Heroic Bodies in Ancient Israel
Brian R. Doak
Reviews and Awards
"a model of how ideological insights may be integrated into a literary-historical study, resisting the either/or of historical readings and creative reception, which should appeal to scholars from across the theological spectrum." -- John D. Nelson, Religion, Vol 52, no.1
"His approach—using the body as a lens through which to view attitudes towards social and political structures—could be fruitfully applied to other corpora of ancient literature." -- Eleanor Vivian, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
"Heroic Bodies addresses a wide range of topics, including gender, hairiness, violence, size, and beauty, to name a few. It interrogates an embodied identity that has hitherto not been fully explored in the Hebrew Bible: that of the hero. Its comparative studies of ancient Near Eastern and especially of Greek material -- often less familiar to the biblical scholar -- provide valuable insights into a widespread heroic tradition ... Heroic Bodies will open up multiple avenues of inquiry that will no doubt continue in coming years." -- Rosanne Liebermann, Ancient Jew Review
"Doak offers an intriguing and clear presentation of the nature of the biblical presentation of heroes and their physical bodies. Through this work, he has made a signifcant contribution to the rapidly growing fields of masculinity studies and heroic studies. Any scholar with an interest in these topics would greatly benefit from Doak's research." -- Alison K. Hawanchak, Bulletin for Biblical Research
