Male Friendship Homosociality And Women In The Hebrew Bible

Male alliances, partnerships, and friendships are fundamental to the Hebrew Bible. This book offers a detailed and explicit exploration of the ways in which shared sexual use of women and women’s bodies engenders, sustains, and nourishes such relationships in the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew Bible narratives demonstrate that women and women’s bodies are not merely used to foster and cultivate male homosociality, male friendship, and toxic hegemonic masculinity, but rather to engender them and make them possible in the first place. Thiede argues that homosocial bonds between divine and mortal males are part of a continual competition for power, rank, and honor, and that this competition depends on women’s bodies for its expression. In a final chapter, she also explores whether female characters in the Hebrew Bible use male bodies to form friendships and alliances to advance female power, status, and rank. The book concludes by arguing that women are essential to the toxic biblical hegemonic masculinity we find in the Hebrew Bible, but only because their bodies are used to make it possible in the first place. This book is intended for scholars of the Hebrew Bible, as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students in religious studies, women and gender studies, masculinity studies, queer studies, and like fields. The book can also be read profitably by lay students of biblical literature, seminary students, and clergy.

Moses: Man Among Men? examines the nature of Moses' relationships with other male characters by utilizing the theory of hegemonic masculinity and homosociality. In doing so, this book considers the way in which Moses is pictured as an idealized figure by comparison to other male characters in his story.

Rape Culture in the House of David: A Company of Men describes a biblical rape culture sustained and maintained by Yhwh and a host of men—from royal kings and princes to their relatives, counselors, generals, and servants. This volume reveals that sexual violence in the house of David is not simply perpetrated by its most powerful men. Rather, in the pursuit of power, status, authority, and honor, men form alliances and networks that support the use and abuse of women’s bodies and valorize sexualized violence against other men. The man who is most capable of sexual violence is Israel’s ideal king. Barbara Thiede deftly addresses the power and contemporary relevance of these narratives and argues that exposing and naming rape culture in biblical literature is essential—in social, economic, and political realms. This is a meaningful feminist intervention in the field of biblical studies and is of great benefit to graduate students and scholars of religion, gender studies, and masculinity studies.

This handbook presents an overview of the main approaches from social and cultural anthropology to the Hebrew Bible. Since the late 19th century, biblical scholarship has addressed issues and themes related to biblical stories from a perspective which could now be considered socio-anthropological. It is however only since the 1960s that biblical scholars have started to produce readings and incorporate analytical models drawn directly from social anthropology to widen the interpretive scope of the social and historical data contained in the biblical sources. The handbook is arranged into two main thematic parts. Part 1 assesses the place of the Bible in social anthropology, examines the contribution of ethnoarchaeology to the recovery of the social world of Iron Age Palestine and offers insights from the anthropology of the Mediterranean for the interpretation of the biblical stories. Part 2 provides a series of case studies on anthropological themes arising in the Hebrew Bible. These include kinship and social organisation, death, cultural and collective memory, and ritualism. Contributors also examine how the biblical stories reveal dynamics of power and authority, gender, and honour and shame, and how socio-anthropological approaches can reveal these narratives and deepen our knowledge of the human societies and cultural context of the texts. Bringing together the expertise of scholars of the Hebrew Bible and Biblical Archaeology, this ethnographic introduction prompts new questions into our understanding of anthropology and the Bible.

Offering a reading of the intermarriage debate and expulsion of the foreign women in Ezra 9-10, this book engages with the production and performance of masculinities in this biblical text, shifting the focus away from the 'foreign women' to the men who are the primary actors in this work. This approach addresses the diversity of masculinities and the ways in which they are implicated in the production of power relations in the text. It explores the ‘feminized’ masculinity of the peoples-of-the-lands, the unstable masculinity of the golah, Ezra’s performance of penitential masculinity, and the rehabilitation of divine masculinity. The rejection of the marriages and the call for the expulsion of the women and children are addressed as sites on which masculinities and power relations are configured. In doing so, this book sheds light on how women and the traits and performances culturally ascribed to women, femininity and inferior masculinities, are appropriated to produce masculinities and negotiate power relations between men. It posits that the debate in Ezra 9-10 is not, ultimately, about the women themselves, but about bringing the masculinities, bodies and practices of dissenting men under the ‘management’ of those who wield the Torah in the narrative world of the text. Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra-9-10 is of interest for scholars and students working on the Book of Ezra specifically, as well as the Hebrew Bible and its world more broadly. It is also a valuable study for those working on masculinities and gender in the biblical world and ancient Near East.

"This book analyses the character of Jonathan in 1 Sam 13-2 Sam 1 and in contemporary fiction. The first part of each chapter is devoted to the literary portrayal of Jonathan in the final form of the biblical text. It seeks to establish an interpretation that allows Jonathan to be read as a psychologically cohesive character. This part raises a series of questions. What kind of man is Jonathan who shows initiative, daring, and clear leadership ability (1 Sam 13-14), yet also is willing to lay down his crown before the usurper David's feet in humble submission (1 Sam 18-23)? What kind of son is Jonathan who rebels against Saul and takes David's part in the conflict between the two men, yet remains loyal to his father until the bitter end on Mount Gilboa? The second part of each chapter investigates the depictions of Jonathan in contemporary fiction, with focus on novels, short stories, and poetry. It explores how a wide range of modern retellings of the David saga highlight, transform, and subvert the biblical portrayal of Jonathan. This part responds to the series of questions raised in the first part. Together, the two parts demonstrate how fictional retellings both deepen and challenge the ways that scholars interpret the biblical text"--

The Routledge Companion to Eve is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary collection which explores the history of interpretation that surrounds Eve’s character in both religious writings and cultural texts. The primary themes discussed in the volume include the religious, historical, and cultural ideologies that have influenced interpretations of Eve, as well as the cultural impact of these interpretations on gender identities and injustices. Chapters trace the evolution of Eve’s interpretive history from ancient biblical texts up to the present day. The contributors engage with both traditional modes of inquiry in text-based religious research as well as the newer fields of reception history and cultural criticism to explore the rich history of interpretation and reception surrounding Eve, as well as the cultural and historical impact these interpretations have had on women’s religious and social lives across space and time. The Routledge Companion to Eve is an original and important collection which will equip readers to begin their own explorations of Eve’s extraordinary legacy. It will be an invaluable resource for scholars of Gender Studies, Biblical Studies, Theology, Religion and Gender, Literary Studies, History of Art, and Cultural Studies.

This book invites a close textual encounter with the first 11 chapters of Genesis as an intimate drama of marginalised peoples wrestling with the rise of the world’s first grain states in the Mesopotamian alluvium. The initial 11 chapters of Genesis are often considered discordant and fragmentary, despite being a story of beginnings within the context of the Bible. Readers discover how these formative chapters cohere as a cross-generational account of peoples grappling with the hegemonic spread of domesticated grain production and the concomitant rise of the pristine states of Mesopotamia. The book reveals how key episodes from the Genesis narrative reflect major societal revolutions of the Neolithic period in Mesopotamia through a three-fold hermeneutical method: literary analysis of the Bible and contemporary cuneiform texts; modern scholarship from archaeological, anthropological, ecological, and historical sources; and relevant exegesis from the Second Temple and rabbinical era. These three strands entwine to recount a generally sequential story of the earliest archaic states as narrated by non-elites at the margins of these emerging state spaces. The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1–11 provides a fascinating reading of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, appealing to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the Near East, as well as those working on ecological injustice from a religious vantage point.