Social Inequality in the World of the Text The Significance of Ritual and Social Distinctions in the Hebrew Bible
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Saul M. Olyan
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Social Inequality in the World of the Text The Significance of Ritual and Social Distinctions in the Hebrew Bible
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Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht Unipress
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9783647550244
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Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements
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1
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CHF 80.30
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Christentum
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English
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240
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Wasserzeichen/DRM
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PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
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PDF
This volume consists of fifteen of the author's essays, including two that have never been published before. The essays date to the last decade and a half, and all reflect in some manner the author's ongoing interest in literary operations of classification and their social implications, particularly the production of distinctions which create social inequality in the world of the text, and have the potential to generate hierarchical social relationships in contexts where biblical texts might have had an impact on real people. In these essays, the author explores themes such as gender, sexuality, purity and pollution, sanctification, death and afterlife, foreignness, and disability with particular attention to the roles distinctions such as honored/shamed, feminine/masculine, mourning/rejoicing, unclean/clean, alien/native play in creating and perpetuating social differences in texts. Rites of status change such as circumcision, shaving, purification, burial or disinterment, sanctification and profanation of holiness are a focus of interest in a number of these essays, reflecting the author's on going interest in the textual representation of ritual. Most of the essays examine texts in their historical setting, but several also engage the early history of the interpretation of biblical texts, including the phenomenon of inner biblical exegesis. The essays are divided into five sections: Rites and Social Status; Gender and Sexuality; Disability; Holiness, Purity, the Alien; Death, Burial, Afterlife and their Metaphorical Uses. The author introduces each of the sections, contextualizing each essay in his larger scholarly project, reflecting on its development and reception and, in some cases, responding to his critics.
Saul M. Olyan ist Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor für Judaistik und Professor für Religionswissenschaft an der Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Table of Contents
6
Introduction
8
Section 1: Rites and Social Status
14
Introduction
16
Honor, Shame and Covenant Relations in Ancient Israel and Its Environment
18
What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish and What Do They Signal in Biblical Ritual Contexts?
38
Section 2: Gender and Sexuality
52
Introduction
54
“And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman”: On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
58
“Surpassing the Love of Women”: Another Look at 2 Sam 1: and the Relationship of David and Jonathan
86
Occasionally Beyond Gender: The Rhetoric of Familial Nurture in Discourses of West Asian Kings and their Agents
102
Section 3: Disability
116
Introduction
118
“Anyone Blind or Lame Shall Not Enter the House”: On the Interpretation of 2 Samuel 5:8b
120
The Exegetical Dimensions of Restrictions on the Blind and the Lame in Texts from Qumran
130
The Ascription of Physical Disability as a Stigmatizing Strategy in Biblical Iconic Polemics
142
Section 4: Holiness, Purity, and the Alien
156
Introduction
158
Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community
160
“Sie sollen nicht in die Gemeinde des Herrn kommen”: Aspekte gesellschaftlicher Inklusion und Exklusion in Dtn 23,4–9 und seine frühen Auslegungen
174
Mary Douglas’s Holiness/Wholeness Paradigm: Its Potential for Insight and its Limitations
188
Section 5: Death, Burial, Afterlife, and their Metaphorical Uses
198
Introduction
200
“We are Utterly Cut Off”: Some Possible Nuances of nigzarnû lanû in Ezek 37:11
202
Unnoticed Resonances of Tomb Opening and Transportation of the Remains of the Dead in Ezekiel 37:12–14
212
Was the “King of Babylon” Buried Before His Corpse Was Exposed? Some Thoughts on Isa 14:19
222
Some Neglected Aspects of Israelite Interment Ideology
226
