Biblical
Bodies
Critical & Cultural Studies
of Embodiment
in the Hebrew Bible
FEATURED THESIS
Jeremiah’s Womb & David’s Flesh: The Forgotten Bodies of Biblical Translation
Modern readers need to know that Hebrew biblical literature reflects a distinctive body culture which English translations almost entirely fail to convey.
FEATURED THESIS
Ancient Medical Knowledge and the Textualized Body of Job
The text of Job reflects an ancient therapeutic, apotropaic project drawing on diverse kinds of medical knowledge
Previously published essays about biblical bodies
“The Fertility of Bones: Towards a Corporeal Philology of Reproduction” HeBai 8 (2019): 431–447.
“The Corporeality of the Self: The Example of Bitter Nefeš as an Ethnomedical Syndrome” Dead Sea Discoveries 28 (2021): 396-422.
“Rȗaḥ Embodied: Job’s Internal Disease from the Perspective of Mesopotamian Medicine” in Annette Weissenrieder (ed.), Borders: Terminologies, Ideologies, and Performances, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, p. 323–336.
“Conceptualizing Spirit: Supernatural Meteorology and Personal Distress in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East” in Joel Baden, Hindy Najman et Eibert Tigchelaar (eds.), Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, JSJSup 175, Leiden, Brill, p. 826–844.
“The Critical Potential of Spirits: Hebrew Philology, the Poetics of Relation, and Unfamiliar Selves” Ancient Jew Review April 19, 2023. [www.ancientjewreview.com]
A place to put my writing, to gather a carrier bag of my own
Theses
A growing set of theses about biblical bodies.
Briefs
Notes, terminology, and reviews. These briefs can function as short essays, readings, definitions of terminology, engagements with theory, summaries of scholarship, endnotes, etc.
Collections
I am going to be honest here — I have written many more book proposals than books. I think of the “Collections” page as a place to share monograph titles and abstracts along with supporting writing (theses, briefs, and essays from the site as well as published articles).
Image Credit(s)
An Old Babylonian, clay fired figurine of Humbaba’s face. British Museum. (BM116624) See “Humbaba’s Head”
Gesine Marwedel, Body Painting. Photograph by Andreas Broich.
Crinoid Fossil. Photograph from the British Geological Survey.
Dustin Yellin, Psychogeography Studies. Glass, Collage, Acrylic | From left to right: Built to Spill (2019), Study for Theia (2020), Moonshot (2021), Clearing II (2019), and Moon Removed from Stomach to Make a Head (2020).
Subway post-election therapy sticky notes. Photography by Liliana Llamas for The Wall Street Journal.
Niobe Xandó, O desfile II (1975). Collage on paper.