{"title":"Hidden in Plain Sight: Saul’s Male Trauma Narrative in 1 Samuel","authors":"Barbara Thiede","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231763","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract King Saul’s story is not simply a tool for justifying Yhwh’s decision to promote David in his place; it is a narrative of trauma that demonstrates how biblical hegemonic masculinity normalizes sexual violence perpetrated by men against men. Saul is the victim of repeated and sexualized assault by a controlling, coercive deity. After such attacks Saul loses control over his speech, his mind, and his body. He experiences dissociation, helplessness, terror, and rage. In abusing Saul, Yhwh is aided and abetted by Samuel and by David. The sexualized violence Saul experiences marks him and silences him; just before he dies, he a makes a single allusion to the trauma he long endured by invoking the rape he fears at the hands of the Philistines. In fact, after his death, Saul is metaphorically raped, his body stripped, decapitated, impaled, and displayed. He is no trauma survivor, but its victim.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231763","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract King Saul’s story is not simply a tool for justifying Yhwh’s decision to promote David in his place; it is a narrative of trauma that demonstrates how biblical hegemonic masculinity normalizes sexual violence perpetrated by men against men. Saul is the victim of repeated and sexualized assault by a controlling, coercive deity. After such attacks Saul loses control over his speech, his mind, and his body. He experiences dissociation, helplessness, terror, and rage. In abusing Saul, Yhwh is aided and abetted by Samuel and by David. The sexualized violence Saul experiences marks him and silences him; just before he dies, he a makes a single allusion to the trauma he long endured by invoking the rape he fears at the hands of the Philistines. In fact, after his death, Saul is metaphorically raped, his body stripped, decapitated, impaled, and displayed. He is no trauma survivor, but its victim.
期刊介绍：
This innovative and highly acclaimed journal publishes articles on various aspects of critical biblical scholarship in a complex global context. The journal provides a medium for the development and exercise of a whole range of current interpretive trajectories, as well as deliberation and appraisal of methodological foci and resources. Alongside individual essays on various subjects submitted by authors, the journal welcomes proposals for special issues that focus on particular emergent themes and analytical trends. Over the past two decades, Biblical Interpretation has provided a professional forum for pushing the disciplinary boundaries of biblical studies: not only in terms of what biblical texts mean, but also what questions to ask of biblical texts, as well as what resources to use in reading biblical literature. The journal has thus the distinction of serving as a site for theoretical reflection and methodological experimentation.
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