Jephtah's Daughter: A History of Alternating Musical Endings

Abstract

This work examines the relationship between the endings chosen for musical works based on the biblical story of Jephtah's daughter and broader currents of European thought. Because the biblical story leaves the fate of Jephtah's daughter unclear, commentators have offered two interpretations: Jephtah's daughter is either sacrificed or consecrated to God. The examination of these two interpretations in the various commentaries and artistic works throughout the ages suggest a possible correlation between a given artist's religious affiliation and the type of ending he composed for the story. Although Catholics would appear more likely to choose consecration as promoting the ideal of women's celibacy, no such correlation is seen in practice. Rather, the determining factor in the choice of the musical ending of the story is the dominant artistic convention of the time. This finding is in line with Curt Sachs's cultural theory of a universal pendulum of styles in Western civilization. Thus, the specific choice of the ending of the story of Jephtah's daughter in various artistic media may serve as a paradigm for broader trends of European thought.

Notes

1. For a detailed list and description of these works see Efrat Buchris, “The Biblical Story of ‘Jephtah's Daughter’ in Western Music: Interpretations, Conceptions and Styles” (Hebrew) (PhD diss., Bar Ilan University, 2008), 10–24.

2. The two most famous oratorios, performed to this day are Giacomo Carissimi's Jefte (Catholic Italy, 1650) and Fredric Handel's Jephtah (Protestant England, 1751).

3. Wilbur Sypherd catalogued the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lutheran and Jesuit plays based on the story of Jephtah's daughter in Jephthah and His Daughter: A Study in Comparative Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1948), 48. John Thompson noted that all of the plays on the subject—whether Lutheran or Catholic—were basically reconstructions of earlier commentaries. See John L. Thompson, Writing the Wrongs: Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 165.

4. One who kills another human being violates the prohibition of “Thou shalt not murder.” The Bible further prohibits human sacrifice as worship of the Molekh deity: “One who passes his son or daughter through the fire shall not be found among you” (Deuteronomy 18:10); “And they built altars to the abomination in the Valley of Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, which I did not command and never occurred to Me” (Jeremiah 7:31).

5. Pseudo-Philo, The Biblical Antiquities, in L. Ginzburg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909–38), vol. 9, 45–47. Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. and ed. L. Feldman (New York: H. L. Burt Co., 1993), vol. 1. Including Genesis Rabbah 63, Leviticus Rabbah 37:4, Ecclesiastics Rabbah 10:17, Tanhuma, Behukotai 35, and Yalkut Shimoni on the Prophets, 68.

6. This position was similarly adopted by Quodvultdeus, Ambrosiaster, Gregory of Nazianzus, Isodore of Seville, Ephraem of Syria, Gregory of Nazareth, Epiphanius, Heiro, Rupert Deutz, Theodoret, Theodosius, Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Victor, and Bede. The full text of their commentaries can be found in Laura Reinke, “Ueber das Gelübde Jephta's, Richt 11, 30–40,” in Beiträge zur Erkläung des Alten Testament (Münster: Coppenrath, 1851), vol. 1, 419–526.

7. Radak writes (Judges 11:39–40): “‘And he did to her his vow that he had vowed’—He build a house for her and led her inside, and she remained there, removed from other people and from the ways of the world. And it became customary in Israel that every year, the daughters of Israel would go to her … to lament and cry over her virginity.”

8. Jewish commentators such as Gersonides (Rabbi Levi ben Gershon, 1288–1344) and Abarbanel (1437–1508); in David and Yehiel Altschuler's commentary on Metzudat David (first printed in 1753 in Laverne, Italy, and thereafter in many Bible printings). Radak's commentary, first printed in 1485, was published as part of the Mikra’ot Gedolot by Daniel Bamberg in Venice in 1517. Christian commentators such as Nicholas of Lyra (1340), Conrad Pellican (1553), Joann Brenz (1535), and others adopted the non-sacrificial approach, although it is unclear if they were aware of Radak's interpretation. Thompson claims that Christians became acquainted with Radak's commentary only around 1535 (Writing the Wrongs, 155).

9. David Marcus, Jephta and His Vow (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech Press, 1986), 9. Biblical scholars who accepted the non-sacrificial approach include P. Cassel, C. F. Keil, F. Delitzsch, A. Köhler, and E. König. Scholars who maintained the sacrificial interpretation include E. Bertheau, J. S. Black, J. Wellhausen, and the Jewish commentator Meir Leib ben Yehiel Mihel Malbim (1809–79). In his commentary on Leviticus 26, Nahmanides objects to Radak's interpretation (as well as to Gersonides's), and his stance has indeed remained the dominant interpretation among Jewish commentators: “The Bible does not ordain that one must be celibate, and if it had, [Jephtah's] daughter crying over her virginity, as well as her friends, would be like prostitutes mourning their fee. God forbid that there was any law in Israel to mourn over Jephtah's daughter four days out of the year because she did not marry and rather served God in purity!”

10. See Heinruch Ewald, The History of Israel, trans. and ed. Russell Martineau (London: Longmans Green, 1976), vol. 2, 395.

11. Emmanuel Benzinger, Hebräische Archäologie (Leipzig: George Olms, 1927), 356; Gustav Boström, Proverbiastudien (Lund: C.W.K Gleerup, 1935), 115–20; Moshe Weinfeld, “The Worship of Molekh and of the Queen of Heaven and Its Background,” Ugarit Forschungen 4 (1972): 133–54; Leon Wood, Dissertation: Days of the Judges (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1975), 297–95. This can be seen in the commentaries, among others, of C. F. Burney, G. A. Cooke, Y. Kaufmann, G. F. Moore, F. Nöscher, V. Zapeletal, and of various modern commentators including J. D. Martin in the Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible (1975) and R. G. Boling in the Anchor Bible series (1975), as well as the commentary of Yehuda Elitzur (1976) and the Library of the Old Testament (1981).

12. Vincenz Zapeltal, Das Buch der Richter, Exeggitishches Handbuch zum alten Testament, ed. Johannes Nikel (Münster in Westf: Aschendorff, 1923), vol. 7, 194.

13. See Cheryl Brown, No Longer Be Silent: First Century Jewish Portraits of Biblical Women: Studies in Pseudo-Philo's Biblical Antiquities and Josephus's Jewish Antiquities (Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1992), 93–139; Cheryl J. Exum, “The Tragic Vision and the Biblical Narrative: The Case of Jephtah,” in Signs And Wonders: Biblical Texts in Literary Focus, ed. Cheryl Exum (Atlanta, GA: The Society of Biblical Literature, 1989), 58–83; Peggy L. Day, “From The Child Is Born A Woman,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy Day (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,1971), 58–74.

14. See Howard Smither, A History of the Oratorio (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), vol. 2, 343; Winton Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 592; Paul H. Lang, George Frideric Handel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 511.

15. G. Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 304. Moore claims that Luther was aware of Radak's interpretation. According to Thompson, however, Luther was unacquainted with the Radak's commentary, but knew of Nicholas of Lira's (1270–1340) interpretation, who similarly claimed that Jephtah's daughter was not sacrificed (Writing the Wrongs, 155).

16. A. Linton, “Sacrificed or Spared? The Fate of Jephthah's Daughter in Early Modern Theological and Literary Texts,” German Life and Letters 57 (2004): 242.

17. Protestant scholars who opposed the Catholic ideal of celibacy include, among others, John Calvin, Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Moritz of Nassau (1567), and Cyriacus Spangenberg (1567).

18. Debora Shuger-Kuller, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Subjectivity, and Sacrifice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 129–61.

19. “While Protestant hostility to ceremony is well established fact, it is far from clear that the line dividing sacrificial from non-sacrificial interpreters coincides so neatly with the gulf that divided sixteen century Protestants from their Roman counterparts … . On the one side, the moderate Calvinist Johannes Druius, the Puritan William Perkins, and the fugitive Armenian and Catholic sympathizer Hugo Grotius all believed Jephthah's daughter was not sacrificed. On the other side, the moderate Calvinist Louis Cappel, the Puritan Richard Rogers, the Jesuit Cornelius á Lapide, and the nonconformist Presbyterian Matthew Poole all believed she was;” Thompson, Writing the Wrong, 168–69.

20. Buchanan's biblical play, Jephthes Sive Votum, was written in Latin in 1554 and reflects the renewed interest in Greek and Roman literature, as well as translation and interpretation of the Bible. Buchanan's drama was influenced by Euripides’ Iphgenia in Aulis, the Greek myth that parallels the story of Jephtah's daughter. It was a foundational renaissance drama: it was more influential than any other composition among dozens of musical and literary renditions of the story of Jephtah's daughter in the 400 years that followed. It was produced many times and was translated into many languages. Handel's Jephtha, for example, was greatly influenced by Buchanan's work.

21. Sypherd, Jephthah and His Daughter, 74, 82.

22. George Buchanan, “Jephthah,” in The Sacred Drama of George Buchanan, trans. Archibald Brown (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1906), 86, 71.

23. Although Protestants also view virginity as sacred, they oppose it as a notion for the public to adopt. Thompson, Writing the Wrongs, 163, cites Martin Borrhaus (1499–1528), who provided a typology for the two endings. Consecration represents the value expressed in Corinthians II: “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (11:2). Sacrifice represents the value expressed by Paul in Romans: “And be not conformed to this world: but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (12:2).

24. Curt Sachs, The Commonwealth of Art (New York: W.W. Norton, 1946).

25. In a lecture delivered in Washington in 1949, Sachs referred to these as the “Hot pole” and the “Cold pole.”

26. Sachs notes three broad cycles: the Ancient cycle, the Medieval cycle and the Giant cycle— modern times. Each cycle is made up of two sub-era phases of ethos and pathos. Each cycle begins with a period of ethos and moves towards a period of pathos. The transition between the two forms is what pertains to the present subject.

27. The theory does not include the twentieth century primarily because he wrote it in the middle of the century and because of the wide range of styles and the political upheavals that characterized it. He refers to Classicism and Romanticism as two phases of the “Great Romanticism.”

28. Artistic works of a period of pathos may include artistic features of periods of ethos and vice versa (The Commonwealth of Art, 12). Sachs describes trends relative to previous eras, and not absolute characteristics.

29. Most of these works have not been preserved. See Efrat Buchris, “The Biblical Story of ‘Jephtah's Daughter’ in Western Music: Interpretations, Conceptions, and Styles” 10–24.

30. F. W. Sternfeld, “Lieto Fine,” in Grove Music Online.

31. For a detailed discussion of the correlation between musical interpretations of these myths and those of the story of Jephtah See Efrat Buchris, “The Biblical Story of ‘Jephtah's Daughter’ in Western Music” 58–80.

32. “Human sacrifices were not to eighteenth-century taste.” D. Arnold, The Oratorio in Venice (London: Royal Musical Association, 1986), 52.

33. Voltaire, excerpt from a letter on Zaire, Mercure de France (August, 1732), 101.

34. Cited by Fannie Vernaz, Harmonia Mundi HMX 2901424.25 (2002), 28, 23.

35. Mercure de France (March, 1732); cited by Fannie Vernaz, 25.

36. M. Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation (London: John Vladimir Prince, 1995), 73.

37. William Romain, Jephtha's Vow Fulfilled, sermon presented at Oxford University Church (1744), 3.

38. S. Humphreys, The Sacred Books of the Old and New Testament (London: R. Penny, 1735), vol. 1, 721.

39. Humphreys died in 1737, before the oratorio Jephtha was produced, but K. Nott has suggested that Handel's work with Humphreys contributed to the writing of the oratorio; see K. Nott, “Heroic Virtue: Handel and Morell's Jephtha in light of Eighteenth Century Biblical Commentary and Other Sources,” Music and Letters, 1966: 77, 195, 201.

40. R. Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 342.

41. W. Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 592.

42. Harmonia Mundi, HMX 2901424.25 (2002). 23.

43. See M. Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 76.

44. The parallel between the sacrifice of Jephtah's daughter and the Binding of Isaac was already noted by Josephus Flavius and Pseudo-Philo, and later on by the Fathers of the Church and Christian exegetes. See J. D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 173–225. The story of the Binding of Isaac was cited in interpretations of the story of Jephtah's daughter in every period. The ending utilizing the Deus ex Machina technique strengthens the analogy between the two stories. For a detailed discussion of the connection between the two stories, see Buchris, “The Biblical Story of Jephtah's Daughter,” 29–42.

45. M. McClymonds and D. Heartz, “Opera Seria,” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, at http://www.grovemusic.com.

46. Samuel Johnson, “The Works of Samuel Johnson,” in Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. A. Sherbo (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 704.

47. John Dryden, “The Twenty Ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace,” in The Oxford Authors: John Dryden, ed. Keith Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 303. That Horace composed these lines indicates that the trend had already began in the classical period.

48. Epistle X, lines 281–294.

49. For more examples, see Derek Alsop, “Artful Anthology: The Use of Literary Sources for Handel's Jephtha,” The Musical Quarterly 86.2 (2002): 355.

50. Sternfeld, “Lieto Fine,” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.grovemusic.com.

51. Richard Taruskin, “Nationalism,” Grove Music Online.

52. The story of Jephtah's daughter made another patriotic point as well: it portrayed a king willing to sacrifice his daughter for the sake of his people. In eighteenth-century social thought, the highest priority of a “patriot king” was his nation and country. This ideal, as formulated by John Dryden, inspired the genre of patriotic drama. The idea that leadership obligates sacrifice was expressed in speeches and plays both in England and in other countries. See Smith, Handel's Oratorios, chap. 14.

53. Julian Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 71.

54. Sachs, The Commonwealth of Art, 12.

55. Paulus Cassel, The Book of Judges (New York: Scribner-Armstrong, 1875), 177. Linton, Sacrificed or Spared, 246.

56. Thompson, Writing the Wrongs, 169.

57. Howard E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, vol. 4, 384, 445. John Hill Hewitt's oratorio, Jephtha's Rash Vow (1846) was the first oratorio written in America. The development of the oratorio as a genre parallels the struggles between the Catholics and Protestants. The Council of Trent concluded that inferior sermons were the primary cause of heresy and the reason believers abandoned Catholicism for Protestantism. Clear guidelines were established for preachers, who were told to draw their listeners with a pleasant style and use of metaphor, many of whom consequently began to learn rhetoric in order to improve their sermons. See Frederick J. McGuinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 29–30, 32, 50–52.

58. Athansius Kircher, cited and translated by Giuseppe Bianconi, Musurgia Universalis (Romae: Ex typographia Haeredum Francisci. Corbelletti, 1650), 1.603. For Kircher the aesthetic objective of Baroque music was to translate human emotion into music. Carissimi excelled in this technique of “affect.”

59. See Beverley Stein, Between Key and Mode: Tonal Practice in the Music of Giacomo Carissimi (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1994), 11.

60. Sternfeld, “Lieto Fine.” Operas of the period with tragic endings include Vincenzo Bellini's Norma (1831), J. F. F. É. Halévy's La Juive (1835), Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le Prophète (1849) and L'africaine (1865), Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens (1856), Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), La Traviata (1853), La Forza Del Destino (1862), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), and Otello (1887), and Georges Bizet's Carmen (1875).

61. The first to give a nationalistic interpretation to the story of a daugher's sacrifice was Euripides in his Iphigenia in Aulis, lines 1554–55.

62. Isaac Nathan, England, 1815; James Flinter, United States, 1837; Carl Loewe, Germany, 1842; Robert Schuman, Germany, 1856; Adolf Jensen, Germany, 1865; A. Goring Thomas, England, 1880; Ferruccio Busoni, Italy, 1884.

63. B. Bayer, “Jephtha,” in Judaica Encyclopedia (New York: Leon Amiel, c.1974), vol. 9, 1344.

64. See, for example, Peggy Day, “From The Child Is Born A Woman,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy Day (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1971), 58–74; Samuel Henry Hooke, et al., Myth, Ritual, and Kingship: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Kingship in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958); Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1981), 212–17.

65. Sternfeld, Lieto Fine.

66. Comment of W. F. Albright on C. F. Burney's The Book of Judges (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1970), 22.