Abstract
The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament states the following in its entry on the Hebrew term saris:
Two socially contrasting classes are indicated by the term saris. The first includes distinguished officials at the royal court (1 Ch. 28:1), the second the group of castrates excluded from the community at large (Isa. 56:3). Because neither two separate etymologies nor a semantic change in one or the other direction can be persuasively demonstrated, one cannot determine whether this semantic ambivalence involves genuine homonymy on the one hand, or polysemy on the other prompted by extremely divergent semantic development.2
Inasmuch as eunuchs are objects of contempt to the rest of mankind …they need a master who will be their patron.
—Xenophon, Cyropaedia1
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Notes
On the physiological effects of castration, see Matthew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001), 34;
and Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003), 63, who discusses the effects upon facial features specifically.
Column VI, lines 10–12. See Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications 2; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 46. Relevant, too, perhaps is this curse from the Esarhaddon vassal treaties: “Before your very eyes may dogs and swine drag the teats of your young women and the penises of your young men to and fro in the squares of Assur…” (lines 481–83; Parpola and Watanabe 49). See Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (State Archives of Assyria 2; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 49).
See Saul M. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 5, 11–12, 27–28, and elsewhere, for more on genital damage and disability in ancient Israelite texts.
See Chapman, Gendered Language, plate 1; Brad E. Kelle, Ancient Israel at War 853–586 BC (Essential Histories; Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2007), 23.
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© 2011 Candida R. Moss and Jeremy Schipper
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Lemos, T.M. (2011). “Like the eunuch who does not beget”: Gender, Mutilation, and Negotiated Status in the Ancient Near East. In: Moss, C.R., Schipper, J. (eds) Disability Studies and Biblical Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001207_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001207_4
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