Gesture in the Bible and Beyond

This introduction proposes gesture criticism as an emerging interdisciplinary approach within biblical studies. Moving beyond the view of gestures as ancillary forms of nonverbal communication, it argues that gestures are performative, corporeal, and meaning-producing phenomena that shape texts, characters, social relations, and afterlives. Drawing on narratology, the concepts of performativity and corporeality, and recent gesture theory, the essay situates biblical gestures within broader cultural, artistic, and social contexts. The contributions to this special issue demonstrate how gestures construct and challenge social hierarchies, mediate emotions and affect, reveal human and non-human entanglements, contribute to characterization, and travel across media through citation and transformation. Together, these studies show that attention to gesture opens new avenues for interpreting biblical texts and highlights the centrality of embodied action in the production and reception of meaning.