rape culture

It was another morning with scholars of Tanakh (what academics call the Hebrew Bible). I was reading the work of a sober scholar, or so it seemed, when I came across these two sentences:

“While David remains in exile outside of Jerusalem, Absalom sleeps with his father’s concubines as an expression of royal authority. He performs this act to show all Israel he is in charge in place of his father.”

Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

David leaves Jerusalem with “a small nation of thousands,” as another sober scholar, J.P. Fokkelman, puts it. David takes “all the people,” all his servants and followers, all the Cherethites, the Pelethites, and the Gittites (2 Sam. 15:17-8). Even children are part of the king’s entourage (2 Sam. 15:22).

He also decides to leave ten of his “secondary wives” in Jerusalem, charged with the obligation to “protect” the palace (2 Sam. 15:16). When a king commands, you must obey. Unlike David, and his enormous retinue, these women may not flee from an invading army.

Absalom rapes each one of them. On the roof where David once ogled Bathsheba. In public, before all of his men (2 Sam. 16: 20-22).

Absalom sleeps with his father’s concubines?

The words scholars choose are important.

I tried to explain why, in my article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, “Taking Biblical Authors at Their Word: On Scholarly Ethics, Sexual Violence, and Rape Culture in the Hebrew Bible.” In it, I attempt to analyze why scholars avoid using the terms rape and rape culture. Here are some of their arguments:

We must understand the world biblical authors describe on their terms, in “historical context.” This is the way things were “back then.”
Biblical authors do not understand taking a woman as a violent act but rather as a male right, one only limited by the rights of other men. Their legal world excludes rape because they have no concept of the same.
There is no “lexical equivalent” in biblical Hebrew to the word rape. One cannot use a modern term to describe the ancient texts. (A side note: never mind the fact that scholars have been using the term “marriage” in their discussions of biblical texts for millennia, despite the fact that there is no “lexical equivalent” to be found here, either.)

Here are some of my arguments:

Are any ideologies which justify or rationalize oppression, enslavement, sexual assault, or wholesale destruction, off bounds to interrogation? Simply reproducing toxic ideas is an act of collusion.
Denying a woman power of any kind of consent is a defining feature of rape culture.
Likewise, the very lack of a specific term for rape is evidence of a rape culture par excellence, not of its absence. Not having a name for sexual assault ensures that it cannot be challenged.

Of all the things I have written, this piece may remain the most important to me personally. I wrote about the ethical project we engage in as scholars. I spoke to our obligations. We must hold academics to account; they must be able to interrogate biblical literature and call out the many ways in which it has contributed to toxic hegemonic masculine systems.

Feminist research is about resisting and naming what is wrong. It is about giving every victim of sexual harassment and sexual assault their due. Whether they exist in the pages of our Bibles or in the offices next to ours, whether they are next to us or across the globe, whether they belong to our time or some other, their suffering and their pain may not be ignored.

Thiede, Barbara. 2024. “Taking Biblical Authors at Their Word: On Scholarly Ethics, Sexual Violence, and Rape Culture in the Hebrew Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 143.2: 185–205. DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1432.2024.1.

* Thanks to Erik Henning Thiede who told me back in 2024: “You have to write this thing.”

In honor of the annual international campaign, 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.

The texts of Tanakh were written with male hands, redacted by male minds, transmitted for the benefit of men by men. For almost two millennia, scriptural commentary in both church and synagogue has been almost entirely male, written with male hands, redacted by male minds, and transmitted for the benefit of men by men.

We cannot respond to texts of terror we find in this male corpus with the cliché that “times were different then.” The times, where cisgendered male power is concerned, are not as different as we might wish. Moreover, if we refuse to judge texts of gender-based violence we abrogate our moral responsibility – we give those texts either our approval, our excuses, or our indifference.

I’ve been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on the texts of Tanakh for almost fifteen years. For the past few years I’ve taught for the ALEPH Ordination Program, where I was ordained as a rabbi in 2011. All my courses address issues of gender, power, and class. I am currently writing a book for Routledge Press in which I address the ways in which male homosociality and male friendship in Tanakh are dependent on the use (and abuse) of women and women’s bodies.

It is painful work. I write and teach about texts engendered by rape cultures while working in a rape culture. At least one in five of my transgender, genderqueer, and nonconforming students will be sexually assaulted during their college careers. One out of every four female students will be the victim of sexual assault.

For over two millennia, the Bible’s male texts, male commentary, and male scholarship have licensed the power and control of cisgendered men. College and seminary courses still feature syllabi dominated by male authors and reflecting male concerns. Song of Songs, for example, is still taught as an exquisite, transcendent love story. Cisgendered men profit from such a reading. Such readings describe a mythical sexual equality between the female protagonist and her lover despite the fact that the male partner is often absent and appears and disappears in ways that should concern its readers.

My students ask: Is the female protagonist being portrayed as an obsessed woman who can think of nothing else than a man who is manipulating her? When she calls for her lover, he does not answer. When she goes to look for him, she is stripped and beaten by the city’s watchmen (5: 6-7). Is the Song of Songs a cisgendered man’s fantasy of a sexually accessible woman, a fantasy in which such a woman is brutally punished for her sexual initiative (again)?

How do we deal with a long tradition of cisgendered male fears explaining away cisgendered male violence in the textual tradition? In 2 Samuel 13, Amnon, King David’s eldest son and heir to the throne, is described as sick with “love” for his half-sister Tamar. With the collusion and aide of his cousin, Jonadab, he sets a trap for Tamar and rapes her. After he rapes her, Amnon’s lust turns to loathing.

The Hebrew root for “hatred” (sinn-nun-aleph) is used no less than four times in a single verse. We read: Then Amnon hated her, a great hatred indeed; the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the lust he had felt for her (13:15). Where does such a hatred come from? The rabbis explain: the reason Amnon hated Tamar after he raped her was because she had tied her pubic hair around his sexual organ during the rape and castrated him (BT, Tractate Sanhedrin 21a).

Despite decades of feminist scholarship, despite the addition of masculinity studies and the brilliant work being done by scholars of Queer studies, we have yet to fully articulate the dangers of biblical texts written by men, interpreted by men, and dominated by men. Biblical texts describe rape cultures. Their violence goes unnamed in countless social, political, educational, and religious settings; thus, in turn, these texts and much of their commentary continues to support rape cultures.

Texts of gender-based violence are part of our inheritance. Their gender-based violence must be named, revealed, and condemned if we are to create the world we long to see: One in which sexual violence against any human being is made fully impossible.

Tag: rape culture

Holding Biblical Scholars (and Spiritual Leaders) Accountable: On Rape and Rape Culture in the Hebrew Bible

Naming Gender-Based Violence to Stop Gender-Based Violence