The story has a comic undergirding as Naomi and Ruth teach the staid patriarch Boaz a humanitarian lesson.
Historiated initial-word panel of the story of Ruth, with Ruth, Naomi, Boaz, and his servants working in the field. From the “Festival Prayer Book for Shavuot and Sukkot, German Rite (a.k.a. the ‘Tripartite Mahzor’) including Biblical Readings.” Germany, ca. 1322. Additional 22413. f. 71. British Library.
Published May 24, 2023
Aristotle, The Poetics, in Aristotle on Poetry and Style, trans. G.M.A. Gruss (New York: Bobs Merrill, 1958), 5–100. Scholars reconstruct Aristotle’s potential theory of comedy based on his theory of tragedy in the Poetics and the Tractatus Coislinianus, attributed to Aristotle. See Richard Janko, Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics ll (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984); and Dana F. Sutton, The Catharsis of Comedy (Boston: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984).
In everyday language, we use the term “comedy” to describe funny situations. Here, I use the classical literary definition of comedy, drawn from Aristotle’s Poetics and other critical and literary discussions of genre, as a dramatic work that intends to amuse its audience by dealing with its subject matter in a light or satirical manner. For the theatrical aspects of Ruth and its potential for stage performance, see Shimon Levy, “Ruth: The Shrew-ing of the Tame,” in The Bible as Theatre (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2000), 82–103. By pointing out Ruth’s dramatic features, I do not suggest that the authors were acquainted with Greek theatre, or that they knew the Poetics, which was written later; nor did they have in mind a stage production in the Hellenic model, since, like the rest of Scriptures, Ruth was meant to be read, not performed.
On the features of comedy, see Northrop Frye, “The Mythos of Spring: Comedy,” in Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 163–186. Scholarly consensus regarding the literary genre of Ruth is that it is “a historical short story,” or a novella written in prose, and, at times, in poetic prose. See Edward F. Campbell’s introduction in Ruth: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 7 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 5, 6–9. See also the discussion of the genre(s) of Ruth in Jeremy Schipper, Ruth: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible 7 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 16–18. Schipper also describes the book as a short story.
Frye, “The Mythos of Spring,” 163, 178.
Editor’s note: On the character of Orpah, see Barry Dov Walfish, “The Defamation of Orpah,” TheTorah (2021).
Biblical translations follow the NJPS, with modifications.
Levirate marriage (from the Latin word levir, meaning “husband’s brother”) stipulates that the brother of a man who dies childless must marry the man’s widow. For the Levirate custom, see Deuteronomy, 25:5–10, and the Talmud tractate Yevamot.
The term is only attested in the Bible in the construct form. See HALOT, s.v. “יְבָמָה” (yevamah); or CDA, s.v., “יְבֶמֶת” (yevemet).
The Mishnah uses yevamah predominately to denote the relation between the dead man’s brother and his widowed sister-in-law; one exception is the case of two sisters who are about to be “redeemed” by the living third brother of the two dead men (Yevamot 2:3), but this is not the case in Ruth, where the brother-in-law does not exist.
When Boaz asks the servant overseeing the reapers who Ruth is, he simply describes her as נַעֲרָה מוֹאֲבִיָּה הִיא הַשָּׁבָה עִם־נָעֳמִי מִשְּׂדֵה מוֹאָב, “a Moabite girl who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab” (2:5–6). Yet Boaz in verse 12 seems to know her entire story.
This is known in Roman culture and comedies as “Saturnalia,” named after the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn (see Frye, “The Mythos of Spring,” 171). Shakespearean comedies also have scenes of merry making and chaos in critical moments in the action. See Caesar J. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 15, 36 et passim.
Mikhail Bakhtin developed his theories of the carnivalesque and the dialogic imagination in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson, Theory and History of Literature 8 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), and other publications. See also Kenneth M. Craig, Reading Esther: A Case for the Literary Carnivalesque, Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995). Editor’s note: On the carnivalesque and Purim, see Barry Wimpfheimer, “Purim: A Day Beyond Full Rabbinic Control,” TheGemara (2016).
Harold Fisch discusses the affinities between these stories but argues that the Ruth story marks a higher level of historical and cultural evolution, setting it apart from the vulgarity and incestual elements of the previous stories. See Harold Fisch, “Ruth and the Structure of Covenantal History,” Vetus Testamentum 32.4 (1982): 425–437.
Frye, “The Mythos of Spring,” 172–175.
The comic possibilities envisioned by Bergson, such as deception, disguise, pun, comic repetition of verbal formulas, inelasticity of the body, and manipulation of one person by another, are present here. See Henri Bergson, “Laughter,” in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), 79–86. Further, it is possible to see in the three main dramatic protagonists in Ruth a variation of the conventional comic types featured in Greek comedy, Roman New Comedy, and later comedies, such as Molière’s. In this set up, Boaz plays the senex, the comic old man, Ruth is the virgo, the young girl, and Naomi is the counterpart of the servus callidus, the clever slave, or the servus delusus, the crafty servant whose inspired planning and improvisation bring about the happy comic resolution. See Robert S. Miola, “Roman Comedy,” in Shakespearean Comedy, ed. Alexander Leggatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 18.
According to Frye (“The Mythos of Spring,” 165), comedy ends with the protagonist, often a woman, integrated into society.
Campbell (Ruth, 23–28) suggests that women were the locus of storytelling in ancient Israel. On the prominence of women’s voices and a woman’s sphere of authority in Ruth, see also Eunny P. Lee, “Ruth,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012); and Cynthia R. Chapman, The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
Editor’s note: On reading Ruth on Shavuot, see the postscript in Yael Avrahami, “Book of Ruth: Recasting David’s Foreign Origins,” TheTorah (2016).
The present article is a condensed version of two of my previous publications: “The Book of Ruth as Comedy: Classical and Modern Perspectives,” in Scrolls of Love: Ruth and Canticles, ed. Peter Hawkins (Fordham University Press, 2006), 31–44, and “Reading Ruth through a Bakhtinian Lens: The Carnivalesque in a Biblical Tale,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126.3 (2007): 437–453.
