Against the background of the often female-focused view of sexual abuse victims, this paper addresses the issue of male-identifying victims of sexual violence through the lens of the Bible. I tackle one particular form of sexual abuse: female-on-male sexual violence, of the “forced/made to penetrate” type through a re-reading of Genesis 19:…[Read more]

In Judges 19, the Levite from Ephraim, together with his concubine, on their journey back home pass by Jebus and refuse to stay in the hometown of the Jebusites, remarking that “we will not stop at a foreign city where there are no Israelites” (Judges 19:12). It is an ironic comment made as it is precisely within the city of Israelites in Gib…[Read more]

Groups and individuals known as “elders” (Greek: presbyteros, gerousia; Hebrew: zaqan) are often found in ancient Jewish texts and inscriptions. Their ubiquity in such texts and inscriptions is accompanied by very little information about their actual function. Generally, this may be because we have some kind of impression that a group of old…[Read more]

Rufus’s mother features in Paul’s concluding list of church leaders such as Phoebe in Romans 16. Paul calls her his own mother. I argue that Rufus’s mother’s inclusion indicates higher status and influence within the Pauline house-churches, building on Elmer’s notion of corporate Pauline authorship.

The Woman clothed with the Sun makes a brief appearance in Revelation 12; however, her influence upon the imaginations of artists and interpreters is substantive. She is unnamed and yet multiple identities are ascribed to her including individual women (Eve, Mary), corporate institutions (Israel, the church), and ancient goddesses. In this…[Read more]

Americans overwhelmingly assume that Moses married a Black woman. Using sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article highlights interpretations of Moses’s marriage to the Cushite woman in Numbers 12. Utilising cultural-critical reception history—that biblical interpretation is culturally conditioned—readers in the United State…[Read more]

Typically, the cupbearer in Genesis 40–41 is interpreted only as a member of Joseph’s supporting cast. However, closely reading this minor character suggests more options for interpreting both him and other anonymous courtiers found throughout the Hebrew Bible. The cupbearer’s actions (and inactions) raise ethical and psychological questions about…[Read more]

This article suggests that in Ezekiel 13:17–23 we have an example of the ritual activities of Yahwistic women being undermined. However, rather than opening the hermeneutical crux of attempting to understand what it is the women are doing or how their ritual activity is functioning, I will focus squarely on the broader social dynamics in the t…[Read more]

Is anonymity a form of violence? The woman of Judges 19 endured gang-rape and dismemberment, and neither the Bible nor its ancient exegetes gave her a name. This article surveys the modern writers and scholars who chose new names for her, examining how their choices of names reflected their broader goals for retelling her story. From there, I turn…[Read more]

Editorial preface

Psalms write and express revelation, relationship, and response on and through the body; corporeal vocabulary, awareness of embodiment and somatic metaphors abound. This rhetoric draws people in through reference to common experience and uses somatic language to express thoughts and emotions which often escape conceptualisation, such as confusion,…[Read more]

Throughout Daniel 8–10, Daniel is touched five times by human-like figures. By these touch interventions, he receives both physical and emotional strength which allow him to continue participating in the revelatory experience. This essay argues that embodied participation marked by the sense of touch not only legitimates an authentic revelation b…[Read more]

Using cognitive metaphor theory to examine the four NT nursing metaphors (1 Thess 2:5–9; 1 Cor 3:1–3; Heb 5:11–14; 1 Pet 2:1–3), this article demonstrates that the same nursing frame can be used quite differently. The work of separating the contributions of each input space and then running the blend demonstrates how each metaphor functio…[Read more]

The verb ba’ash (lit. “to stink”) is used repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible to describe unwanted groups or individuals (Gen 34:30; Exod 5:21; 1 Sam 13:4; 1 Sam 27:12; 2 Sam 10:6; 1 Chr 19:6). However, there is an overwhelming tendency in English translations and commentaries to translate bet-aleph-shin in a figurative sense as “obnoxious” (NIV, NKJ…[Read more]