Unheard Voices: Cultural Anthropological Approaches to Physical Suffering in the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint

Dear Colleagues,

When it comes to the non-focal characters of a story, the Hebrew Bible as well as the Septuagint tend to veer the imagination away from hard anthropological issues, such as physical pain and its emotional expression. Pain in biblical languages, loaded with theological implications and promoting the hero characters of the group in focus, has recently been investigated through linguistic and historical anthropological approaches (Bauks & Olyan 2021). Non-protagonists’ embodied experience of suffering and pain, however, is misrepresented. Neither ancient authors nor modern interpreters attribute agency to wounded warriors, mutilated foes, expelled ethnic groups, or indeed women, children, men, and animals bodily affected by disease, accident, natural disaster, or rites of torture.

In the planned volume we propose restituting the multivocality of physical suffering preserved in the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, e.g., the imaginary sighs, groans, and cries of those situated at the margins of the plot. Our study shall contribute to an integrative, critical reading of biblical texts by engaging in varied anthropological methods and by drawing on various sources in order to capture a greater diversity of voices (Pedersen & Cliggett 2021) so as to avoid bias, blind spots, and ideological narrowness.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors ([email protected]) or to the Religions editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Bauks, Michaela, and Saul M. Olyan (eds.). 2021. Pain in Biblical Texts and Other Materials of the Ancient Mediterranean. FAT 2, 130. Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck.

Pedersen, Lene, and Lisa Cliggett (eds.). 2021. The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Anthropology. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Prof. Dr. Régine Hunziker-Rodewald
Dr. Blaženka Scheuer
Guest Editors

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• pain
• cultural anthropology
• embodied experience
• multivocality
• balance of power
• Old Testament