Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel

Description

We have all seen the movies about David and Bathsheba or Samson and Delilah, so we know that even popular culture recognizes the many tales of eroticism in the Old Testament. Now Theodore Jennings challenges us to engage with the homoerotic elements of the Hebrew Bible. Of course, the very suggestion that there may be homoeroticism in Hebrew narrative may seem odd given the supposition that the religion and culture of ancient Israel resolutely opposed same sex erotic relationships. The apparent prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus and the story of Sodom from Genesis have been made to speak for the whole Hebrew Bible. The oddity of this situation has not been lost on some interpreters who have recognized that the story of Sodom tells us no more about attitudes towards what we call homosexuality than the story of the rape of Dina tells us about attitudes toward heterosexuality. Jennings contends that the well-known eroticism of the Hebrew Bible is not confined to heterosexuality but also includes an astonishing diversity of material that lends itself to homoerotic interpretation.

Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. is Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology at the Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of Introduction to Theology, The Insurrection of the Crucified (Explorations Press), and The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament.

"The book is written in colloquial language, and, indeed, I found the author's use of language blunt, clever, entertaining, and fresh, which is not often the case in scholarly writings....the book's structure is well organized.... I am sure it will be popular." - RBL, July 2006 mention- The Catholic Biblical Quarterly/ 68, 2006 "There is much in Jennings' book that I admire. He deftly sifts through existing scholarship to recover the terms and forms of ancient Israel's worship of a 'hypermasculine divinity' whose ravishing of his male followers provided a model both for the warrior-leader's sexual relations with his male attendant and for the healer's cure of the sick through the infusion of phallic energy."- Raymond-Jean Frontain, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Jan-Feb 2007 -- The Gay and Lesbian Review "Jacob's Wound remains one of the most stimulating and provocative books on the Hebrew Bible to appear in recent years. I will use it next time I teach on the Bible and homosexuality, and the class discussion it will provoke will be impassioned and productive." - Stephen D. Moore, The Theological School, Drew University, USA; The Journal of the History of Sexuality, September 2008 -- Stephen D. Moore "Over against the hegemony of the religious right and its ferocious homophobia, Jacob's Wound shows that the Bible is a profoundly positive, homoerotic text. Through a careful reading of texts, Ted Jennings reclaims the Bible from those who would use it to oppress others. This is a liberating reading." -Roland Boer, Senior Logan Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology at Monash University, author of Marxist Criticism of the Bible, and managing editor of The Bible and Critical Theory * Blurb from reviewer * "Prophetic voices have tended to give up on the Bible, and in so doing have handed it over to reactionary agendas. Jennings refuses to allow the Bible to be dominated in this way. Drawing on a vast array of biblical and theological resources, Jennings offers us 'other' readings of the Bible, both by reading unfamiliar texts and by reading familiar texts in unfamiliar ways." -Dr. Gerald West, Senior Professor in Hebrew Bible and Director of the Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research, in the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa * Blurb from reviewer * "While not focusing on women's experience in the Hebrew Bible, this volume makes a significant contribution to understanding the homoerotic dimensions of the text." -WATERwheel, 2005 * WATERwheel *