Cifers, Dangerous Tales (SBL)

NEW BOOK FROM SBL PRESS:

Dangerous Tales: Genesis 34 and Its Literary Descendants
Carrie A. Cifers

ISBN 9781628376302
Volume BibRec 9
Status Available
Publication Date April 2025

Hardback $77.00
eBook $57.00
Paperback $57.00

The biblical narrative of Israel’s only daughter Dinah is steeped in deception and violence, vengeance and destruction, and a silence that has posed interpretive problems for readers for more than two millennia. Carrie A. Cifers takes up the retellings of Genesis 34 in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, the book of Jubilees, and Joseph and Aseneth to explore how later authors tried to clarify the assumedly implicit ethical message of Dinah’s story. Through narrative ethics and socionarratology, Cifers demonstrates that biblical stories are a space of encounter where texts make claims on readers and where readers have an ethical responsibility as witnesses to the text. Dangerous Tales is a call for contemporary readers to engage biblical narratives in ways that mitigate interpretive violence and maximize each text’s ethical potential.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.