Erasure of Dissent? Why Miriam of the Bilga Priests is Memorable.

Her name was Martha or Miriam, and she was the disgraced daughter of the priestly family of Bilga some 2000 years ago, here in Jerusalem.

It must have been a big scandal.

What did she do so wrong that got her family to lose their privileged position of power in the temple? Or was she a heroic rebel standing up to a repressive regime?

This July 4th, as the United States celebrates another year and remembers the rebels who stood up to the empire to claim freedom - we focus on a lesser known story of an obscure heroine who may have done the same. Either way - she reminds us that it’s often the outliers who help move movements along and even if forgotten - time claims their fame.

What does this micro story have to do with the macro politics of resistance to the religious system— then and now — defiance and its price — and how can this story from the footnotes of the biblical book of chronicles that we are half way through reading below the Bible Belt? --give us some context for what’s defiance like - as it is happening right now?

Miriam may have been a radical resister of a system that tried to erase her.

But could not.

Here’s the story:

During the 2nd temple period, for hundreds of years, the temple was run by priests on shift - 24 households, men only, each household taking two weeks a year - their version of reserve duty. That covered 48 weeks each year and the extra ones were the big holidays with all hands on deck.

It was literally a bloody well oiled machine —

This past week we read in chronicles about the temple division of labor and how lotteries were used to determine which family served when, who would guard the doorways, and the exact times for the musical lineup of the levites that always had to be there and make music as the sacrifices were offered. Well oiled machine - a big bureaucracy and big business is detailed here like clockwork.

But there’s a crack.

One of the families of priests mentioned in the data was Bilga. Just their name is mentioned in the Bible.

But the sensational story about Miriam appears in the later texts of the Mishna - hundreds of years later . According to this text, The family of Bilga is barred at some point from service in the temple - the rings they use in the wall to tie their sacrificial animals are removed and they are not allowed to eat the ceremonial bread at the end of their shift - these are symbolic gestures of disgrace and dismissal. Quite rare. Why?

The Mishna claims two possible reasons for this punishment: The first is that the men were lazy and didn’t show up on time for their shift. The second blames one of the family’s daughters, Marta, or Miriam, who falls in love with a Greek soldier, marries him and publicly denounces the Jewish God and humiliates her people.

The Talmud goes on to discuss this story and ask whether it’s ok to punish an entire family for the transgression of one of its members and wonders what this removal from official duties really was about.

I read this and wonder:

Is this another example of social dissent, of more ideological break with the system that paid the price for some sort of opposition and is recorded in the books as rebuke but also as reminder for us that resistance to the system was/is always an option?

Who is this woman who may be follows her heart for love beyond tribe and had her own theological ideas about life beyond her upbringing?

Even if the scribes of Chronicles would have known about the Bilga story and what this erasure was really about - the history they chose to tell us, sitting not far from where I am right now in Jerusalem, around 2,300 years ago -- was not going to include her or her dissent. No hint of discord in official story of the temple glory. They wanted to tell a grand tale of opulence and order, a religious system ordained by God, designed by David, and implemented to keep going. And it did - for hundreds of years, until its eventual erosion from within - our own internal Jewish wars -- and then the final destruction by the Romans.

Marta might be a fragment of an early story of resistance, a woman’s story, maligned, hidden between the lines of long descriptions of men in charge of everything.

Whoever wrote Chronicles, edited and curated the Bible, left us both the big official story and the cracks that betray more layers, attitudes, oppositions and creative choices challenging the official Judean narrative which was more about national unity - no matter what.

Next week we’ll begin the second book of Chronicles -- the final 36 chapters of the Hebrew Bible and we’ll keep checking out below the belt to find the hidden messages of the resistance, the recipes for how to overcome divisions, and juicy stories from the past that give us

some sense of the present, perhaps also as helpful breadcrumbs towards a more tolerant and inclusive future -- a lot less war and a lot more love.

Miriam Bat Bilga - whoever you were and whatever you story really was - here’s to you and our herstories and histories and lessoned learned and more we need to know - reclaim what’s ours, with love, resist the fear-based ideologies, reimagine better reality - just like these authors did too..

From Jerusalem, with all its stories of woe and wonder - thank you for joining me below the bible belt.

May peace prevail. Let freedom ring!

(Sorry for the blurry vid..)

Shabbat shalom.