I am personally very excited to announce the release of Jeremy Schipper's important LHBOTS Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story in paperback. For the last few years, Schipper has been on the cutting edge of considering the intersection of disability studies and biblical studies and we are very happy to make his important work more easily available to both the scholar and student. He has also received some stellar endorsements for this book:
"Jeremy Schipper has written an exceedingly important, thoughtful, disciplined book that will concern anyone who notices the toxic “social constructions” that go on in our society. His study is acute in its attention to the biblical text while at the same time it carefully probes contemporary disability theory. Schipper offers a model for interpretation and a summons to engagement."
-Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary
"There is nothing tame about minor biblical characters or about this exceptional book. Such an analysis does more than complicate the ideologies of disability and kingship; it forever changes the way you read the Deuteronomistic History."
-Gina Hens-Piazza, Professor of Biblical Studies, Jesuit School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA
"This is a remarkable book that is destined to set new standards for the study of disability in the Bible."
-Dr. Hector Avalos, Professor of Religious Studies, Iowa State University
Professor Schipper has also written a guest post for our Authors Circle, which I am sure you will enjoy:
A few years have passed since I wrote Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible. I am flattered at the reception that it has received since its original publication in 2006 and am very happy to see it in paperback this year. Regarding the books of Samuel and Kings, biblical scholarship has shown how certain motifs and themes (Zion, kingship, covenant, family, and so on) do more than just describe particular institutions and conceptions. Instead, these themes and motifs help to articulate, interpret and organize Israelite identity. Along these lines, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible shows that when the Hebrew Bible addresses disability it usually does more than just describe or diagnose a particular physical, mental or emotional trait. Rather, when read alongside images of Zion and kingship, disability provides a frequent, but often overlooked, means of articulating, interpreting, and organizing Israelite identity. My book uses the story of Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s disabled son (2 Samuel 4, 9, 16, 19) to show how disability functions as a means of social or ideological commentary rather than an objective and clear depiction of the everyday experience of disability in the ancient world. A close study of Mephibosheth as a point of entry into these larger set of issues surrounding disability imagery allowed me to emphasize the complicated and nuanced manner in which the Hebrew Bible represents disability.
The scholarly interest in disability and the Bible has grown a great deal since I first wrote this book. I am happy to have more conversation partners as well as books and articles to read. This is not to say that we have exhausted this type of work by any means. For example, after returning to my book a few years later, I am left with the impression that the Hebrew Bible has a lot of images of disability, but very few persons with disabilities. To argue for the importance of the study of disability in the Bible, my book showed how disability imagery works together with kingship and Zion imagery to help articulate Israelite identity. Yet, I did not acknowledge that in so doing, the disability imagery no longer describes persons with disabilities. Rather, it describes a nation that is traditionally remembered as largely able-bodied. Since this book was published, I have become increasingly concerned with how often disability imagery is used to describe the plights of the presumably non-disabled. In short, disability becomes a powerful literary tool to describe a variety of human experiences without the inconvenient presence of persons with disabilities. Much more needs to be done to understand the operation and the impact of disability imagery in the Hebrew Bible.
One of the stated goals of my book was to stimulate a deeper conversation between disability studies and biblical studies. It is exciting to see that this conversation continued beyond the present volume with later books such as This Abled Body (ed. Hector Avalos, Sarah Melcher and Jeremy Schipper; Society of Biblical Literature, 2007); Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora (T and T Clark, 2008); and Saul Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2008). These books continue to move the study of disability in biblical studies away from a focus on medical diagnosis or healthcare pertaining to the individual body. Rather, they examine disability in the Bible and other Near Eastern literature as a social and political experience similar to gender or race. I welcome these other projects that survey disability as a mode of representation and social organization throughout the Hebrew Bible more broadly. I am delighted that Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible is now available in paperback. (I must admit, I did not expect that to happen when I first wrote it.) Nevertheless, I am even more excited about the work on disability and the Bible that has yet to be done.
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