Functional Order: Te-Si-Ne-Fi

Tamar is businesslike and industrious; she is also straightforward when dealing with other people, which shocks some of the more emotional women around her. She gives it straight to Zeb when he asks for her opinion on his olive oil—it’s rancid and he can’t sell this; where he did he get the olives from? She has never met a problem she does not want to fix head-on… so she suggests rather than dealing with bad olives, they buy and nurture their own olive grove to turn a profit for the ministry. She wants to speak to the man selling it to them and to see the trees, and has experience that she relies on when making financial decisions. Her solution when she can’t get her crippled friend to Jesus is to take him up on the roof, tear out a section of thatch, and lower him down for healing. Tamar is also very sensory-driven in that she’s focused on using her own expertise and knowledge to assist the ministry funds; she has a strong sense of how the finest oils should taste, and on how to heal an olive grove and ensure the trees do not die. Her repeated encounters with Jesus tell her that he is a holy man who can be trusted, and who can heal others. Tamar also is very respectful of her own past, and the traditions of her people; she does not want to part with her tribal jewelry because it passes from mother to daughter, and still has her mother’s blood on it from when another tribe massacred her. She is good at thinking up alternative ways to make money and finding solutions to problems, but like a lot of inferior Fi users, struggles to articulate or deal with her feelings easily. Rather than tell Ramah and Mary why she won’t part with her jewelry, she clams up and refuses to talk about it. It takes her a long time to open up and talk about what happened in a meaningful way, because it feels too vulnerable to speak about something so emotionally devastating.

Enneagram: 3w4 so/sp

One of the reason Mary Magdalene has conflict with Tamar is because Tamar is so self-confident and assertive—she interrupts Jesus teaching to literally rip the roof off a building and lower her crippled friend through the roof so Jesus can heal him! Then she bluntly tells Zeb exactly what she thinks of his terrible olive oil, and volunteers herself to help him find a better source of olives. In truth, Tamar is just a 3 – a person who knows her own worth, who is determined to succeed, and who loves to stay busy. She is extremely proactive and lets no grass grow under her feet as she goes about helping others be more productive, industrious, and successful. She’s also extremely aware of how things look—at one point, she laments that Matthew has such “poor taste” in furniture, because it will be harder to sell because it’s “out of season.” (It was popular for only a short time, which means no one will want it now, at least not anyone with “taste.”) 3s do a lot of image management and care how things come across to others; they are in tune with what’s popular, especially as social types. But her snobbishness comes from her 4 wing, which finds frustration when things are not exactly the way she wants them to be. Tamar is also holding onto her past tightly, in that the horrific loss of her parents haunts her every day, but she doesn’t open up about that to Mary for many months; she just refuses to “sell her jewelry” to “help” the mission.

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