FEUCHTWANGER - JEFTE AND HIS Daughter issue 1

An insightful attempt to recreate the meaning contained in this story was made by Lion Feuchtwanger in his novel Jephte and his daughter. The outstanding writer, although he considered himself a non-believer and rejected the supernatural dimension of the Bible, reconstructed with all care the religious root from which Jephte's ill-fated vow grows. Namely, for Feuchtwanger it was a particularly dramatic act in the process of liberation from henotheism -- that is, from such a belief in one God that does not exclude the existence of other gods -- toward full monotheism. Very aptly, in my opinion, the writer introduces the theme of Jephthah's overcoming the temptation to marry his daughter to the Ammonite king, which would automatically entail her departure from the worship of the God of Israel. In another form, this temptation insistently returns to Jephthah when that very native daughter has proved to be the victim of an ill-advised vow: his wife, who is going out of her mind, then makes desperate efforts to coerce first her husband, then her daughter herself, to leave the land of Israel and put herself under the protection of some other god. However, Jephthah was unwilling to save the life of his beloved daughter at the price of deviating from his God. Also, the subject herself preferred to give up her life rather than depart from her father's God.

/Jacek Salij OP/.