Performing Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible by Milena Kirova

Abstract

Reviewed by: Performing Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible by Milena Kirova Andrew Montanaro milena kirova, Performing Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible (HBM 91; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2020). Pp. xiii + 218. $85. An English rewrite of her two-volume Bulgarian work (2011 and 2017), Performing Masculinity brings Milena Kirova's keen literary criticism to bear on a wide range of biblical passages relevant to masculinity as conceived by the ancient authors. K. presents a perceptive commentary on a unique set of underexamined aspects of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible, including men's roles as shepherds, bandits, and builders. K. provides a valuable contribution to both masculinity studies and biblical studies. This volume comprises nine essays and an epilogue. Kirova employs an important methodological maneuver whereby she resists imposing categories employed by post/modern social sciences onto ancient perspectives without careful consideration. In this regard, her chapter on weeping (see below) can be seen as the most important since in it K. explicates her nuanced critique of the use of masculinity studies. K. makes the commonsense observation that males in hegemonic roles throughout the Hebrew Bible vary from one another in that they are celebrated for contradictory traits. She states, "[I]n the world of the Hebrew Bible we should better talk of hegemonic masculinities, rather than of a hegemonic masculinity, the way Raewyn Connell [Masculinities (2nd ed.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 76–77]) does in her attempt to define the new general situation in the postmodern world. . . . [B]iblical masculinity is a category much wider and inherently variable in a way that is unfamiliar to the modern Western world" (p. 150). She notes that pairs of conflicting traits (cruelty and mercy, honesty and trickery) are commonly seen as hegemonic "because biblical men, heroic or not, powerful or weak, have come into being after 'the image and likeness' of God. God and not man is the allencompassing matrix of human being" (p. 163; emphasis original). Kirova frequently returns to her premise that God is the ultimate male before whom all other distinctions among humans—including gender distinctions—become relativized. Important for this methodology and its application is a detailed examination of hegemonic masculinity as it exists in God; however, such an examination is absent from this study. Nevertheless, K.'s analyses will aid anyone interested in this work to engage more fully with the question of God's masculinity. The above premises and methodological concerns are demonstrated throughout the volume in relation to various topics, and in this way the reader gets a sense of K.'s method [End Page 115] in practice as she explores subjects such as the imago dei and bodily perfection, which make the Hebrew man like God (chaps. 1 and 2); humiliation and the "etiquette of unwillingness to become king," which are explained not as lapses in hegemonic masculinity but as necessary rituals for becoming king (chap. 3); and circumcision, such as in the Shechem massacre in Genesis 34, which, after explicating the "ass" theme, K. argues would have been part of an amusing story for the ancients—"the ethical aspect that causes shock to the modern reader simply did not exist" (p. 67; chap. 4). Further, K. explores the role of shepherds, drawing a trajectory ending in apocalyptic texts where God is shepherd (chap. 5). She argues that this results in a collapsing of gender distinctions: "The small differences between worldly men and worldly women are assimilated into the vast difference between man and God" (p. 121). Here the meekness and care of human shepherds make them more like God (and thus closer to the hegemonic). Next, K. examines David's bandit years against similar bandit-kings in Judges, and she argues that, through fairness and generosity, David transcends the category of bandit to become worthy of being king (chap. 6). In chap. 7, she focuses on the theme of weeping both as a manipulative act to elicit a response (particularly from God) and also as an expression of kindness, an attribute of God. She perceptively observes that, far from emasculating men, weeping can be an expression of an attribute that makes men more like God. Kirova further treats men in the role of...