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Following Daniel Bodi's previous monographs on the three wives of King David-Michal, Bathsheba and Abigail-here is a fourth one on Abishag, the last woman in his life. It has not been recognized before how decisive a role she played as a palace administrator in David's final political crisis, Adonijah's coup d'état, and Solomon's proclamation as king. Hitherto, Abishag has been given androcentric readings. Her position as administrator has been demoted to that of a mere housekeeper, bedfellow or even hot-water bottle. Some rabbinic authors transformed her into an androgynous being, claiming an intersex person warms better than a young female virgin. In fact, the term for Abishag's office as s¿kenet is nothing but the feminine form of s¿ken 'palace steward', a well-known functionary across the Semitic world. Much more than a simple housekeeper, Abishag wields administrative power with a legal role as a witness in Solomon's appointment. Exploring further the role of women at royal courts, Bodi also offers a comparative analysis of the famous queens who played a role in the royal succession as kings' mothers in Egypt, Mari, Hatti, Ugarit and Assyria. Solomon's appointment as David's successor results from a palace putsch, executed with cunning and craftiness, which are to be understood as archaic forms of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, classical Greece and the ancient Near East. The stories of David's wives-and of Abishag-together form a Hebrew document in the style of an Advice to a Prince. An interesting comparison is drawn between David's four wives and the four females Odysseus encounters in Homer's Odyssey: Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope. Strikingly, the Hebrew version of the Advice to a Prince and the Homeric Epic were being written at roughly the same time, the end of the eighth century bce.

Samson and Delilah. Well-known biblical figures in a tale of deception, betrayal and a haircut. Or is there more to the tale than this?There is, in fact, a good deal more, as J. Cheryl Exum demonstrates in her wide-ranging collection of essays. Far from being a simple story, the tale in Judges 13-16 about Samson and his adventures, culminating in his fatal liaison with Delilah, is a subtle, nuanced and highly complex narrative with an elaborate literary structure, a sophisticated theological programme, and an ambitious and problematic androcentric agenda. It is, moreover, a story that lives on in literature, art, music and even Hollywood films.The eleven essays brought together in this volume investigate the Samson story from a diversity of critical perspectives and in a variety of its afterlives. Both Samson and Delilah are characters of many facets, as these essays reveal, and Judges 13-16 emerges from this investigation as a story that encourages and supports rather than resists multiple, often incompatible, modes of reading it.

What would it look like to be queer in the time of Abraham and Sarah? What is normative and what is deviant in their stories? What does this have to do with queer lives today?In Ancestral Queerness, Gil Rosenberg uses a careful comparative method to develop a cross-cultural queer category ('Queer'). He applies this category to Abraham and Sarah and argues that, Abraham and Sarah may usefully be regarded as 'Queer'.Rosenberg's comparisons draw on a variety of contemporary queer stories, scholarship, and theories. These include a lesbian mother trying to support her partner and newborn daughter, Australian polyamorous families, Lee Edelman's figure of the Child, and gay men building families through surrogacy.These comparisons lead Rosenberg to surprising new interpretations of several key passages in Genesis 11-21. For example, he argues that Abraham wants to hide his marriage to Sarah because their relationship is a queer one, and that Sarah may not actually be wanting a biological child. Rosenberg also highlights the combination of normative and deviant elements in Abraham's strategies for obtaining an heir, and the role of ethnic and class difference in Abraham's and Sarah's efforts to become more normative.Bold in its conclusions but careful and precise in its method, Ancestral Queerness breaks new ground by developing a queer theory applicable to diverse cultures, revealing the bias in previous scholarship on Abraham and Sarah, and opening up new paths of interpretation in their narratives.

'Reception history is one of the most inviting, yet also one of the most difficult, fields in the study of the Bible today. It is difficult because it involves so many layers of expertise. The reception-historian does not only need a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the biblical text itself, but also familiarity with the cultures and intellectual background of the many diverse ages in which it has been read and appropriated; and in addition needs to be versed in media other than writing, including the visual and performing arts.But it is inviting because it carries its practitioners so far beyond the confines of ordinary textual study, with its concern for language and text, and out into an ocean of interdisciplinary engagement with writings that have, after all, stimulated the imaginations as well as the intellects of generations of religious (and non-religious) readers. The Decalogue is an obvious candidate for a reception-historical treatment. It has acquired over the centuries an enormous weight of commentary, and has been assimilated into the most varied cultures. Though a text, it has often also been an icon, appearing on walls in churches and now even in American courthouses. The subject was ripe for study, and the conference at which the papers in this book were delivered marked a significant milestone in biblical reception history' (from John Barton's Preface to the volume).The 21 papers in this volume offer the richest and most wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of studies on the reception of the Decalogue in culture, and will prove to be a fundamental resource for students of the biblical text and of the reception of the Bible in general.

This is the third of a set of three volumes reviewing the progress of feminist Hebrew Bible scholarship over the last forty years. In this third volume, eighteen contributors focus on the wide range of exegetical methods as they have been productively employed in feminist biblical interpretations. More specifically, each essay investigates how feminist Hebrew Bible exegetes have worked with exegetical methods. Each essay surveys the method under consideration as it has emerged in academic discourse generally and in biblical studies in particular. Each essay also explains how feminist uses of the various exegetical methods have been deeply embedded within the theological, cultural, and even political expectations and assumptions of readers of the Bible. This volume asks readers to come to terms with the following question: What are the best methods for feminist exegesis in the light of past and present socio-political, theological, or hermeneutical developments in reading the Bible? After all, feminist theorists have come to recognize that methods are always already situated within powerful epistemological and methodological structures that have their roots in vast arrays of historical, political, economic, social, and religious factors. This volume encourages feminist debate on these complex issues that stand at the heart of biblical exegesis.