Abstract
The phenomenon of the stranger reveals that spatial relations are, on the one hand, only the condition and, on the other hand, the symbol of human relations. This article discusses the specific form of interaction of the wife (woman) as a stranger in the context of the biblical family. The wife as a stranger is discussed here not in the sense often touched upon in the past, as a wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as a person who comes today and stays tomorrow. She is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although she has not moved on, she has also not overcome the freedom of coming and going. She is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries, but her position in this group is determined by the fact that she never belonged to it from the beginning. The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human relation is organised, in the phenomenon of the stranger, in a way which may be most briefly formulated by saying that in her relationships, distance means that she, who is close by, is also far away, and her strangeness means that she, who is far away, is also actually near. I examined the implications of knowing and identifying the wife as a stranger for feminist theory and its interpretation.
Highlights
The stranger appears throughout history as the trader who moves from place to place, the trader was perceived as a stranger
It was the trader who was seen as a stranger, but the classical example is the history of European Jews, and current examples include the migration of people from Syria or Africa to Europe, and that of Mexicans to the USA
The new wife as stranger threatens the boundaries of the ordering process that imposes stability and predictability on the family. She is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries
Summary
The stranger appears throughout history as the trader who moves from place to place (the wanderer), the trader was perceived as a stranger. Infertility was a reason for divorce, and the wife might face the consequences and be sent away (Instone-Brewer 2002:92–93) She might stay in the dwelling but the family (and community) sustains the marked-out boundaries and remains an insider-outsider (Marotta 2002:42). Married women as well as unmarried daughters belonged to the domain of the men in the family (Dreyer 2005:738) This type of marriage reinforces the wife’s role as outsider and ‘other’ in the husband’s family. The wife’s body must be cleansed and washed because of her impurity after birth giving and monthly periods, to be without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, in other words, to be holy (Eph 5:27) This was not required of any men as members of the faith community, but fits perfectly the public order of women’s identification and bodily demarcation.
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