Essays exploring and explaining how 'queer' reading makes a difference to biblical exegesis. As with feminism, theoretical questions arise such as whether such readings are characterized by certain questions or can only legitimately be done by gay or lesbian readers. The contributors are drawn from a range of backgrounds and a variety of interests--Jewish, Christian, agnostic, male, female, heterosexual, gay and lesbian--and mostly concentrate on individual passages and books. But the volume also contains some theoretical reflections, and it ends with three +critical responses' from scholars with interdisciplinary interests on the place of queer read-ing of the Bible in broader contexts. A book for anyone interested in contemporary issues of bible interpretation or in queer theory generally.

In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. Following on this ancient tradition, Torah Queeries brings together some of the world's leading rabbis, scholars, and writers to interpret the Torah through a "bent lens." This incredibly rich collection unites the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight-allied writers, including some of the most central figures in contemporary American Judaism. All bring to the table unique methods of reading and interpreting that allow the Torah to speak to modern concerns of sexuality, identity, gender, and LGBT life. Torah Queeries offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through biblical interpretation. Written to engage readers, draw them in, and at times provoke them, Torah Queeries charts a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition. A labor of intellectual rigor, social justice, and personal passions, Torah Queeries is an exciting and important contribution to the project of democratizing Jewish communities, and an essential guide to understanding the intersection of queerness and Jewishness.

The Queer Bible Commentary brings together the work of several scholars and pastors known for their interest in the areas of gender, sexuality and Biblical studies. Rather than a verse-by-verse analysis, typical of more traditional commentaries, contributors to this volume focus specifically upon those portions of the book that have particular relevance for readers interested in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues such as the construction of gender and sexuality, the reification of heterosexuality, the question of lesbian and gay ancestry within the Bible, the transgendered voices of the prophets, the use of the Bible in contemporary political, socio-economic and religious spheres and the impact upon lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. Accordingly, the commentary raises new questions and re-directs more traditional questions in fresh and innovative ways, offering new angles of approach. This comprehensive, cutting-edge commentary is prefaced by an introductory essay by Professor Mary Tolbert. Contributors draw on feminist, queer, deconstructionist, utopian theories, the social sciences and historical-critical discourses. The focus is both how reading from lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender perspectives affect the reading and interpretation of biblical texts and how biblical texts have and do affect lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender communities. The commentary includes an extensive bibliography that directs the reader to a full range of literature relating to queer interpretation of scripture.

The Hebrew Bible offers a metaphor of marriage that portrays men and women as complementary, each with their distinct and 'natural' roles. Queer Theory and the Prophetic Marriage Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible draws on contemporary scholarship to critique this hetero-normativity. The book examines the methodological issues involved in the application of queer theory to biblical texts and draws on the concept of gender performativity - the construction of gender through action and behaviour - to argue for the potential of queer theory in political readings of the Bible. The central role of metaphor in reinforcing gender performativity is examined in relation to the books of Jeremiah, Hosea and Ezekiel. The book offers a radical reassessment of the relationship between biblical language and gender identity.

Art as Biblical Commentary is not just about biblical art but, more importantly, about biblical exegesis and the contributions visual criticism as an exegetical tool can make to biblical exegesis and commentary. Using a range of texts and numerous images, J. Cheryl Exum asks what works of art can teach us about the biblical text. 'Visual criticism' is her term for an approach that addresses this question by focusing on the narrativity of images-reading them as if, like texts, they have a story to tell-and asking what light an image's 'story' can shed on the biblical narrator's story. In Part I, Exum elaborates on her approach and offers a personal testimony to the value of visual criticism. Part 2 examines in detail the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21. Part 3 contains chapters on erotic looking and voyeuristic gazing in the stories of Bathsheba, Susanna, Joseph and Potiphar's wife and the Song of Songs; on the distribution of renown among Jael, Deborah and Barak; on the Bible's notorious women, Eve and Delilah; and on the sacrificed female body in the stories of the Levite's wife (Judges 19) and Mary the mother of Jesus.

This collection brings queer theory into dialogue with biblical scholarship, showing the complexity of queer biblical studies in all its dimensions of not only sexuality, but of gender, race, class, nationality, and ethnicity.

This book uses the ubiquitous comparison between food and sex as a framework for examining a number of texts from the Hebrew Bible, as well as later readings of those texts and interpretive issues raised by the texts. A range of biblical texts in which both food and sex appear are analyzed in an interdisciplinary fashion with the help of both traditional tools of biblical scholarship and less traditional tools such as Queer studies and cultural anthropology. By utilizing a reading lens that relates food and sex to one another intentionally, rather than treating them separately, the book will among other things question the tendency of readers of the Bible to overstress the gravity of sexual matters in relation to other matters of potential ethical, theological, exegetical and cultural concern, such as food. At the same time, as the title Practising Safer Texts indicates, the book also proposes a pragmatic approach to biblical interpretation that uses strategies of "safer sex" as a sort of loose model. Such an approach assesses texts and readings of the Bible not in a universalizing fashion but rather in terms of their likely effects, for good or ill, on particular readers in particular contexts and situations (just as notions of "safer sex" ask us to assess sexual acts not in a moralizing fashion but, rather, in terms of their likely effects on particular persons.