Throughout this investigation, i have sought to reconstruct the ways in which disability is represented in biblical texts, with reference to its representation in cuneiform and other non-Israelite West Asian literatures for comparative purposes. I have also compared biblical representations of disability to those of the Dead Sea Scrolls in order to develop a perspective on how ancient Jewish exegetes both perpetuate and modify earlier biblical representations of disability. A central goal of my treatment has been to investigate the ways in which the authors of our texts frequently stigmatize and seek to marginalize disabled persons through their representations, thereby contributing to social differentiation and inequality. I have also endeavored to recover the contours of ancient patterns of classification, and to investigate the degree to which biblical and other taxonomic categories evidenced in the texts under consideration overlap with contemporary, Euro-American notions of disability. In this conclusion, I address each of these issues. I also consider the evidence for a hierarchy of stigmatization in the biblical text, and for varying perspectives on the etiology of disability and the deity's attitude toward disabled persons. In addition, I attempt to identify some possible native explanations for why the authors of biblical texts seek so frequently to stigmatize and marginalize disabled persons. Finally, I consider the gender dimensions of biblical representations of disability.

Representations of disability in the Hebrew Bible and the other West Asian literary corpora under consideration in this investigation share a number of common characteristics.