Taking Biblical Authors at Their Word: On Scholarly Ethics, Sexual Violence, and Rape Culture in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract Biblical scholars who reject the application of the terms rape and rape culture in the study of the Hebrew Bible stress the Sitz im Leben of biblical texts and the need for neutrality and objectivity in interpreting ancient sources. Some scholars argue that, because there is no lexical equivalent for the word rape in Biblical Hebrew and consent is immaterial to its authors, applying the terms rape and rape culture to biblical texts is anachronistic. Others acknowledge the prevalence of sexual violence in the Bible—particularly against female characters—and suggest that biblical authors indeed possessed a “concept of rape.” In this article, I describe how rape and rape culture emerged as salient terms in feminist discourse and biblical scholarship. I then present three forms of Sitz im Leben arguments that reject the terms rape and rape culture outright or qualify their use, demonstrating that each argument unwittingly aligns with harmful ideologies of the Hebrew Bible and reveals the retrojection of troubling assumptions grounded in contemporary hegemonic masculinities and today’s rape cultures. I conclude that interrogating the literary culture of the Hebrew Bible as a rape culture is both an ethical and a necessary academic project.