Constructions of Gender in Religious Traditions of Late Antiquity

Shayna Sheinfeld is assistant professor of religion at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Juni Hoppe is junior executive editor of the Encyclopedia of Jewish-Christian Relations (EJCR) and director of the Intercultural Center Genezareth (IZG) in Berlin, Germany. Kathy Ehrensperger is research fellow at the Faculty of Theology, University of Basel, Switzerland.

With the use of diverse methodologies, the contributing authors in this volume skillfully expose the intricate web of gender constructions across the late ancient Mediterranean world. A triumph of contemporary intersectional lenses, this work illuminates the understanding that gender is, and always has been, a richly constructed mosaic in the religious imagination.

• Introduction Shayna Sheinfeld, Juni Hoppe, and Kathy Ehrensperger1. Why Should an Androginos Not Become an Enslaved Hebrew? Tannaitic Reasoning about the Androginos within the Roman World Bernadette J. Brooten2. Because of Her We All Die: Eve in Early Jewish and Early Christian Reception Sara Parks3. The Feminine as an Intellectual Category in Gnosticism: Proposing a Methodological Framework Lavinia Cerioni4. Explicit and Implicit Gender Laws — “Incest” in Qumranic and Tannaitic Literature: A Halakhhic Struggle for Cultural Hegemony on the basis of Lev 18:13 Federico Dal Bo5. Torah, Gender, and Rabbinic Expertise Krista N. Dalton6. Constructions of Gender in Origen of Alexandria Ilaria L.E. Ramelli7. One of the Boys: Jerome’s Fabulous Frontier Masculinity Matthew R. Anderson8. Queen Helena of Adiabene through the Centuries Sarit Kattan Gribetz9. “For Rachel I Will Return the Israelites”: Maternal Grief and Loss in the Early Jewish Imagination Sari Fein10. The Body as a Wonderland: Rabbinic Talk of the Human Body as a Sex/Gender ConstructionDaniel Vorpahl11. Shush Shelamzion, your brother Shimon is speaking! A Peculiar Pattern of Palestinian Passivation Andrew W. Higginbotham12. Eve in Early Christian Armenian Tradition David Zakarian13. The Stillborn Messiah and the Non-Viable Redeemer: Gender and Judeo-Christian Entanglement Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel14. Tying Knots of Fortitude to Withstand Your Beauty: Women as Temptresses and Tests of Fortitude in Sufi Literature Matthew R. Hotham