Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler Blake Leyerle Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity Maria E. Doerfler Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 396. ISBN: 9780520304154 In this nuanced and exquisitely written study, Maria Doerfler takes readers on an extended survey of the richly variegated terrain of loss. Drawing on hymns, as well as on homilies and commentaries, she not only assesses the response of clerics to child mortality but also illuminates the affective responses of bereaved parents. Throughout the work, she stresses the powerful role of the liturgy in scripting emotions, and she explores how expressions of grief are typically gendered. The merits of this splendid work are many. Chief among them is the rich array of cited evidence. With impressive ease, Doerfler ranges across genres and linguistic communities, weaving Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopian sources into a conversation usually solidly dominated by Greek and Latin authors. To extend and clarify her analysis, she draws on contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman sources, adduces ancient material evidence, and cites voices from the medieval period, as well as from our own. Epigraphs to the chapters are as likely to feature quotations from recently published manuals on parenting as extracts from documentary papyri, a verse from Galit Hasan-Rokem's poetry as a passage from Theodoret. An introductory chapter sets up the study. Although information about the death of children in Late Antiquity remains frustratingly scanty, the experiences of one particular group of children, namely biblical characters, "were amply—one might even say excessively—documented and discussed" (5). The fact that most of these children, (Abel, Isaac, Jephthah's daughter, and the Maccabean mother's seven sons) are adult offspring underscores how this study is as much about parental bereavement as it is about the death of subadults. For if theological treatises, borrowing from philosophical writings, often conclude that an early death is a boon to both the deceased and their families, the reactions of biblical characters suggest otherwise. In their unrestrained grief, they offer vital, if often overlooked counternarratives (12). After a helpful summary of the social, religious, and ritual contexts surrounding children's death and commemoration, each subsequent chapter focuses on one or two of these dramatis personae. Chapter 2 focuses on scripture's first bereaved parents. Presented as paragons of suffering, Adam and Eve functioned not only to moderate but also to elevate the grief of ordinary parents. The laments placed into Eve's mouth by Ephrem, among others, invited parents to set their own loss within that narrative framework, and thus they offered reassurance that their children—just like Abel—would enjoy a paradisiacal future (59–71). Chapter 3 takes up the binding of Isaac, which Doerfler presents not as an exceptional story but as a familiar horror: "the threatened death of an aged couple's only son—and with it, the end of the family's lineage" (77). Portraying Abraham as a paragon of piety and emotional restraint, homilists urged parents to respond to the surrendering of their children—to martyrdom or the ascetic life, as well as to premature death—in a similarly pious and trusting manner (82–88). Realism enters, however, in the [End Page 252] figure of Sarah, whom homilists insert into the narrative to give voice to maternal grief and to theological protest. Her words allow "writers to express what Abraham in these texts could not, but what late ancient audiences evidently felt the situation required" (96). Indeed, for some homilists, Isaac's survival was due to her vociferous lament (99–101). In an especially brilliant chapter, Doerf er illuminates how the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter and the death of the Maccabean mother's seven sons function as parallel narratives to the Akedah. Although Jephthah is praised by Jacob of Serugh as a model parent, one who balanced allegiance to the divine and devotion to his family, for most early commentators, he is "a compromised hero, a counterfeit Abraham, a dangerous example" (116). Condemned as much for his overt expression of grief as for his rash vow, his mourning...