A patriarchal sin reconsidered : Reuben's Act (Gen 35:22) retold or : rewritten Bible as finding a scapegoat

Abstract

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls it has become obvious that the bible manuscripts were not considered to be static entities, but much more as dynamic entities which could be adapted and expanded and even rewritten if the need was felt. Whereas it appears that this is a phenomenon dating from the period of canonization of the Bible, recent examples can be found in which the biblical text is adapted and rewritten. In this paper I compare such a recent example from Papua (Indonesia; formerly called Irian Jaya) with the defilement of Bilhah in Genesis and the way it is rewritten in the Testament of Reuben. The comparison shows that such texts may tend to have special emphasis on one certain aspect of the story which is retold, which might be explained from an ideological or a psychological perspective. In the view of the author it is the scapegoat mechanism which influenced the retelling of the story of Bilhah, blaming her more or less explicitly for Reuben's fall. The rewritten story from Papua, retelling the story of the fall in Paradise, as well as the retold story in the Testament of Reuben both show a clear tendency to blame women for the presence of sin and evil in the world, causing men to fall into sin.