Dangerous Tales in Bloomington, MN

The biblical narrative of Israel's only daughter Dinah is steeped in a silence that has posed interpretive problems for readers for more than two millennia. Carrie A. Cifers takes up the retellings of Genesis 34 in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, the book of Jubilees, and Joseph and Aseneth to explore how later authors encountered this silence. Through narrative ethics and socionarratology, Cifers demonstrates that readers have an ethical responsibility as witnesses to the text. This volume is a call for contemporary readers to engage biblical narratives in ways that mitigate interpretive violence and maximize each text's ethical potential.