The Tamar Scroll

"I think so. But there may be more in what you have uncovered than you know. There is a Midrash that speaks of 'ma'aseh Er ve-Onan' or 'the act of Er and Onan'. We never knew what this meant as the Torah text is quite vague regarding Er's sin. As a goy, you wouldn't know any of this, of course. You seem to have uncovered a scroll whose text proves the two men committed the same sin or sins as it were. That may be evidence that this scroll existed prior to the time the Sages wrote the Talmud and that the Sages knew of the common sin of Er and Onan.

At the meeting, I hope that you don't mind if I lead the discussion of the Talmud and its relation to this scroll? I think that if it came from someone Jewish, that would lend more weight to your findings."

"I would be delighted if you would, Dr. Altman. I think this is the first staff meeting I'll be looking forward to."

Francis Lajeunesse rose from the chair and shifted her shoulders while turning to the right far enough to open her blouse at the point of the open button. She stopped to smile as she opened the door. The expression on the old man's face betrayed the fact that he had taken a naughty peek. He had seen the perfectly shaped mound of flesh on her chest. As she walked back to her office, Francis thought, "Dr. Altman does have some physical feelings for women. I wonder if he can still perform. At least there's nothing wrong with his mind. He's very intelligent and he promised to get involved with my work. I'm starting to like this old guy."

Yehuda Revisits Adullam

"11 Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said, Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. 12 And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah's wife died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. 13 And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep." Genesis 38: 11-13, KJV)

Francis Lajeunesse sat down at Avi Altman's desk once more. In preparation for today's meeting, she had taken care to wear a long denim wraparound skirt similar to the style worn by the more fashionable young haredi ladies. Unlike the haredi women, Dr. Lajeunesse arranged her skirt so that the wraparound fell away upon taking a seat. Just in case the skirt didn't fall away by itself, Francis crossed her legs, exposing an expanse of her thighs to Dr. Altman's view. The Chief Scholar's eyes were fixed upon the provocative sight before him. Was that a hint of lust in Dr. Altman's eyes? Francis interrupted the awkward silence, bringing the meeting back to its original purpose.

"I have another page of the scroll assembled and transcribed. But there's something in this passage that now makes me doubt the authenticity of the 'Tamar Scroll'. Dr. Altman, I fear you may have been right about the scroll being just pseudepigrapha. I have run across a passage in the scroll that appears to be the same sort of fantasy as we see in the pseudepigrapha genre."

"Dr. Lajeunesse, you're the one who cautioned me that I shouldn't jump to conclusions. Why don't you let me read this chapter and then we'll discuss whether there's a problem in the text."

Yehuda banished me from his encampment screaming after me: "You have robbed me of my two sons and you shall not take the third. I must have a son to say Kaddish before my tomb. You will live as a widow in Adullam and remain barren for the rest of your days." Upon hearing this curse, I went back to the village of my uncle Hirah. Word of the misfortunes of my two marriages had preceded me. Hirah would not let me enter his camp, lest I bring the same misfortune upon his family. Instead, he sent me to my father's house in the village where once he plied his trade as a potter. "Stay there with my servants, wear widow's garments and pray to the gods of Canaan that they show favour upon you."

So, it came to pass during my widowhood that my cousin Shuah died and Yehuda was left without woman. The thought came to me that the death of my cousin left no impediment to Yehuda himself fulfilling the law with me. If the man still lusted after me as he did when I sat upon his donkey, I could bring him the heirs and progeny he so desired. More than the law, it was I, Tamar, who personally needed fulfillment and to be made a completed woman. I remained a twice-married maiden.

The servants of Hirah informed my servants that Yehuda would come to Adullam to shear his sheep and the sheep of their master. I dismissed my servants under the pretext that they should assist the household of my uncle with his myriad country guests. As I suspected he would, Yehuda came to my house in the dark, in order not to be seen by others. He entered my house exuding the aroma of sheep wool and the smell of a man who had toiled all day in the sun. His smell was manly and his smell was strong.

"Greetings, Oh Tamar. I have come to ensure myself that you lack nothing. As the widow of both my sons, I am doubly obligated for your support." I could not tell him that all I lacked in my life was a man and children. We seated ourselves on cushions and talked for many hours. I sensed that this may have been the first time in his life that Yehuda had a real conversation with a woman. We spoke of his family, of his sons who had been lost to the wrath of his God. I offered my condolences at the untimely death of my cousin, Shuah. His speech gave way to sadness and then to tears because he was lonely without a woman. When a man is moved to tears, he is ready to be comforted by a woman and then seduced. I put my hands in his rough hands and laid my head on his shoulder. He embraced me and placed a kiss upon my lips.

"Your kiss is sweet, oh Tamar, and your body is warm. It has been so long since I held a woman. Forgive me but I need you now."

Yehuda untied my garment and bared my shoulders and breasts. He kissed my shoulders and pleasured my breasts gently. He did caress my erect nipples between his calloused fingers. Then he lay me down on the rug and removed my garments completely. His visage was gentle and kind, unlike the hateful looks his sons had given me. His face disappeared from view as he removed his robe. I looked down at the man's member and gasped. I could not keep an exclamation from escaping my lips. His member was fully a half-cubit long and its girth was that of my forearm. How unlike the sons was the father.

I could not stop the man as he was completely consumed with lust. He parted my legs and placed his member on my nakedness. I gasped in pain as he entered unto me. His member had the hardness of the rocks of the Negev as it burrowed deeply into me and disappeared into my nakedness. I screamed in pain but he heard me not in his lust. His fury abated quickly for he spoke the truth about not having a woman for a year. Yehuda withdrew from within me and quickly replaced his robe. As he reached for my garments, he sighted an issue of blood from my nakedness.

"Woman, it is your time of the month. You have caused me to sin for I am now unclean. I must remain outside my encampment for seven days of purification before I can perform the sacrifice."

"Nay, my lord Yehuda. I am not unclean. I was a maiden until you yourself fulfilled the obligations of your sons. Now I have been made a complete woman by your strong member."

"My sons have not gone into you? So that is why my sons gave me not an heir."

"Give me your remaining son, my lord Yehuda. He shall open my womb and you shall have the heirs you so mightily desire and deserve."

"That I cannot now do, Tamar. It is forbidden by our God for a son to marry a woman who has known his father, lest the son uncover his father's nakedness."

Whereupon Yehuda turned his back to me and left for his encampment outside the gates of the city.

Dr. Altman remained silent, pondering the meaning of this portion of the scroll. Finally, he looked up. "I can't find anything problematic in this portion of the scroll, Dr. Lajunesse. May I ask what it is in this passage you've read that makes you doubt the authenticity of this scroll?"

"It's so obvious, Dr. Altman. Didn't you notice the measurement that Tamar gives for Yehuda's, um, winkie? She says that it's half a cubit long as if that's a matter of fact. A cubit is 46 cm. That means Yehuda's, uh, winkie was 23 cm. long. That's impossible. I've learned a lot about men and I assure you that winkies are 15 cm. in length give or take a cm. of variance for some subjects. That range of dimensions was substantiated in 1996 by a statistically valid study of males in a neighbouring country. (Footnote: Awwad Z, Abu-Hijleh M, Basri S, Shegam N, Murshidi M, Ajlouni K (2005). "Penile measurements in normal adult Jordanians and in patients with erectile dysfunction". Int. J. Impot. Res. 17 (2): 191–5.)"

"If I may correct you, Dr. Lajeunesse, in Patriarchical times the cubit was equivalent to 52 cm, the so-called Royal Cubit. This measurement has been verified by Egyptian archaeologists at Giza and Karnak. Therefore Yehuda's zain, schlong or winkie as you term it, could be over 25 cm long."

"That's ridiculous, Dr. Altman. Besides what about the girth of the zain that Tamar describes as being as thick as her wrist."

"I guess that your stay in Israel has been somewhat sheltered because another Hebrew term for the zain is "yad", which means "hand" but it can also mean "arm". Thus the girth of Yehuda's zain is verified by modern idiomatic Hebrew. Dr. Lajeunesse, by disputing what the text says about Yehuda's zain, you are disputing the very detail that authenticates your scroll as genuine history."

"Say what?"

"Please have a seat, Dr. Lajeunesse. What I am about to tell you will seem at first to have as much substance as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion but, unlike that Tsarist document, this is the truth. Do you recall from your Torah that in ancient days, people lived longer lives than our current life expectancy? Just as lives were longer in ancient times, men's zains were also longer, thicker and harder. Those certainly were the good old days."

"Please don't patronize me, Dr. Altman. I know that you're just trying to encourage my work but I'd rather you told me the past few months have been a waste of time and I should start reassembling and translating something else."

Avi Altman got up from his chair, walked over to the whiteboard and assumed a pose that he normally reserved for the lecture hall. With a dry erasable marker, he wrote out Hebrew quotations from the Torah. Francis Lajeunesse shifted her position to face the whiteboard, letting part of her skirt expose her left leg. She crossed her legs, exposing the inside of her thigh well above the knee. Dr. Altman didn't register any protest.

"I'm not at all patronizing you, Dr. Lajeunesse. Please allow me to demonstrate with references to zain in Torah. The Nephilim, or giants as they're translated in your English Bibles, were not really any taller or more muscled than the average man of their times. However, they were giants between their legs compared to the ordinary male. As you have rightly discerned, the Torah seems to have a male point of view, so when it says that 'the daughters of men were fair' to the Nephilim, it means that the daughters of men thought the zains of the Nephilim were also 'fair'. In B'Reshit or Genesis, the offspring of the Nephilim were apparently able to transmit their zains to their sons because they were the 'Heroes of old'. Would any woman call a guy with a teeny-weenie zain 'My Hero'?

Let's look at Ya'akov or Yisrael as he ultimately became known. Ya'akov had two wives, Leah and Rachel, that he managed to keep satisfied to the tune of eight sons. Torah also records that Ya'akov messed around with the maids of his both two wives for a total of four more sons. Now, that's a remarkable record for any man's zain. The Tanach definitely implies that there was something unusually attractive to women about Ya'akov.

The twelve sons of Israel, including the Yehuda of your scroll, inherited their father's endowments. I need only refer to Ya'akov's number one son, Reuven. The Torah says that he had an affair with Bilhah, one of his mother's maids. Since Bilhah had two sons by Ya'akov, Dan and Naphtali, she must have known that Reuven had a case of 'like father, like son' in the zain department. Her desire for big zain was enough to overcome the tribal taboo of sex with father and son.

Then there's the unnamed wife of Potiphar who was after Joseph's private parts. This woman must have observed Joseph's bulging package while he was busy overseeing Potiphar's estate. Why would she have gotten Joseph in private and then yanked off his clothes if it wasn't curiosity about what he had down there? In fact, it wasn't Joseph's rejection of Potiphar's wife's advances that landed him in jail. Potiphar's wife was so frightened when she saw the actual the size of Joseph's zain that she decided to claim rape instead of letting Joseph's huge appendage violate her.

Let us skip to the days of the Slavery. In the Book of Sh'mot (Exodus) the story is told in Chapter 1: 'The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." Now, this Pharaoh must be as dumb as a stele because it was the male slaves who did the heavy lifting that built his tombs and pyramids. Ostensibly, he wanted the males killed because the bnei Yisrael had become too numerous. That's nonsense because the more male slaves he has, the more work gets done on the Pharoah's toys. No, the real reason for Pharaoh's order is that the Avot (Patriarchs) had transmitted their oversize zains to their children 400 years later. The killings were a pure case of national penis envy on the part of the Egyptians."

"Are you telling me, Dr. Altman, that the Egyptians were somewhat under-endowed down there?"

"Of course. Have you ever seen a zain hanging below those miniskirts that Egyptian men wore? Remember that these events took place in the days before underwear was invented. Let me continue. Moshe was a Levite. The Levites were chosen as the priesthood because, in a nation of big zain, the Levites had the biggest. Remember that the Sacrificial System in Torah requires that only the best be brought to the Temple. The Levite priests were the biggest and best at sex.

Now, why was Moshe picked out and saved by hiding him in a waterproof cradle in the reeds? Apparently, even as a baby, his mother and sisters realized that his zain was a remarkable specimen, even for a Levite. When the package floated into the hands of Pharaoh's daughter, what she noticed first was Moshe's package. Given the puny zain of the in-bred males around her, Moshe, with a big zain even at the tender age of a few days, seemed like the salvation for her frustration. Yes, Pharaoh's daughter decided to 'grow her own', as it were.

In Numbers 12, there is one sentence that refers to Moshe having married a Cushi woman. I ask you, Dr. Lajeunesse, why would an African woman make a journey all the way north to the Desert of Sin to marry Moshe, if she could have all the industrial-sized schvartze schlong in Africa she could ever want? No, the reputation of Moshe's zain had spread from Egypt south into the land of Cush, beckoning to the black women of Africa.

Now, in Devarim or Deuteronomy 34:7, your King James Bible reads 'And Moshe was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.' That translation is very prudish because the Hebrew reads 'v'Moshe ben Meah v'esrim shanah b'moto lo chatah eyno v'lo nas lecho.' After the final conjunctive vav and the negating lo, you find the word nas. Nas is a conjugation of the verb 'to flee' and 'lecho' is 'his moisture'. So, in Hebrew, 'nor his natural force abated' reads 'and his moisture had not fled'.

So here we have confirmation that Moshe lived to a great age linked to the fact that he still had a working zain. Now, why did the Deuteronomic Historian praise Moshe's zain in his old age if there wasn't something about his schlong that was as remarkable as the man's life itself?

In later times, the Book of Kings records that Avshalom worked his way completely through his father's sizeable harem in a single day and in the full sight of the population of Jerusalem. That's a remarkable score for ancient or modern times but why do it in the full sight of the populace if he didn't have something to show off?"

As Dr. Altman continued on, Francis Lajeunesse's eyes wandered to the crotch of her boss' pants. She never noticed it before but Dr. Altman's pants bulged noticeably. Like most young women, Francis Lajeunesse never associated old men with sexuality. In fact, the thought of her elderly boss as a sexual being was as big a shock to Francis as when she realized her parents had sex in order to conceive her. Dr. Altman's lecture on ancient penises coupled to her new-found curiosity surrounding Dr. Altman's own appendage aroused Francis. The damp feeling between her legs confirmed that her own moisture had not fled.

"Dr. Altman, I believe that this lecture is the beginnings of what could form the next paper you publish. I find your theory about ancient zain quite, um, exciting. If we can prove the existence of such large penises in ancient times, it will add credence to the Tamar Scroll when we publish. But this theory of yours will remain just conjecture unless I can find the hard data to support what you've postulated."

"Why do I need data? I just proved my point from Torah. What more do I need than that?"

"Forgive me for being the Devil's Advocate where the Bible is involved but the scholarly community will be just as skeptical as I was. There's the Jordanian study I mentioned that supports much smaller penis sizes than what you claim existed among the ancient Hebrews. This study will be cited by your skeptical scholarly rivals to disprove your theory. We have to prepare to counter their criticism."

"We, Dr. Lajeunesse? I believe that now you're offering to collaborate with me on this paper. I accept, with some reservations. I don't see how data fits into a paper on Biblical Research. And if we do need data, where does it come from?"

"Dr. Altman, I think that all the data we need is in this very room. I believe that you have the proof between your legs. That's why the size of Yehuda's zain didn't cause you any concerns. Could I pose a couple of questions? The first question is, 'Is your family descended from the priesthood?'"

"How did you guess that? My father's family name actually was Cohen. He changed it to Altman because he thought it sounded more German. Well, that didn't save his store from being trashed on Kristallnacht. He fled to what was then Palestine where he met my mother. Her family was Russian Jews with the name Levitt. As you know, the cohanim are only allowed to marry within the priesthood. Yes, I remember my father giving the priestly blessing at Shavuot. He wanted me to become a rabbi but I loved the ancient languages more, so…."

To put an end to the old man reminiscing, she interrupted: "Could we proceed to the next question, Dr. Altman. I'm sorry to have to ask you this but has your moisture fled? And if it hasn't, that would mean that you could counter any objection to the authenticity of the Tamar Scroll by showing me 25 cm. of zain."