Maternal Bodies in the Biblical Books of Samuel and Kings: Notes on the Representation of Maternity in Crisis Contexts

Although motherhood is the female destiny par excellence in the biblical narrative, it is an experience only accessible through a male point of view. In order to reflect on the problems of representation of the maternal body in the Hebrew Bible, I propose an analysis of different maternal characters present in the books of Samuel and Kings. My reading aims, on the one hand, to identify the features that define the maternal in the biblical text and, on the other hand, to offer an approach that allows to point to the implications that the crisis context the texts reflect have on the picture of the actions and the destinies of these female characters.

The Books of Samuel

The textual history of the books of Samuel, both in Greek and in Hebrew, is laden with problems that the researcher needs to be acquainted with, whatever the focus of textual research. The Septuagint translation shows a close word-for-word correspondence to its Hebrew Vorlage, however, not without occasional freedom of translation, especially in lexical choices and grammatical forms, as well as erroneous translation due to defective knowledge of Hebrew. The Hebrew Vorlage used by the translator differed at times substantially from the later Masoretic Text, used for comparison during the early textual history of the Septuagint text as well as in research today. Not only is the Masoretic Text corrupted but it underwent editorial changes until the turn of the era. Textual differences caused by both the translator and the editors of the Hebrew text must have occasioned the repeated revisions of the Greek text by Jewish and Christian scribes.

Canonical and Non-Canonical Sources for Biblical History in Two Arabic Universal Histories Written by Christians in al-Andalus

This article examines the biblical material contained in two universal histories written by the Christians of al-Andalus: the so-called Kitāb Hurūshiyūsh (KH) and the “Mozarabic universal history” (MUH) preserved at MS Raqqada 2003/2. A thorough comparison of the parallel passages from the Books of Samuel and Kings shows that KH, which has proved to be one of the sources of MUH for profane history, was not used by the latter’s compiler for the large fragments relating to sacred history. Both KH and MUH contain copious material concerning biblical history that was derived from sources different than the Bible. Thus, Giorgio Levi Della Vida and I, as editors of MUH and KH respectively, have observed that the biblical material derived from the Vulgate in both texts was enriched with information from Jerome’s and Isidore’s works. In this article I show that both contain a substantial amount of information absent from Jerome’s and Isidore’s works and that canonical biblical material is largely interspersed with material from non-canonical and non-biblical sources, including information well rooted in the Jewish tradition. This is especially the case in MUH.

Exploring Biblical Women in Music

This essay explores various musical works that retell the stories of biblical women who are largely silent in the biblical text. It analyzes operas and oratorios featuring biblical women with prominent roles in more than one musical work. These are: Sarah, Hagar, and Rebecca in the book of Genesis; Jochebed, Pharaoh’s daughter, and Miriam in the book of Exodus; and Michal and Bathsheba in the books of Samuel. This research draws on my previous scholarship on nineteenth- and twentieth-century opera, oratorio, and song settings of biblical women. Many musical settings of biblical narratives focus intensely on the women. The women’s singing voices add new elements to their depictions, and librettos almost always enlarge the women’s roles. Composers and librettists together turn the women into three-dimensional characters. The essay presents various threads in numerous musical works that tie together the re-visioning of several biblical women. The goal is to illustrate how the selected women move from the biblical background to the musical foreground, and to offer new and surprising perspectives on biblical women.

David in Reception History

David is one of the most colorful figures of the Bible and of the entire literature that has come down to us from antiquity. David’s characterization as a sensitive musician, a violent warrior, and an emotional lover is intertwined with his political career as king of Israel. David’s characterization in the books of Samuel, already transformed in the Psalter and in Chronicles, is the starting point for a variegated history of reception. In the New Testament, David appears as the ancestor and type of Christ. From late antiquity to early modern times, Christian emperors and kings were portrayed as new Davids. Only the Enlightenment cast dark critical shadows over the figure of David. Modern interest shifted towards his individual, psychological traits. After sketching the biblical images of David, their reception, especially in political terms, is traced up to the present.

Methods of the narrative analysis: monarchies in the Ancient Israel

This article offers a method for narrative analysis regarding the stories told in the Biblical books of Samuel and Kings. This method provides an opportunity for drawing some preliminary conclusions about the historicity of the events narrated. Key parameters are 1) the high number of small details, which is an evidence that the narrator was close to the event; 2) the narrator’s emotional involvement, which may hint to his personal participation or that of the people from his inner circle in the events described. Stories which comprise a large number of common places, on the contrary, seem to be less historically accurate. As the result, one can subdivide the narration flow as found in the Books of Samuel and Kings into several blocks, which represent different levels of historical actuality and precision.

Voices from below: The role of anonymous women’s opinion in the birth of Israel’s monarchy

This article argues that the opinion of anonymous women in the books of Samuel exerts a powerful influence over the reputation and political fortune of Israel’s first kings. The descriptions of the singing women who greet Saul when he returns with David from battle (1 Sam 18.6-7, 21.12, 29.5) reveal that, in this turbulent period, popular opinion forms at the lowest rungs of society and percolates from the bottom up. David demonstrates his own appreciation of this fact by actively cultivating the favor of disenfranchised women (2 Sam 6.14-22). Previous studies of community sentiment within Samuel have paid insufficient attention to women as generators of public opinion during the formation of the united monarchy.