Portrait of the Chauncey Bradley Ives' sculpture "Jephthah's Daughter", 2012
2012dec_IMG_2393
What I like about photographing statues is breathing life into them.
The Old Testament story of Jephthah's unnamed daughter is one of human sacrifice. Jephthah, a judge (something like a non-hereditary tribal leader said to be called by god in times of trouble and apostasy), strikes a deal with god in his hope to convince him to be on his side in battle and give him a solid win against the Ammonites. He vows that if god makes him victorious he will sacrifice whatever first emerges from his house when he returns home. The biblical story relates god as granting him victory but is coy about whether this has anything to do with the pledge of a sacrifice. All that we know is Jephthah is victorious and god has made it so. The promise of whatever first living thing emerges from his house is a peculiar one, and if you heard it in a movie you'd know no good would result. But what was Jephthah expecting to first greet him upon his return home? A sheep? Instead, congratulating her father for his victory, Jephthah's only child comes out to meet him, dancing, playing a tambourine. Jephthah is grief-stricken but must honor his debt and sacrifice what he most treasures. Rather than plea for her life, the story of the daughter becomes one of the individual who understands the importance of a promise made to god and that it must not be broken. Rather than damning her father, the daughter is in full accord that Jephthah carry through with his vow. She is a person of honor. What she does ask is a period of two months time to mourn her dying a virgin, unmarried. This mourning is permitted, after which she is immolated. A closing point is that she did indeed die a virgin, which means this is an essential part of the tale. As an individual, the woman is not important, she serves to have children and this is being denied her.
Why a supreme being that has supposedly created all would want a sacrifice, I don't know. It's like you don't know what to get your dad for his birthday if he has everything--so, you give him back the best thing he ever gave you?
Stories morph, at least until they are set in stone and established as history. Because of other stories of this type, one has to wonder if Jephthah's god was originally and explicitly the seeker of the sacrifice. Abraham was commanded to kill his only son, Isaac, and set out to do so, it is a test of his absolute faith and dedication, and due this his son is replaced with a ram and is saved (some readings differ on this and believe that Isaac was sacrificed as he's not explicitly stated as coming down the mountain). If we exempt the account of King Ahaz who killed a son, which is not elaborated upon in story form, in the Old Testament, the tale of Abraham and Isaac is the only one of a sacrifice or the potential sacrifice of a son, Isaac is submissive but is also fooled into not knowing what is happening, though he is thirty-seven years of age. A replacement appears and human sacrifice is condemned. Though a sacrifice was commanded, as a result there is the assurance that it is not desired. Instead what is wanted is absolute faith and obedience, which is problematic, of course, the teaching of not questioning authority, and is a reason why some no longer read the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, during Rosh Hashanah. One other story-form sacrifice appears in the Old Testament and it is that of Jephthah's daughter, so one can look at this only daughter as the female equivalent to Isaac and Abraham. If Jephthah wasn't explicitly asked to make a sacrifice, one might view the story as being another one that condemns sacrifice even as it notes the importance of the oath. But no angelic hand appears to prevent the deed, there is no replacement. No matter how the promise came to be made, the honor of Jephthath's daughter is the neon sign headlining the story. She knows her father's promise must be carried out and so submits to that fate.
And it is a perfectly story-crafted destiny for the child of a man who promises his god a random life from his household. God and fate must ensure that the prized daughter is the one condemned. There is no other option.
The Greek version is that of Agamemnon who had, by Clytemnestra, a son, Orestes, and daughters Iphigenia, Electra and Chrysothemis. His brother, Menelaus, had married Clytemnestra's sister, Helene, who had run off or been spirited away to Troy with Paris. Agamemnon, preparing to sail for war on Troy, offends the goddess Artemis in some manner, the how changing from telling to telling, and so she afflicts the land with a plague, and prevents Agamemnon from setting sail by causing the wind to die. The prophet Calchas informs Agamemnon that he must sacrifice Iphigenia in order to appease Artemis, which is as good as having god speak to Agamemnon personally. Eventually, the Greeks, deploring sacrifice, had Artemis accept a deer in Iphigenia's stead, but before this Iphigenia was killed. She is taken to the place of sacrifice under a ruse, believing she is to be married to Achilles, who is nearly a god, an Achilles tendon removed from being immortal, and it is only at the altar does she realize the horrible truth. Iphigenia ultimately is compliant, which brings honor upon her, as with Jephthah's daughter. But after the war her mother seeks vengeance, traps Agamemnon with a net in the bath, and kills him. The tragedy doesn't end there as Agamemnon's other children then seek vengeance for the murder of their father.
Another version has a man named Idomeneus as one of Agamemnon's advisors, and when a storm besieges his ship he promises Poseidon, in return for safety, the sacrifice of the first living thing that he sees upon returning home from the war, which turns out to be his son. In one version other gods are angry about the sacrifice and in retaliation send a plague.
Jephthah's daughter mourns she will die a virgin. Agamemnon's daughter believes she is to be married and discovers instead she is being sacrificed. In both instances the father is grieved and the daughter brings honor on herself by demanding the promise be carried out, her willingness suggestive of removing any possible guilt from the father's head, even if the sacrifice has been conceived of as god-ordained. In Iphigenia's case her sacrifice ends a plague and restores the wind that carries Agamemnon to a successful battle against the Trojans. Or, as with Isaac, she is later saved with a deer or a goat serving as substitute. Clearly, these are associated stories--but in the Old Testament there is no substitute for Jephthah and she dies.
A wildly popular sculptor, as with a number of other sculptors of his time, the work of Ives, born in 1810, is flawed by a sentimentalism that denies much substance. But Chauncey Bradley Ives' 1867 capture of Jephthah's unnamed daughter, while being in many ways a not very pleasing sculpture, is a beautiful one to photograph as she translates as real rather than an imaginary ideal. Eyes cast down, she sits with her tambourine, perhaps having learned the news of her sacrifice and pondering her fate. There is little if any tension or explicit grief in her figure. Instead, with completely downcast eyes, she is a picture of submission. What does it mean that a girl--for clearly she is a very young woman--draws honor upon herself by being compliant to her father's vow that means her sacrifice? What was the ancient message?
One can look at it like this. A story survives and is retold in one fashion or another as long as it is utilitarian. I'd hazard that in the repeated telling of the story of Jephthah's daughter, what most resonates is not any horror of sacrifice so much as the essentiality of her submission. Some are made to be saved, like Isaac. Others are not, like Jephthah. More than Isaac, however his binding, she's an archetype of obligation to not even her own oath but the oath of her father. One could possibly argue that she's the female equivalent of the youthful male soldiers who have died or will die on the battlefield, both the Greek and Old Testament versions of the tale concerned with war which means the then acceptance that a number of young men will die, but there's an especial import to her death and submission. As long as the story is told as resonant in this form, this nameless girl's honor is in her submission to her father and his oath. Efforts can be made to try to twist it so victory is had due an honorable and heroic submission, wherein she is perceived as having the strength to accept and bear this fate, but she remains the story of a woman damned to be bereft of agency, her value being in her compliance.
The High Museum's page on Jephthah's Daughter
Another of my photos of Jephthah's Daughter
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