A woman's life in the ancient world was constrained by her social and economic status. As a daughter she was firmly under the aegis of her father and brothers, who would later allocate the woman to another man as his wife. The power of fathers and husbands extended to using their wives and daughters as sexual gifts to gain favour. Yet, alongside this, woman had certain socio-economic rights notably concerning inheritance and property - which they could use to protect themselves. 'Sexual Hospitality in the Hebrew Bible' examines sacred sexuality and ritual fecundity from patronymic marriage - where the husband claims exclusive rights over his wife's sexuality and attributes her offspring to his line and kin - to metronymic conjugal systems which allow a woman to remain in her home where the male consort joins her and her kin. Ranging across abstention, promiscuity, and holy offering, the sexual lives of women in biblical times reveal not only restriction but also female agency and resistance.

This groundbreaking book, which builds on the author's earlier work in On Gendering Texts, studies how, by what means and to what extent human love, desire and sex, and possibly even 'sexuality', are gendered in the Hebrew Bible. Following a classification and gendering of the linguistic and semantic data, the investigation looks into the construction of male and female bodies in language and ideologies; the praxis and ideology of sex, procreation and contraception; deviation from socio-sexual boundaries (e.g. incest, rape, adultery, homosexuality, prostitution); eroticism and "pornoprophetics". Finally, the work discusses some of the wider sociological and theological implications of the findings.

The Hebrew Bible's fascinating narratives about women have occasioned some of the most important biblical scholarship of the last generation. Lillian Klein contributes to that wealth with her absorbing studies of key figures in the narrative material: Deborah, Jephtha's daughter, Delilah, Jael, the whore of Gaza, Kaleb's daughter Achsah, Hannah, Esther, the wife of Job, David's wife Michal, and Bathsheba. With a marvelous eye for the telling detail -- or its absence -- Klein examines the biblical portraits, often unfortunately brief, of these women and the dynamics of gender, power, and honor at work in their stories. A remarkably lucid and careful scholar, Klein has surfaced the underlying and ironic ideals of womanhood in a society that both honored and marginalized women in stories of seduction and rivalry, deviation and obedience, public shame and private power.

Biblical scholar Michael Coogan's introductory course on the Old Testament has been a perennial favorite among students at Harvard University. Here, Coogan examines one of the most controversial aspects of the Hebrew Scripture: what the Old Testament really says about sex, and how contemporary understanding of those writings is frequently misunderstood or misrepresented. In the engaging voice generations of students have appreciated, Coogan explores the language and social world of the Bible, showing how much innuendo and euphemism is at play, and illuminating the sexuality of biblical figures as well as God. By doing so, Coogan reveals the immense gap between popular use of Scripture and its original context. Certain to provoke, entertain, and enlighten.--From publisher description.

This book explores the phenomenon of shame in the Hebrew bible. It focuses particularly on the major prophets, because shame vocabulary is most prominent there. Shame has been widely discussed in the literature of psychology and anthropology; the book discusses the findings of both disciplines in some detail. It emphasises the social-anthropological honour/shame model, which a considerable number of biblical scholars since the early 1990s have embraced enthusiastically. The author highlights the shortcomings of this heuristic model and proposes a number of alternative critical approaches.

'Incest' refers to illegal sexual relations between family members. Its precise contours, however, are culturally specific. Hence, an illegal incestuous union in one social context may be a legal close-kin union in another. First-degree sexual unions, between a parent and child, or between siblings, are most widely prohibited and abhorred. This book discusses all overt and covert first-degree incest relations in the Hebrew Bible and also probes the significance of gaps and what these imply about projected sexual and social values. As the dominant opinion on the origin of first-degree incest continues to be shaped, new voices such as those of queer and post-feminist criticism have joined the conversation. It navigates not only the incest laws of Leviticus and the narratives of Lot and his daughters and of Amnon and Tamar but pursues subtler intimations of first-degree sexual unions, such as between Adam and his (absent but arguably implied) mother, Haran and Terah's wife, Ham and Noah. In pursuing the psycho-social values that may be drawn from the Hebrew Bible regarding first-degree incest, this book will provide a thorough review of incest studies from the early 20th century onward and explain and assess the contribution of very recent critical approaches from queer and post-feminist perspectives.

The sex laws of the Hebrew Bible are well known, if not notorious. From them many have concluded that in ancient Israel adultery was a capital crime, that there was no conception of rape, that brides had to be virgins, and that women had no autonomy whatsoever. But was that the reality? Not if we broaden our horizon beyond the laws, argues Lipka, who focusses here on sexual transgression, that is, the trespass against sexual boundaries. She finds three aspects of sexual transgression: it may be transgression against religious boundaries (sexual acts violating divine law), against communal boundaries (sexual acts violating the rights of another member of the community), or against personal boundaries (sexual acts imposed by force and/or violence). Transgressive sex is complicated. But some conclusions are possible. (1) Though adultery was universally disapproved of, there was a wide variety of opinions on who was considered guilty, who was considered the offended party, who was punished, what the punishment was, and who should execute it. (2) There was indeed a conception of rape, with an understanding of its devastating emotional and psychological consequences for the victim. (3) Though virginity in brides was the norm, and young women were under a great deal of pressure to preserve their virginity, it was unrealistic for all men in ancient Israel to expect their wives to be virgins. (4) Women did not enjoy legal autonomy over their sexuality, yet they were not completely powerless; they had some degree of personal sexual autonomy, and some took the liberty of doing with their bodies as they pleased.