Incest and the Hebrew Bible

This chapter explores both (illegal) incest and (legitimate) close-kin sex in the Hebrew Bible. It examines the vocabulary and depiction of incest in the prohibitions of Leviticus 18 and 20, before demonstrating how narrative accounts are regularly discordant with these prohibitions. From here, the chapter explores the extent of association between child sexual abuse and incest, both in the context of the Hebrew Bible and in the present. A case is made for the firm association between incest and deviance, as evidenced already in rabbinical texts, and which persists into contemporary contexts. Notions of deviance are – in the Bible and up to the present – amplified by association with other matters considered deviant.