The Construction of Shame in the Hebrew Bible: The Prophetic Contribution

(Hardback)

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Shame has become a topic of major interest in the literature of psychology and anthropology. This book explores the phenomenon of shame in the Hebrew Bible, focusing particularly on the major prophets because shame vocabulary is most prominent there. Stiebert discusses the theoretical issues in some detail, emphasizing the social-anthropological honour/shame model, which a considerable number of biblical scholars since the early 1990s have embraced enthusiastically. She also highlights the shortcomings of this heuristic model and proposes a number of alternative critical approaches.

Reviews

"Stiebert is to be commended for calling the attention of biblical scholars to a neglected semantic domain and for focusing our attention on the writings in which they predominate. She has summarized important criticisms of the honor-shame rubric, appropriately asserting that models presuming cultural continuity should not be superimposed on ancient texts.... In the end, the best insights of the book are the careful, lexically sensitive readings of biblical texts, the kind of work this reviewer wishes there was more of." --Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 4 (2002-2003)
A summary of the book -Religious Studies Review, 01/04 -- Marvin A. Sweeny * Religious Studies Review *
A summary of the book -Religious Studies Review, 01/04 * Religious Studies Review *

Author Bio

Johanna Stiebert is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Leeds, UK.