Abstract
This collection of fine essays spotlights the constructed, performed, and historically-fluid spectrum of representations of men and masculinity in a range of Hebrew Bible and cognate texts. It consists of twelve essays, methodologically diverse and divided among four thematic parts:
“Subordinating Men, Destabilizing Hegemonies” (two essays);
Fantasies of (Male) Governance (six essays);
“Lo(o)sing It in Sex and Tears” (three essays); and
Biblical Men Gendering Bible Readers Today” (one essay).
The collection is held together by concluding “Final Reflections” (Part V) from two pioneers in the study of Hebrew Bible masculinities, David J. A. Clines and Stephen D. Moore. As might be expected from such tantalizing sub-headings, there is some rich material to be found here.
In Part I, Susan Haddox invokes an established anthropological masculinity typology to judge how representations of the Patriarchs' ‘subordinate masculinities’ fail to meet four standards of ancient Near Eastern “hegemonic masculinity”: avoiding women/feminization; demonstration of sexual/military potency, aggression; maintenance of honor; and display of wise/persuasive speech. Haddox suggests that subordinate masculinities are given prominence and favor in Genesis because they model a properly submissive relationship with God and because they offer the nation of Israel strategies for political survival. Roland Boer finds in Chronicles a resistant, though no less conflicted, representation of masculine hegemony based on cultic correctness. As Moore notes, Boer helpfully reminds readers of “the largely forgotten Marxist origins of the … stock masculinity studies concept of ‘hegemonic masculinities’” (p. 244) invoked by Haddox and three other of the volume's essays (DiPalma; Creangă; Strimple and Creangă).
In Part II, Brian C. DiPalma gauges how three of the masculine standards noted above—violence, persuasion, and detachment from women—are undermined in Exodus 1–4 by the juxtaposition of characterizations of Pharaoh and Moses that put them to different, contradictory use. In his treatment of the Sinai account (Exodus 32–34), David J. A. Clines elaborates on the masculine profiles he has drawn for/from other biblical texts (the warrior, the persuasive, and the womanless), adding to his critical inquiry the seemingly counterintuitive performance of “The Beautiful Male.” Mark K. George catalogues Deuteronomy's socially normative regimentation of the Israelite male's body, social place, categorization of time, inhabited spaces, and relationship with the deity.
Ovidiu Creangă examines how portraiture of Joshua's masculinity in the Conquest Narrative (Joshua 1–12) both employs some of the standards of ideal masculinity noted above (military aggression, procreation, persuasion, upholding moral law/standards) and is also destabilized by the absence of key masculine traits. Cheryl Strimple and Ovidiu Creangă survey how disability as a “narrative prosthetic” is used in the story of Naaman's healing (2 Kings 5) as part of the normalizing discourse that establishes and reinforces Deuteronomistic notions of masculinity, hierarchy, and power. Maria Haralambakis interrogates the portrayal of Job in the Testament of Job as a man in charge (as father and husband; wealthy monarch; wrestler; and benefactor) who dominates and silences the much-celebrated women of the story.
In Part III, Sandra Jacobs shows how early rabbinic gendered discourse on memory employs, though ultimately distances itself from, the biblical, Priestly idealization of masculinity based largely upon perceptions of fertility and virility. Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska evaluates how ambivalent representation of Samson's masculinity in Judges corresponds to particular “Mediterranean” notions of male honor, “competitive sexuality,” which, although unstable and at-risk, is employed in the framework of the narrative's ideology of war. C. J. Patrick Davis probes the relationship of the representation of Jeremiah's aggressive masculinity in the book of Jeremiah to the emergence of his feminized characterization as “Lamenting Prophet” in the Beyond of Second Temple Jewish Literature.
Finally, in the sole entry of Part IV, Andrew Todd explores the gendered dimensions of different interpretive “voices” within three present-day, lay Bible study groups (from East Anglia) in their social interactions and in their negotiations with the text of Daniel 7. Todd's essay provides an alluring asymmetry to the organization of the volume, a coda which invites readers to think critically about what all this analysis of destabilized biblical masculinities means for continuing use of the Hebrew Bible in the Beyond of contemporary religion.
Besides the two insightful response essays by Clines and Moore, which mostly compensate for the lack of an introductory essay to the volume, another salutary aspect unites this diverse collection: the research is taken up in a profitably critical mode and, in explicit and implicit dialogue with theories and methodologies developed by feminist biblical scholars, and challenges rather than (re-)affirms hegemonic models of “biblical manhood.” A certain privilege is granted to the biblical canon, however, and many of the contributors show indifference to the problem of the paucity of comparable work on ancient Near Eastern ideologies of masculinity. Nevertheless, the volume is to be commended for delivering both a (“quasi-structuralist”) catalogue of representations of “rules, codes and conventions that enable and determine the production, the construction, the performance of biblical … masculinities” (p. 246) and a (“poststructuralist) critique of the inherently unstable nature of those representations.
This challenging set of essays has relevance for specialists and offers a popular audience an accessible introduction to an important emerging field. It would also make a useful supplement to existing Bible and gender courses which tend to gloss over masculinities.