The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality: Critical Readings

Lynn R. Huber, Rhiannon Graybill, Lynn R. Huber, Rhiannon Graybill

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567677563
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This volume collects both classic and cutting-edge readings related to gender, sex, sexuality, and the Bible. Engaging the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and surrounding texts and worlds, Rhiannon Graybill and Lynn R. Huber have amassed a selection of essays that reflects a wide range of perspectives and approaches towards gender and sexuality. Presented in three distinct parts, the collection begins with an examination of gender in and around biblical contexts, before moving to discussing sex and sexualities, and finally critiques of gender and sexuality. Each reading is introduced by the editors in order to situate it in its broader scholarly context, and each section culminates in an annotated list of further readings to point researchers towards other engagements with these key themes.

SECTION I

GENDER/S IN AND AROUND BIBLICAL CONTEXTS

As discussed in the introduction, scholars often distinguish between sex and gender. While the former is often used to describe biological sexual differences, gender typically refers to the behaviors and attitudes identified as culturally appropriate for each sex. Gender is typically divided into the categories of “masculine” or “feminine,” although there is increasing awareness of the fluidity of these categories and growing interest in how individuals and groups transgress these categories.

The essays in this section engage gender from a variety of angles and can be used in a variety of ways. First, it is possible to use these to gain an understanding of the different methods and theories scholars use to approach gender in biblical contexts. Beth Alpert Nakhai discusses the importance of archaeology to reconstruct understandings of gender in ancient Israel. Drawing upon the insights of archaeology to explore Israelite women’s religious practice allows us to see the complexity of ancient Israelite religion as a whole. This type of investigation, moreover, requires attention to not only cult and temple sites but also domestic spaces, where many women would have engaged in religious practice. Also attuned to the importance of place, Steed Vernyl Davidson uses insights drawn from geography and the social construction of space in his discussion of gender and space in the book of Jeremiah. By looking at gendered spaces in the prophetic text, Davidson, like Nakhai, uncovers some of the variety of ancient Israelite religious practice, specifically the worship of the “Queen of Heaven” as an alternative to temple worship. In both these essays, we see the importance of looking for how gender appears in places historically unexplored by scholars.

Most of the essays in this section engage in rich historical and literary analysis as they explore how gender appears and functions within biblical texts and traditions. Mary F. Foskett’s discussion of the noncanonical early Christian text Protevangelium of James, which she compares to the Gospel of Luke, provides an excellent example of this. Engaging historical discussions about virginity in the ancient world, Foskett offers a close reading of Prot. Jas., noting that the text emphasizes Mary’s purity over other characteristics that may have been part of Greek and Roman constructions of ideal femininity. In light of this, Foskett places this story of Mary in conversation with other depictions of ideal virgins from the ancient Mediterranean, including traditions about the Vestal Virgins, Joseph and Aseneth, and The Acts of Thecla.

Second, a reader can approach these essays with attention to how their authors relate to the history of scholarship on gender in biblical texts and traditions and/or who their primary conversation partners are. Some of these essays explicitly challenge the biblical studies establishment. Shelly Matthews’s essay focuses on 1 Corinthians, while also touching on the famous Pauline proclamation of “no male and female” in Gal. 3:28. Matthews interrogates readings that dismiss feminist scholars’ insistence that early Christian communities were sites where gender norms were disputed and disrupted, especially by early Christian women. Amy-Jill Levine challenges how gender is read in the intertwined stories of the bleeding woman and of the deceased girl in Matthew 9. Levine also criticizes the anti-Jewish bias that often accompanies scholarly interpretations of Gospel stories about Jesus’s interactions with women. Another way one might approach these readings is by highlighting the ways these scholars expand conversations about the Bible and gender. Julie Kelso’s analysis of silences in Genesis 34 offers a more literary approach to the text, as she engages the work of feminist theorists, especially Luce Irigaray. Thomas Hentrich’s essay is notable for bringing an emerging field of study, disability theory, into conversation with depictions of the masculine within ancient Near Eastern and Hebrew Bible traditions. While noting that disabled bodies tend to experience social exclusion within Hebrew Bible texts, Hentrich broaches the possibility that in the New Testament there is a shift toward a more inclusive approach to disabled, impure, and female bodies. This claim should be compared to the insights of Levine.

Similarly, it is possible to approach these essays with attention to how they envision the relationship between biblical conversations about gender and surrounding discourses. On the one hand, there are essays that argue certain biblical texts resist cultural constructions of gender. In this vein, Brittany E. Wilson argues that the depictions of Peter and Paul in Acts reveal how the author, Luke, “refigures” ancient assumptions about what it means to be a man. This suggests interesting connections to the other essays, as well as points of contrast. Matthews’s essay offers a variation of this perspective that challenges the assumption that early Christian belief was monolithic, suggesting that women in Paul’s audiences challenged the traditional gender expectations foisted upon them by the apostle. On the other hand, Hentrich highlights the ways that a variety of Hebrew Bible texts depicting disabled bodies make sense within ancient Near Eastern frameworks of masculinity, drawing upon cultural assumptions about men’s bodies. Foskett places the tradition of Mary’s uncompromised virginity into conversation with Greek and Roman traditions, suggesting that the author’s depiction of Jesus’s mother aligns with other divine births.

While these essays offer a range of perspectives on gender in biblical traditions, also reflecting some of the variety found within biblical traditions, there are some areas for expansion. Most notably, these readings focus upon masculinity and femininity without much consideration of gender outside of this binary. Below we offer some suggestions for readings that address gender more complexly, such as Rebecca Solevåg’s essay on the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts. Even though the included essays pay some attention to the intersection of gender with categories of ethnicity and class or status, these topics can be addressed more specifically. To this end, we recommend Shelia Briggs’s essay on slavery and gender and Clarice Martin’s treatment of the household codes as an introduction into this topic. Two readings elsewhere in this volume, Joseph A. Marchal’s essay on Philemon and Margaret Aymer’s essay on Acts 11, also address the intersection of slavery and gender.

Further Reading

Brenner, Athalya, ed. A Feminist Companion to Prophets and Daniel. A Feminist Companion to the Bible, Second Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.

The Feminist Companion to the Bible (FCB) is a series of edited volumes featuring feminist readings of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, noncanonical texts, and methodological issues. The breadth and coverage of FCB, now in its second series, is remarkable. This volume addresses the Latter Prophets and Daniel, with a particular focus on the “marriage metaphor,” which imagines God and Israel in an abusive marriage. These texts (particularly Hosea 1–3, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Jeremiah 3) have long posed a challenge to feminist interpreters. This volume includes multiple essays addressing the texts from a feminist perspective, including studies of gender-based violence, gender reversal, and questions of identity and critique. There are also several essays on female prophecy.

Briggs, Sheila. “Slavery and Gender.” In On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds, edited by Jane Schaberg et al., 171–92. New York: Continuum, 2003.

Focusing on the intersection of class and gender, Briggs sheds light upon the relationship between gender and slavery within the Greco-Roman world as parallel categories within a hierarchically ordered cosmos. In so doing, Briggs explains how this connection undergirds the baptismal formula of Galatians 3.

Harris, Rivkah. “Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites.” History of Religions 30, no. 3 (1991): 261–78.

Harris explores the various paradoxical aspects of the ancient Near Eastern goddess Inanna or Ishtar, noting, in particular, the figure’s androgyny. Included in this discussion is a consideration of how the paradoxical aspects of Inanna-Ishtar relate to the participants within the goddess’s cult. She also discusses Inanna-Ishtar’s association with nonnormative sexuality and gender performance.

Huber, Lynn R. “Sexually Explicit? Re-Reading Revelation’s 144,000 Virgins as a Response to Roman Discourses.” Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality 2, no. 1 (2008): 3–28.

Addressing Revelation 14:4, which describes the ideal follower of Christ as a virginal male, Huber argues that Revelation’s critique of the Roman Empire includes an element of gender critique. By valorizing male virginity, John calls for a rejection of the imperial imperative to become a “real man” by marrying and bearing children.

Martin, Clarice J. “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: ‘Free Slaves’ and ‘Subordinate Women’.” In Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, edited by Cain Hope Felder, 206–31. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1991.

Addressing the use of “household codes” in New Testament epistles, Martin highlights how gender shapes the way readers within the black church tradition engage these texts. In this way, this piece offers introductions to both the ancient context of these codes, which reflect Roman moral assumptions, and African American interpretative traditions.

Moss, Candida. “The Man with the Flow of Power: Porous Bodies in Mark.” Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 3 (2010): 507–19.

Moss draws upon ancient medical writers’ understanding of male and female b...