Reading Gender in Judges. An Intertextual Approach

Birdsong, Shelley L.; de Vos J. Cornelis; Kim, Hyun Chul Paul

Abstract

Much of the content of Judges can be understood only when read together with other parts of the Hebrew Bible. Narratives in Judges comment, criticize, and reinterpret other texts from across what became the canon, often by troubling gender, disrupting stereotypical binaries, and creating a kind of gender chaos. This volume brings together gender criticism and intertextuality, methods that logically align with intersectional lenses, to draw attention to how race, ethnicity, class, religion, ability, sex, and sexuality all play a role in how one is gendered in the book of Judges. Contributors Elizabeth H. P. Backfish, Shelley L. Birdsong, Zev Farber, Serge Frolov, Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, Susan E. Haddox, Hyun Chul Paul Kim, Richard D. Nelson, Pamela J. W. Nourse, Tammi J. Schneider, Joy A. Schroeder, Soo Kim Sweeney, Rannfrid I. Lasine Thelle, J. Cornelis de Vos, Jennifer J. Williams, and Gregory T. K. Wong provide substantial new and significant contributions to the study of gender, the book of Judges, and biblical hermeneutics in general. This volume illustrates why biblical scholars and students need to take the intersectional identities of characters and their intertextual environments seriously.