Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts

Were eunuchs more usually castrated guardians of the harem, as florid Orientalist portraits imagine them, or were they trusted court officials who may never have been castrated? Was the Ethiopian eunuch a Jew or a Gentile, a slave or a free man? Why does Luke call him a man while contemporaries referred to eunuchs as unmanned beings? As Sean D. Burke treats questions that have received dramatically different answers over the centuries of Christian interpretation, he shows that eunuchs bore particular stereotyped associations regarding gender and sexual status as well as of race, ethnicity, and class. Not only has Luke failed to resolve these ambiguities; he has positioned this destabilized figure at a key place in the narrativeas the gospel has expanded beyond Judea, but before Gentiles are explicitly namedin such a way as to blur a number of social role boundaries. In this sense, Burke argues, Luke intended to queer his readers expectations and so to present the boundary-transgressing potentiality of a new community.

Author: Sean D. Burke
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 08/01/2013
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.07w x 0.45d
ISBN: 9781451465655

About the Author
Burke, Sean D.: -

Sean D. Burke is assistant professor of religion at Luther College. Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch is a revision of his dissertation completed under Mary Ann Tolbert at the Graduate Theological Union.

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