Introduction

Abstract

What exactly does it mean to say that the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible, is an earthy text? The following pages compose a series of fleshly readings in an effort to show how crude it really is and indeed can be. So dear reader, alongside discussions of terms for testicles, of the pervasive but futile spermatic spluttering pen(is) of the prophets, and of the decidedly queer nature of the detailed attention to interior decoration on Mount Sinai and in the books of Chronicles, you will also find teasingly sensuous engagements with the sexuality of flora and fauna, hooker hermeneutics, hairy queens and anal dildos, Jeremiah the mastur-bator, Ezekiel the autofellating prophet, prophetic hygrophilia, and the bestial and necrophiliac practices of the Hittites. But you will also find detailed engagements with the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, and Claude Lévi-Strauss and Antonio Negri.