Authors from the ancient world rarely used great detail to describe the physical features of characters in their works. When they did mention bodies, they did so with very specific goals in mind. In particular, the bodies of "heroic" figures, such as warriors, kings, and other leaders became loaded sites of meaning for encoding cultural, religious, and political values on a number of fronts. Brian Doak analyzes the way biblical authors described the bodies of some of their most iconic male figures, such as Jacob, the Judges, Saul, and David. These bodies represent not mere individuals-they communicate as national bodies, signaling the ambiguity of Israel's murky pre-history, the division during the period of settlement in the land, and the contest of leading bodies fought between Saul and David. Heroic Bodies in Ancient Israel examines the heroic world of ancient Israel within the Hebrew Bible, and shows that ancient Israelite literature operated within and against a world of heroic ideals in its ancient context. The heroic body tells a story of Israel's remembered history in the eventual making of the monarchy, marking a new kind of individual power. Not merely a textual study of the Hebrew Bible in isolation, this book also considers iconography and compares Israelite literature with other ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern materials, illustrating Israel's place among a wider construction of heroic bodies.

About the Author
Brian R. Doak (PhD Harvard University) is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Faculty Fellow in the William Penn Honors Program at George Fox University, just outside of Portland, Oregon.

Reviews
a model of how ideological insights may be integrated into a literary-historical study, resisting the either/or of historical readings and creative reception, which should appeal to scholars from across the theological spectrum. * John D. Nelson, Religion, Vol 52, no.1 *
His approach-using the body as a lens through which to view attitudes towards social and political structures-could be fruitfully applied to other corpora of ancient literature. * Eleanor Vivian, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament *
Heroic Bodies addresses a wide range of topics, including gender, hairiness, violence, size, and beauty, to name a few. It interrogates an embodied identity that has hitherto not been fully explored in the Hebrew Bible: that of the hero. Its comparative studies of ancient Near Eastern and especially of Greek material -- often less familiar to the biblical scholar -- provide valuable insights into a widespread heroic tradition ... Heroic Bodies will open up multiple avenues of inquiry that will no doubt continue in coming years. * Rosanne Liebermann, Ancient Jew Review *
Doak offers an intriguing and clear presentation of the nature of the biblical presentation of heroes and their physical bodies. Through this work, he has made a signifcant contribution to the rapidly growing fields of masculinity studies and heroic studies. Any scholar with an interest in these topics would greatly benefit from Doak's research. * Alison K. Hawanchak, Bulletin for Biblical Research *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190650872
Author Brian R. Doak
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 236mm * 25mm