The Love of David and Jonathan (BibleWorld)

Were David and Jonathan 'gay' lovers? This very modern question is at the root of the recent explosion of studies of the David and Jonathan narratives in 1 and 2 Samuel. But what makes it possible even to ask this question, and what agendas govern the ways interpreters try to answer it? This book begins by critiquing recent scholarship on David and Jonathan, with particular emphasis on the ideological use of historical criticism on the one hand and queer theory on the other. Neither approach to the relationship between David and Jonathan has taken seriously enough either the richness of the biblical text as a work of narrative art or the influence of reception history on the way scholarly agendas are framed. Beneath the plurality of interpretations currently on the market lies an ambiguous text that has drawn readers, beginning with the redactors of the Hebrew text and the translators of the Septuagint and Targum, to the task of resolving its several possible meanings. Generations of interpreters have read the biblical narrative through the lens of later codes and conventions, culminating in the use of this narrative as a resource for the reconstruction of gay history. Far from being a history of misreading, the reception history of the David and Jonathan narratives is a witness to the capacity of a richly ambiguous text to generate interpretations