We have all seen the movies about David and Bathsheba or Samson and Delilah, so we know that even popular culture recognizes the many tales of eroticism in the Old Testament. Now Theodore Jennings challenges us to engage with the homoerotic elements of the Hebrew Bible. Of course, the very suggestion that there may be homoeroticism in Hebrew narrative may seem odd given the supposition that the religion and culture of ancient Israel resolutely opposed same sex erotic relationships. The apparent prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus and the story of Sodom from Genesis have been made to speak for the whole Hebrew Bible. The oddity of this situation has not been lost on some interpreters who have recognized that the story of Sodom tells us no more about attitudes towards what we call homosexuality than the story of the rape of Dina tells us about attitudes toward heterosexuality. Jennings contends that the well-known eroticism of the Hebrew Bible is not confined to heterosexuality but also includes an astonishing diversity of material that lends itself to homoerotic interpretation.

Author Biography

Theodore W Jennings, Jr is Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology at the Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of the bestselling Introduction to Theology, The Insurrection of the Crucified and The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament