Captive: gendering genocide in the HB
Embargo Date
2028-03-26
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Scholarship on offensive warfare set during the premonarchic period of ancient Israel typically typologizes warfare episodes based on how the events replicate or diverge from the practices of ḥērem as described in the warfare laws in Deuteronomy 20–21. With ḥērem at the center, other warfare passages that do not invoke the term are often categorized as “non- ḥērem,” thus establishing ḥērem as the categorical center. This dissertation moves away from ḥērem as the lens through which to understand and create a typology of offensive warfare and instead suggests that narrative accounts (Gen 34, Num 31, Judg 5, Judg 19–21) should be compared within a larger transhistorical framework of warfare and genocidal violence. Using the typologies of gender neutral and gender specific genocide offered by comparative genocide studies, this dissertation focuses on gender as the analytic category in order to understand the different types of mass atrocities present throughout history and in the ancient world. Centering what happens to women and girls in warfare and the material conditions they face has the capacity to historicize their experiences as a part of the gender-based violence typically experienced by many: captivity. Special attention is focused on the law of the foreign female captive (Deut 21:10–14) and its rituals, and larger social meaning. Moreover, attention to interpretive trends within biblical studies about the foreign female captive will be juxtaposed with eyewitness testimonies from women and girls who survived warfare and genocide in order to address the ethics behind certain interpretive trends made about captivity.
Description
2024