Queer Theory and Historical-Critical Exegesis:

Queering Biblicists—A Response

S. Tamar Kamionkowski

Queer readings of the Bible feel like roller-coaster rides. (I love roller
coasters!) The readings, when done well, can make my heart race and my
guts twist. They can turn me in unexpected directions and even throw me
for a loop. When I complete a queer biblical reading, I often feel as I do
when I exit the roller coaster for the first time. I cannot recall the details
of the ride, but I come off with a sense of intensity and disturbance that
makes me both uneasy (or queasy) and elated.
As a lesbian, I delight in queer readings of the biblical texts. They speak
to my personal experiences and I see myself reflected in biblical texts in
new ways—my experience is given voice in the Bible. Queer readings also
have a tendency to be fun, surprising, and sometimes even titillating. As
a Jew who holds the Tanak as a sacred and dynamic text that provides the
soil from which meaning making occurs, I struggle with queer readings.
These interpretations challenge sustained identity, enduring meaning, or
even a perch from which to gaze upon the world.
As a lesbian and a strongly identified Jewish biblicist, I find myself
queer identified in that I embody or perform identities that would seem to
be at odds with one another from the perspective of heteronormative cul-
ture. At the SBL, for example, I attend “traditional” sections such as Isra-
elite Prophetic Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures along-
side “subversive” sections like Ideological Criticism and Gender, Sexuality,
and the Bible. The analogy is weak but I sometimes feel like I’m traveling
between the synagogue and gay bars—unlikely to find a lot of the same
people and somewhat closeted in each location. When I think of myself
as a queer biblicist, I mean one who is queer and subversive by the very
nature of occupying professional spaces that the academy has defined as

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oppositional to one another, not one who applies queer theory to the Bible.
In other words, I blur the boundaries of “traditional = dominant regime”
and “postmodern/queer = subversive.” I embrace both historical criticism
and queer readings.
I begin with this personal statement in order to provide the back-
ground from which I will be engaging primarily with the works of Stone
and Guest (with some reference to Epstein and Runions). What happens
when a queer biblicist (both traditional and postmodern) applies her lens
to these essays?
Each writer provides a slightly different definition of queer readings
of the Bible. However, the common thread is that each claims to approach
the Bible as a text to be interrogated for the ways in which it is read to
support the heteronormative-regulating regime. Stone, Epstein, and Run-
ions (and Guest less so) approach the text as an Other to be interrogated
even while the offensive may be directed more at the history of readers
rather than the text itself. By positioning themselves as interrogators, they
consciously stand “outside” to chip away at the “center.” The political and
social agenda of bringing down heteronormativity (an agenda that I share)
is the primary aim of these authors, and it seems to me that the biblical
text and other cultural media are tools, or the means by which the political
agenda is addressed. I want to suggest, however, that these writers are also
making important contributions to those scholars who do not share the
same political agenda. I seek to widen the circle of those who might benefit
from queer readings, even if they fail to understand heteronormativity.
The bridge I find useful is not cultural media (film, art …) or theories
of race, ethnicity, postcolonialism … but rather Jewish textual interpre-
tation. It is this hermeneutic that enables me to travel between the two
worlds (traditional historical-critical and postmodern) and in so doing, to
merge the worlds into a beautifully complex and messy universe.
The broader reading framework that informs my approach is a Jewish
textual reading tradition that Jon Levenson first articulated among Jewish
biblicists. “Whereas in the church the sacred text tends to be seen as a
word (the singular is telling) demanding to be proclaimed magisterially, in
Judaism it tends to be seen as a problem with many facets, each of which
deserves attention and debate” (Levenson 1993, 55). He continues, “It is
not only that Jews have less motivation than Christians to find a unity or
center in their Bible; if they did find one, they would have trouble integrat-
ing it with their most traditional modes of textual reasoning. What Chris-
tians may perceive as gain, Jews may perceive as a loss” (55). A number of

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scholars of Judaic studies, outside of biblical studies, have independently

argued that rabbinic interpretation allows for multiple perspectives and
truths. In b. Sanh. 34a we read: “One biblical utterance is susceptible to
many interpretations.”
Susan Handelman (1982) argues that there are radical differences
between rabbinic and patristic interpretation and that these early differ-
ences paved the way for two substantially different approaches to text. She
argues that there is no stable, single text in Jewish thinking. The written
Torah cannot be separated from the Oral Torah, and in fact, the tradition
of Torah predates creation itself. Everything is interpretation, commentary.
Similarly, David Kraemer has written, regarding the Babylonian
Talmud, “What is outstanding about the deliberations that the Bavli
records is that they so often avoid any conclusion; more often than not
they prefer to support competing views rather than deciding in favor of
one view or the other” (1990, 6). He continues: “the form of the Bavli
embodies a recognition that truth, divine in origin, is on the human level
indeterminable. For this reason, at least in part, the Bavli considers alter-
native approaches to the truth but methodically seeks to avoid privileging
one over another” (7).
Likewise, the redacted Bible recognizes multiple truth claims and sets
them side by side, perhaps suggesting similarly that “truth” on the human
level is indeterminable but that we must still strive to seek it. This approach
to reading, which is based on the joy of commentary, open-ended argu-
mentation, and the acceptance of multiple perspectives side by side is the
framework from which queer readings may reach the most people.
While I thoroughly enjoyed all the essays, space will allow me to focus
on only the works of Stone and Guest.
Ken Stone uses models of relationships and gender performance that
are highlighted in the film Paris Is Burning to inform our reading of the
Dtr texts regarding the houses of Saul and David. Rather than taking a
document from the ancient Near East, he asserts that the knowledge we
gain from Paris Is Burning can be applied to a biblical text—not because
there is a direct line of influence but simply because the application of
the model from the film “works” on the Saul-David narratives. As Stone
points out, what makes this reading queer is that the models in the film
highlight the performance of gender and challenge the heteronormative
claim to a binary system.
Stone’s reading accomplishes its goal of getting us to understand the
competition between Saul and David from a new dimension. He shows

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Add pages
us how the competition between Saul and David is “a contest in the per-
number formance of gendered ‘realness’ ” (000). The house of David predominates
from proofs because he performs “manhood” more successfully than does the house of
5 times. Saul. Ultimately, Jonathan is “read” as mimicking or imitating manhood.
He is an ambiguous character who embodies both manly and womanly
traits.
Stone describes his work as “an experiment” and as “a practice” (000).
He suggests that there is a rather arbitrary nature as to which texts out-
side the Bible are considered acceptable as texts for comparison or frame
working (e.g., twentieth-century anthropology of shame and honor). (I
am reminded of the work of Albright and his students, who used Egyp-
tian Execration texts alongside Nuzi documents and Akkadian law codes
to “prove” the historicity of the patriarchal narratives. The difference in
cultures and the time span is not radically different from setting the Bible
alongside modern film!) At the end of his essay, he writes: “But if the space
between the virile biblical epic and contemporary drag ball is smaller than
we usually imagine, the attempt to ground heteronormativity in appeals to
biblical literature may prove to be less secure” (000).
The analogies between the film and the royal narratives are indeed
striking and I believe that Stone accomplishes his goal. While he accom-
plishes the lessening of the divide, he does far more that interests me as a
biblicist and a lover of these texts. I now understand the conflict not just
as military, and therefore masculine, but also as a complex set of gender
dynamics and interpersonal relationships. Stone’s reading brings the text to
life and honors the text by claiming that the epic is more than simply a story
of a rivalry for political and military power. Stone reveals the complexity
and shifting identities of the epic’s characters.
Guest’s study is a bridge between the interrogator and the identity
seeker. She is the writer who most explicitly suggests that she is looking
for a mirror of herself. She admits that she is deliberately interrogating
the text with her own agenda—but as the essay continues, one discovers
that the agenda is not just to break down heteronormative structures but to
create a place for herself within biblical readings. She writes that the les-
bian and queer perspectives that she engages break “upon the traditional
and cherished norms of historical-critical exegesis with all the force of
several gate-crashers at a party from which they had long been excluded”
(000). Guest is the only writer to pause, or as she says: “push the pause
button for a moment” (000). The pause allows for a moment identity
formation—rather than looking at the text as an Other to be “troubled,”

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Guest enters into the world of the text to find herself reflected in it. The
trouble is the sophisticated awareness that she holds in recognizing that
to see herself reflected in the text is to exclude others, such as transsexu-
als. The identity that she uncovers in the character Yael from the book of
Judges is one of Yael with a penis, neither a woman warrior nor a male
rapist. She is not-woman, not-man, but Yael with a penis—a gender blur.
Guest’s work furthers the spectrum of individuals who may find a place
for themselves within the text. In so doing, Guest has accomplished two
things: she brings into question the claim that the Bible is one of the most
successful products of the heteronormative regime (as do other queer
readers), but then she does not simply walk away. She takes the next step
and suggests that since the Bible (or a reading of the Bible) offers identi-
ties that stand outside the norm, we might find something useful in the
Bible—a perspective that deepens our reading of the Bible rather than
alienating us from it.
Stone adds a valuable perspective to our exegesis of the Saul/David
narratives and Guest carefully opens up the text to make room for those
who have traditionally been excluded. In both cases, these subversive
readings that invoke the concept of genderfuck (brought into biblical stud-
ies by Runions) and reference to drag balls have the potential to bring all
students of the Bible closer to its complexities. While they may present
themselves as breaking down the house, they build it up with newer mate-
rials and resources.
So I return to my earlier question: is the future of queer readings of the
Bible going to make the most impact by serving as a political tool to bring
down the regime of heteronormativity? I believe that queer readings will
have a longer lasting impact and will speak to a greater audience if they
are framed as a reading strategy that adds new layers to our appreciation
of the Bible. This will require queer theorists to allow themselves to land
for even a moment in the world of meaning making and, perhaps more
challenging, it will require more traditional biblicists to heed the voice of
Jewish textual tradition that “these and these are the word of the living
God” (b. ‘Erub. 34a).

Works Consulted

Handelman, Susan. 1982. The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic

Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory. Albany: State University of
New York Press.

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Kramer, David. 1990. The Mind of the Talmud. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Levenson, Jon. 1993. The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical
Criticism. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

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