This book was first published in 2008. Mental and physical disability, ubiquitous in texts of the Hebrew Bible, here receive a thorough treatment. Olyan seeks to reconstruct the Hebrew Bible's particular ideas of what is disabling and their potential social ramifications. Biblical representations of disability and biblical classification schemas - both explicit and implicit - are compared to those of the Hebrew Bible's larger ancient West Asian cultural context, and to those of the later Jewish biblical interpreters who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study will help the reader gain a deeper and more subtle understanding of the ways in which biblical writers constructed hierarchically significant difference and privileged certain groups (e.g. persons with 'whole' bodies) over others (e.g. persons with physical 'defects'). It also explores how ancient interpreters of the Hebrew Bible such as the Qumran sectarians reproduced and reconfigured earlier biblical notions of disability and earlier classification models for their own contexts and ends.
• First thorough treatment of this topic • Explores social dimensions of biblical representations of disability • Compares biblical notions of disability with those of other ancient West Asian literatures and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Contents
Introduction; 1. Constructions of beauty and ugliness; 2. Physical disabilities classified as 'defects'; 3. Physical disabilities not classified as 'defects'; 4. Mental disability; 5. Disability in the prophetic Utopian vision; 6. Non-somatic parallels to bodily wholeness and 'defect'; 7. Exegetical perpetuations, elaborations and transformations: the case of Qumran; 8. Conclusion.
Review
'[Olyan's] book is an important contribution and deserves full attention.' Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Book List 2009
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