Avalon said, "When a Fundamentalist who's a little past the bend speaks of immorality, or when he starts calling someone a Jezebel, there is no need, in my opinion, for the existence of real immorality. It's probably purely subjective. Any woman who rouses feelings of sexual excitement within him will seem to him to be immoral; and the one who does so most will seem to him to be most immoral."
"You mean," said Gordon, swiveling his eyes toward
Avalon, "that he's after the most beautiful one and aims to kill her?"
Avalon shrugged. "What's beauty? He may be after the one he thinks is most beautiful, but what are his standards? It might not even be beauty in the most literal sense. It might be that one of them reminds him of his dead mother, his childhood sweetheart, or some teacher he once had. How can we tell?"
"All right," said Gordon. "You may be quite correct in all you say, but it doesn't matter. Tell me who he's after; tell me who Rahab is; and we can worry about motives afterward."
Avalon shook his head. "I don't know that we can dismiss motive quite that easily, but, in any case, we won't get anywhere if we head down the wrong path. Despite what Manny says, I don't think there's any parallelism between Jezebel and Rahab."
"There certainly is," said Rubin, his jaw lifting at once.
"Where is it? To begin with, Jezebel wasn't a harlot. She was the Queen of Israel and there is no hint in the Bible that she was in any way sexually immoral. It's just that she was an idolator and opposed the Yahvists; that is, those who worshipped Yahveh-or Jehovah, to use the more common but less accurate name."
Rubin said, "I'll explain it to you, if you want. Jezebel was the daughter of the King of Tyre, who was also a priest of Astarte. She was probably a priestess herself. As for Rahab, she was probably not a common harlot, but a priestess who participated in fertility rites. To the Israelites that was being a harlot."
Halsted said, "Not everybody has gone into the Bible the way you have, Manny. The Bible calls Jezebel a queen and Rahab a harlot, and the average reader wouldn't go past that."
"But that's not the point I'm trying to make," said Avalon. "Jezebel, whatever her status, came to a bad end. She died in a palace coup and was eaten by dogs. Rahab, however, came to a good end. She was saved alive after the fall of Jericho, because she had kept the spies hidden and safe. One can assume she was converted to the worship of the God of Israel and was no longer a harlot or a pagan priestess. In fact… Manny, let me have the Bible."
Avalon took it and turned its pages rapidly. "It's just at the opening of the Book of Matthew. Here it is: And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the king. There, that's the fifth and sixth verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. According to that, Rahab married a prominent Israelite and was the great-great-grandmother of David and therefore a distant ancestress of Jesus himself. Having helped the Israelites take Jericho, having married an Israelite, and being the ancestress of David and Jesus, Rahab couldn't possibly be used as a symbol of immorality by any Fundamentalist."
The Bible passed from hand to hand, and Halsted said, "The name isn't spelled the same. It's 'Rachab' in Matthew."
Avalon said, "The New Testament is translated into English from the Greek; the Old Testament from the Hebrew. The transliterations aren't consistent. 'Booz' in the passage I just read is 'Boaz' in the Old Testament Book of Ruth."
"Besides," said Rubin, "in this case 'Rachab' is more nearly the correct spelling. The Hebrew letter that occurs in the middle of the name is correctly pronounced like the guttural German 'ch.'"
"So if we are going to associate Rahab with one of the Miss Earth contestants," said Avalon, "we had better forget about the parallelism with Jezebel and look for something else."
"But what?" asked Drake.
"Don't worry." Avalon lifted an admonitory finger. "I have something in mind. Manny, isn't 'Rahab' used in the Bible as the poetic equivalent of Egypt?"
Rubin said excitedly, "Yes, you're right. It's not the same word in Hebrew. There the middle letter is an 'h.' Still, it's the same word in English. Usually it's translated into 'pride' or 'might' or something like that, but it's left untranslated in at least one place… Somewhere in the Psalms, I think."
He turned the pages and muttered, "I wish we had a Bible dictionary. That's something the club ought to buy and add to the reference shelf." Then, with his voice rising to a shout, he said, "Here it is, by God! Fourth verse of the 87th Psalm: / will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia."
"How do you know that 'Rahab' means Egypt there?" asked Gonzalo.
"Because throughout Old Testament history the rival great powers were those in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and on the Nile. Babylon clearly typifies the former, so Rahab must typify the latter. There's no dispute there. Biblical scholars agree that 'Rahab' stands for Egypt there."
"In that case," said Avalon, "I don't think we have to fall back on Henry. I suspect that it's Miss Egypt that our mysterious friend is after. And that makes sense, too. There are a couple of million Jewish people in this city and considering the present situation between Israel and Egypt, one of them, with a little derangement, might feel called upon to threaten Miss Egypt."
Gordon said, "An interesting thought. There's only one trouble."
"What's that, sir?"
"There isn't any Miss Egypt. You see, the Miss Earth contest isn't as cut-and-dried as the Miss America contest. In the Miss America you have one contestant from each of the fifty states because foreign policy doesn't enter into it. In the Miss Earth contest, nations hostile to the United States, or those which look down on beauty contests as decadent, don't enter. This year, no Arab state is represented. On the other hand, some nations are represented by more than one entry, each with a different name. Some years ago, I understand, there were two German beauties. The top winner went as Miss Germany and the second went as Miss Bavaria."
Avalon looked distinctly annoyed. "If there's no Miss Egypt, then I don't know what 'Rahab' can mean."
"What does it mean in the Bible?" asked Gonzalo. "Why do they give that name to Egypt? There has to be some reason."
Rubin said, "Oh, well. Egypt was a river kingdom and Rahab was associated with the waters. In fact, it was a mythological remnant of a pre-Israelite creation myth. The land was viewed by the Sumerians as having been created from the sea. They visualized the sea as an enormous monster called Tiamat that had to be split in two so that the land emerged from between the halves. In Babylonian mythology, it was Marduk who killed Tiamat.
"The priestly writers of the first book of Genesis cleaned up the Babylonian myths and removed the polytheism, but they left traces. In the beginning, before the first day of creation, according to Chapter 1, Verse 2 of Genesis, And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Well, the Hebrew word translated as 'the deep' is 'tehom' and some commentators think that is a version of Tiamat and that this verse is all that is left of the cosmic struggle."
"That's pretty farfetched," said Drake.
"I don't know. There are occasional verses in the Bible which seem to refer to the earlier and less sophisticated creation myth. There's one toward the end of Isaiah, if I can find it… I used to know where all these references are."
He turned pages back and forth feverishly, ignoring the small glass of brandy Henry had placed before him. Gordon sipped at his own brandy and watched calmly. He made no attempt to stop Rubin or to attempt to bring the discussion back to the point.
It was Trumbull who said, "Is this getting us anywhere?"