"Why Ask My Name" Anonymity and Identity in Biblical Narrative [Hardcover]

Unnamed characters--such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharaoh's baker, and the witch of Endor--are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles. Adele Reinhartz here seeks to answer two principal questions: first, is there a poetics of anonymity, and if so, what are its contours? Second, how does anonymity affect the readers' response to and construction of unnamed biblical characters? The author is especially interested in issues related to gender and class, seeking to determine whether anonymity is more prominent among mothers, wives, daughters, and servants than among fathers, husbands, sons and kings and whether the anonymity of female characters functions differently from that of male characters.

Preface
Part I. Anonymity and the Effacement of Personal Identity
1. The Bit Players
2. Servants, Stewards, and Armour-bearers
3. Transmitters of Information
Part II. Anonymity and the Expression of Personal Identity
4. Wise Women and the Unworthy Levites
5. Wayward Wives and Multifarious Mothers
6. Doomed Daughters
Part III. Anonymity and the Boundaries of Personal Identity
7. The Convergence of Characters
8. Character Confusion in the Heavenly Realm
9. Crossing the Frontier Between Reader and Text

This is a fascinating study and an easy book to read. --The Bible Today