“I wonder what their sexual ambiguity has to do with treating people as individuals?”
“Well, if they don’t have a sex, they might be less likely to treat people according to sexual stereotypes.”
Nodding her head, Dr. Shaw said, “Perhaps. Can anybody think of any other mythological characters whose sexual ambiguity helped them communicate?”
Ted Mullins interjected, “The Greek messenger-god Hermes wasn’t really sexually clear, and his son, Hermaphroditus, was both sexes. He was like the kurgarra and the galatur crossing from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead either because they are sexless or androgynous. Maybe it’s important to try to look at things first from a just plain human perspective, not first as a man or woman, if one wants to be a good communicator. Maybe we’re supposed to think about what the message actually means before we reference ourselves? Maybe we should understand before we judge.”
“Good point, Ted, but perhaps easier said than done. What word do we use to refer to the science of interpreting literature that comes from that Greek idea?”
A few seconds of silence pass as the mental cabinets are searched. Then Ted’s eyes light up. “Oh yeah! Hermeneutics.”
In a smiling pause Dr. Shaw ponders the unanswerable question “Why doesn’t everybody in the world want to be a teacher?” Then she says, “Let’s return to our main character. In the pagan polytheism of Ancient Sumeria, how important was Inanna?”
Servat speaks up. “Inanna was the most important deity of all. Because of her, because she was a goddess rather than a god, regular Sumerian women had some status. They were involved in temple business; they owned property; they negotiated for themselves.”
“Good, Servat. There does seem to be a connection. The patriarchal institutions of the second millennium BCE, with gods like Marduk or Enlil, almost eliminated women’s participation in public life. And Inanna was demoted to a mere fertility goddess. But, what about Inanna’s place in her own marriage? Who is her consort?”
Drew now enters the conversation with some energy. “Dumuzi just gets bossed around by Inanna. The galla abuse him. He cries like a wimp. Inanna is a great goddess, and she’s married to a lowly human shepherd. In this story she has the superior status.” The speech contained a palpable undercurrent of contempt for the dominated Dumuzi.
“Right, I wouldn’t like to be in Dumuzi’s place,” responded the professor. “I have just been wondering if any of you heard about Inanna before this reading assignment?”
Crystal joins in with, “When I was visiting my sister in Raleigh, she took me to a pretty radical feminist meeting, and we sang a hymn to Inanna. I didn’t really get it then, but I think I do now.”
“Thanks, Crystal, Inanna is still very important in many strains of feminism. Hymns to Inanna are popular videos on YouTube. What about other powerful goddesses in our culture?”
Travis pipes up, “People today are just past that. We are more rational than those primitive cultures.”
“So you don’t see goddesses in your daily life?”
“No way.”
Dr. Shaw hesitates for a moment. “I see you grabbed a cup of coffee on your way to class. That Starbuck’s logo on your cup is an almost omnipresent image in our society; is it not?”
Travis agrees, “Yea, it’s everywhere.”
“Could you describe it for us?”
“Well, I guess so. I’m not sure I know what it actually is.”
“Is it feminine or masculine?” asks the teacher.
“Definitely feminine. It has long hair.”
“Does anything in the image imply she is a sovereign?”
“For sure, she’s wearing a crown.”
“Is there any image above her crown to suggest what she might be ruler of?”
“I see a star; maybe she’s ruler of the heavens?”
“Is there anything in the image that implies she’s mythical?”
“Wow, I never noticed that she has fins. Why, she’s a mermaid with two tails.”
“Yes, she’s sometimes called a siren, a kind of goddess in myths, and the fact that she has two tails makes her particularly powerful.”
Chapter 4
All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.
—1 Corinthians 15:39
Dr. Shaw asks the class what the first reading strategy listed on the syllabus is, and receives thirty-five blank stares. Then Servat, the only student who bothered to print out the syllabus, begins searching through her notebook. She momentarily answers, “We are supposed to note the reading assignment’s genre.”
“Right, and what is genre?”
Travis, with a vague feeling of wanting to give a correct answer after that last exchange, felt himself on firm ground with this. “Genre is the kind of literature that a text is, like whether it’s a poem or a novel.”
“Exactly,” replies Dr. Shaw. “Why is it important to know the genre?”
Again, silence.
Dr. Shaw asks another question. “If I begin a story with ‘once upon a time,’ what genre is it?”
Crystal answers, “A fairy tale.” And the whole class agrees.
“And what does that tell us about how to interpret the story?”
Matthew says. “We know it’s just a made-up story.”
“Right, if the author is purposefully vague about the time of the setting, a perceptive reader knows that the events never really happened at all. Does that mean that the fairy tale isn’t true?”
Rachel, a bit surprised at such an easy question, responds with a quick, “Of course not, it’s just fiction.”
The teacher stops to consider a change in the conversational course, then she says, “On the first day of class, I asked you all to list five books you’ve read since the eighth grade that you enjoyed. From those lists I know that most of you have read a Harry Potter book, either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, and more than one of Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia—all fiction. So, did you see anything true about real English boarding school experiences from reading about Hogwarts? Did you recognize anything true in Bilbo Baggins’s tension between the comfortable and the adventurous? Did you notice anything true about Jesus of Nazareth from reading about Aslan? . . . I suggest that often works of fiction are unconcerned about the truth of their facts, but that they are very concerned about the truth of ideas.”
Travis announced, “I don’t believe there is such a thing as the truth of ideas; the only kind of truth is truth about verifiable, empirical facts.”
“I am sure, Travis, that the many people in our culture agree with you about that, or that, at least, they unthinkingly presuppose it in their daily decisions. But such a generalization is not true of the ancient cultures we will read in this class. And I am asking you to please read and interpret the literature according to its literary and cultural context, as best you can, before you make judgments upon it. I am not asking you to agree with anything, but only to withhold your opinion of the text until you have been careful about the question, ‘What did it mean to them?’”
Travis’s “I’ll try” had a ring of sincerity.