Life and Death: Social Perspectives on Biblical Bodies explores some of the social, material, and ideological dynamics shaping life and death in both the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel and Judah. Analysing topics ranging from the bodily realities of gestation, subsistence, and death, and embodied performances of gender, power, and status, to the imagined realities of post-mortem and divine existence, the essays in this volume offer exciting new trajectories in our understanding of the ways in which embodiment played out in the societies in which the texts of the Hebrew Bible emerged.

List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsEditor's NoteList of Abbreviations1. Introduction: The Materiality of Life and the Sociality of Death - Francesca Stavrakopoulou, University of Exeter, UKPart One: Praxis and Materiality2. Blood and Hair: Body Management and Practice - Susan Niditch, Amherst College, USA2. Wherever the Corpse is, There the Vultures will Gather - Matthew J. Suriano, University of Maryland, USA4. 'Know Well the Faces of Your Sheep': Animal Bodies and Human Bodies - Rebekah Welton, University Exeter, UKPart Two: Value, Status and Power5. Birthing New Life: Israelite and Mesopotamian Values and Visions of the Pre-born Child - Shawn W. Flynn, University of Alberta, Canada6. Persons with Disabilities, Unprotected Parties and Israelite Household Structures - Jeremy Schipper, Temple University, USA7. Modifying Manly Bodies: Mourning and Masculinities in Ezra 9-10 - Elisabeth Cook, Latin American Biblical University, Costa Rica8. The Wisdom of Ageing - Hugh Pyper, University of Sheffield, UKPart Three: Extended Sociality9. Immortality and the Rise of Resurrection - Nicolas Wyatt, University of Edinburgh, UK10. Forming Divine Bodies in the Hebrew Bible - Daniel O. McClellan, University of Exeter, UKBibliographyIndex