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Sex

i
 Encounters: Experience and Anthropological Knowledge

ISSN: 1746-8175

Series Editor: John Borneman

The Encounters series examines the issues that affect all anthropologists in the field.
These short collections of essays describe and analyze the surprise and interest of the
fieldwork encounter, on topics such as money, violence, food and sex. The series aims
to show that anthropological knowledge is based in experience, bringing into the
public realm useful and thought-provoking areas for discussion that previously
anthropologists have been reluctant or unable to highlight.

Previously published in this series:

Children: Ethnographic Encounters, edited by Catherine Allerton
Food: Ethnographic Encounters, edited by Leo Coleman
Money: Ethnographic Encounters, edited by Stefan Senders and Allison Truit
Violence: Ethnographic Encounters, edited by Parvis Ghassem-Facha

ii
 Sex
Ethnographic Encounters

Edited by
Richard Joseph Martin and Dieter Haller

iii
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2019

Copyright © Richard Joseph Martin, Dieter Haller and Contributors, 2019

Richard Joseph Martin and Dieter Haller have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xi constitute an extension of this

copyright page.

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this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret
any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Martin, Richard Joseph, editor. | Haller, Dieter, editor.
Title: Sex : ethnographic encounters / edited by Richard Joseph Martin and Dieter Haller.
Description: London, UK : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Series: Encounters: experience
and anthropological knowledge | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008130| ISBN 9781474294713 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781474294706 (hbk.)
Subjects: LCSH : Sex. | Anthropology.
Classification: LCC HQ 21 .S47115 2018 | DDC 306.7—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008130

ISBN : HB : 978-1-4742-9470-6
PB : 978-1-4742-9471-3
ePDF : 978-1-4742-9474-4
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and sign up for our newsletters.

iv
 Contents

List of Contributors vii

Acknowledgments xi
Preface John Borneman xii
Introduction Dieter Haller and Richard Joseph Martin xiv

Part One Institutions

1 Towards an Intimately “Impure” Ethnography: Considering the

Limits of Non-Participant Observation Timothy M. Hall 3

2 When Bodies Talk: Indulging Ethnography Sebastian Mohr 15

3 “She Goes with the Refugees”: Desire and Power Amid the Politics
of Asylum in Greece Heath Cabot 27

Part Two Interpellations

4 A Camel Walks into a Brothel: Passing Anxieties in the Sexual

Economies of Brazil Gregory Mitchell 47

5 The Anthropologist’s New Clothes: Ethnographic Exposure and

BDSM Richard Joseph Martin 59

6 Dating a Gypsy Punk Musician: Cultural Appropriation and Ethnographic

Fieldwork Among Brazilian Romanies Diana Budur 73

Part Three Intimacies

7 In Bed with My Informant (and Her Lover/s): Navigating Intimacy

and Ethics in Singapore Adlina Maulod 87

8 All Acts of Love and Pleasure are My Rituals: Fieldwork and Erotic
Subjectivity in an American NeoPagan Community Susan Harper 101

9 Invulnerable Men and Dangerous Women: Encountering HIV

Risk Perception in Urban South Africa Hans Reihling 115

v
vi Contents

10 Public Vegetarianism and Public Menstruation: Staging Chastity

Among Jains in Gujarat Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg 127

Part Four Incommensurabilities

11 The Naked Fear: Desire and Identity in Morocco Dieter Haller 145

12 Faux Amis: On the Morals of Not Being Gay in Istanbul Samuel Williams 157

13 Im/possibilities in the Field: Lessons from Jerusalem Robert Phillips 169

14 Guide to Further Reading William L. Leap 179

Notes 183
References 189
Index 201
 List of Contributors

John Borneman is Professor of Anthropology and currently Director of the Program

in Contemporary European Politics and Society at Princeton University. He has
conducted fieldwork in Germany and Central Europe, and in Lebanon and Syria. His
research focuses on two sets of relationships: on the relation of the state and law to
intimacy and practices of care, specifically the care for refugees; and on the relation
of political identification, belonging, and authority to memory and forms of justice.
He also works on questions of epistemology and knowledge in the public sphere, and
on psychoanalytic understandings of the self, group formation, and political form. His
most recent monograph is Cruel Attachments: The Ritual Rehab of Child Molesters in
Germany (University of Chicago Press 2015).

Diana Budur holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University. She resides in
New York and is working on a book on sex and love addiction. She is also a freelance
consultant and researcher involved in a research project on transcendental meditation
(TM ) alongside Columbia University child psychology professor Renae Beaumont
and several other researchers.

Heath Cabot is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.

She is a political and legal anthropologist whose research examines citizenship, ethics,
and rights in Europe, with a focus on Greece. She is author of On the Doorstep of
Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece (Penn Press 2014). She is also co-editor-in-
chief of PoLAR : Political and Legal Anthropology Review.

Dieter Haller is Professor for Ethnologie at Ruhr Universität Bochum (Germany).

Previously he has held positions as visiting professor in Frankfurt/Main (2000),
Hamburg (2001), Granada, Spain (2002), at New School University, New York (2003),
and at the University of Texas, Austin (2003–5). His main fields of interest are port
cities, sexuality, corruption, Morocco, Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean. His latest
publications are a volume on corruption (Pluto Press 2005, co-edited with Cris Shore),
an introduction to cultural anthropology (DTV-Atlas Ethnologie, 2005; published
in German, Hungarian, and Spanish), an ethnography on Texas (Lone Star Texas,
transcript Bielefeld 2007), on the history of anthropology in the Federal Republic
of Germany between 1960 and 1990 (Die Suche nach dem Fremden, Campus Verlag
2012) and on the Moroccan city of Tangiers (Tanger—der Hafen, die Geister, die Lust,
transcript 2016).

Susan Harper is an educator, activist, and advocate in Dallas, Texas. She holds a PhD
in Cultural Anthropology from Southern Methodist University and a Graduate

vii
viii List of Contributors

Certificate in Women’s Studies from Texas Woman’s University. Her ethnographic

research focuses on new religious movements in the American South; the intersection
of gender, sexuality, and religious identity; and sex, sexuality, and sex education. Her
work has been published in the Journal of Bisexuality. She serves as Graduate Reader/
Editor for Texas Woman’s University. She is currently working on an autoethnography
about burlesque and a visual anthropology project exploring the use of Pinterest by
practitioners of NeoPaganism.

William L. Leap, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American

University (Washington, DC ) and an Affiliate Professor in the Center for Women,
Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, FL ). He is the
founding senior editor of the Journal of Language and Sexuality and, since 1993, has
coordinated the annual program of the Lavender Language Conference. Key publications
include American Indian English (1993), Word’s Out: Gay Men’s English (1996), Out in
Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World (co-edited with
Ellen Lewin), Speaking in Queer Tongues: Gay Language and Globalization (co-edited
with Tom Boellstorff ), and the widely reprinted papers “Language, socialization and
silence in gay adolescence,” “Queering gay men’s English”, and “Homophobia as moral
geography.” He is currently completing a multi-disciplinary study of language, identity
and same-sex desire in the US military, in Renaissance-era Harlem, in women’s softball
teams, in cruising sites, and in other locations “before” Stonewall.

Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg is a lecturer at Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main

(Germany). She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from the Free University
Berlin in 2006. Her thesis, Die Reise zum Ursprung. Die Pilgerschaft der Shvetambara-
Jaina zum Berg Shatrunjaya in Gujarat, Indien, establishes the importance of this
particular pilgrimage for the collective memory of the Jains. Her current habilitation
project deals with Jain child ascetics.

Richard Joseph Martin is Preceptor in Expository Writing at Harvard University. He

is completing his first monograph, The Magic of Consent: Cultural Phenomenology and
BDSM in Berlin. His recent work appears in The Journal of Language & Sexuality.
Drawing on his research interests, he has taught courses on the anthropology of sex
and gender, the anthropology of media, the anthropology of play, religion and sexuality,
social science writing, and graduate research methods in anthropology and psychology.
He holds a PhD from Princeton University and a BA from Columbia University.

Adlina Maulod is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Ageing Research and Education,
Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. He obtained a PhD in Cultural Anthropology
from Purdue University, USA for his dissertation research on same-sex family
households and queer reproductive practices in Singapore. His current research in
gerontology expands his interests in queer methodologies, social inequalities,
intersectionality and the body, to develop and advocate new and inclusive life design
for highly-aging communities.
 List of Contributors ix

Timothy McCajor Hall, MD PhD, is a psychiatrist and a psychological anthropologist

at UCLA , where he is Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family
Medicine. He has studied at Harvard, UCSD, Karlova Univerzita, the University of
Chicago, UCLA , and the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Since 1999, he
has carried out nearly four years of fieldwork in Prague, Czech Republic, on processes
of sexual identity development and maintenance among gay and bisexual men, and on
aspects of mental health and HIV risk. He has also conducted fieldwork in Los Angeles
since 2011 on non-gay-identified men who have sex with men, and clinical research on
various aspects of addiction treatment and HIV prevention.

Gregory Mitchell is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

at Williams College and a faculty affiliate in Anthropology and Latina/o Studies. He is
the author of Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil’s Sexual
Economy (University of Chicago Press 2016), an ethnography of male sex workers and
their clients. His work appears in American Ethnologist, GLQ, Brasiliana, Wagadu, The
Journal of Popular Music Studies, and edited volumes in the United States and Brazil. His
second book project examines violence against female sex workers during mega-events
like the World Cup and the Olympic Games to reveal the overlapping interests of evangelical
Christian groups, anti-prostitution radical feminist organizations, neoliberal business
developers, and corrupt state security apparatuses that appropriate the discourse of human
rights.

Sebastian Mohr is Senior Lecturer at the Center for Gender Studies at Karlstad
University, Sweden. His research explores the intersections of gender, sexuality,
and technology. He is interested in the formation of subjects with a sense of self,
identity, and belonging, and asks what role gender, sexuality, and technology play
thereby. He attends to this dynamic through ethnographic explorations of diverse
technological contexts: military life, reproductive biomedicine, scientific knowledge
production. He has a special interest in the epistemological groundings of ethnography
and the ethnographic history of gender theory and ethnography’s gender theoretical
legacy.

Robert Phillips is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Ball State

University in Muncie, Indiana. He lectures on ethnographic methods and
anthropological approaches to technology and religion. His early fieldwork was in
south India, but most of his empirical research was conducted in Singapore, focusing
on how interactions on the internet affect sexual subjectivity. More recently, Phillips
has been conducting research among Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn, NY and
Jerusalem, Israel, focusing on religious subjectivity.

Hans Reihling is a postdoctoral fellow in the Becoming Men Research Group at the
University of Amsterdam. He holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from
Freie Universität, Berlin and is currently working on the manuscript “(In)vulnerable
Men: Navigating Affective Health in Urban South Africa.” Reihling is also a licensed
x List of Contributors

psychotherapist and works with men who suffer the effects of structural and
interpersonal violence.

Samuel Williams is postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck-Cambridge Centre for

Ethics, Economy, and Social Change. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton
University.
 Acknowledgments

This project has been a long time in the making and has incurred many debts. The
editors would like to thank our series editor, John Borneman, and our press editor,
Miriam Cantwell, for their unrelenting enthusiasm for this project as it took shape, and
for their patience as it came to fruition. We would like to thank Stefanie Hof, Adrian
Neuser, Andreas Warneke, and Seda Sönmeztürk for their assistance in preparing the
manuscript, as well as three anonymous reviewers whose comments helped us better
realize our vision. And, on behalf of all contributors, we would like to thank our
interlocutors in the field, whose encounters with us made this volume possible.

xi
 Preface
John Borneman, Series Editor

Sex: Anthropological Encounters examines encounters with sex in the fieldwork

experience of contemporary anthropologists. The focus here, like that of other volumes
in this series, is on personal encounters with a particular theme or object in the field—
for example, money, violence, children, food. With “sex” as the object, authors are
confronted with peculiar challenges, above all, as Dieter Haller and Richard Martin
write in the introduction, “the main question when anthropologists deal with sex in
ethnographic contexts: what is considered to be sex, and what isn’t?” Although the
same question, of the instability and variability of the object, can be asked of money or
violence, questions of encounters with sex betray an intimacy with the difference
between one’s own conception of sex and that of our interlocutors. That intimacy, when
disclosed in writing, leaves the anthropologist vulnerable in a way research on other
objects does not, while also revealing a domain of activity—“sex”—both surrounded
by taboos and, as Foucault taught us, subject to discursive proliferation.
It may seem paradoxical that the challenges anthropologists face in writing about
sex remain much the same as they did half a century ago. On the one hand, sex and
gender have become mainstays of anthropological research. Whether the focus is on
politics, religion, or the economy, the question of how sex and gender, much like race,
structure such domains of activity is now considered an essential part of most
investigations. Sex and gender now even constitute their own field of study, with
positions earmarked for this scholarly focus. And this field that keeps evolving, as
Haller and Martin in the introduction, and Leap in the final chapter, make clear. On
the other hand, reflexive work on the sex part of this unit has largely grown out of a
particular subset of this field, now defined as LGBT studies. While LGBT studies itself
has diversified its objects, it has had a difficult time enticing anthropologists whose
experiences are with the opposite sex to write about them. In soliciting contributions
for this volume, the editors had difficulty securing contributions from anthropologists
with fascinating and theoretically rich experiences that involved opposite-sex eroticism
of, for example, the sexualization of a white man by black women in Africa, or the
erotic experiences of women with their fieldwork informants that resulted in marriages
with them.
In this volume thirteen anthropologists explicate their own experiences with this
object, sex, in the field. They talk of experience in thirteen countries: the Czech
Republic, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, France, Germany, Singapore, the USA , South Africa,
India, Morocco, Turkey, and Israel. The diversity of countries changes the object and
one’s relationship to it. Sex in one place is physical intimacy; in another friendship; in
one about identity, in another what one does. The contributions range from discourses

xii
 Preface xiii

about “sex” in ethical review boards, to sartorial exposures, unruly refugee desires,
being perceived as sexual, the allocation of qualities of sexual fidelity or infidelity, the
space of the bed, the significance of sex for public health discourses, its power to split
or unify the subject, and much more. What the authors bring to the fore is always
intersubjective, relational, initially taking shape through participant observation in the
unique social dramas of ethnographic encounters.
We asked the authors in this series to write with a particular concern in mind: to focus
on stories that showed their own engagement with “sex” in fieldwork. We also requested
that they resist the temptation to let theoretical concerns dominate their writing. We
encouraged them instead to allow their descriptions of fieldwork to show how and in
what way cultural difference is learned in an encounter with “sex.” We invited them, in
other words, to write outside the current normative genres of anthropology, and to risk
exposing themselves—warts, private pleasures, misunderstandings, and all—in the thick
of it. Hence, contributors have elaborated their specific interactions and totally eschewed
the conventions that authorize most ethnographic accounts, such as footnoting, long
bibliographies, or dense theoretical language.
Such rhetorical change makes new demands on our readers: we ask them to enter,
openly, into the often threatening, sometimes embarrassing, but always potentially
insight-bearing situations of fieldwork. In return, we hope that the reading of these
essays awakens an appreciation for the quality of subjective sensual experience
(personal, tied to a particular time and place); for curiosity in difference itself, in
translating the strange, foreign or unassimilable; and for a kind of storytelling that
contributes both to the documentary function of the ethnographic encounter and to its
analytical potential.
Finally, in the “Guide to Further Reading,” William Leap reflects on the various
contributions of the authors in this volume and situates them within different
anthropological literatures. He also identifies one of the central contributions of this
volume: to take “sexuality out of the exclusively interiorized domains . . ., and [instead]
engage the difficulties associated with confronting sexuality as a social experience in
the ethnographic research setting.” Indeed, while recording and publishing the social
experience of sexuality may present its own challenges, future work might do well
to ask about the relations between interiorized domains—desires, object choices,
drives—and the experience of these in fieldwork settings.
 Introduction
Dieter Haller and Richard Joseph Martin

Jules: [. . .]. Eating a bitch out and giving a bitch a foot massage ain’t even the same
fucking thing.
Vincent: It’s not. It’s the same ballpark.
Jules: Ain’t no fucking ballpark neither. Now, look, maybe your method of massage
differs from mine, but, you know, touching his wife’s feet and sticking your tongue in
the holiest of holies ain’t the same fucking ballpark. It ain’t the same league. It ain’t
even the same fucking sport. Look, foot massages don’t mean shit.
[. . . .]
Vincent: [. . .] But you’re saying a foot massage don’t mean nothing, and I’m saying
it does. Now, look, I’ve given a million ladies a million foot massages, and they all
meant something. We act like they don’t, but they do, and that’s what’ so fucking cool
about them. There’s a sensuous thing going on where you don’t talk about it, but you
know it, she knows it, fucking Marsellus knew it, and Antoine should have fucking
better known better. I mean, that’s his fucking wife, man. He ain’t gonna have no sense
of humor about that shit. You know what I’m saying?
Jules: That’s an interesting point.1

“O boy, if you want to gladden my heart/You must give me kisses after serving me
wine” (Ey pesar gar del-e man kard hamikvāhi šād/Az pas-e bāda marā busa hami
ˉ
bāyad dād; Abul Hasan Ali ibn Julugh Farrukhi Sistani, p. 46).2

The above epigraphs are taken from expressive culture rather than ethnography, but
both quotations speak to key questions anthropologists ask when dealing with sex in
ethnographic contexts. Is a foot massage, as Vincent argues in Pulp Fiction, in the same
“ballpark” as cunnilingus (eating a bitch out)? Amongst scholars of Persian culture
there is a fervent discussion about the character of the poem, written by medieval
Persian author Abul Hasan Ali ibn Julugh Farrukhi Sistani (c. 980–1037 or 1038): is it
“only” a poetic expression of friendship? Is it about a spiritual experience, coated in a
language that today is considered erotic and sexual? Or is it about a man’s sexual desire
to kiss a desired youth? In both cases, the writers pose their questions in ontological
terms: What is sex? However, these questions are also semiotic: What does “sex” mean;
what makes an act intelligible as sexual—or not—for those who participate in or
observe it? Likewise, they are phenomenological: How do people, in various contexts,
experience and understand phenomena as sexual?

xiv
 Introduction xv

While these questions can be asked philosophically, they can be answered

ethnographically. In this sense, we hold open questions of definition: what are the
limits of our object, when and where does a sexual act start, and when and where does
it end (Oppitz 2008)? Does it start with physical arousal and end with an orgasm? Or
does it start long before the physical act, with phantasies, desires and thoughts—
phenomena intrinsically linked to physical activity of the brain and the nervous
system? In their treatise on The Anthropology of Sex (2010), Hastings Donnan and
Fiona Magowan consider “how cultural difference generates multiple experiences and
classifications of sex” (3). As anthropologists, we take seriously the variation in answers
to questions of definition concerning sex and sexuality, and therefore take our
encounters with others as the basis for conceptualization. As interpreters of culture, we
are especially well positioned to consider problems of meaning, as that meaning is
made and remade intersubjectively. When the authors of the present volume talk about
sex, these questions of definition do not vanish: as in cross-cultural contexts any
generalization comes to its limits.
We therefore focus instead on assumptions basic to the volume as well as the series
in which this volume is published. Firstly, we take as a point of departure the inductive
method of field experience rather than starting from pre-given definitions. We want to
know what in the situations under observation is considered to be “sexual,” by those
who inhabit the culture in which such experiences take place. It is not the academic
categories and concepts that are the main focus of the anthropologist’s interest, but
those of the researched. Our premises reflect basic constellations of ethnology, between
relativism and universalism: to what extent is it possible to unsettle ethnocentric ideas
when documenting, analyzing and trying to understand “foreign” behavior? Is sex a
separate domain of knowledge and/or practice in the fields that we study? What are
local conceptions of sexuality, and how are they informed by trans-local practices and
discourses? From the at-once laborious and satisfying work of ethnographic research,
we try to liberate ourselves of our own patterns of thinking and acting, and to immerse
ourselves in the worlds of others. Based on this experience, we then strive to unfold the
interconnections within their understandings and practices of sex and, to develop
appropriate categories and concepts from their reality. This is a central intention of the
book series and of this volume.
Secondly, the rationalist conception of nature as something given, that can only
be known and understood by using reason has long been refuted in various works,
such as those by Sperling (1997) on primatology, Descola’s (2013) typology of
ontologies, or Viveiros de Castro’s (2004) work on Brazilian perspectivism. We
also know that health and disease and sometimes even ostensibly natural disease
symptoms are also always linked to culture, as was already shown by ethnomedicine
in the 1950s (Drobec 1955). Thanks to Marcel Mauss (1935) and Pierre Bourdieu
(1977), the understanding that bodies are also culturally determined, and that
cultural values and norms can be habitualized in bodies, is an important, although
already old, discovery. This also applies, as shown in the contributions to this volume,
to sex.
Thirdly, cultural realities are reducible neither to static structural constraints, nor to
fluidity and individual agency, but they are informed by both. The moment of
xvi Introduction

anthropological experience is always embedded into wider local, regional, and global,
historical, and political contexts. The fleeting ethnographic encounter can only be
interpreted within these wider frames. When we remember the cultural historical
tradition of our discipline, then a wealth of other sources helps us to embed our field
experiences: artifacts, historical documents of various genres, religious and legal
sources, poetry, literature, and paintings.
However, at the center of the contemporary anthropological endeavor lies
ethnography, experience, and the methods of contemporary field study paradigms.
Our senses, bodies, and mental capacities become a survey instrument in participatory
observation. Participant observation can highlight different aspects of cultural reality:
we can listen to discourses on sexuality in the field, discuss sexuality with women and
men, old and young, married people and singles, city and country dwellers, pious and
secular, virgins and sluts, homo- and heterosexuals, and an interminable et cetera.
Which discourses are dominant, which peripheral? Which are verbalized, which
expressed in the visual media?
But, in addition to listening, we can also observe. Generally ethnographers do not
get to see intimate relations, because they mostly occur in places to which we do not
have access. So often we have to limit our observations to publically accessible
behavioral traces of sexual behavior: this could be anything, for example, from graffiti
to the range of contraceptives in pharmacies. The separation of public and private is
fundamental to the methods we select; we must question what the perceptions are of
the public and private in the society we are studying, to whom intimate spaces are
accessible, if they exist at all. When male informants—as Kulick (2014) experienced—
masturbate in front of one another and fantasize about women, they clearly do not see
the male ethnographer’s presence as a disruption of intimacy; the presence of a woman,
however, would probably destroy the intimate space.
Finally, we have the opportunity to participate physically. A review of the relevant
subject literature reveals three main contexts in which ethnographers—beyond
individual sexual relationships which are generally not reflected in ethnographies
because they are linked to emotional love—participate directly: tourism, prostitution,
and homosexuality. Until recently, sexual practices and field experiences have been
described almost exclusively by gay men and only a small number of female researchers.
Accordingly, we know more about homosexual than heterosexual practices and more
about male than female sexual practices. In this sense, not much has changed since
the publication of the groundbreaking Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in
Anthropological Fieldwork (Kulick and Willson 1995).
Anthropologists use the research methods of participant observation as a path to
knowledge. Gerd Spittler (2001) has defined four criteria that inform these methods:
besides being present on-site for a long time (at least one year), mastering the local
language and assuming a social role in the field, it is above all what he calls deep
involvement. This means participating in as many aspects of daily life as possible and
eye witnessing what happens. It is almost certain that this last approach is hardly
possible in the practice of field studies on sexuality. Protecting sexual distance in the
field has for a long time been an unwritten imperative. However, researchers have
had relationships with informants in the field; many of them even got married. But
 Introduction xvii

for many reasons hardly any of them wrote about the sexual side of the relationship.3
Also, it would be epistemologically doubtful that the individual relationship between
the researcher and his or her partner(s) could say something about the culture as
a whole. One would have to amass many sexual experiences with different partners
or to observe them to be able to generalize. But even Murray (1996), who had many
sexual partners in Guatemala, believed that he could not learn about sex between the
natives by having sex with the natives. Rather, sexual contact with a foreigner offers not
only the researcher, but also the researched the possibility of expressing otherwise
inexpressible desires, which would not (or could not) be revealed to another native.
Even if there is something in Murray’s argument, it is doubtful that we cannot learn
anything about what takes place among our interlocutors by having all sorts of sexual
relations in the field. Good field studies are not the result of using a single research
technique. One would be a poor field researcher if relying on participant observation
alone and not relating one’s findings to various other sources: contextualization is the
basis of understanding in interpretive anthropology.
The task, then, is to show what encounters with sex can tell us. When we depict
ethnography as the sine qua non of ethnological knowledge and theory formation, we
generate knowledge about others’ sexuality using the techniques of participation,
observation, and contextualization—this does not relate solely to individual desire,
but to broader fields of culture which can tell us something about sexuality. Instead of
being guided by “big” notions, insights containing the germs of generalizations are
garnered from the field: about the culture as a whole, perhaps even, tentatively, about
humanity itself. So, we take the title of the book—Sex—as a starting point and working
concept, and embark on field studies in the hopes that insights will emerge that will
challenge in a productive way our own ideas about sex and sexuality.
Approaching sexuality from social and cultural studies perspectives has a long line
of false starts and neglected histories. In the 1930s, Hirschfeld (2006) unsuccessfully
called for a specific sexual ethnology. This had existed for a brief period when Friedrich
Salomon Krauss was publishing the journal Anthropopytheia at the beginning of
the twentieth century. Although the staff of the journal included important figures
of German, US -American, and Italian anthropologies, such as Karl von den Steinen,
Franz Boas, and Giuseppe Pitrè, the interest in sexuality attracted little attention in the
center of the subject. Unjustifiably forgotten anthropologists such as the great Finnish
ethnologist and sociologist Edward Westermarck had been studying human sexuality
thoroughly. His doctorate challenged the assumption that sexual promiscuity was a
behavioral norm in primitive societies. He later studied sexuality in Morocco. His
book The Origins of Sexual Modesty (Westermarck 1921) argued that sexual shame was
a by-product of evolutionary adaptation, namely the natural aversion to incest.
But Westermarck and Hirschfeld had almost no influence on how academic
anthropologies—cultural, social, and ethnological disciplines alike—dealt with
sexuality. As Lyons and Lyons have shown in their incisive history of anthropology and
sexuality, with notable early exceptions such as Malinowski (1987 [1929]) and Mead
(1928), modern ethnographic writing veered away from sexuality, submersing sex “in
other discourses” such as gender and kinship (2004: 216–17). Initiated by psychological
and psychiatric works (Opler 1980; Hooker 1965), anthropologists only turned their
xviii Introduction

attention to sexuality in the 1960s. Research was primarily focused on homosexuality,

transvestitism and third genders. These diverted from the unquestionably accepted
sexual norm and appeared worldwide in such varied cultural forms, like the North
American Berdache (Callender and Kochems 1983) or Two-Spirits (Lang 1990, 1994;
Carocci 1997), Indian hijra (Nanda 1985), Sevillian travesties (Haller 1992); Pakistani
khusra (Pfeffer 1995), Albanian sworn virgins (Grémaux 1996; Young 2000), the xanith
of Oman (Wikan 1977) and the mahus of Tahiti (Levy 1971), that research on them
was deemed necessary. For a long time, these phenomena were approached through
cultural comparison (Ford and Beach 1968; Churchill 1968; Klein 1974; Fitzgerald
1977; Davis and Whitten 1987). Even beyond research within gay and lesbian studies—
in anthropology of women and initiated by feminist ethnology—there was increasing
interest in gender roles and identities. However, all these studies were primarily about
identities, roles, power and dominance relationships in their cultural imprint, and less
about sexual practices.
It was not until the 1990s that a flurry of edited volumes—Taboo (Kulick and
Willson 1995), Out in the Field (Lewin and Leap 1996), and Sex, Sexuality, and the
Anthropologist (Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999)—initiated a new, sustained, reflexive
engagement with sex, sexuality, fieldwork, and erotic subjectivity. Rhetorically, these
volumes all positioned themselves, as breaking the “silence” concerning what Esther
Newton (1993) had famously dubbed “the erotic equation in fieldwork.” Building on
Newton’s insights, Kulick and Willson highlight how failures to critically engage erotic
subjectivity in fieldwork serve to reinforce and naturalize sexual, racial and colonial
hierarchies (1995: 12). They propose, in response to the Taboo of the volume’s title, to
start a conversation on the epistemological productivity of erotic subjectivity (1995:
23). Similarly, Lewin and Leap (1996: 22) discuss “breaking our silence” in terms of
coming “out” as gay and lesbian anthropologists. They respond to sexuality’s status as
“virtually prohibited” in “even the most candid ethnographic chronicles” (1996: 3), by
making explicit how (homosexual) subjectivity shapes fieldwork and ethnography.
The paradigm of being “out” frames visibility and vocalization in relation to questions
of identity. Likewise, Markowitz and Ashkenazi highlight how emerging reflective
discussions on the anthropologist’s positionality had not extended to sex and sexuality.
Methodologically, they conclude that “ethnographers ought to address the sexual issue
proactively . . . sexuality cannot be brushed aside” (1999: 14). These volumes position
themselves as breaking certain kinds of silences surrounding sexuality, and they all
frame the need to talk about sex through attentiveness to the anthropologist’s
subjectivity, identity, or positionality, adopting to some extent a confessional mode
along Foucauldian lines. In this way, these volumes turned to questions of desire and
erotic subjectivity of the anthropologist, focusing on issues of the fieldworker’s self,
building on as key points of reference the posthumous publication of Malinowski’s
Diary, the reflexive turn of the Writing Culture school, and the influence of Foucault.
Twenty years have passed since those groundbreaking collections. Both the world
and the discipline of anthropology have changed in the intervening years. In this
volume, we suggest that, as Gayle Rubin famously put it, once again “the time has come
to think about sex” (2011: 137), and, to think about sex in ways that account for both a
changing discipline and a changing world. In recent years, we have seen increasingly
 Introduction xix

widespread recognition of same-sex marriage and transgender rights, as well as

increasing awareness of sexual harassment and assault, as in the #MeToo movement.
These social and political changes are reflected in recent anthropological research,
made thinkable by the groundbreaking works of the previous generation. Our volume
is, in some ways, a follow up to these works which, as the chapters in this collection
attest, remain foundational in the education of anthropologists—especially those who
set out to study sex-related topics.
This is not to suggest, of course, that the conversation stopped with the edited
volumes of the 1990s. Indeed, the work of thinking about sex and fieldwork has been
taken up in a number of places, especially in the burgeoning subfield of queer
anthropology. Thus, many of the shifts being developed in this volume are already
underway, as ethnographic works become suffused with discussions of sex and
sexuality, as in Boellstorff on “dubbing culture” (2005), Dave on ethics and affect (2012),
Manalansan on “cultural citizenship” (2003), Povinelli on “intimate events” (2006),
Ramberg on “marriage” to the goddess (2014), Stout on intimacies (2014), Valentine on
the ethnography of categories (2007), and Weiss on “circuits” (2011), to name a few.
But, while the silence about “sex” has been broken, the “taboo” on writing
ethnography on sex from the standpoint of an observing participant in many ways
persists. Very little ethnographic work on sex makes explicit use of the ethnographer’s
body as research instrument—sociologist Staci Newmahr’s (2011) immersive study of
BDSM being a notable exception—and while talk about sex now proliferates in
academic writing, the use of intimate encounters as a basis for anthropological
knowledge remains underdeveloped; indeed, even a volume dedicated to the “shadow
side of fieldwork,” concentrating on blurring between professional research and
personal life in the field, contains only a single index entry referring to sexuality—and
that refers to a citation of other studies rather than the anthropologist’s own encounters
(McLean and Leibing 2007: 59). Yet, as the chapters in this volume attest, encounters
with sex in the field shape ethnographic knowledge in diffuse and important ways;
rather than writing out or wishing away such moments, we pursue their potential,
within the anthropology of sexuality and beyond it.
The chapters that comprise this volume, having had the benefit of absorbing the
lessons and insights of previous scholarship, are able to build on and depart from
the preoccupations of the earlier volumes in important ways. Here, questions of
identity and identification are not the central focus of theorization but rather a basis
of ethnographic engagement. Thus, the chapters are concerned with interpellation,
intersubjectivity, appropriations of identity categories, and incommensurability across
categories as they emerge and unfold in the field. Likewise, there is a shift from a focus
on sexual identity categories toward an emphasis on erotic practices (such as polyamory
and sadomasochism), as well as intimacies; reflexivity extends beyond the personal, for
example, by considering the institutional possibilities (such as IRB s and credentialing
trajectories) that shape the becoming of an anthropologist and the production of
anthropological knowledge.
More specifically, the chapters push beyond a focus on the erotic subjectivity of the
anthropologist. The lessons of the “reflexive” turn have been absorbed—contributors to
this volume of course acknowledge and reflect on their situation as subjects, erotic and
xx Introduction

otherwise. But what’s important about these texts is that those assertions of positionality
no longer constitute a primary focus of theorization and analysis. Rather, in these
chapters, reflexivity about the self becomes a precondition for thinking about other
issues concerning sex, sexuality, ethnography, and theory building. These issues include:
reflexivity about institutions and their role on shaping the conditions of possibility for
research and writing in anthropology; a shift from identity to interpellation as a
foundation for taking seriously the idea of encounter; a shift from thinking pre- and
proscriptively about sex in the field to homing in on the various kinds of intimacy
erotic engagement (or disengagement) in fieldwork can and does produce; an expansion
from field encounters to cautious generalizations about culture, and strategies of
grappling with various moments of incommensurabilty in the field.
It is worth noting that one key way the world has changed since is the relevance
of technological mediation, especially following the advent of the internet and its
increasingly widespread usage since the mid 1990s and the introduction of smart
phones and their attendant apps a decade later. Such media make appearances
throughout these chapters, if often obliquely. But, rather than pursue internet-based
ethnography, these chapters highlight “encounter-based fieldwork” in its embodied,
experiential depth and complexity (Borneman and Hammoudi 2009). This choice is
strategic: our volume emphasizes in-person ethnographic encounter, and the salience
of sex for producing ethnographic knowledge through corporeal engagement; our use
of classic field methods highlights how it is in and through traditional fieldwork that
these insights are developed and sustained. That said, technologically mediated forms
of eroticism and intimacy are increasingly prevalent, and are—as William Leap notes
in his Guide to Further Reading—a key area for further reflection.

Organization of chapters

Institutions
The chapters in this first section focus on problems of researching and writing about
sex ethnographically with respect to the institutional frameworks that shape
possibilities of knowledge production. Timothy McCajor Hall focuses on IRB s,
considering how certain kinds of data—those that convey “the qualia of erotic
experience”—become difficult, sometimes impossible, to collect and analyze. He takes
issue with the appropriation of biomedical models for ethnographic research as well as
a priori positioning the researcher as occupying a zone of structural privilege at the
expense of recognizing informants’ agency. Drawing on encounters ranging from his
fieldwork in Prague to his experience taking PrEP, he shows how intimate encounters
make it possible to draw important ethnographic insights. He thus argues for embracing
an “impure ethnography.”
While Hall uses the metaphor of impurity, Sebastian Mohr offers that of “indulgence,”
reclaiming this concept often lodged against those who write up personal experience.
Mohr takes on a different aspect of academic institutions, that of the writing process—
from the graduate thesis to professional publication—characterized as a rite of passage
for young ethnographers. Mohr critiques the Cartesian framework for imagining the
 Introduction xxi

academic writer as a disembodied mind: in this paradigm, the informant has a body
but not a mind, the anthropologist has a mind but not a body. Mohr highlights the
importance of “embodied experience” in the ethnographic encounter, and his fieldwork
accounts highlight the importance of learning how to listen to the ways in which
“bodies talk.” The body speaks without words, in its own way, and adequate attention to
bodily encounters, he argues, is essential to the ethnographic enterprise: “no fieldwork,
no participant observation, no interview without bodies,” he writes. Collectively, Hall
and Mohr remind us of how institutions are crucial sites through which knowledge
production becomes recognizable as such: sex is not just a problem of encounters in
the field, but one of encounters with the apparatuses that make fieldwork possible.
In the third chapter, Heath Cabot makes the case for the broader necessity of deep
thinking about desire, sex, and sexuality in ethnographic research—beyond the typical
subfield domains to which this thinking is often confined. While such discussions, she
notes, have increasingly appeared in anthropology, they are often confined to classes with
a topical focus on gender and sexuality. Cabot’s research on refugees at an NGO in Greece
would not be a locus where such topics would seem to be relevant in training on methods
and ethics, and yet, she shows, they were. “I came to understand,” she writes, “through
somatic and affective modes of experience, how globally and structurally shaped aspects
of desire and attraction emerge in the felt intimacies of intersubjective encounters.”
Indeed, a key aspect of Cabot’s contribution is the insight that issues of desire and erotic
encounter are central to ethnographic topics that might, on the surface, seem to have little
to do with sex or sexuality: “desire is, in fact, at the center of many questions about law,
ethics, protection, and support that I had been exploring in my research, as well as
ethnographic work more broadly.” Thus, Cabot’s chapter builds on the work in the first
two, exemplifying the productivity of inhabiting the impurities and indulgences of which
Hall and Mohr respectively speak. Cabot closes the chapter, and the section, by calling for
anthropologists “to inhabit this unruliness with a certain kind of grace.”

Interpellations
The second section takes up issues of reflexivity, pushing the conversation past a
focus on erotic subjectivity. Beyond the anthropologist’s professed identity, these
chapters show how identities are appropriated and negotiated intersubjectively.
Gregory Mitchell calls for rethinking the role of reflexivity most explicitly, displacing
the idea of confession with that of interpellation. He writes: “it’s imperative that we
ethnographers fret less about how we feel about our own sexuality in the field and
focus instead on how our interlocutors experience and perceive our sexual subjectivity.”
Drawing on his experiences being interpellated during his fieldwork on prostitution in
Brazil, Mitchell shows how he was taken not just as a potential client but as a certain
kind of client, in ways that illuminated aspects of the culture of the sauna that otherwise
may have remained obscured. Mitchell highlights some of the untapped potential of a
refocused reflexivity.
Similarly, Richard Martin calls for a shift from a paradigm of “disclosure” to one of
“exposure.” He takes up the issue of clothing—what one wears in the field—which was
especially significant in his fieldwork in the BDSM scene, where “appropriate” attire
xxii Introduction

was required as a condition of access to field sites. Though Martin identified himself as
an outsider to the scene verbally, his clothing often gave off a different impression, and
visits to the field by his partner, who participated with him at certain events, complicated
informants’ understandings further still. Martin shows how the self-understanding of
the anthropologist cannot and should not be taken for granted, but should rather be
located in terms of the intersubjective negotiations that unfold in the field. A “more
reciprocal unsettling,” he argues, nuance understandings of both BDSM and the
enterprise of ethnography.
While Mitchell and Martin both focus on the unintended ways that informants
interpellate the anthropologist, Diana Budur highlights how appropriations of identity
can be deliberate and all the more difficult to navigate in terms of methods and ethics.
Drawing on her fieldwork among Roma in Brazil, Budur discusses how her position
during fieldwork depended on her then significant other, the internationally-known
musician Eugene Hütz. Budur discusses Hütz’s appropriation of Gypsy identity, and
her attempt, through him (and her own ambiguous ancestry), to position herself as
inhabiting gendered norms in her field site. For example, Budur agreed to an
asymmetrical relationship in which her fidelity was expected but his was not as a way
to understand firsthand the cultural norms of her interlocutors. These appropriations,
she notes, enabled her to ask different questions and prompted her informants to
confide in her, even as the ethics of appropriation remain fraught.
Collectively, these chapters highlight how ethnographic encounter is a dialogical
negotiation. Interpellation is a much-needed counterpoint and corrective to a focus on
subjectivity as emanating from the anthropologist in a unidirectional fashion. Exposure
offers a way to conceptualize this two-way dynamic. And appropriation highlights how
anthropologists and informants alike make use, in ways that are sometimes strategic
and ethically ambiguous, of variously accessible cultural frames.

Intimacies
Institutions shape the possibilities of fieldwork; interpellations pervade intersubjective
encounters in the field. The next set of chapters takes up intimacies that emerge through
such encounters. Intimacy is a product of long-term fieldwork, and fieldwork that
focuses on deeply personal, erotic, and sexual topics unsettles boundaries both
conceptual and corporeal.
Adlina Maulod, a transmasculine anthropologist working with the Malay ethnic
minority in Singapore, discusses being literally in bed with informants. Such intimacies
are “at once pleasurable and perilous.” Maulod portrays intimate ethnographic
encounters as a dance in which “one’s move depends on how the other moves,” and
shows how the mutuality that emerges out of such erotic encounters can “challenge
the monolith of the ethnographic gaze,” democratizing knowledge production and
bridging methodological distance. Here, intimacy becomes an antidote to institutional
inequalities, requiring the anthropologist to grapple with “reception,” which generates
ethnographic unsettling as well as understanding.
Conversely, Susan Harper’s chapter highlights the limits of associating sexuality
with liberation. Harper’s study of a NeoPagan community in Texas shows how sex-
 Introduction xxiii

positive discourses and practices of polyamory and bisexuality can be appropriated to

enable, under a seemingly progressive guise, the perpetuation of “heterosexist and
patriarchal dynamics still at work.” Her chapter navigates the complexities of analyzing
and representing informants’ ideas when the uses to which sexuality is put are at odds
with the discourses used to express them. Harper’s chapter also shows how her
fieldwork enabled her to develop new insights about her personal relationships, even as
her own relationship dynamics enabled her to see new insights about her fieldwork.
Similarly, Hans Reihling’s chapter on masculinity and HIV in South Africa highlights
the importance of intimacy in generating fieldwork insights. His interpellation as a
sexual subject taught him much about local ideas about the invulnerability of male
bodies and the “heterosexual geographies of risk perception.” Reihling traces the ways
in which informants reacted to a failed relationship in the field, and what these reactions
reveal about gendered understandings of risk, vulnerability, and sexual subjectivity. In
particular, his intimate encounters led to deeper understandings of his field material,
in which he shows how the “moral language of romantic love” is at odds with “public
health risk discourse.” Importantly, it is intimacy that produces these realizations,
which in turn have implications for rethinking the efficacy of interventions at the level
of policy.
But intimacy is not synonymous with erotic encounter. As Andrea Luithle-
Hardenberg shows, intimate moments can be especially poignant even in contexts of
chastity and abstention (erotic and otherwise). This point is made most explicitly in her
comparison of celibacy and vegetarianism, drawing parallels between the two. Through
her long-term fieldwork with ascetics in India, Luithle-Hardenberg highlights powerful
intimate encounters in the field. From describing interactions in which her husband
negotiates on her behalf, literally speaking for her, to having her bags inspected by male
ascetics for impermissible food items, to making her menstruation public through
visible and ritualized seclusion, she shows how intimacy is implicated in powerful
fieldwork experiences. In this sense, her chapter makes most explicit that “intimacy” is
not meant as a euphemism for sex with informants, but is rather a way to understand
the potential of mutual vulnerability, exposure, and close connection that ethnographic
encounters make possible and even necessary. Embracing intimacy is thus, in all these
chapters, a way to push past the epistemological limits of methodological distance.

Incommensurabilities
Variegated forms of intimacy enable us to push, experientially and analytically, beyond
discourses of identity in productive ways. Just as the chapters in the “interpellations”
section push us to decenter self-professed identity and erotic subjectivity, and those in
the “intimacies” section unsettle distinctions between observer and observed, the
chapters in this section show how such decentering and unsettling enables us to push
through the impasses of incommensurability, even as incommensurability remains a
problem with which anthropologists and informants alike continue to grapple.
Dieter Haller’s chapter, based on fieldwork in Morocco, pushes beyond the
Foucauldian paradigm of confession. Understandings of “the inner self ” may appear
to make adherence to certain religious identities incompatible with certain expressions
xxiv Introduction

of sexuality. Haller shows how Germans and Moroccans experience this

incommensurability differently, highlighting how, for the Moroccan Nadir, a model of
discretion makes homosexual encounters possible and, in a certain sense, compatible
with fulfilling cultural obligations (heterosexual marriage, fatherhood). Here, it is not
about expressing the truth of the self as it is learning to be discreet about enacting
desires. Discretion is not a mode of silence, to which confession is opposed, but rather
itself a mode of enactment.
Similarly, Samuel Williams takes on the Foucauldian opposition between confession
and silence. Drawing on fieldwork in Istanbul, he shows how discourses of a “double
life” do not do justice to the ways in which his informants navigate religious and sexual
practices: “the way he carefully partitions his relationships into two domains is not
regarded as a moral compromise but as a moral achievement.” Williams show how
access to plural and unsettled discourses enables people to make sense of their lives in
the “gaps” or “interstices” and opens up these ideas as key sites for ethnographic inquiry
and attention.
Conversely, Robert Phillips offers a poignant counterpoint: even as
incommensurability becomes navigable, it can very much remain a problem for
anthropologists and informants alike. Phillips draws on his experience trying to
reconcile two potentially incompatible aspects of his identity, as a gay man and an
Orthodox Jew. Drawing on his academic trajectory, from work on gay Singapore to
studies of pornography and gay Orthodox men in Jerusalem, Phillips shows how
different kinds of research necessitate grappling with subjectivity in different ways. In/
coherent research programs and in/coherent selfhood become provocatively
intertwined. Phillips narrates the heartbreaking death of Shira Banki, which becomes
“a very tangible representation of the im/possibility of reconciling my sexual and
religious subjectivities. It is almost as if that incident represents one part of my
subjectivity, my fervently Orthodox Jewish self, attempting to kill my other, gay self.” If,
as Williams writes, pushing beyond incommensurability is a “moral achievement,”
Phillips’s piece shows how such achievements are often incomplete. Making sense of
lives is an urgently ongoing work.
The chapters in this volume seek to contribute to the project of making sense in the
domains of sex, sexuality, and erotic subjectivity, but in ways that extend beyond them
with implications for all who take ethnographic encounter seriously. A key emphasis
throughout these chapters is to take reflexivity beyond a focus on the self, to show how
the self is situated in ways that unsettle methodological individualism and make
intersubjective encounter a fundamental basis of being in the field and the world. Such
engagements are epistemological, methodological, and ethical, shaped by the
institutions of research and writing as the contexts of knowledge production and
reception. Such engagements depend less on professed identity and more on various
forms of interpellation, exposure, and appropriation. Such engagements result in the
production of various forms of intimacy. And such engagements can both produce and
push beyond the impasses of incommensurability. These are our core contributions to
the conversation, as well as points of departure for future research.
Another random document with
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The passage in Genesis “Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall
be taken on him seven-fold,”[131] has been variously interpreted.
Cosmas Indopleustes renders it thus, “Whosoever slayeth Cain will
discharge seven vengeances;” that is, he will deliver him from those
calamities to which he is subject when living.[132]
But Malala renders it otherwise; he says it is to be thus understood:
“Every murderer shall die for his sin, but thou who didst commit the
first homicide, and art therefore the originator of this crime, shalt be
punished seven-fold; that is, thou shalt undergo seven punishments.”
For Cain had committed seven crimes. First, he was guilty of envy;
then, of treachery; thirdly, of murder; fourthly, of killing his brother;
fifthly, this was the first murder ever committed; sixthly, he grieved
his parents; and seventhly, Cain lied to God. Thus the sin of Cain
was seven-fold; therefore seven-fold was his punishment. First, the
earth was accursed on his account; secondly, he was sentenced to
labour; thirdly, the earth was forbidden from yielding to him her
strength; fourthly, he was to become timid and conscience-stricken;
fifthly, he was to be a vagabond on the earth; sixthly, he was to be
cast out from God’s presence; seventhly, a mark was to be placed
upon him.
The Mussulmans say that the penitence of Cain, whom they call
Kabil, was not sincere. He was filled with remorse, but it was mingled
with envy and hatred, because he was regarded with disfavour by
the rest of the sons of Adam.
Near Damascus is shown a place at the foot of a mountain where
Cain slew Abel.[133]
The legends of the death of Cain will be found under the title of
Lamech.
“Half a mile from the gates of Hebron,” says the Capuchin Friar,
Ignatius von Rheinfelden, in his Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, “begins the
valley of Mamre, in which Abraham saw the three angels; the
Campus Damascenus lies toward the west; there, Adam was
created; and the spot is pointed out where Cain killed his brother
Abel. The earth there is red, and may be moulded like wax.”[134]
Salmeron says the same, “Adam was made of the earth or dust of
the Campus Damascenus.” And St. Jerome on Ezekiel, chap. xvii.,
says: “Damascus is the place where Abel was slain by his brother
Cain; for which cause the spot is called Damascus, that is, Blood-
drinking.” This Damascus near Hebron is not to be confused with the
city Damascus.
 VII.
THE DEATH OF ADAM.

According to a Mussulman tradition, Adam was consoled for the loss

of Abel by the discovery of how to make wheat-bread. The story is
as follows:—
The angel Gabriel was sent out of Paradise to give him the rest of
the wheat-grains Eve had plucked from the forbidden tree, together
with two oxen, and various instruments of husbandry. Hitherto he
had fed on roots and berries, and had known nothing of sowing
grain; acting under Gabriel’s directions, he ploughed the land, but
the plough stuck, and Adam impatiently smote one of the oxen, and
it spoke to him and said, “Wherefore hast thou smitten me?”
Adam replied, “Because thou dost not draw the plough.”
“Adam!” said the ox, “when thou wast rebellious, did God smite thee
thus?”
“O God!” cried Adam to the Almighty, “is every beast to reproach me,
and recall to me my sin?”
Then God heard his cry, and withdrew from beasts the power of
speech, lest they should cast their sin in the teeth of men.
But as the plough was still arrested, Adam dug into the soil, and
found that the iron had been caught by the body of his son Abel.
When the wheat was sprung up, Gabriel gave Adam fire from hell,
which however he had previously washed seventy times in the sea,
or it would have consumed the earth and all things thereon. In the
beginning, wheat-grains were the size of ostrich eggs, but under
Edris (Enoch) they were no bigger than goose eggs; under Elias they
were the size of hen’s eggs; under Christ, when the Jews sought to
slay him, they were no larger than grapes; it was in the time of Uzeir
(Esdras) that they diminished to their present proportions.
After Adam and Eve had been instructed in all that appertained to
agriculture, Gabriel brought them a lamb and showed Adam how to
slay it in the name of God, how to shear off the wool, and skin the
sheep. Eve was instructed in the art of spinning and weaving by the
angel, and she made of the wool, first a veil for herself, and then a
shirt for her husband.
The first pair brought up their grandsons and great grandsons, to the
number of 40,000 according to some, and 70,000 according to
others, and taught them all that they had learned of the angel.
After the death of Abel, and after Cain had been slain by the
avenging angel, Eve bore a third son, named Seth, who became the
father of the race of the prophets.
Finally, when Adam had reached his nine hundred and thirtieth year,
the Angel of Death appeared under the form of a goat, and ran
between his legs.
Adam recoiled with horror, and exclaimed, “God has given me one
thousand years; wherefore comest thou now?”
“What!” exclaimed the Angel of Death, “hast thou not given seventy
years of thy life to the prophet David?”
Adam stoutly denied that he had done so. Then the Angel of Death
drew the document of transfer from out of his beard, and presented it
to Adam, who could no longer refuse to go.
His son Seth washed and buried him, after that the angel Gabriel, or,
according to some accounts, Allah himself, had blessed him: Eve
died a year later.
Learned men are not agreed as to the place of their burial; some
traditions name India, others the Mount Kubeis, and others again,
Jerusalem—God alone knows![135]
Tabari says that Adam made Seth his testamentary executor.
“When Adam was dead, Gabriel instructed Seth how to bury him,
and brought him the winding sheet out of heaven. And Gabriel said
to Seth, ‘Thou art sole executor of thy father, therefore it is thy office
to perform the religious functions.’ Then Seth recited over Adam
thirty Tebîrs. Four of these Tebîrs were the legal prayers, the others
were supererogatory, and were designed to exalt the virtues of
Adam. Some say that Adam was buried near Mecca on Mount Abui-
Kubais.”[136]
According to the apocryphal “Life of Adam and Eve,” Adam before
his death called to his bedside all his sons and daughters, and they
numbered fifteen thousand males, and females unnumbered. Adam
is said to have been the author of several psalms; amongst others,
Psalm civ., Benedic anima mea, and Psalm cxxxix., Domine
probasti; as may be gathered from the 14th, 15th, and 16th verses:
“My bones are not hid from thee: though I was made secretly, and
fashioned beneath in the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance,
yet being imperfect; and in Thy book were all my members written;
which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of
them.”
The Arabs say that when Adam dictated his last will and testament,
the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to receive it, accompanied
by sixty-two millions of angels, each provided with clean white
sheets of parchment and pens, and that the will was sealed by
Gabriel.[137]
Tradition is not agreed as to the place of Adam’s burial. Khaithemah
says that Adam was buried near Mecca on Mount Abu-Kubais. But
the ancient Persians assert that he was buried in Ceylon, where his
sepulchre was guarded by lions at the time of the war of the giants.
[138]

But the most generally received tradition is this:—

The body of Adam was taken by Noah into the ark, and when the ark
rested on Ararat, Noah and his sons removed the body from it, and
they followed an angel who led them to the place where the first
father was to lie. Shem or Melchizedek—for they are one, as we
shall see presently—being consecrated by God to the priesthood,
performed the religious rites; and buried Adam at the centre of the
earth, which is Jerusalem; but, say some, he was buried by Shem
along with Eve, in the cave of Machpelah, in Hebron. But others
relate that Noah on leaving the ark distributed the bones of Adam
among his sons, and that he gave the head to Shem, who buried it in
Jerusalem. Some, taking this mystically, suppose that by this is
meant the sin and punishment of Adam, which was transmitted to all
the sons of Noah, but that to Shem was given the head, the Messiah
who was to regenerate the world.[139] S. Basil of Seleucia says:
“According to Jewish traditions, the skull of Adam was found there
(i.e. on Golgotha), and this, they say, Solomon knew by his great
wisdom. And because it was the place of Adam’s skull, therefore the
hill was called Golgotha, or Calvary.”[140]
With this a great concourse of Fathers agree; whose testimony has
been laboriously collected by Gretser in his famous and curious book
“De Cruce.” And this tradition has become a favourite subject for
artists, who, in their paintings or sculptures, represent the skull of
Adam at the foot of the Cross of Christ.
The apocryphal “Testament of Adam” still exists.
The tomb of Eve is shown at Jedda. “On entering the great gate of
the cemetery, one observes on the left a little wall three feet high,
forming a square of ten to twelve feet. There lies the head of our first
mother. In the middle of the cemetery is a sort of cupola, where
reposes the navel of her body; and at the other extremity, near the
door of egress, is another little wall also three feet high, forming a
lozenge-shaped enclosure: there are her feet. In this place is a large
piece of cloth, whereon the faithful deposit their offerings, which
serve for the maintenance of a constant burning of perfumes over
the midst of her body. The distance between her head and feet is
four hundred feet. How we have shrunk since the creation!”[141]
The bones of Adam and Eve, says Tabari, were taken by Noah into
the ark with him, and were reburied by him.
This article may be fitly concluded with the epitaph of Adam,
composed by Gabriel Alvarez, and published by him in his “Historia
Ecclesiæ Antediluvianæ,” Madrid, 1713.
“Here lies, reduced to a pinch of dust, he who, from a pinch of
dust, was formed to govern the earth,
Adam,
the son of None, the father of All, the stepfather of All
and of himself.
Having never wailed as a child, he spent his life in weeping,
the result of penitence.
Powerful, Wise, Immortal, Just,
he sold for the price of disobedience, power, wisdom, justice,
immortality.
Having abused the privilege of Free-will, which weapon
he had received for the preservation of Knowledge and
Grace,
by one stroke he struck with death himself and all the human
race.
The Omnipotent Judge
who in His Justice took from him righteousness, by His Mercy
restored it to him whole again:
by whose goodness it has fallen out, that we may
call that crime happy, which obtained such and so great
A Redeemer.
Thenceforth Free-will, which he in happiness used to
bring forth Misery, is used in Misery to bring forth
Happiness.
For if we, partakers of his pernicious inheritance, partake
also of his penitential example, and lend our ears
to salutary counsels,
Then we (who by our Free-will could lose ourselves) can be
saved
by the grace of the Redeemer, and the co-operation of our
Free-will.
The First Adam Lived to Die;
The Second Adam Died to Live.
Go, and imitate the penitence of the First Adam;
Go, and celebrate the goodness of the Second Adam.”
 VIII.
SETH.

When Seth had ascended the throne of his father, says Tabari, he
was the greatest of the sons of Adam. Every year he made the
pilgrimage to the Kaaba, and he ruled the world with equity, and
everything flourished during his reign. At the age of fifty he had a
son; he called his name Enoch and named him his executor. He died
at the age of nine hundred.[142]
Seth and the other sons of Adam waged perpetual war against the
Divs, or giants, the sons of Kabil, or Cain.
Rocail was another son of Adam, born next after Seth.
He possessed, says the Tahmurath Nâmeh, the most wonderful
knowledge in all mysteries. He had a genius so quick and piercing,
that he seemed to be rather an angel than a man.
Surkrag, a great giant, son of Cain, commanded in the mountains of
Kaf, which encompass the centre of the earth. This giant asked Seth
to send him Rocail, his brother, to assist him in governing his
subjects. Seth consented, and Rocail became the vizier or prime
minister of Surkrag, in the mountains of Kaf.
After having governed many centuries, and knowing, by divine
revelation, that the time of his death drew nigh, he thus addressed
Surkrag: “I am about to depart hence and enter on another
existence; but before I leave, I wish to bequeath to you some famous
work, which shall perpetuate my name into remote ages.”
Thereupon Rocail erected an enormous sepulchre, adorned with
statues of various metals, made by talismanic art, which moved, and
spake, and acted like living men.[143]
According to the Rabbinic traditions, Seth was one of the thirteen
who came circumcised into the world. The rest were Adam, Enoch,
Noah, Shem, Terah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah,
and Jeremiah.[144] The book Schene Luchôth says that the soul of
righteous Abel passed into the body of Seth, and afterwards this
same soul passed into Moses; thus the law, which was known to
Adam and in which Abel had been instructed, was not new to Moses.
[145]

The Little Genesis says, that Seth was instructed by the angels in
what was to take place in the world; how its iniquity was to grow, and
a flood was to overwhelm it; and how the Messiah would come and
restore all things. Seth was remarkable for the majesty and beauty of
his appearance, as he had inherited much of the loveliness of
unfallen man. He married his sister Azur, or, according to others,
Noræa or Horæa. Suidas, under the heading ‘Σήδ,’ says: “Seth was
the son of Adam: of this it is said, the sons of God went in unto the
daughters of men; that is to say, the sons of Seth went in unto the
daughters of Cain. For in that age Seth was called God, because he
had discovered Hebrew letters, and the names of the stars; but
especially on account of his great piety, so that he was the first to
bear the name of God.”
Theodoret thus refers to the verse,—“And to Seth, to him also there
was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to
call upon the name of the Lord,” or as our marginal reading is, “then
began men to call themselves by the name of the Lord.” “Aquila
interpreted it thus, ‘then Seth began to be called by the name of the
Lord.’ These words intimate his piety, which deserved that he should
receive the sacred name; and he was called God by his
acquaintance, and his children were termed the sons of God, just as
we are called Christians after Christ.”[146]
The origin of this tradition seems to be the fact that Seth was the
name of an ancient Egyptian deity, at first regarded as the giver of
light and civilization, but afterwards identified with Typhon by the
Egyptians, who considered Seth to be the chief god of the Hyksos or
shepherd kings; and in their hatred of these oppressors, the name of
Seth was everywhere obliterated on their monuments, and he was
regarded as one with the great adversary, Typhon; and was
represented as an ass, or with an ass’s head.[147]
Abulfaraj, in his history, says that Seth discovered letters, and that,
desirous to recover the Blessed Life, he and his sons went to Mount
Hermon, where they served God in piety and continence, and
associated not with the people of the land, nor took to themselves
wives; wherefore they were called the sons of God.[148]
Flavius Josephus relates that after the things that were to take place
had been revealed to Seth,—how the earth was to be destroyed, first
with water and then with fire,—lest those things which he had
discovered should perish from the memory of his posterity, he set up
two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, and he wrote thereon all
the science he had acquired, hoping that, in the event of the brick
pillar perishing by the rain, the stone one would endure.[149]
Freculphus adds that Jubal assisted the sons of Seth in engraving
on the columns all that was known of the conduct and order of the
heavens, and all the arts then known.[150]
The stone pillar was to be seen, in the time of Josephus, in Syria.
Anastasius of Sinai says that, when God created Adam after His
image and likeness, He breathed into him grace, and illumination,
and a ray of the Holy Spirit. But when he sinned, this glory left him,
and his face became clouded. Then he became the father of Cain
and Abel. But afterwards it is said in Scripture, “He begat a son in his
own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth;” which is
not said of Cain and Abel; and this means that Seth was begotten in
the likeness of unfallen man and after the image of Adam in
Paradise; and he called his name Seth, that is, by interpretation,
Resurrection, because in him he saw the resurrection of his departed
beauty, and wisdom, and glory, and radiance of the Holy Spirit. And
all those then living, when they saw how the face of Seth shone with
divine light, and heard him speak with divine wisdom, said, He is
God; therefore his sons were commonly called the sons of God.[151]
As Seth was an ancient Egyptian Sun-god, the origin of the myth of
his shining face can be ascertained without difficulty.
To Seth were attributed several apocryphal writings.
 IX.
CAINAN SON OF ENOS.

“And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: and
Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and
begat sons and daughters: and all the days of Seth were nine
hundred and twelve years: and he died. And Enos lived ninety years,
and begat Cainan.”[152]
Alexander wrote many epistles to Aristotle, his preceptor, in which he
narrated what had befallen him in India. Amongst other things he
wrote: “After I had entered the Persian region, which is a province of
India, I arrived at some islands of the sea, and there I found men,
like women, who fed on raw fish, and spake a language very like
Greek; they said to me that there was in the island the sepulchre of a
most ancient king, who was called Cainan, son of Enos, and who
ruled the whole world, and taught men all kinds of knowledge, and
had demons and all kinds of evil spirits under his control. He, by his
wisdom, understood that the ever-blessed God would bring in a flood
in the times of Noah; wherefore he engraved all that was to take
place on stone tables, which exist there to this day, and are written in
Hebrew characters. He wrote therein that the ocean would, in that
age, overflow a third part of the world, which took place in the
lifetime of Enos, the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam, our first
parent.
“In the same island, Cainan built a most extensive city, surrounded
with walls; and a great marble citadel, in which he treasured jewels
and pearls, and gold and silver in great abundance.
“Moreover, he erected a tower, very lofty, over a sepulchre for
himself, to serve as his monument. This tower can be approached by
no man; for it was built by astronomical art under the seven planets,
and with magical skill, so that every one who draws near the wall is
struck down with sudden death.”[153]
 X.
ENOCH.
 1. THE TRANSLATION OF ENOCH.

Enoch, or Edris,[154] as he is called by the Arabs, was born in

Hindostan, but he lived in Yemen. He was a prophet. In his days
men worshipped fire, being deceived by Eblis. When God sent
Enoch to his brethren to turn them from their false worship, they
would not believe him.
Idolatry began in the times of Jared, son of Mahalaleel, and it spread
to such an extent that, when Noah was born, there were not eighty
persons who worshipped the true, and living, and only God. Jared
fought Satan, the prince of demons, and captured him, and led him
about in chains wherever he went.
Enoch knew how to sew, and was an accomplished tailor. He was
the first to put pen to paper; he wrote many books. He had in his
possession the books of Adam, and for ten years, instead of
sleeping, he spent the night in reading them.
He instructed men in the art of making garments; Enoch showed
them how to cut out the skins to the proper shape, and to sew them
together; and how to make shoes to protect their feet.
And then, when the people had derived this great blessing from him,
they were ready to listen to his books; and he read to them the
books of Adam, and endeavoured thereby to bring them back to the
knowledge of the true God.
When he had spent many years in prayer, the Angel of Death
desired to make a compact of friendship with him. He took on him a
human form and approached him, saying, “I am the Angel of Death,
and I desire thy friendship. On account of thy great piety, thou
mayest make me a request which I shall accomplish.”
Enoch answered, “I desire that thou shouldst take my soul.”
The angel replied, “I have not come to thee for this purpose; thy time
is not yet arrived at its appointed close.”
Then Enoch said, “It is well; but take my soul away for a little space,
and then return it to my body, if God so wills.”
The angel said, “I cannot do this without God’s consent.” But he
presented the supplications of Enoch before Allah, and God,
knowing what was the design of Enoch, granted the prayer.
Then Azrael bore away the soul of Enoch, and at the same instant
the Eternal One restored it to him. After this, Enoch continued to
praise and pray to God; and the Angel of Death became his friend,
and often came to visit him.
Years passed, and Enoch said one day to the angel, “Oh, my friend!
I have yet a request to make.”
Azrael answered, “If I can grant it, I will do so readily.”
Enoch said, “I would see Hell, for I have undergone death, and I
know its sensations. I would know now the torments of the lost.”
But the angel answered, “This I cannot grant without permission from
the Almighty.”
God heard the prayer of Enoch, and He suffered Azrael to
accomplish what the prophet had desired. Then the Angel of Death
bore away Enoch, and showed him the seven stages of Hell, and all
the torments inflicted there on sinners: after that he replaced him
where he was before.
After some while had elapsed, Enoch again addressed Azrael, and
said, “I have another request to make.”
The angel answered, “Say on.”
Then said Enoch, “I desire to see the Paradise of God, as I have
seen Hell.”
Azrael replied, “I cannot grant thy petition without the consent of
God.”
But the All-Merciful, when he heard the request of his servant,
consented that it should be even as he desired. So the angel bore
Enoch into Paradise. And when they had reached the gates, the
keeper, Ridhwan, refused to open, saying to Enoch, “Thou art a
man, and no man can enter Paradise who has not tasted death.”
Then Enoch replied, “I also have tasted death; the soul that I have
will dwell eternally with me; God has resuscitated me from death.”
Ridhwan, however, said, “I cannot do this thing and admit thee
without the order of God.”
Then the order arrived from Allah, and the angel of the gate refused
no more; so Enoch entered; but before Enoch and Azrael passed the
gates, Ridhwan said to the prophet, “Go in, and behold Paradise, but
be speedy and leave it again, for thou mayst not dwell there till after
the Resurrection.”
Enoch replied, “Be it so;” and he went in and viewed Paradise, and
came out, as he had promised; and as he passed the threshold of
the door he turned and said to the angel, “Oh, Ridhwan! I have left
something in there; suffer me to run and fetch it.”
But Ridhwan refused; and a dispute arose between them.
Enoch said, “I am a prophet; and God has sent me thirty books, and
I have written them all, and I have never revolted against God. In
those books that God sent me, I was promised Paradise. If it be
necessary that I should have undergone death, I have undergone it.
If it be necessary that I should have seen Hell, I have seen it. Now I
am come to Paradise, and that is my home; God has promised it to
me, and now that I have entered I will leave it no more.”
The dispute waxed hot, but it was terminated by the order of God,
who bade Ridhwan open the gate and re-admit Enoch into Paradise,
where he still dwells.[155]
 2. THE BOOK OF ENOCH.

The Book of Enoch, quoted by S. Jude in his Epistle, and alluded to

by Origen, S. Augustine, S. Clement of Alexandria, and others of the
Fathers, must not be passed over.
The original book appears from internal evidence to have been
written about the year 110 B.C.[156] But we have not the work as then
written; it has suffered from numerous interpolations, and it is difficult
always to distinguish the original text from the additions.
The book is frequently quoted in the apocryphal “Testament of the
Twelve Patriarchs,” which is regarded as canonical by the Armenian
Church, but the references are for the most part not to be found in
the text. It was largely used by some of the early Christian writers,
either with acknowledgment or without. The monk George Syncellus,
in the eighth century, extracted portions to compose his
Chronography. This fragment in Syncellus was all that was known of
the book in the West till the last century. The Jews, though
remembering the work, had lost it in Hebrew; but it was alluded to by
the Rabbis down to the thirteenth century, and it is referred to in the
Book Sohar, though the writer may not have read the book of Enoch.
Bruce, the African traveller, was the first to bring it to Europe from
Abyssinia in two MSS., in the year 1773. Much attention was not,
however, paid to it till 1800, when De Sacy in his “Magasin
Encyclopédique,” under the title “Notice sur le Livre d’Enoch,” gave
some account of the work. In 1801, Professor Laurence gave to the
public an English translation, accompanied by some critical remarks.
Since then, the book has been carefully and exegetically examined.
The version we now have is Ethiopic.
The Book of Enoch consists of five divisions, or books, together with
a Prolegomena and an Epilegomena.
After the introduction (caps. 1-5), which describes the work as the
revelation of the seer Enoch concerning the future judgment and its
consequences, with warnings to the elect as to the signs; the First
part (caps. 6-16) opens with an account of the fall of the Angels, their
union with the daughters of men, and the generation of the Giants.
Connected with this, and divided from it by no superscription or sign
of change of subject, is an account of a journey made by Enoch, in
the company of the angels, over the earth and through the lower
circles of heaven, during which he is instructed in various mysteries
hidden from the knowledge of men, and a great deal of this
wondrous information is communicated to the reader.
This description of a journey, which is itself divided into two parts,
unquestionably belongs to the original book, and the historical
portion, narrating the procreation of the Giants, is an interpolation.
The Second portion of the book (caps. 37-71), with its own special
superscription and introduction, is called “The Second History of
Wisdom.” It continues the history of the voyage. The first portion
contained the description of the mysterious places and things in the
earth and in the lower heaven; the second portion contains an
account of the mysteries of the highest heaven, the angel-world, the
founding of the kingdom of the Messias, and the signs of His coming.
The close of this portion contains prophecies of Noah’s Flood, and
accounts of the fall of the Angels, their evil life and their punishment.
The whole account of the Flood, which comes in without rhyme or
reason, is also a manifest interpolation.
The Third portion (caps. 72-82), also under its own heading, is on
“The Revolution of the Lights of Heaven,” and describes the motions
of the planets, the duration of the seasons, and the number of the
days of the months, and the great winds of heaven. With this part the
voyage of Enoch closes.
The Fourth part (caps. 83-91), which has no superscription, but
which is generally designated as “The Book of the Dream History,”
contains the visions shown Enoch in his youth, which, in a series of
pictures, gives the history of the world till the end of time. This part
closes with some words of advice from Enoch to his sons.
The Fifth and last part (caps. 92-105) is “The Book of Exhortation,”
addressed by Enoch to his family against sin in all its forms, under all
its disguises, and concludes with an account of certain presages
which should announce the birth of Noah.
The Talmudic writers taught that Enoch at his translation became a
chief angel, and that his name became Metatron. In the Chaldee
version of Jonathan on the words of Genesis v. 24, it is said, “And
Enoch served before the Lord in truth, and was not among the
inhabitants of the earth, for he was translated above into the
firmament, through the word of the Lord; and He called him by the
name of Metatron (the great writer).” And in Rabbi Menachem’s
Commentary on the Five Books of Moses, it is written, “The Rabbi
Ishmael relates that he spoke to the Metatron, and he asked him
why he was named with the name of his Creator and with seventy
names, and why he was greater than any prince, and higher than
any angel, and dearer than any servant, and more honoured than all
the host, and more excellent in greatness, in power, and dominion
than all the mighty ones. Then he answered and said, ‘Because I
was Enoch, son of Jared. This is what the holy, ever-blessed God
wrought,—when the races of the Flood (i.e. the sinners who lived at
the time when the Flood came) sinned, and did unrighteously in their
works, and had said to God, ”Depart from us,“—He took me from
that untoward generation into the highest heaven, that I might be a
witness against that generation. And after the ever-blessed God had
removed me that I should stand before the throne of His Majesty,
and before the wheels of His chariot, and accomplish the
requirements of the Most High, then my flesh became flame, and my
arteries fire, and my bones juniper ashes, and the light of my eyelids
became the flashing of lightning, and my eyeballs torches of fire, and
the hair of my head was a flame, and all my limbs were fiery, burning
wings, and my body became burning fire; and by my right hand
flames were cleft asunder; and from my left hand burnt fiery torches;
but around me blew a wind, and storm, and tempest; and before and
behind me was the voice of a mighty earthquake.’”
The Rabbi Ishmael gives further particulars which are enshrined in
the great Jalkut Rubeni.[157]