Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: "For All Her Household Are Clothed in Crimson" ed. by Antonios Finitsis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: "For All Her Household Are Clothed in Crimson" ed. by Antonios Finitsis Richard Anthony Purcell antonios finitsis (ed.), Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: "For All Her Household Are Clothed in Crimson" (LHBOTS 679; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019). Pp. xv + 191. $114. This collection of essays addresses a lacuna in Hebrew Bible studies, as the topic of dress and clothing is an understudied aspect of the ancient Syro-Palestinian symbolic world. The topic bridges the gap between material and textual studies, for dress "figures prominently in both ancient narratives and art" (p. 2). The essays demonstrate interdisciplinary approaches that draw on linguistic, textual, and art-historical data to interpret dress and clothing in the Hebrew Bible. The scholars adopt the term "dress" (p. 1) as a theoretical lens from Joanne B. Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, who define dress as the "assemblage of body modifications and/or supplements displayed by a person in communicating with other human beings" (see Eicher and Roach-Higgins, "Definition and Classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender Roles," in Dress and Gender: Making Meaning in Cultural Contexts [ed. Ruth Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women 2 [Oxford: Berg, 1993] 15). The definition provides a starting place for studying the functions of dress in communication and identity formation. The essays explore dress from different angles, from the referential to the metaphorical to the constitutive (p. 11). Why, though, the study of dress? Alicia J. Batten makes a case in the foreword that dress serves as an aspect of identity construction and projection just as food and language do (p. x). This basic sentiment undergirds the symposium of voices held together in the volume, as different essays explore how dress indicates status, symbolizes communal change, enables liberation or protest, or functions apotropaically and mnemonically in various biblical texts. Antonios Finitsis ("For All Her Household Are Clothed in Crimson") opens the volume with an introductory essay, laying out the primary goal of exploring the rhetoric and power of dress in the ancient world with both literary and visual data. Finitsis himself examines the expressions of gender and power in Proverbs 31, focusing on the valorous woman's clothing of her household in crimson garments, symbols of her economic acumen and power. Sara M. Koenig ("Tamar and Tamar: Clothing as Deception and Defiance") also attends to the intersection of clothing, gender, and power. She explores how the change or alteration of dress becomes an avenue of agential empowerment and expression in the Hebrew Bible's two Tamar narratives (Genesis 38 and 2 Samuel 13). The women's garments create opportunities for them to affect their situations, offering opportunities of liberation (Genesis 38) and of protest (2 Samuel 13). Sean E. Cook ("Is Saul among the Philistines? A Portrayal of Israel's First and Flawed King") examines the rhetorical use of Saul's dress to other the king and shape his downfall. [End Page 728] Like Goliath, Saul owns a bronze helmet and heavy armor (1 Sam 17:5-7). Saul's lack of clothes and nakedness in 1 Sam 19:23-24 shame the king, and his slaughter of Yhwh's priests clothed in linen ephods shows that the king stands over and against Yhwh (1 Sam 22:18). In addition, Saul's attempt to hide his identity with a robe to engage in divination practices like those of the Philistines (1 Sam 28:8; 6:2) displays the king's embrace of foreign identity. Ian D. Wilson ("The Emperor and His Clothing: David Robed and Unrobed before the Ark and Michal") also attends to the dress of kings. Wilson analyzes the parallel accounts of David dancing before the ark of Yhwh (2 Samuel 6; 1 Chronicles 15). Using the lens of cultural memory and social forgetting, Wilson investigates the (in)appropriateness of the king's (lack of) garments, with particular attention to how the Persian literati reading the books would have judged David's (lack of) clothing. Wilson surveys artistic and textual data to conclude that ancient readers would likely have expected the king to be elaborately clothed, as indeed...