Woman’s Body and the Social Body in Hosea

Alice A. Keefe

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 338

Gender, Culture, Theory 10

Dedicated with much love and gratitude to my parents, Ann and John Keefe

Copyright © 2001 Sheffield Academic Press

A Continuum imprint

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Sheffield Academic Press Ltd

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-84127-247-7 (hardback)

1-84127-285-X (paperback)

Contents

Abbreviations

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

Female Fornication and Fertility Religion

Chapter 3

The Fertility Cult Revisited

Chapter 4

Covenant and Apostasy

Chapter 5

Feminist Approaches to Hosea

Chapter 6

Women, Sex and Society

Chapter 7

Rereading Hosea’s Family Metaphor

Bibliography

Index of References

Index of Authors

Abbreviations

AB Anchor Bible

ABD David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992)

AJSL American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures

ANET James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950)

ANQ Andover Newton Quarterly

AOS American Oriental Series

BA Biblical Archaeologist

BARev Biblical Archaeology Review

BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

BDB Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962)

BibRes Biblical Research

BJS Brown Judaic Studies

BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin

BZ Biblische Zeitschrift

CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly

EncJud Encyclopaedia Judaica

ER Encyclopedia of Religion

EvT Evangelische Theologie

HAR Hebrew Annual Review

HR History of Religions

HTR Harvard Theological Review

HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual

IDBSup IDB, Supplementary Volume

IEJ Israel Exploration Journal

JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion

jb Jerusalem Bible

JBL Journal of Biblical Literature

JFSR Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages

JQR Jewish Quarterly Review

JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series

JTC Journal for Theology and the Church

JTS Journal of Theological Studies

KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament

KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz and J. Sanmartin, Die Keilaphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit einschliesslich der keilalphabetischen Texte ausserhalb Ugarits 1: Transkription. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 24, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1976.

LUÅ Lunds universitets årsskrift

mt Masoretic Text

nab New ...

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About Woman’s Body and the Social Body in Hosea

Keefe’s analysis dismantles the androcentric and theological assumptions which have determined the dominant reading of Hosea’s metaphor of Israel as the adulterous wife of God. It shows how the projection of symbolic associations of women with nature, sexual temptation and sin have anachronistically determined this metaphor as referring to Israel’s apostasy in a lurid “fertility cult”. Against this reading, Keefe’s study considers Hosea 1–2 in the context of the association of sexual transgression and social violence in biblical literature; in this light, Hosea’s symbol of Israel as an adulterous woman is read as a commentary upon the structural violence in Israelite society which accompanied the eighth century boom in “agribusiness” and attendant processes of land consolidation.

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