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Abstract
Bat-Yiphtach is a transitioning child, lamenting her
Abstract
What does a child-oriented interpretation of Bat-Yiphtach’s narrative do to assessments of her agency? Chapter 5 surveys how agency has emerged in childhood studies scholarship and in previous scholarship on Bat-Yiphtach’s narrative. It includes a brief review of the focus on agency in childhood studies, including theoretical moves made by Nick Lee, David Oswell, and Michael Gallagher, whose research constructs agency relationally and contextually, in open assemblages. A survey of how biblical scholars have constructed Bat-Yiphtach’s agency reveals the vast differences the narrative’s gaps and ambiguities allow, and the place of the interpreter within the relational assemblage. Using Gallagher’s assemblage framework, and in conversation with the interpretation of Bat-Yiphtach’s narrative in Chapter 4, the chapter adds to previous assessments of her agency by suggesting that Bat-Yiphtach is at the mercy of her body (she bleeds), her father (she echoes and obeys), and socio-cultural and religious traditions for menstruating girls (she goes).
Abstract
Chapter 1 sketches the story of Bat-Yiphtach and some of the gaps and ambiguities that have inspired interpreters’ imaginations. The chapter also provides readers with a roadmap of the book—from the history of scholarship on Judges 11:29–40 in Chapter 2, to the book’s theoretical grounding in childhood studies in Chapter 3, to the fresh, child-oriented views that are offered of this Judges tale in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 1 establishes my argument: that menarche and menstruation play a larger role in Bat-Yiphtach’s characterization and narrative, including in her weeping, than previous scholars and readers might have recognized. Together, the theoretical lenses in childhood studies; curiosity about the shifts in translations of
Abstract
Chapter 6 reviews the moves made through this project, including its development of the proposed category of transitioning child and its capacity to question the child–adult binary, as well as the revelation of the experiences of menarche and menstruation to transitioning children and its relevance to Bat-Yiphtach’s narrative. The chapter identifies multiple questions that remain to be studied and that invite further research. These questions have implications for interpretations of the biblical texts, including of Judges 11:29–40 and of Judges more broadly, and for how the biblical texts affect contemporary children, their contexts, and child–adult relationality.
Abstract
Scholars contributing to the field of childhood studies first and foremost have an interest in children and their realities. Chapter 3 reviews this field and its breadth, including its interdisciplinary interest in sociological, psychological, biological, philosophical, and theoretical perspectives of children and their realities. It examines the field’s primary tenets and the shifts being made in recent years. The chapter argues that research in childhood studies—on children, the sociology of childhood, and child–adult relationality—reveals presuppositions that underlie a child–adult binary. It then examines developments in childist and child-oriented biblical scholarship, including a review of child-oriented biblical scholars whose work attends to Bat-Yiphtach. The perspectives offer new interpretive possibilities for Bat-Yiphtach’s narrative, including interpretations of her life stage (i.e., transitioning child) and agency.
Abstract
This chapter answers the question: How have readers and interpreters constructed Bat-Yiphtach’s character? It answers the question by noting when readers have used an adult-centric gender binary to flesh out Bat-Yiphtach as woman (not man), and when readers use a child–adult binary to characterize her as a child who, in her obedience, is worthy of emulation. Chapter 2 complements this previous work by suggesting an alternative characterization of Bat-Yiphtach as transitioning child, thus creating a space for studying the “excluded middle” of the child-adult binary and for questioning adult-centric presuppositions underlying both binaries.