Appalling Bodies
Queer Figures Before and After Paul's Letters
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:21st Dec '22
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£98.00(9780190060312)
This work explores the letters of Paul, highlighting their reinforcement of ancient stereotypes about marginalized groups. It employs queer theory to challenge traditional interpretations and recontextualize historical figures alongside contemporary discussions of gender and sexuality.
Appalling Bodies explores the letters of Paul, which are frequently referenced in contemporary debates surrounding gender, sexuality, and the concept of embodiment. The author, Joseph Marchal, seeks to recontextualize these letters by looking beyond Paul to other intriguing figures that exist in the broader narrative. These letters often perpetuate ancient stereotypes concerning women, eunuchs, slaves, and outsiders, portraying them as marginalized and complex individuals within the Roman imperial context.
Marchal employs queer theory to delve into the dangers and intricacies associated with these historical figures. By placing ancient identities alongside modern understandings of gender and sexual diversity, he aims to challenge and redefine our perceptions. This approach encourages readers to reconsider the implications of marginalization and stigmatization, shedding light on the intertwined histories of these figures and the ongoing struggles for recognition and respect.
Ultimately, Appalling Bodies invites a fresh examination of Paul's letters and their impact on biblical interpretation. By reintroducing us to both ancient and contemporary bodies that have been deemed appalling, Marchal emphasizes the need for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding gender and sexuality. This work not only enriches our comprehension of biblical texts but also provokes critical discussions about ethics and politics in interpretation, suggesting that our approach to these letters may be forever altered.
This book is rich in theory, in history, in how breaking rules (e.g., using anachronisms) and 'dwelling longer in zones of confusion' can be strategically effective in forming intersectional coalitions. * Teresa Hornsby, Chicago Theological Seminary, Catholic Biblical Quarterly *
Marchal reaches across history—with an acknowledged debt to Carolyn Dinshaw's queer historiography (1999, 2012)—not to locate forebears from those distant years, but rather to illustrate the ways that gender and sexuality are constructed and contested in these texts, and to resist the ways they still influence the shape of gender and sexuality in our contemporary moment. In thinking about the androgyne, the eunuch, the slave, and the barbarian, Marchal performs a tour de force of theoretical and exegetical work. * Kent Brintnall , Religion Compass *
Appalling Bodies is such a rich analysis of lives touched, traumatized, destroyed, and resurrected by sex. Paul's letters are the occasion. History and theory are the modes of inquiry. But joy, sorrow, love, and pain are the true subjects of this work, or that's how it seemed to me. * Jennifer Knust, Duke University, Ancient Jew Review *
Simply stunning and exhilarating! Marchal travels back and forth in time to juxtapose fascinating (and often threatening) figures of the first and the twentyfirst century to show us a whole new way of reading Paul's letters without placing Paul at the center. This carefully researched, conspicuously erudite, and compellingly readable book will surprise, delight, and impress you. * Tatsiong Benny Liew, Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies, College of the Holy Cross *
Joseph Marchal has emerged as one of today's leading practitioners of queer biblical scholarship, and this volume amply demonstrates why. It will be required reading not only for scholars who are interested in the letters attributed to Paul and the assumptions made by those letters (and by their interpreters) about gender and sexuality, but also for anyone who seeks a model for queer engagement with ancient texts. * Ken Stone, Professor of Bible, Culture, and Hermeneutics at Chicago Theological Seminary *
Appalling Bodies takes us beyond a kyriarchal focus on Paul to appreciation of the other figures that populate his letters for rhetorical effect- prophetic women, eunuchs, and slaves, whose gender and sexuality do not conform to imperial Roman elite male sexuality. Making partial and contingent touches across time to contemporary LGBTQI communities, Marchal troubles and complicates the sexual regimes Paul's letters are used to enforce. This brilliant book is sure to become a classic in studies of scripturalized sexual norms and queer engagements with the Bible. * Erin Runions, author of The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty *
This is an immensely exciting book, exceptionally original and stunningly creative, the first to limn out in full the contours of a queer historiography in biblical studies. It amounts to a dizzying defamiliarization of ground that has been endlessly trodden and retrodden by Pauline scholars. But it is not a specialist tome. It richly merits an audience beyond the boundaries of biblical studies, and even beyond religious studies. * D. Moore, author of God's Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and Around the Bible *
Appalling Bodies is a deeply ethical book meant to improve human lives, especially those of the most marginalized among us. Theories can be opaque to general readers, but to show how these theories can make human lives more livable, Marchal explains them clearly. Marchal employs deliberate anachronism to shake up readers' belief that they know what Paul meant, thereby undercutting fundamentalisms. Fundamentalisms are resulting in deaths, whether through hate crimes or suicides, and Marchal understands the urgency of truly alternative biblical interpretation in which marginalized figures become central. * Bernadette J. Brooten, Robert and Myra Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies, Emerita, Brandeis University *
- Winner of Honorable Mention Selection from the Borsch-Rast Prize and Lectureship.
ISBN: 9780197668962
Dimensions: 152mm x 237mm x 20mm
Weight: 485g
328 pages