Band 2, Heft 2 - Special Issue: Making Men: The Reception of the Bible in the Construction of Masculinities in Jewish and Christian Con/Texts / Issue Editors: Ovidiu Creanga, Adriaan van Klinken, Jorunn Økland and Peter-Ben Smit

The introduction to this special issue reviews the articles collected and presented in the volume. After an overview of the contents, the chapter turns to a more refined discussion of the insights resulting from the collection. These insights concern the productivity as well as limitations of canonicity, the importance of contextuality, the embodied practice of masculinity and the subsequent need to acknowledge intersectionality, and finally, it problematizes the rhetoric of ‘tradition(al)’ or ‘biblical’ masculinity. Mapping the future of the study of biblical reception and masculinities, the introduction identifies key issues and areas for further research. These are the necessity of a greater emphasis on multidisciplinarity, the need to demonstrating hermeneutical self-awareness, and a broadening of the scope of the field to include the Qur’an and Muslim cultures as well as newly emerging forms of Christianity in the global South. These features are key to the study of the reception of biblical masculinities going forward.

This article seeks to analyze a contextually-reflexive reading of Genesis 1:26–31 that was produced by a group of contemporary “ordinary” readers – in this case, a group of South Derbyshire coal miners. The coal miners used Genesis 1:26–31 as a literary platform upon which they interrogated two principal issues: How ‘masculinity’ is constructed, performed, understood, enforced, and legitimized in coal mining culture; and, what the relationship is between humanity and Earth. This resulted in a reading whereby an attempt was made to synthesize how a man’s understanding of ‘masculinity’ impacts upon his relationship with, and attitude towards, Earth.

Abstract: “Masculinity, Moral Agency, and Memory: The Spirit of the Deity in Judges, Samuel, and Beyond” examines the use of the “spirit of Yahweh/Elohim” in Judges and 1–2Samuel as it relates to questions of masculinity, moral agency, and memory. The article argues that the presence of the “spirit” stories in the narratives of the so-called judges and the figures of Saul/David reflect different conceptions of ancient masculinities, and sometimes function to challenge the masculine ideals of earlier memories from ancient Israel in order to pave the way for the institution of monarchy in the final form of the texts. Additionally, the article examines later interpretations of the stories and how they have been interpreted and used to promote certain contemporary ideas about masculinity while also often ignoring the troubling implications about moral agency vis-a-vis the way that the “spirit of Yahweh/Elohim” functions in the narratives.

Abstract: This paper explores the masculinity of King David in the biblical text alongside three film versions dating to 1951, 1984, and 1997. The paper demonstrates how in different times David's masculinity is constructed to reflect contemporary mores.

Modern variations of the “Muscular Christianity” movement emphasize Jesus’ masculinity in various dimensions, inspired in part by the idealized masculinity of Jesus portrayed in the Gospel of John. However, these constructions overlook the Roman context of the Fourth Gospel, and thus miss its critical and subversive engagement with imperial masculinity. I argue that the Gospel of John forges its portrait of Jesus in the rhetorical crucible of honor and virtus , where Roman masculinity was socially constructed and contested. Within the divergent configurations of manliness that emerge in the early imperial period, the glorious death of John’s Jesus appeals to and subverts reigning constructions of imperial masculinity. Through the portrayal of Jesus’ unflappable courage and conquering via his death, the rhetoric of the Fourth Gospel lays claim to the ideal of Roman virtus , especially as set forth in the rhetorized renditions of anti-imperial Stoic martyrs (such as Cato and Seneca). However, by constructing Jesus’ masculinity around his bound, beaten, crucified and penetrated body, the Fourth Gospel critiques and subverts imperial configurations of hegemonic manliness and domination. John’s glorification of the cross provides a paradigm of masculinity that exalts courageous critique and rejection of imperial violence even at the cost of one’s life, thereby inverting the shame of crucifixion and imbuing it with honor and virtus . In so doing, imperial notions of martial masculinity and power are subverted and reconfigured around the cross, thereby opening up new possibilities for the performance of masculinity by ancients and moderns alike.

In the book of Acts, Luke adapts masculinity according to different narrative contexts, and in the process, ultimately ends up destabilizing masculine norms. To demonstrate Luke’s depiction of an adaptable, yet destabilizing, masculinity, this article focuses on two key episodes involving Paul: (1) Paul’s conversion as recounted in Acts 9, 22, and 26, and (2) Paul’s transition from “Saul” to “Paul” in Acts 13 and its early reception history. In this brief foray into Acts and beyond, we shall see that, according to Luke, being a “man” of God involves reneging self-control and serving a persecuted “Lord”.

The tensions and gaps between Joseph’s canonical reception (in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2) left him wide open for literary development. This essay considers the reception of Joseph in the Protevangelium of James (PJ) and examines the overlapping and intertwining ways in which interpretation and social context influence that reception. In contrast to that of Luke (Luke 1-2) and similar to that of Matthew (Matt 1-2), PJ’s infancy account is arguably Joseph’s tale. Joseph’s point-of-view characterization in PJ feasibly plays a key role in mediating collective memory and putative in-group identity, bound up with the processes of male self-fashioning. In particular, through its meditation on the outwardly perplexing circumstances of Joseph’s ‘not quite’ marriage to Mary and in its positioning of the ‘rodhandling’ priestly elite, PJ can be seen to have been instrumental in inspiring, or at least being conducive to, forms of masculine subjectivity at home within early Syrian ascetical circles.