Noah's Wife and Her Gossips

Podcast Audio

Links to images discussed

https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/4cf7e9d2-c06e-4029-a3b1-152736320897/surfaces/1eaf2d07-7f24-4e94-bd27-621f108ee679/

http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/2/77498

Transcript

Noah's Wife and Her Gossips, Chisme Symposium with Dr. Esther Brownsmith

January 15, 2025

[00:00:00] Neomi De Anda: Hello and welcome to the Chisme Symposium podcast. We have taken a little break from doing our video and audio podcast, but are back again. And we are here in December, 2024, and so excited to be recording a new podcast. And today we have Dr. Esther Brown Smith, who is an assistant professor here at the University of Dayton in the Department of Religious Studies, and I will let her tell you just a little bit more about herself, and then we will continue with a conversation. Today's topic is on Noah's wife and her gossips.

So, Dr. Brown Smith, please. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came to the University of Dayton, anything that you'd like to share. 

[00:00:50] Esther Brownsmith: This is my second year at the University of Dayton, and I'm so thrilled to be here. I am a professor of Hebrew Bible, so I study the Old Testament. And, in particular, I'm really interested in using the lenses of gender and sexuality as a way to understand the text, and as a way to understand how the text has impacted people throughout time.

So, The job that I had before I started at UD was actually all the way over in Norway at Oslo. And it's relevant to this particular subject because I was part of a international project doing my postdoc there called Books Known Only by Title. Oh, interesting. So Books Known Only by Title was basically looking at books from the first millennium, plus or minus, C, uh, and that we know about because people have mentioned them, but we don't have them.

So maybe they once existed and we've lost them, maybe they never existed and they were made up. Um, in some cases we don't know which of those are true. Those was true, but regardless, they're books that are kind of functioning as objects in the writing of other people, but that don't exist as an object in themselves.

[00:02:02] Neomi De Anda: Oh, wow. So they get named or cited, 

[00:02:05] Esther Brownsmith: right? Exactly

[00:02:06] Neomi De Anda: So I'm just going to start doing that. 

[00:02:08] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah. 

Well, no, in some cases, it looks like scholars actually did that deliberately to, you know, basically give themselves sources to say, Oh, well, I didn't make this up. I got this from so and so and the book of so and so.

And in some cases that may have been completely their invention. In other cases, they may have heard of a book and so and so, but not actually read it or seen it themselves. Um, so there are a lot of different fun possibilities. And one of the specific focuses of the project, which is how, Part of how I got connected to it is on gender and the way that these books are connected to structures of gender.

So, for instance, in one of my colleagues study, The Galatian Decree, which is a list of books. Canonical and non canonical, but virtuous and totally bad, don't read them books that was written. 

[00:03:02] Neomi De Anda: Well, when you're saying canonical, can you just tell me a little bit, what do you mean by that word? 

[00:03:05] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, absolutely.

 Canonical is an interesting term when you're talking about this early, because, uh, Canon is something that now we have, now we can say, you know, the Protestant canon contains these books. The Catholic contain canon contains these books. The Jewish canon contains these books. But in many cases, it took a while between when those books were written and began to get popular and when they were decided, okay, these and no other books are the ones that we consider scripture that are the ones we consider authoritative.

 This question of what is canon and what isn't was a debated subject for many centuries. And so in the Galatian Decree, which is attributed to Galatius, but we don't actually know who wrote it makes a list of, okay, here are the books of canon, and it basically gives us the books that are in what we call the Bible today.

And here is, Texts that are not canonical, but they're still good to read, they're things like, the early Church Fathers, where they're good, they're just not part of Scripture with a capital S. And then we have the list of books that you're really not supposed to be reading because they're misleading.

And strangely enough, all of the books that are attributed to women appear in that third list. 

[00:04:25] Neomi De Anda: Ah, or not so strangely. 

[00:04:27] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, 

not so strangely. Um, so things like that, we notice these trends in how attribution to a woman or connection to a woman is often enough to get a book mentioned, perhaps, often in the context of, and don't you dare read it, but not actually published.

Part of what's being copied and preserved for future generations. 

[00:04:52] Neomi De Anda: Oh, fascinating. No, that's, that's super helpful. Well, and the gender piece I think is so important. I was also thinking about the connection to Chisme there, as far as how this gets pushed forward and how we still have this. And you said it's attributed to, but may not have been the actual author. So to me, all of those pieces are kind of linking into how knowledge is created using chisme. So that's super helpful for me and fun. 

[00:05:20] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that for me, it really connects to this question of how does gender change our valuation of knowledge and information?

How does something being associated with, Women with femininity mean that it is less serious, less important, less reliable, less virtuous, less whatever, 

[00:05:42] Neomi De Anda: right? 

Just less. 

[00:05:44] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, just less. 

[00:05:46] Neomi De Anda: Okay, so you did a presentation for us in our in person Chisme Symposium. And so I just wanted you to kind of go through a little bit.

What do you know about Noah's wife? And then. Give us whatever pieces you'd like for that. And then I think eventually you're going to get to read a portion of the reading of what you did for us in the in person Chisme Symposium, right? Which I'm also saying that for the listeners, because I know that there was a little bit of buzz on social media that people wanted to know what you were doing when you shared your post and when we shared the post about the Chisme Symposium.

So, so people get ready, that's coming, but please tell us. It's more about what we know about Noah's wife. 

[00:06:29] Esther Brownsmith: Absolutely. So, part of why I brought up the books known only by title is that this is how I started really wondering about Noah's wife. Because there's a character called Norea who is mentioned in the book.

In Epiphanius, as who's one of the early church fathers, as having written a book or books that are Gnostic and bad, so Gnosticism, for those who aren't familiar with it, is kind of a branch of, we'll call it Christianity, even though it diverged from what we now think of as Orthodox Christianity, but it was very much still inspired by the life of Jesus.

 However, they had a number of pretty major theological divergences including the idea that The God of this world is actually not a good guy, he's actually a bad Archon, and that he was a created being who has rulership over this world, but isn't the ultimate true God, so Gnosticism as a sect. is actually associated with female empowerment in a number of really interesting ways. A lot of the positive characters in Gnosticism and some of the teachers of Gnosticism that we know of were women. And so it's not really a surprise that when Epiphanius starts talking about Gnosticism, he starts talking about a woman, Norea.

And he says that Norea was Noah's wife, but she was listening to the powers on high, the powers, the big real gods, and by their instruction, they, she burned down the ark several times while he was trying to build it, because he was listening to the bad gods, the corrupt gods.

And so he sets her up as the wife of Noah, but also as this source of divine knowledge. And this was really intriguing to me. So I started reading up more about who is this person. 

[00:08:22] Neomi De Anda: MHmm

[00:08:23] Esther Brownsmith: So the thing about Noah's wife is number one, we know very, very little about her. We don't even know her name. Norea is one of many names, names that have been given to her.

There's an article called, I believe the 103 names of Noah's wife. And so every source, it seems comes up with a different name for her. She is basically an appendage to Noah. She is proof that life will go on, but it's actually kind of interesting because she isn't fully necessary, which is to say their three sons go on the ark and they need wives because they need to have children and procreate and repopulate the earth.

Yeah, she doesn't have any more children after that. So, it's actually kind of interesting to me that she was necessary for this ark because she isn't necessary to the reproduction. But regardless, she's mentioned not by name very little, she goes on the ark, she comes off the ark at the end, and that's all we know about her.

[00:09:23] Neomi De Anda: Mmhmm 

[00:09:23] Esther Brownsmith: We really don't see anything more, but because Noah is, of course, such a major figure in the Bible that so many people have then speculated more about her, um, including the Gnostics and including people much later. So in Judaism, they linked her to Nama, who is mentioned, who is mentioned in the Bible because they said, well, Nama is mentioned in Genesis.

She doesn't have a husband there. Noah is mentioned. We don't know the name of his wife. Clearly, they're the same person. We see a lot of speculation about her, and one of the things that really interested me was looking into Christianity, when we start to see the ways that she becomes a character in what I'll call Christian legends, the Christian mythos of kind of tales that are associated with the Bible, but not actually in the Bible itself.

 So we have a number of visual depictions of her. We have a number of plays and stories about her. And she emerges as this really interesting character because the central defining trait that is worked out in different ways is that she doesn't want to go on the Ark. And so the question of why doesn't she want to go on the Ark gets answered differently by different people.

But even as early as 1000, we have a manuscript of, that has an image of the Ark and Noah's wife standing down at the bottom of the gangplank, refusing to board while Noah tries to draw her onto it. 

[00:10:55] Neomi De Anda: Oh wow. 

[00:10:55] Esther Brownsmith: So this is pretty early. 

[00:10:56] Neomi De Anda: The protest is strong. 

[00:10:58] Esther Brownsmith: Yes, the protest is very strong.

[00:11:00] Neomi De Anda: So, this is your portion, those of you who tuned in because you heard about the Chisme Symposium and the gathering we had here at the University of Dayton earlier this year.

And so here, Dr. Brownsmith is going to give us a reading and then tell us some about what she did with us here in person. 

[00:11:22] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah. So this is a reading that is taken from a 1607 manuscript, which is a pageant. It was a play that was performed publicly for entertainment, as well as, repeating the Bible.

I'm sure there was some good edification going on too. 

[00:11:38] Neomi De Anda: And where was this performed? 

[00:11:39] Esther Brownsmith: And this one was performed in Chester, and it was performed by the Water and Fish Guilds. So each of the guilds would have a different play, and I guess they decided, well, for the Water and Fish Guilds, We'll give you Noah

[00:11:52] Neomi De Anda: There's a little water in that story. 

[00:11:53] Esther Brownsmith: Yes.

So this is an excerpt from after God has already told Noah to build the ark, he's built it, the time has come to get on board. Noah, wife, come in. Why stands thou here? Thou art ever froward, that dare I swear. Come in, on God have. Time it were for fear lest that we drown.

Noah's wife, come in. Yea, sir, set up your sail and row forth with evil heel, for without fail I will not out of this town. But I have my gossips, every one. One foot further I will not gone. They shall not drown by St. John, and I may save their life. They loved me full well by Christ, but thou wilt let them in thy chest, else row forth, Noah, wither thou list, and get thee a new wife.

Noah, Shem's son, though thy mother is raw, Forsooth such another I do not know. And then we skip ahead a little bit and we have a little chorus that is probably sung at the time by the good gossips. The flood comes in full fleeting fast, On every side it spreadeth full fare, For fear of drowning I am aghast.

Good gossip, let us draw near, and let us drink or we depart, for often times we have done so. For at a draught thou drinks to court, and so will I do, or I go. Japheth, there's one of the children of Noah, says, Mother, we pray you all together, or we are here your own children. Come into the ship for fear of the weather, for his a love that you bought.

She replies, That I will not for all your call, but I have my gossips all. Shem says, In faith, mother, yet you shall, whether you will or not. So she goes in, Noah says, Welcome, wife, into this boat, and she says, And have thou that for thy moat, and she gives a blow.

Noah says, Aha, Mary, this is hot. It is good to be still. And yes, if you noticed that this story of Noah contains mentions of St. John and Christ and Mary, which is just a wee bit anachronistic, you are correct. So that's the scene that really caught my attention. The reason that it caught my attention, which we talked about in this Tuesday Symposium, Is that it's a moment that was probably written in order to make fun of Noah's wife, in order to say, "Oh, look at her. She's being such a busy body and spending time with these gossips instead of going on the ark like she's supposed to. Oh, those women, they never obey their wives. " But in fact, it's kind of sympathetic that these gossips are people who have been true friends to her and she doesn't want to watch them drown.

And so we have this moment where our modern reading of the text is actually a lot more sympathetic than maybe the original intention of the text. And we have this idea of the gossips. And what about them makes them gossips? What about them makes them not good companions for Noah's wife? Because I don't think the text thinks they're good companions for Noah's wife.

[00:15:14] Neomi De Anda: So, tell us a little bit about, uh, Noah's wife. Why they're called gossips, or what might be the possibility of why they're called gossips? 

[00:15:22] Esther Brownsmith: So this is interesting because of when the text was written. So, originally, originally, gossip was a shortened version of god sibling. So, a god sib was like a godfather or a godmother.

It was someone who was there when you were baptized. However, that starts to change right around when this text was written, in the Oxford English Dictionary. I looked up put together a little timeline of how does this word change from first being a sponsor at baptism to then being, in general, a familiar acquaintance, someone who's close to you to then being, to quote the dictionary," a person, mostly a woman, of light and trifling character, especially one who delights in idle talk."

 We see in Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, he says, I will leave you now to your gossip like humor. You break jests as braggarts do their blades. So it is definitely a meaning that was 1600 with Shakespeare. By this point, it does have that meaning. And so the question is whether the people who are listening to this play would have thought, Oh, she just means my God siblings, the people I'm close to. Or whether there's a sense of, oh, they're drinking beer and chatting to each other. And that chatting is what is keeping Noah's wife off of the ark. 

[00:16:42] Neomi De Anda: What do you think it is? Or what would you prefer it to be? 

[00:16:47] Esther Brownsmith: Oh, good question.

I think that it's both and in some ways. In that I think that God's siblings who are women Are going to be associated with idle chatter to begin with, and I think that that's where that's how the word evolves as it does, and so whether or not gossip as we think of it today meant what it did to the heroes of this play that to talk about these gossips implied that they were flighty, you know, Oh, her girlfriends, her female family, they go off and probably talk about nails and hair.

Um, obviously I'm being a little anachronistic there, but,

[00:17:33] Neomi De Anda: Well, you don't know. Maybe that's what they talked about. 

[00:17:35] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, maybe they did. And this idea that because it's a group of women who are engaging in conversation with her that is less valued I think is really important to this word gossip where it appears there.

There's also this question of gossip as conveying information, and this is where it connects back to the Chisme, this question of whether they are actually providing new information that Noah has been so caught up in creating the Ark that he's not really thinking about the people who are going to die.

And the fact that he or God is condemning. Millions and millions of people to death, and they refuse to be silenced on that. They refuse to let that go. They say, no, we don't want to drown. 

[00:18:29] Neomi De Anda: That's the part I think is so significant about this story. 

[00:18:33] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, that's one of the ways in which we talked about at this workshop the connections between the Gossips and chisme. 

The other way that started to develop in some of the conversation at the workshop, and that I actually ended up reading a little more about later on, was that there are some really interesting ways that Noah's wife and Mary are paralleled. And so, this gossipy Noah's wife and the chisme of Mary in the Magnificat may actually have some both overt and implicit connections going on there.

[00:19:08] Neomi De Anda: Oh, I want to hear more about that. But is there anything else you want to highlight about maybe something you learned or other discussions that happened at the Chisme Symposium itself? 

[00:19:19] Esther Brownsmith: Well, first of all, this direction of connecting her to Mary was largely planned.

Because of the conversations that we had there, and in particular, some of the comments that were made by Dr. Megan Henning, who's one of our faculty here. But in addition to that, I think that my favorite part was that we divided into groups for conversation and my group was with three undergraduates, and they were so delighted and sympathized so much with Noah's wife, that they had heard the story of Noah, but they'd never really stopped to consider the the ethical dilemma of letting all those people drown and the way that Noah's wife brings out that dilemma and refuses to let it lie silent was really appealing to them. And so seeing them get excited about the story is really what I love most about teaching the Bible. When you can kind of get someone past the, oh yeah, I know this story, blah, blah, blah, into, oh, so it could mean that.

[00:20:15] Neomi De Anda: That is so interesting and exciting. And usually at the Chisme Symposium, we don't have undergraduates, but we had them this time and they really added some things. 

[00:20:26] Esther Brownsmith: Absolutely. And I think that that separation of time can sometimes help us see things more clearly in the past that we might not see because we're so used to them today. And so to be able to then bring that back is a really important step. 

[00:20:39] Neomi De Anda: Yeah, that's super interesting. All right. Well, tell us, bring us back to Noah's wife and Mary and any of those parallels you'd like to make.

[00:20:47] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah. So first of all, this is a parallel that, um, medieval artists and writers were making. So I have a couple of images here that I'll try to, I'll show you, but I'll try to describe for our listeners. And we'll put those up on the website. Yes. So the first is from what's called a Bible Moralisee, which was, a type of picture book, basically, that had illustrations of different scenes in the Bible, along with a little description along the side about, oh, this is what you're looking at.

And these were often a really important way for medieval artists and literary creators to interpret the Bible, not just to reproduce it, but to actually give their spin on what's going on in it. And so here we have this top, image in a roundel here that is pretty clearly Noah and his wife are going onto the ark.

You can see the ark there in the water. You can see the animals and his sons are already on board. So pretty standard picture of Noah in the Ark. And it's paired with this image below, with a woman who is wearing the same color clothes, a man who is wearing the same color clothes. But they're sitting and very clearly from their poses, it's Jesus and Mary.

And the side alongside it says in Latin that Noah signifies Christ and Noah's wife signifies the Virgin Mary. And their family stand for the apostles through whom the church is liberated from the waves of its time. You see this idea from quite early that Mary and Noah's wife are in some way equated.

And then we have another one that is almost exactly 1300 that has a similar set of illustrations. The top left illustration is Noah, sitting on the ark.

 The water's all around him. This one's fun because you actually can see corpses in the water. 

[00:22:42] Neomi De Anda: So, oh my!

[00:22:43] Esther Brownsmith: And it's not the only illustration like that, that I've seen. Like some of these illustrators really like to draw all these dead bodies floating in the water around the ark. 

[00:22:53] Neomi De Anda: Yeah. That is definitely not the way I learned this story in my picture books.

[00:22:57] Esther Brownsmith: Indeed. And so we have Noah's wife standing here. Who's refusing to go on and if you look closely she's got a little devil clinging on to her back which relates to legends that we see in Islamic stories as well of devils who led Noah's wife astray and caused her to sabotage the ark.

So a lot of extra biblical stories around this But then if we look at the bottom two here, um, these are images of Joaquim and Ana, and of the blessing of their marriage and the birth of Mary. 

[00:23:31] Neomi De Anda: Oh, wow. 

[00:23:31] Esther Brownsmith: And so there's this question of why would you pair those with each other in a particular image.

And this one doesn't have a written explanation of why they're together. 

[00:23:40] Neomi De Anda: Oh, interesting. 

[00:23:41] Esther Brownsmith: But, at least according to some of the scholarship I've seen, there is this sense that, again, Mary is the new Noah's wife, and that where Noah's wife failed, Mary succeeds. 

[00:23:52] Neomi De Anda: Oh, okay. Okay. 

[00:23:54] Esther Brownsmith: So Noah's wife is linked to Eve, for sure, in being kind of the bearer of sin, but also to Mary and the way that Mary and Eve are linked.

[00:24:02] Neomi De Anda: So there's something also about, just because today on December 9th in the USA we're celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. 

[00:24:11] Esther Brownsmith: Yeah, it's well timed. 

[00:24:12] Neomi De Anda: Immaculate Conception imagery at least in the background happening there. 

[00:24:17] Esther Brownsmith: Absolutely, absolutely. 

So, We have these overt links where they will, like, directly say, Okay, Noah's wife signifies Mary.

[00:24:27] Neomi De Anda: Mm hmm. 

[00:24:27] Esther Brownsmith: But there's also some really interesting thematic links that I found as well. So, one of them is around the idea of virginity. That in the Gnostic texts that we have about Norea, so most of the Gnostic texts that existed in the ancient world were lost because they're heretical, so they weren't copied by the monasteries, but we've found a few of them in Egypt, in the Nag Hammadi library, and so there is this really interesting one that describes Norea as the child directly of Adam and Eve.

It says in the Hypostasis of the Archons, which is an Gnostic text from Nag Hammadi, Eve became pregnant and she bore Norea. And she said, he has begotten on me a virgin as an assistance for many generations of mankind. She is the virgin whom the forces did not defile. So, it's this very Marian imagery of her as an undefiled virgin. It's that imagery that makes her an appropriate vessel for communicating this divine knowledge that she then gives later in this Gnostic text. 

[00:25:33] Neomi De Anda: Oh, interesting. So, that's why she's able to see the the true message rather than the false message.

[00:25:40] Esther Brownsmith: Exactly. That's why they're in communication with her is because she is undefiled, unlike most of humanity. And so we have this link of virginity. We also have another link that I thought was really interesting, which is that, um, I mentioned that the play that we listened to was from the city of Chester, which had fishmongers and water carriers, and they were doing this Noah thing.

 There are. Regional variants on all these different plays. Mm-hmm . And another regional variant is from the city of Wakefield, which was associated with fabric production, um, spinning and weaving and so on. And in that one, I don't have the excerpt here on hand, but just to summarize it, Noah's wife refuses to get on board because she's too busy spinning.

Oh. Because she's like, I don't wanna put down my spindle. I have. To finish this reel of yarn, I'll go on board the ship once I'm done with my spinning. 

[00:26:34] Neomi De Anda: Oh, wow. 

[00:26:36] Esther Brownsmith: And as the article that talked about this noted, spinning is also something that is associated in medieval texts with the Virgin Mary. And that may have been very deliberately shown as it's a virtuous activity.

It's a womanly appropriate activity. But, she was doing it to excess, and that's what made the difference, is that it's okay to be womanly and virtuous, but not if you're doing it excessively, not if you're doing it and it's standing in the way of your obedience to your husband. So there was this connection of spinning, and then also, finally, just the connection of compassion, and this is the one that was brought up by Dr. Henning in our conversation at the Chisme Symposium, is she talked about the weeping Mary the Mater Dolorosa, who is weeping for mankind and for her losses. And this idea of the empathic Mary, the empathic Noah's wife, who sees the people who are destined to drown around her and doesn't want to let them go, doesn't want to let their deaths just happen, a really beautiful image of feminine compassion, I think.

It's a moment where you see the text. in some small way, even as it's making fun of her, nonetheless, understanding that she can have an opinion and that her opinion may disagree with the male opinions and that it stands as a counter story, as a counter narrative to the overall narrative of what the Bible itself says.

And that's a really important thing to me that Noah's wife is. A paradoxical figure and this is something that in particular Jewish authors wrestled with. On the one hand, She had to have been worthy, because of all the people on the earth, she was one of the just eight people who survived the flood.

So clearly she was a worthy, good person and yet there are all these indications that she may not have been. So Nama, whom they identified with her, that I mentioned earlier, is actually one of the descendants of Cain. So she's not supposed to be a good person, even though her name means lovely or beautiful.

So they said, well, she was personally virtuous enough that she overcame her heritage and managed to be good enough to be worthy of the Ark. But this tension where you're using Noah's wife as an example of womanly misconduct, of hanging out with her gossips drinking, of sitting there spinning instead of paying attention to her husband, and yet she still gets to be saved.

[00:29:16] Neomi De Anda: Right. 

[00:29:17] Esther Brownsmith: It's a really interesting tension to me. 

[00:29:19] Neomi De Anda: And it definitely complexifies the story of good and evil and what it means to be a virtuous human, which I think so many times gets listed as kind of a black and white or you can do certain things and not other things.

But then, There can be some real complexities. My favorite part is that where she regularly goes and drinks with her gossips. That really is my favorite part and that the gossips in the story that you read to us are, are so adamant about that. That's why they want her to stay back. And, but that's also why they want to be included in those who are saved.

I don't want to say it's about the drinking. I think it's about the conviviality. They really share life right there. And they want more of those moments and more of that time. And piece of Noah's wife making us pause to really think about all of the people who are lost in the flood.

And when we think today about what is virtuous and how how do we think about people or not think about people or even think about the earth and the environment? There's all kinds of things and connections that could be made. And I don't want to take from your thinking, but those are the sparks that have been coming to me in addition to, not just thinking about Mary, but also so many times, I think, with the, the Mary and Eve dynamic that people want to say, this is an Eve thing and this is a Mary thing and, and Mary is virtuous and Eve is evil because she allowed sin into the world.

And we have this crazy Christian conceptualization that has them pitted against each other when really there's belief that there are women, right, like women living in the world, however you want to take the Genesis story, but definitely there's, there's still narratives of women actually living lives.

[00:31:23] Esther Brownsmith: I'm also really interested in the way these texts, both the story that we read and the story of the morning Mary are both presenting an idea of unhappiness as resistance; of saying, "I may not be able to change God's plan and God's plan is that my son would be crucified and killed, but I will mourn it. I will be sad about this. I will not just say, well, it's what God wanted. So cool, right?" And in the same way, Noah's wife doesn't have the power to stop the flood, but she can try and save whoever's possible and she can protest to Noah and say, what you're doing is wrong.

And the ways that simply being an unhappy object can be an important form of resistance, and that for many women in the Bible, it's the only form of resistance that they can do is to not be happy with what's happening, is to express that they're not okay with God's plan. And so I think that this is a really important theological concept that that we see reiterated in these stories.

[00:32:29] Neomi De Anda: That's a great point, yeah. 

 Alright, so, anything else you want to add as we wrap up? Uh, or something we skipped over that you had planned to share?

[00:32:39] Esther Brownsmith: There's a poem that I included in the Chisme Symposium handout that I really, really love. It's a poem by a Jewish rabbi, a poet. She writes this just short two stanza poem about, the wife of Noah called Parashat Noah.

 In particular, I love the fact that in the final lines, it mentions her voice because that goes back to this idea of gossiping of what a woman's voice can and can't do. So, shall I read the two, two stanza poems? 

[00:33:14] Neomi De Anda: Sure, please go ahead. 

[00:33:18] Esther Brownsmith: My mothers and sisters, there would be no room for them. God had been very specific, my husband said, on this point, as on all the others.

How long, how tall, how deep, how many windows, one, how many animals, lots, how everyone else would die. At nine, my youngest sister is brown haired, plain, eyes quick and curious, lips filled with laughter and secrets. I will not go without her, I say, trying to sound fierce and certain against the darkening sky and gathering wind.

But I can hear my voice betray me, high pitched, cracking, muted by thunder not so very far away. 

[00:34:06] Neomi De Anda: Oh, that's magnificent. Anything else you want to say?

[00:34:12] Esther Brownsmith: I want to help provide space for people who pick up the Bible and are troubled by what they find to recognize that's an okay space to dwell in. That even if you're hearing the thunder muting you where you are, where you're coming from, how you read the text is a really important thing to lift up and preserve.

 So that, that lesson is I think one that's really close to my heart and really important to me. And so I do see that here in this poem and in this story. 

[00:34:47] Neomi De Anda: Thank you so much. And that sounds so wonderfully brought together, even as heavy and hard as that might be.

But I think that is really important, especially in times when people are carrying so much and maybe feeling multiple burdens. Knowing that is possible and even for scripture to be a place to turn and not need to find reprieve or joy, but actually just to be able to sit and be and know that figures like Noah's wife also experienced some of the pain and suffering that may be happening and some of the hardships of what we see happening with how God is understood in the theology that we do every single day. So thank you so much, Dr. Brownsmith! This has been a really wonderful conversation. I think we can go on and on. I am excited to see where your work continues and how that might continue to incorporate gossip, chisme. And thank you so much to all who are listening and have been listening and we look forward to the next time we can gather for the Chisme Symposium.