Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis 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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prelude: Before and After Romosexuality Queer Reconfigurations Past Paul After This Before Chapter One: Touching Figures: Reaching Past Paul Between Brooten and a Halperin Place How to Get Stuck in "the Middle" with Sedgwick and Butler Toward Some Touching Connections? Chapter Two: A Close Corinthian Shave: Trans / Androgyne Corinthian Citations, Pauline Performativity, and Echoes of Androgyny Ancient Androgyny, Reconsidered Hair-Raising Androgyny and the Corinthian Assembly? Transgender and Other Mobilizations of Masculinity Resembling and Assembling Female (Masculine) Prophets Chapter Three: Uncut Galatians: Intersex / Eunuch "They tried to write their Gospel on my body": Defining, Treating, Resisting An Ancient Pal, Against Genital Cutting? A Cutting Joke Facing the Phallus, Cutting to the Fore(skin) "Don't Quote Ovid to Me" (and Don't Bother with Paul Either?) Conclusion Chapter Four: Use: Bottom / Slave The Use of Slaves The Use of Onesimus: Chresis and Consent, Puns and Patrons Switching Biblical Bonds Other Uses of History How Not to Race Past Attending to the Past Whipping Through Time Chapter Five: Assembled Gentiles: Terrorist / Barbarian Exceptional Sexual The Epistles' Exceptionalism Barbarians, Among Other Perverse Figures Exceptionalism Rules An Unexceptional Paul Some Alternative Assembly Required Analogy, Anachronism, Assembly: A Contingent Conclusion Epilogue: Biblical Drag Bibliography Indexes
