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Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible
Queer theory calls for a look at social location, a critique of dominant concepts of sex and gender, and the recognition of potential for political cooperation among diverse groups of people.Ken Stone explores the nature of queer theory as applied to biblical commentary. The text embodies the tenets of queer theory and thus departs from traditional scholarship.
Seven "queer readings" of the Hebrew Bible form the bulk of the book, followed by three responses. The contributors to this volume show the heterogeneous nature of the field.
Seven "queer readings" of the Hebrew Bible form the bulk of the book, followed by three responses. The contributors to this volume show the heterogeneous nature of the field.
250 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2001
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May 13, 2017This is a collection of essays from Bible scholars - many of them Christian or secular, so this is not very much a "Jewish" collection of commentaries, but still interesting. (If you're looking for an emphatically Jewish one, I'll have a different book coming up...)
The authors were all quite white and Anglo, except for ONE person of color in the "responses to the essays" part responding to point out the whiteness of the collection and that it did not engage with race and/or ethnicity even when the authors brought it up. I think that's a very fair criticism and I'm glad it was included, but it also made me sad why didn't the editor just solicit an article from the author of the response to begin with, instead of only soliciting a response.
The commentaries also skewed toward focusing on gay masculinities, and several of the authors themselves pointed out that this could further perpetrate patriarchy instead of subverting it - I think that is a fair point. But a lot of Jewish-themeed queer books are heavily skewed toward lesbian feminism, it's a somewhat different dynamic than in Anglo-white queer discourse; and I've just read some of the lesbian books, so I felt it was good to have something examining gay masculinities. (The book was still very cis, which some authors also pointed out as a weakness.) It was rather baffling that one author said that there might not even be enough lesbian and/or femininity-focused content in the Bible, I guess the author didn't read the voluminous lesbian Jewish material that is out there and engaging with the Bible too.
I assumed most of the authors were queer? It wasn't always clear, but some of them said outright, and it seemed a given? Maybe I'm mistaken, it's not a very new book. Some of the commentary had to do with more 'straight' topics, like F/m femdom in Shimshon & Delilah, which is a subversive topic but not necessarily queer - but I did feel that the approach had more of a queer gaze. So to me it showed that a queer approach could even add to straight sexual interactions in the Bible.
One thing that annoyed me a bit was that so many of the authors emphasized how queerness was a kind of destabilizing and upsetting force, and.... on one hand I see that, on the other I have been growing a bit tired of it. This rhetoric is especially common in queer theory, but here the authors were Bible scholars reflecting on queer theory, rather than queer theorists. To be honest, I don't really experience my queerness as something that sets out to destabilize the world; if the world gets destabilized, that's the world's problem. (I do want my activism to actively dismantle the oppressive status quo *and rebuild from there*, but my activism and my queerness are different, though overlapping areas of my life. Also even in my activism I like to focus on making new things rather than tearing down old things, though I know that both need to be done.)
I really enjoyed the Jennings chapter that did not focus on David and Yonatan but instead the romantic and sexual elements of the relationship between David and... Hashem. It really got me thinking and I got a lot out of it. I felt that the criticisms brought to it by other authors in the responses section did apply - yes, it focused on masculinities sometimes at the exclusion on everything else, the cross-cultural comparisons were rather brief and unelaborated, etc. but I still thought this article was very thought-provoking.
I also enjoyed Koch's article on reading the Bible as if one were cruising. It not only provided new discussion of the material, but also a new *method*, which was not something I expected. It was also a fun, entertaining read. I was a bit eh on the parts where the author bemoaned Christian apologia trying to lump in gay men with eunuchs, which I disagree with, but probably for a different reason than the author.
I also liked Stone's essay on how food relates to Biblical masculinity and I felt like a lot of what he unearthed was absolutely still present in Jewish culture, at least in Eastern European Jewish cultures, specifically. (Maybe not so much in Eastern European Jewish cultures transplanted to the US. But I'm an Eastern European!) He didn't really reflect on that, but I could, the text gave me an opportunity to think.
Overall even the articles I felt a bit more meh on or disliked gave me much to think about, which is the point of Bible commentary as far as I'm concerned, so the book certainly achieved that. I wouldn't call it the be-all-end-all of queer commentary, because of the limitations I mentioned above that were discussed in the book itself. But I thought it was interesting. I wonder how Christian readers would feel about it, given that quite a few of the authors were Christian. (There was not much emphasis on Christian interrelations with the Hebrew Bible, though some authors did mention those aspects.)
Source of the book: University of Kansas, Watson Library
The authors were all quite white and Anglo, except for ONE person of color in the "responses to the essays" part responding to point out the whiteness of the collection and that it did not engage with race and/or ethnicity even when the authors brought it up. I think that's a very fair criticism and I'm glad it was included, but it also made me sad why didn't the editor just solicit an article from the author of the response to begin with, instead of only soliciting a response.
The commentaries also skewed toward focusing on gay masculinities, and several of the authors themselves pointed out that this could further perpetrate patriarchy instead of subverting it - I think that is a fair point. But a lot of Jewish-themeed queer books are heavily skewed toward lesbian feminism, it's a somewhat different dynamic than in Anglo-white queer discourse; and I've just read some of the lesbian books, so I felt it was good to have something examining gay masculinities. (The book was still very cis, which some authors also pointed out as a weakness.) It was rather baffling that one author said that there might not even be enough lesbian and/or femininity-focused content in the Bible, I guess the author didn't read the voluminous lesbian Jewish material that is out there and engaging with the Bible too.
I assumed most of the authors were queer? It wasn't always clear, but some of them said outright, and it seemed a given? Maybe I'm mistaken, it's not a very new book. Some of the commentary had to do with more 'straight' topics, like F/m femdom in Shimshon & Delilah, which is a subversive topic but not necessarily queer - but I did feel that the approach had more of a queer gaze. So to me it showed that a queer approach could even add to straight sexual interactions in the Bible.
One thing that annoyed me a bit was that so many of the authors emphasized how queerness was a kind of destabilizing and upsetting force, and.... on one hand I see that, on the other I have been growing a bit tired of it. This rhetoric is especially common in queer theory, but here the authors were Bible scholars reflecting on queer theory, rather than queer theorists. To be honest, I don't really experience my queerness as something that sets out to destabilize the world; if the world gets destabilized, that's the world's problem. (I do want my activism to actively dismantle the oppressive status quo *and rebuild from there*, but my activism and my queerness are different, though overlapping areas of my life. Also even in my activism I like to focus on making new things rather than tearing down old things, though I know that both need to be done.)
I really enjoyed the Jennings chapter that did not focus on David and Yonatan but instead the romantic and sexual elements of the relationship between David and... Hashem. It really got me thinking and I got a lot out of it. I felt that the criticisms brought to it by other authors in the responses section did apply - yes, it focused on masculinities sometimes at the exclusion on everything else, the cross-cultural comparisons were rather brief and unelaborated, etc. but I still thought this article was very thought-provoking.
I also enjoyed Koch's article on reading the Bible as if one were cruising. It not only provided new discussion of the material, but also a new *method*, which was not something I expected. It was also a fun, entertaining read. I was a bit eh on the parts where the author bemoaned Christian apologia trying to lump in gay men with eunuchs, which I disagree with, but probably for a different reason than the author.
I also liked Stone's essay on how food relates to Biblical masculinity and I felt like a lot of what he unearthed was absolutely still present in Jewish culture, at least in Eastern European Jewish cultures, specifically. (Maybe not so much in Eastern European Jewish cultures transplanted to the US. But I'm an Eastern European!) He didn't really reflect on that, but I could, the text gave me an opportunity to think.
Overall even the articles I felt a bit more meh on or disliked gave me much to think about, which is the point of Bible commentary as far as I'm concerned, so the book certainly achieved that. I wouldn't call it the be-all-end-all of queer commentary, because of the limitations I mentioned above that were discussed in the book itself. But I thought it was interesting. I wonder how Christian readers would feel about it, given that quite a few of the authors were Christian. (There was not much emphasis on Christian interrelations with the Hebrew Bible, though some authors did mention those aspects.)
Source of the book: University of Kansas, Watson Library
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