Ruth
Edited by
Rhiannon Graybill [+–]
University of Richmond
Rhiannon Graybill is Marcus M. and Carole M. Weinstein and Gilbert M. and Fannie S. Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond. She is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose work brings together biblical texts and contemporary critical and cultural theory. Her research interests include prophecy, gender and sexuality, horror theory, speculative fiction, and the Bible as literature. She is the author of Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford, 2016) and Texts after Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford, 2021). She has also co-edited three books: Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements (with Cooper Minister and Beatrice Lawrence, Lexington Books, 2019), The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality: Critical Readings (with Lynn R. Huber, Bloomsbury / T. & T. Clark, 2020), and “Who Knows What We’d Make of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?”: The Bible and Margaret Atwood (with Peter J. Sabo, Gorgias Press, 2020). Her current projects include the Anchor Yale Bible Commentary on Jonah(with Steven L. McKenzie and John Kaltner) and an edited volume entitled Lee Edelman and the Queer Study of Religion (with Kent L. Brintnall and Linn Tonstad).
Philippe Guillaume [+–]
University of Berne
Philippe Guillaume is Lecturer at the University of Berne. His latest publications are A History of Biblical Israel co-authored with Ernst Axel Knauf (Equinox, 2016) and Deuteronomy in the Making, Studies in the Production of Debarim, edited with Diana Edelman, Benedetta Rossi and Kåre Berge (De Gruyter, 2021).
The Book of Ruth is an all-time Bible favorite. In four chapters, it builds a clear plot with narrative tension heightened with sexual innuendos; and it ends well. Since the 1990s at least, studies produced an array of portrayals of the heroes of the tale beyond the traditional idyllic readings. Gaps and fissures have been explored to cover its ideological premises. Feminist readings denounce the way patriarchalism used the figures of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz to bolster its social hegemony. Ruth has been presented as a coquette, Naomi as a pimp or a scold, Ruth and Naomi as lesbians, Boaz as exploiter of the proletariat, unstraight, sugar Daddy or impotent.
The growing types of LGBTQ+ orientations might offer more characterizations still; and Veganism has yet to grind Ruth’s gleanings and Boaz’s bridal gift.
Yet, time is ripe to steer a course between idyllic readings and critical ones. There is more to gender asymmetries and patriarchy than the devaluation of women. Women always have power. Neither Naomi or Ruth are powerless victims.
This volume maps an uncompromising way forward between patriarchy and advocacy.
This volume will be first published online and then as a print book. Chapters 2-7 published 2023.
Table of Contents
Chapter 2
University of Berne
Philippe Guillaume is Lecturer at the University of Berne. His latest publications are A History of Biblical Israel co-authored with Ernst Axel Knauf (Equinox, 2016) and Deuteronomy in the Making, Studies in the Production of Debarim, edited with Diana Edelman, Benedetta Rossi and Kåre Berge (De Gruyter, 2021).
As they imagine that Naomi is selling a field that once belonged to Elimelech, contemporary readers of Ruth miss the economic implications of the deal Boaz wins at the expense of the other next-of-kin. Arguing in favor of the priority of the ketiv at 4:5, this chapter shows that the matter of land shares clarifies the gate scene and reveals why Naomi and Boaz deserve the title of tricksters.
Chapter 3
The Torah in Ruth? [+–]
University of Berne
Philippe Guillaume is Lecturer at the University of Berne. His latest publications are A History of Biblical Israel co-authored with Ernst Axel Knauf (Equinox, 2016) and Deuteronomy in the Making, Studies in the Production of Debarim, edited with Diana Edelman, Benedetta Rossi and Kåre Berge (De Gruyter, 2021).
This chapter challenges the common references to the Pentateuch, in particular the so-called “laws” on gleanings (Leviticus 19; 23; Deuteronomy 24), land redemption (Lev 25), Zelophehad’s daughters (Numbers 27; 36), the levirate (Deut 25), and the exclusion of the Moabites (Num 25; Deut 23). On the basis of the priority of the ketiv in Ruth 4:5, the Ruth story made sense in light of marriage customs before the Alexandrian translators introduced were keen to present Jews – Boaz and Naomi – as Torah-abiding.
Chapter 4
Institut Catholique de Paris
William Krisel is a lecturer at Institut Catholique de Paris (Catholic University of Paris). His recent publications include Judges 19–21 and the “Othering” of Benjamin: A Golah Polemic against the Autochthonous In- habitants of the Land? Leiden: Brill, 2022; “Methodological Problems in Intertextual Analyses of Old Testament Texts: Genesis 19 and Judges 19 as a Case Study,” SJOT 36:2 (2022); “Was the Levite’s Concubine Unfaithful or Angry? A Proposed Solution to the Text Critical Problem in Judges 19:2,” OTE 33, 2 (2020).
The thrust of this chapter is to situate what appears to be an isolated “stand-alone” novella in the broader narrative context of Judges 19–21 and 1 Samuel 1–7.
Chapter 5
University of Richmond
Rhiannon Graybill is Marcus M. and Carole M. Weinstein and Gilbert M. and Fannie S. Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond. She is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose work brings together biblical texts and contemporary critical and cultural theory. Her research interests include prophecy, gender and sexuality, horror theory, speculative fiction, and the Bible as literature. She is the author of Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford, 2016) and Texts after Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford, 2021). She has also co-edited three books: Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements (with Cooper Minister and Beatrice Lawrence, Lexington Books, 2019), The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality: Critical Readings (with Lynn R. Huber, Bloomsbury / T. & T. Clark, 2020), and “Who Knows What We’d Make of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?”: The Bible and Margaret Atwood (with Peter J. Sabo, Gorgias Press, 2020). Her current projects include the Anchor Yale Bible Commentary on Jonah(with Steven L. McKenzie and John Kaltner) and an edited volume entitled Lee Edelman and the Queer Study of Religion (with Kent L. Brintnall and Linn Tonstad).
The book of Ruth is often considered to be a happy story. It is also celebrated as a happy text for feminist and queer biblical interpretation. However, Ruth is also frequently disappointing, as the book complicates or fails to meet our expectations of a positive female relationship of friendship, solidarity, or love. This chapter argues for the importance of disappointment in reading Ruth. Drawing on work on queer feeling and affect, it charts four forms of disappointment: unhappy objects, cruel optimism, queer failure, and “no fun.” Each of these modalities of disappointment is associated with the work of a specific queer theorist: unhappy objects hail from Sara Ahmed’s queer and feminist critique of happiness; cruel optimism originates with Lauren Berlant; queer failure is most closely associated with Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, and no fun is a framework borrowed from Bo Ruberg’s work on queerness and video games. Separately and together, they offer new ways of understanding disappointment in Ruth, suggesting that unhappy, uncomfortable, and unpleasant feeling can be useful, liberating, or even worldmaking.
Chapter 6
Broken Bay Institute, Australian Institute of Theological Education
Jonathan Thambyrajah is the Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the Broken Bay Institute – The Australian Institute of Theological Education (BBI–TAITE), and also lectures in Biblical Studies and Hebrew at the University of Sydney. As well as the topic of ethnicity in the Hebrew Bible, his research focuses on biblical languages, translations, and literature in the cross-cultural context of the Second Temple period and its aftermath (particularly Esther). He is also interested in how early translations of biblical books reflect the exegesis and interpretation of early Jewish and Christian communities.
Many interpretations of the book of Ruth turn on questions of the ethnicity of Ruth. Implicit is the idea that the book of Ruth needs to be read through the lens of Deut 7:1–6 and 23:4–7, laws that regulate intermarriage and membership of the “assembly of Israel.” However, after these laws from Deuteronomy are rid of the intellectual baggage of the intermarriage crisis in Ezra and Nehemiah and the story of Solomon’s wives in 1 Kings 11, they do not apply to the situation described by the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth is read more clearly without imposing the framework of these laws. Rather, identification of Obed as an Israelite is entirely what should be expected, despite Ruth’s Moabite ethnicity, according to the primordialist assumptions of the book of Ruth (in line with many other texts from the Hebrew Bible).
Chapter 7
Institut Catholique de Paris
William Krisel is a lecturer at Institut Catholique de Paris (Catholic University of Paris). His recent publications include Judges 19–21 and the “Othering” of Benjamin: A Golah Polemic against the Autochthonous In- habitants of the Land? Leiden: Brill, 2022; “Methodological Problems in Intertextual Analyses of Old Testament Texts: Genesis 19 and Judges 19 as a Case Study,” SJOT 36:2 (2022); “Was the Levite’s Concubine Unfaithful or Angry? A Proposed Solution to the Text Critical Problem in Judges 19:2,” OTE 33, 2 (2020).
It is always tempting to imagine that a single author sat down one day with quill, ink, and scroll in hand to compose the wonderful story that has been transmitted to posterity in the form of the Book of Ruth. However, it is far more likely that Ruth began like other biblical narratives as a very short text, possibly based on an oral tradition, that was then expanded and developed and reworked by later generations of scribes. This chapter will examine the textual and contextual traces that point to the existence of a sexier and less pious original version of the story in which Naomi goes down with Ruth to the threshing floor to surprise Boaz after he has fallen into a drunken sleep. Naomi tricks Boaz into sleeping with both women and then marrying them and fathering their sons. This older version of the narrative was significantly rewritten and overwritten by redactors to erase all references to Boaz’s relationship with Naomi and to transform the story into a bucolic idyll about the pious, generous, and monogamous Boaz, the contented widow Naomi happy to live out her days as a surrogate grandmother, and the proverbial woman of excellence and ancestress of David, Ruth.
