God's Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and Around the Bible / Edition 1

by Stephen D. Moore

Overview

God's Beauty Parlor opens the Bible to the contested body of critical commentary on sex and sexuality known as queer theory and to masculinity studies. Through a series of dazzling rereadings staged not only in God's beauty parlor, but also in God's boudoir, locker room, and war room, the author pursues the themes of homoeroticism, masculinity, beauty, and violence through such texts as the Song of Songs, the Gospels, the Letter to the Romans, and the Book of Revelation.

He ponders such matters as the curious place of the Song of Songs in the history of sexuality, or how an apparent paean to male-female love became a pretext for literary cross-dressing for legions of male Jewish and Christian commentators; Jesus' face and physique in relation to ideologies of beauty, ranging from the patristic era, when the "earthly" Jesus was regularly represented as ugly, to the contemporary global culture industry, with its trademark equation of looks with worth; the gendered and sexual substratum of Paul's doctrine of salvation embedded in his most influential epistle—not least his gendering of righteousness as masculine and sin as feminine; and the intimate imbrication of masculinity and mass death in Revelation, a book about war making men making war-making men . . . some of whom also happen to be gods.

God's Beauty Parlor is an exhilarating attempt to bring some of the most significant currents in contemporary gender studies to bear on a text that, even in the post-Christian West, remains the ultimate cultural icon, cipher, and shibboleth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804743327
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2002
Series:	Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences
Edition description:	1
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	990,228
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stephen D. Moore is Professor of New Testament at Drew UniversityTheological School. His most recent book is God's Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	xi
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Prologue / Plot Preview	1
	Introduction: The Year of Queer	7
Part I	God's Boudoir, God's Beauty Parlor ...
1	The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality	21
	Beautiful Brides	22
	Scholarship Is Sexy	29
	Allegory's Double Cross (Which Turns the Cross-Bearing Christian into a Christian Cross-Dresser)	39
	The Breast Pump	50
	Allegory's Engine	54
	Carnival Queens	66
	After the Carnival (the Commentator Removes His Makeup)	74
	The New Allegorists	82
2	On the Face and Physique of the Historical Jesus	90
	The Tannery	90
	The Beauty Parlor	92
	The Asylum	129
Part II	God's Locker Room, God's War Room
3	Sex and the Single Apostle	133
	Of Men and Unmen	135
	What's That Peculiar Thing Poking through the Tear in Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans?	146
	Things That Cannot Be Thought without Shame or Horror	146
	The Locker Room	169
4	Revolting Revelations	173
	War Book, I	176
	War Book, II	176
	In Lieu of a Conclusion: Lines Intended for a Public Lavatory Door in San Ysidro, California	201
	Notes	207
	Bibliography	279
	General Index	317
	Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources	331

Editorial Reviews

"Too often the debate about the Bible and homosexuality is reduced to a dull episode of Crossfire. On the right, the Book of Romans condemns queers! On the left, the Book of Romans celebrates queers! In four essays Moore queers the debate for both sides, discussing the gay iconography of Jesus, the Song of Solomon, and the masculinity of the apostles as well as his own travels through the study of the good book. Deftly combining easy humor with academic theory, Moore turns up the disco music and hangs a mirror ball over the debate."

Out Magazine

"For well over a decade Stephen D. Moore has served as a powerful advocate for the intercourse between biblical interpretation and contemporary critical theories. His latest book, God's Beauty Parlor, shares many of the characteristics that Moore's readers have come to expect from his work: a solid if often irreverent grounding in biblical scholarship; a penetrating awareness of the possible implications of utilizing those methods and theories as resources for reading the Bible; and a prose style that is engaging, frequently humorous, and clear but seldom simplistic."

Chicago Theological Seminary - Ken Stone

"Too often the debate about the Bible and homosexuality is reduced to a dull episode of Crossfire. On the right, the Book of Romans condemns queers! On the left, the Book of Romans celebrates queers! In four essays Moore queers the debate for both sides, discussing the gay iconography of Jesus, the Song of Solomon, and the masculinity of the apostles as well as his own travels through the study of the good book. Deftly combining easy humor with academic theory, Moore turns up the disco music and hangs a mirror ball over the debate."—Out Magazine


"For well over a decade Stephen D. Moore has served as a powerful advocate for the intercourse between biblical interpretation and contemporary critical theories. His latest book, God's Beauty Parlor, shares many of the characteristics that Moore's readers have come to expect from his work: a solid if often irreverent grounding in biblical scholarship; a penetrating awareness of the possible implications of utilizing those methods and theories as resources for reading the Bible; and a prose style that is engaging, frequently humorous, and clear but seldom simplistic."—Ken Stone, Chicago Theological Seminary

From the Publisher