Unnamed characters--such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharaoh's baker, and the witch of Endor--are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles. Adele Reinhartz here seeks to answer two principal questions: first, is there a "poetics of anonymity," and if so, what are its contours? Second, how does anonymity affect the readers' response to and construction of unnamed biblical characters? The author is especially interested in issues related to gender and class, seeking to determine whether anonymity is more prominent among mothers, wives, daughters, and servants than among fathers, husbands, sons and kings and whether the anonymity of female characters functions differently from that of male characters.
Unnamed characters--such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharaoh's baker, and the witch of Endor--are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles. Adele Reinhartz here seeks to answer two principal questions: first, is there a "poetics of anonymity," and if so, what are its contours? Second, how does anonymity affect the readers' response to and construction of unnamed biblical characters? The author is especially interested in issues related to gender and class, seeking to determine whether anonymity is more prominent among mothers, wives, daughters, and servants than among fathers, husbands, sons and kings and whether the anonymity of female characters functions differently from that of male characters.
Preface
Part I: Anonymity and the Effacement of Personal Identity
1: The Bit Players
2: Servants, Stewards, and Armour-bearers
3: Transmitters of Information
Part II: Anonymity and the Expression of Personal Identity
4: Wise Women and the Unworthy Levites
5: Wayward Wives and Multifarious Mothers
6: Doomed Daughters
Part III: Anonymity and the Boundaries of Personal Identity
7: The Convergence of Characters
8: Character Confusion in the Heavenly Realm
9: Crossing the Frontier Between Reader and Text
"This is a fascinating study and an easy book to read."--The Bible
Today
"...filled with insightful observations."--Bibliotheca Sacra
"Reinhartz challenges the conventional notion that anonymity is
associated primarily with women characters, but also argues that
gender is central to readers' construction of and resonses to
unnamed characters." --Old Testament Abstracts
"This is a fascinating study and an easy book to read."--The Bible
Today
"This is a superb study of anonymity in biblical narrative, a model
of sophisticated and eminently readable literary
analysis...Reinhartz has contributed a beautiful analysis of many
of the most interesting, strange, and sometimes unnoticed figures
in the Hebrew Bible, as well as an exemplary study of a neglected
literary technique."--Journal of Biblical Literature
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