6. “Basar” (Part One) – “And they shall become ONE BODY”

I used Rodin’s "Thinker" to illustrate how a person looks while "talking in his lev." In his comment, my dear friend Dr. Adi Eyal implored us to: “Look also at the body - taut, strong, as much involved as the head. Indeed, inseparable…” This affirmative idea of the body goes against seeing the “flesh” as carnal. To appreciate how deeply the Hebrew Bible shares this positive sentiment (as it does the ideal of physical sex) we must first discover its concept of “body” itself, namely basar.

If you keep kosher you know that today basar only means “meat”—something you eat rather than work-out at the gym. Likewise, the accepted biblical translation of basar is “flesh” (as in “the sins of...”) which means little more than live meat. This translation, however, misses the primary idea of the Hebrew word. Rather than "flesh," the biblical basar stands for the entire soft-tissue husk of the body, as it stands or functions, dead or alive.

There is one verse where even the most conservative translations are forced to translate basar as “body” rather than “flesh”. The verse is Ezekiel 10:12, describing the seraphs of Heaven’s chariots:

“Their whole basar—their backs, their hands and their wings—and the wheels were full of eyes all around.”

Well, since angels can’t have flesh then basar can’t mean “flesh,” can it? It is their BODY that has a back, hands, wings and eyes. Not to be headstrong, however, I will grant that at the other extreme there may be verses where “meat” is an apt translation. For instance Exodus 16:3, where the Israelites reminisce about Egypt, “When we sat by the pots of basar…” So, now, having seen that both meanings are not only possible, but definite, we need only to determine where the other 267 verses fall. While Strong, for instance, renders two as “body” and the rest as “flesh,” the correct ratio, I believe, is quite the opposite.

To start the analysis, and in line with the above verse about angels, let us first see how the human basar also includes, by definition, much more of our physique than the term “flesh” suggests - for basar has everything that the human BODY has:

·         The BODY has hair: “The hair of my basar bristled up” (Job 4:15)

·         The BODY has skin: “The priest shall look at the mark, on the skin of the basar” (Leviticus 13:3)

·         The BODY has organs: “But the skin of the bull, and all its basar—including its head and including its legs and its entrails, and its refuse...” (Leviticus 4:11)

·         The BODY has openings: “When any man has a secretion from his basar…” (Leviticus 15:2)

·         The BODY has genitals: "She lusted after her lovers, whose basar was like that of donkeys, and whose ejaculation was like that of horses" (Ezekiel 23:20, cf 16:26)

·         The BODY has eyes: “Do you have eyes of basar...?” (Job 4:15)

·         The BODY has a circulatory system: “basar, together with its life, its blood, you shall not eat” (Genesis 9:4)

·         The BODY has a respiratory system: “I do bring the flood… to destroy all basar, wherein is the breath of life” (Genesis 6:17)

The case for basar as “body” is just beginning. In honor of my nephew who just got engaged, however, I will already reference the first appearance of basar in the bible: the creation of Eve and the edict to join in matrimony (Genesis 2:21-24). In reading the story correctly, not only is it essential to understand basar, but also tzela (צלע). Suffice to say that in the bible this common word ALWAYS means “side” or "flank," like a side of a square, or a flank (=side) of the tabernacle, the ark, or the altar. The biblical term is also used for the flank of a mountain, and for protecting one’s flank in war. Likewise the literal meaning of tzolea, limping, is “lopsided.” On the other hand, the term is never used for a bone in the chest, making the Genesis translation as “rib” utterly bogus. So here is the literal translation of the most important passage in human relations, describing the moment when men and women got their familiar gender-characterized bodies:

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and He took one of his flanks, and closed a body in its place. And the flank, which the LORD God had taken from the man, built He into a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man said: 'This is now a skeleton of my skeleton, and a body of my body; she shall be called Woman. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and join unto his wife, and they shall become one body.”

What does it mean to "become one body"? To be a single organism? I will leave you with three illustrations of the idea—one biological (joining in the one-body of a child), one physical (the joining of bodies into one), one spiritual (illustrated by Chagall), and all equally true.

Mazal tov Idan and Ronit,

Ethan

P.S. More on the duo of “skeleton and body” next week. Rabbinic sources claim that the First Man was a dual-entity who was then split either between front and back (“The First Man had two faces…”; Eruvin 18) or midsection, at the “tail” genital area. Do not confuse my use of "flank" to mean the specific section between the ribs and hip, but rather "the side of anything, as of a building" (Dictionary.com), as in: “On its two flanks on its two sides” (Exodus 37:27).

Comments

[Steg (dos iz nit der šteg)]

great idea, thanks for pointing this out.

the צלע "rib" translation has always bothered me, too.