The Conceptualization of Dress in Prophetic Metaphors: (195 Vetus Testamentum, Supplements)

While the last four years has seen a renewed interest in dress in biblical studies, much of this work focuses on dress as object—what it is, looks like, and who wears it. In consequence, the symbolic and rhetorical function of dress in metaphors is often reduced to its function in “real life.” In response, this study bridges the conversation from what dress is to what dress is doing. By focusing on dress as subject and a concept, this study identifies constellations that hold prophetic metaphors of the investiture/divestiture of dress together with respect to identity formation/deformation, suffering, and destruction.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 Dress and Nakedness as Processes of the Self  1 Introduction  2 Dress and Perception Management: Research and Observations  3 Nakedness, Self, and Shame  4 Jerusalem as Woman, Body as Metaphor  5 Considerations of Gender  6 Covering and Uncovering the Body as a Source of Knowledge  7 Making Meaning in Metaphor 2 Jeremiah 13:20–27: Deficient Perspective, Dismal Perception  1 Introduction  2 Text and Translation  3 Overview of Dress in Jeremiah 13:20–27  4 שׁולים: Skirt, Hem, or Something Else?  5 The Removal of Jerusalem’s Skirt  6 Uncovering in Exile  7 An Incongruous Perception  8 Conclusion 3 Ezekiel 16: The Performative Body as Invitation to Shame  1 Introduction  2 Metaphor in Ezekiel 16: Background, Foreground, Somewhere in the Middle  3 Text and Translation  4 Overview of Dress and Nakedness in Ezekiel 16:1–34  5 Degrees of Nakedness  6 Divestiture as Shaming Act  7 The Performative Body: An Invitation to Shame  8 Conclusion 4 Isaiah 52:1–2: Dress as Event and Means of Perception Management  1 Introduction  2 Text and Translation  3 Overview of Dress in Isaiah 51–52  4 Destruction versus Dress  5 Dust and Chains No More  6 Dress as Perception Management: Merleau-Ponty, Perception, and Attention  7 Conclusion 5 Isaiah 61:10–11: Dress as Ritualization and Invitation to Transformation  1 Introduction  2 Text and Translation  3 Overview of Dress in Isaiah 61  4 Constitutive or Attributive?  5 Dress and Ritual  6 From Isaiah 61 to Isaiah 59  7 Perceiving Ritualization  8 Redefining the Boundaries of Body and City  9 Conclusion 6 Conclusion: A Deeper Love for Reality Bibliography Index

About the Author :
S.J. Parrott, Ph.D (2022), University of Oxford, is a postdoctoral researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. Her most recent publication is in a volume on dress in the Hebrew Bible on the meaning and function of dress in Ezekiel 16:1-14 (T&T Clark, 2022).