","tag-martha-moody","tag-susan-stinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}