Marriage by Capture in the Book of Judges

Katherine E. Southwood is University Lecturer in Old Testament and Fellow and Tutor in Theology and Religion at St John's College, Oxford. Her research focuses on and promotes interdisciplinary approaches to the Hebrew Bible through engagement with social anthropology to understand Israelite marriage practices and the impact of forced and return migrations on Israelite identity. She is the author of Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9-10: An Anthropological Approach (2012).

'In the best tradition of radically innovative biblical interpretation, Southwood has established a framework for the discussion of the historical meaning of Judges 21 that is now the inevitable starting point for future analysis, whether or not one agrees with all the details of her particular conclusion. The members of the Society for Old Testament Study should be gratified that their new Monograph Series has been inaugurated by so substantial a work of original scholarship as this.' Philip F. Esler, Journal of Jewish Studies

• 1. Methods, considerations, and recent approaches to Judges 21; 2. Contextualised outline of the causes for and consequences of marriage by capture; 3. Virginity, marriage, and rape in the Hebrew bible; 4. Judges 21 as an example of marriage by capture in the Hebrew bible; 5. Marriage by capture within an ethnic narrative: Judges 21 as a social critique of superficial unity in the Persian period; 6. Conclusions.