The Earthy Nature of the Bible

Through a series of close readings, Boer explores the earthy nature of the Bible. These readings are gathered into three parts: the Song of Songs; Masculinities; Paraphilias. Each study is undertaken with rigorous attention to relevant scholarship and significant theoretical engagement (especially with psychoanalysis, ecocriticism and Marxism).

Introduction PART I: SONG OF SONGS: INTRODUCTION The Second Coming: Repetition and Insatiable Desire in the Song of Songs A Fleshly Reading: Masochism, Ecocriticism and the Song of Songs Making It, Literally: Metaphor, Economy and the Sensuality of Nature PART II: MASCULINITIES: INTRODUCTION The Patriarch's Nuts: Concerning the Testicular Logic of Biblical Hebrew Too Many Dicks at the Writing Desk, or, How to Organise a Prophetic Sausage-Fest Of Fine Wine, Incense and Spices: The Unstable Masculine Hegemony of the Books of Chronicles Yahweh as Top: A Lost Targum Skin Gods: Circumcising the Built Male Body PART III: PARAPHILIAS: INTRODUCTION Hooker Hermeneutics: A Reading of Avaren Ipsen's Sex Working and the Bible King Solomon Meets Annie Sprinkle Orientalist Camp: The Case of Allen Edwardes Hittites, Horses and Corpses: On Bestiality and Necrophilia in the Hebrew Bible Conclusion