Within and without Purity, Danger, Honour, and Shame: Anthropological Approaches in Feminist Hebrew Bible Studies

This essay explores intersections between cultural anthropology and feminist Hebrew Bible studies. The approaches highlighted here incorporate empirical data obtained from participant observation in human communities and their impact on textual study. As part of a wider social-scientifc endeavour such data inform understanding of social structures, behaviours and interrelations, as refected in and by the Hebrew Bible. Coexistent with this is an emphasis on the role and contribution of gender but, as will become clear, feminist advocacy is evident in these approaches to various degrees. Four sections outline this interdisciplinary methodological development in biblical studies. First is a brief and general discussion of feminism in the academic discipline of anthropology. I next turn to the encounter of Hebrew Bible studies with cultural anthropology during the past few decades, focusing particularly on two seminal anthropologists, Mary Douglas and Julian Pitt-Rivers, whose explorations have ventured into the Hebrew Bible. Then follows the most substantial portion: a discussion and illustration of how feminist Hebrew Bible scholars have appropriated anthropological concepts, models, and methods. Their areas of focus range from purity and pollution, to the honour-shame value complex and body adornment, but with a new emphasis on women’s roles and concerns. Some feminist bible scholars, moreover, draw less on anthropological data and more on the distinctive cultural-anthropological technique of feldwork, even if these feminist exegetes do not always explicitly identify their indebtedness to anthropological methodology. Finally, a conclusion asserts the still somewhat underexplored possibilities for dynamism and creativity when feminist Hebrew Bible scholars use anthropological theories and techniques in the interpretation of biblical texts.