Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women

310 Pages·2012·5.319 MB·English

by  J. Cheryl Exum

P , S , P
lotted hot and ainted
Classic Reprints

P , S , P
lotted hot and ainted
Cultural rePreSentationS of BiBliCal Women
Second Revised Edition
J. Cheryl Exum
Sheffield Phoenix PreSS
2012
Copyright © 2012 Sheffield Phoenix Press
Published by Sheffield Phoenix Press
Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield,
45 Victoria Street, Sheffield S3 7QB
UK
www.sheffieldphoenix.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the
publishers’ permission in writing.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Typeset by ISB Typesetting
Printed on acid-free paper by Lightning Source UK Ltd, Milton Keynes
ISBN 978-1-907534-67-6 (paperback)
for my mother
Rebecca Cockrell Exum
and my other mothers
Lucy Cockrell
and
Margaret L. Hines
in memoriam

Contents
Preface to the Second Edition 9
Preface to the First Edition 13
List of Figures 23
Chapter 1
BathsheBa Plotted, shot and Painted 27
Chapter 2
MiChal at the WindoW, MiChal in the Movies 61
Chapter 3
the hand that RoCks the CRadle 85
Chapter 4
PRoPhetiC PoRnogRaPhy 105
Chapter 5
lot and his daughteRs 133
Chapter 6
is this naoMi? 161
Chapter 7
Why, Why, Why, delilah? 209
Bibliography 277
Index of References 299
Index of Authors 303

PRefaCe to the seCond edition
In preparing this new edition of Plotted, Shot, and Painted, I have not attempted
to revise the argument in the text of the original six chapters. I had originally
planned a more extensive revision, but I soon realized that, after sixteen
years, such a project would involve considerable rewriting, updating and re-
conceptualizing of the issues, and life is indeed, as they say, too short. I have
therefore settled for expanding the footnotes to include a number of relevant
recent works, although I have not undertaken a comprehensive survey of the
scholarly literature that has appeared since 1996. I have also added a section
at the end of what is now Chapter 7, ‘Why, Why, Why, Delilah?’, in order to
include some discussion of the film Samson and Delilah, directed by Nicolas
Roeg, that had been announced but had not yet appeared when I completed
Plotted, Shot, and Painted. It seemed important to give some attention to this
film, not least because it so failed to live up to DeMille’s much earlier version,
to which I devoted considerable space. I have also added a chapter, Chapter
5, ‘Lot and His Daughters’, a slightly revised version of an essay written a
few years after Plotted, Shot, and Painted and published in a Festschrift for
Burke Long, because it too deals with central concerns of this book: the
representation of women in the biblical text, and what happens to these
women and their stories when they reappear, inspected and embellished, in
art and film.1 The problems with the biblical story of Lot’s incestuous relations
with his two daughters that Chapter 5 addresses—the father’s responsibility
and the anomalous role played by the daughters that requires explanation—
have been largely ignored in the scholarly literature, and, by including this
chapter in the present edition of Plotted, Shot, and Painted, I hope it might
reach a wider audience. A further change I have made that affects the whole
book is to use British spelling and punctuation rather than American. I am
not sure why I did this, except that, after living in the UK for nineteen
years, it seemed ‘right’ (cultural constructs are influential). Images are much
1. ‘Desire Distorted and Exhibited: Lot and his Daughters in Psychoanalysis,
Painting, and Film’, in ‘A Wise and Discerning Mind’: Essays in Honor of Burke
O. Long (ed. Saul M. Olyan and Robert C. Culley; Brown Judaic Studies, 325;
Providence, RI: Brown University, 2000), pp. 83-108. I thank Brown University for
permission to reuse this material.