The Vanishing Hebrew Harlot is written with two objectives: First, to recover the core meaning of the Hebrew stem ZNH as a complex of non-Yahwist rituals, deities, institutions and beliefs prevalent in ancient Israel and Judah. With this understanding, the author assigns the translation value «participate in non-Yahwist religious praxis» to ZNH. The second objective is to understand how this core meaning came to be encrusted with promiscuity, prostitution, and detestable things, and, above all, with adultery, a capital offense, as well as with religious contamination and its destructive consequences. In the biblical texts, the stem ZNH, which encompasses a complex of non-Yahwist religious practices, operates in a powerful, adversarial relationship to the Yahwist complex of religious practices. Since non-Yahwist sacrifices signify the repudiation of Yahweh, non-Yahwist sacrifices arouse fierce opposition. The prophets Hosea and Jeremiah grasp this adversarial relationship and in their advocacy for Yahweh infuse non-Yahwist praxis with images of illicit sexual encounters and with the production of religious contamination that will lead to the devastation of Israel and Judah and to the exile of their inhabitants. The new structure of ZNH that emerges with Hosea and Jeremiah is one that re-visions ZNH activities by incorporating repugnant sexual imagery and devastating theological contamination into the core of non-Yahwist praxis. However, ZNH also has a sexual signification in contexts that are independent of and distinct from cultic contexts. The stem ZNH is examined in its Ancient Near Eastern environment, but the thrust of this research is the analysis of ZNH in its Hebrew textual environment using concepts from cognitive linguistics: network of associations, associated commonplaces, and blending.

The concepts of purity and pollution are fundamental to the worldview reflected in the Hebrew Bible, yet the ways biblical texts apply these concepts to sexual relationships remain largely overlooked. Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible argues that, when applied to sexual relations, pollution language usually reflects a conception of women as sexual property susceptible to being "ruined" for particular men through contamination by others. In contrast, however, the Holiness legislation of the Pentateuch applies such language to men who engage in transgressive sexual relations, conveying the idea that male bodily purity is a prerequisite for individual and communal holiness. This understanding of sexual pollution, found in Leviticus 18, has a profound impact on later texts. In the book of Ezekiel, it contributes to a broader conception of pollution resulting from Israel's sins, which bring about the Babylonian exile. In the book of Ezra, it figures in a view of the Israelite community as a body of males contaminated by foreign women. Drawing on psychological and cross-cultural studies as well as philological and historical-critical analysis of biblical texts, Eve Feinstein's study illuminates the reasons why the idea of pollution adheres to particular domains of experience, including sex, death, and certain types of infirmity.

Many scholars in Biblical and Revelation studies have written at length about the imperial and patriarchal implications of the figure of the Whore of Babylon. However, much of the focus has been on the links to the Roman Empire and ancient attitudes towards gender. This book adds another layer to the conversation around this evocative figure by pursuing an ideological critique of the Great Whore that takes into account contemporary understandings of sexuality, and in so doing advances a de-moralization of apparent sexual deviancy both in the present and in the past. Offering an emancipatory reading of Revelation 17-18 using Foucauldian, postcolonial and queer historiographies, this study sets out alternative paths for identity construction in Biblical texts. By using these alternative critical lenses, the author argues that the common neglect of the ethical and political impact of Biblical texts in the present can be overcome. This, in turn, allows for fresh reflection on the study of the Bible and its implications for progressive politics. Situated at the intersection of Revelation Studies, Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics, as well as Contextual/Liberationist Theologies and Queer and Postcolonial Criticism, this is a cutting edge study that will be of keen interest to scholars of Theology and Religious Studies.

A woman's life in the ancient world was constrained by her social and economic status. As a daughter she was firmly under the aegis of her father and brothers, who would later allocate the woman to another man as his wife. The power of fathers and husbands extended to using their wives and daughters as sexual gifts to gain favour. Yet, alongside this, woman had certain socio-economic rights notably concerning inheritance and property - which they could use to protect themselves. 'Sexual Hospitality in the Hebrew Bible' examines sacred sexuality and ritual fecundity from patronymic marriage - where the husband claims exclusive rights over his wife's sexuality and attributes her offspring to his line and kin - to metronymic conjugal systems which allow a woman to remain in her home where the male consort joins her and her kin. Ranging across abstention, promiscuity, and holy offering, the sexual lives of women in biblical times reveal not only restriction but also female agency and resistance.

An innovative collection of inner-biblical, intertextual, and intercontextual dialogues Essays from a diverse group of scholars offer new approaches to biblical intertextuality that examine the relationship between the Hebrew Bible, art, literature, sociology, and postcolonialism. Eight essays in part 1 cover inner-biblical intertextuality, including studies of Genesis, Judges, and Qoheleth, among others. The eight postbiblical intertextuality essays in part 2 explore Bakhtinian and dialogical approaches, intertextuality in the Dead Sea Scrolls, canonical critisicm, reception history, and #BlackLivesMatter. These essays on various genres and portions of the Hebrew Bible showcase how, why, and what intertextuality has been and presents possible potential directions for future research and application. Features: Diverse methods and cases of intertextuality Rich examples of hermeneutical theory and interpretive applications Readings of biblical texts as mutual dialogues, among the authors, traditions, themes, contexts, and lived worlds

The frank eroticism of the Song of Songs has long seemed out of place in the Hebrew Bible. As a result, both Jewish and Christian interpreters have struggled to read it as an allegory of the relationship between God (as husband) and Israel or the church (as bride). Havilah Dharamraj approaches the Song with a clear vision of the gendering of power relationships in the ancient Near East and through an intertextual method centered not on production but on the reception of texts. She sets the Song's lyrical portrayal of passion and intimacy alongside other canonical portrayals of love spurned, lust, rejection, and sexual violence from Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The result is a richly nuanced exposition of the possibilities of intimacy and remorse in interhuman and divine-human relationship. The intertextual juxtaposition of contrasting texts produces a third text, an intracanonical conversation in which patriarchal control and violence are answered in a tender and generous mutuality.

This book examines many of the laws in the Torah governing sexual relations and the often implicit motivations underlying them. It also considers texts beyond the laws in which legal traditions and ideas concerning sexual behavior intersect and provide insight into ancient Israel's social norms. The book includes extended treatments on the nature and function of marriage and divorce in ancient Israel, the variation in sexual rules due to status and gender, the prohibition on male-with-male sex, and the different types of sexualities that may have existed in ancient Israel. The essays draw on a variety of methodologies and approaches, including narrative criticism, philological analysis, literary theory, feminist and gender theory, anthropological models, and comparative analysis. They cover content ranging from the narratives in Genesis, to the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, to later re-interpretations of pentateuchal laws in Jeremiah and texts from the Second Temple period. Overall, the book presents a combination of theoretical discussion and close textual analysis to shed new light on the connections between law and sexuality within the Torah and beyond.