Are We Amused?: Humour About Women In the Biblical World

by Athalya Brenner-Idan, Andrew Mein (Editor), Claudia V. Camp (Editor)

Overview

Biblical humor about women and gender remains elusive for many readers, for its recognition may imply the realization that it's a cruel and disrespectful humor, ridicule rather than good-natured fun. But viewing humor as social critique, as is largely done in the essays in this volume, with respect to both the texts read and their actual or implied author, may be fun as well as significant for understanding the biblical worlds. As most of the essays show, writing about women is writing about men as well. In other words, it is writing about gender roles. The critique of women, womanhood and femaleness implied by biblical and related texts serves, in equal measure, as a critique of men, manhood and maleness in the texts, of the texts authors, and of the texts' commentators and readers.

Contributors include Scott Spencer, Mary Shields, Kathleen O'Connor, Toni Craven, Kathy Williams, Athalya Brenner, Gale Yee, Amy-Jill Levine, and Esther Fuchs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780567083302
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/23/2004
Series:	The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies , #383
Pages:	170
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.36(d)

About the Author

Athalya Brenner is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam, and Rosalyn and Manny Rosenthal Distinguished Professor-in-Residence of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas.

Table of Contents

	Series Editor's Preface	vii
	Abbreviations	ix
	Introduction	1
Part I	Essays
	Those Riotous--Yet Righteous--Foremothers of Jesus: Exploring Matthew's Comic Genealogy	7
	'More Righteous than I': The Comeuppance of the Trickster in Genesis 38	31
	Humor, Turnabouts and Survival in the Book of Esther	52
	Is that Fearfully Funny? Some Instances from the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books	65
	At the Expense of Women: Humor(?) in Acts 16.14-40	79
	Are We Amused? Small and Big Differences in Josephus' Re-Presentations of Biblical Female Figures in the Jewish Antiquities 1-8	90
	Ooooh, Onan! Geschlechtsgeschicte and Women in the Biblical World	107
Part II	Responses
	Women's Humor and Other Creative Juices	120
	Laughing with/at/as Women: How Should We Read Biblical Humor?	127
Appendix	Babble/Bible Light: On Some Biblical Women	137
	General Bibliography	143
	Index of References	152
	Index of Authors	156