Construction of Shame in the Hebrew Bible

Johanna Stiebert is Lecturer of Hebrew Studies. University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana.

• Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION: Shame: Definition and Characteristics; Shame and Psychology; Shame and Emotion; Shame and Guilt; Aside: Scheler on Women and Inherent Shame; Shame and Social Sciences: Shame and Guilt Cultures. Honour and Shame: Summary CHAPTER ONE: Shame and Biblical Literature: Background: Honour and Shame in the Apocrypha and New Testament: A Summary and General Comments; Honour and Shame in the Hebrew Bible; A Summary and General Comments; Early 'Cultural Studies; Pedersen and Daube; The Major Hebrew Bible Shame Studies: Klopfenstein and Bechtel Huber; Honour, Shame and Hebrew Bible Narratives; Criticism of the Honour/Shame Model in Hebrew Bible Studies: Honour, Shame and Prophecy; Summary CHAPTER II: SHAME AND ISAIAH: The Book of Isaiah and the Deficiencies of the Honour/Shame Model: Excursus: Shame and the Role of Yhwh; Women, Shame and Referred Metaphor in Isaiah: Shame, Wealth and Idolatry; Summary CHAPTER III: SHAME AND JEREMIAH: Ideological Criticism; Shame Language and Its Implications: Sexual Metaphor; Shame and Anti-foreign Ideology; Shame and Wordplay; Summary CHAPTER IV: SHAME AND EZEKIEL: Impurity and Shame; Woman Jerusalem in Ezekiel; The Psychological Approach; Feminist Approaches: Ezekiel 16, Shame and Antilanguage; Summary; Excursus: Shame and the Psalter; CONCLUSIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Stiebert is to be commended for calling the attention of biblical scholars to a neglected semantic domain and for focusing our attention on the writings in which they predominate. She has summarized important criticisms of the honor-shame rubric, appropriately asserting that models presuming cultural continuity should not be superimposed on ancient texts.... In the end, the best insights of the book are the careful, lexically sensitive readings of biblical texts, the kind of work this reviewer wishes there was more of." --Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 4 (2002-2003)