Karalina Matskevich examines the structures that map out the construction of gendered and national identities in Genesis 2-3 and 12-36. Matskevich shows how the dominant 'Subject' - the androcentric ha'adam and the ethnocentric Israel - is perceived in relation to and over against the 'Other', represented respectively as female and foreign. Using the tools of narratology, semiotics and psychoanalysis, Matskevich highlights the contradiction inherent in the project of dominance, through which the Subject seeks to suppress the transforming power of difference it relies on for its...

This study focuses on the Chronicler's special interest in Levite singers. It takes into consideration the socio-ideological milieu of the Jerusalem temple community in the Persian period and the Mesopotamian elite professional norms and practices that nourished the singers and their music. It also explores the conception of the earthly temple as representative of its heavenly counterpart, and looks at the way in which this shaped the Chronicler's theological frame of reference.

The work is divided into two parts. Part I examines the Mesopotamian scribal-musical background, to which...

The story of Samson and Delilah in Judges 16 has been studied and retold over the centuries by biblical interpreters, artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers. Within these scholarly and cultural retellings, Delilah is frequently fashioned as the quintessential femme fatale - the shamelessly seductive 'fatal woman' whose sexual treachery ultimately leads to Samson's downfall. Yet these ubiquitous portrayals of Delilah as femme fatale tend to eclipse the many other viable readings of her character that lie, underexplored, within the ambiguity-laden narrative of Judges 16 -...

In Going Up and Going Down Yitzhak Peleg argues that the story of Jacob's dream (Genesis 28.10-22), functions as a mise en abyme ('as a figure, trope or structure that somehow reflects in compact form, in miniature, the larger structure in which it appears', Greenstein). Close examination reveals that focusing on the vision of Jacob's dream and understanding it as a symbolic dream facilitates an explanation of the dream and its meaning.

Scholars have historically classified the dream as theophany, the purpose of which is to explain how Beth-El became a sacred place,...

An examination of the presence of theophanic scenes in the final form of the Pentateuch, which argues that rather than there being a single, over-arching theophanic "type-scene" there are multiple such scenes which reflect the individual theological tendencies of the biblical books within which they appear.

The Genesis type-scene revolves around YHWH's promises in crisis situations (i.e., YHWH only appears when there is a crisis or threat to the Abrahamic promise). The Exodus type-scene typically includes the appearance of YHWH's dangerous fiery presence (Kabod Adonai), a communal...