Hunting for sex? This study finds that one purported hunting ground may be less well-stocked than its reputation suggests:
“Sleeping with the Enemy: Recent Scholarship on Sexuality in the Book of Judges,” Serge Frolov [pictured below], Currents in Biblical Research, June 2013 vol. 11 no. 3, pp. 308-327. The author, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, explain:
“Reviewing the publications of the last three decades, this article demonstrates that the period in question has been predictably marked by sharply increased attention to the sexual aspects of the book of Judges, and especially by sustained attempts to discover sexuality in the texts that had been commonly read with little to no reference to it. Refreshing as it is in many respects, this trend suffers from multiple vulnerabilities, including the exegetes’ tendency to stretch semantics of the biblical lexemes, ignore the syntactic layout and context of the discussed fragments, rely on problematic sexual symbolism, and produce interpretations that are less than edifying for contemporary Western audiences. As a result, much, although by no means all, of the recent quest for sexuality in Judges is unsustainable, as far as both the text and the reader are concerned.”
(Thanks to Dan Vergano for bringing this to our attention.)
BONUS: A dissenting view