Fully Human: Shame, Humility and the Creation of Humankind - Rereading Genesis 1-11

2002

This thesis explores the phenomenon of shame in the context of the Hebrew Bible, focusing particularly on the three major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel), because it is here that shame vocabulary is most prevalent. Shame is prominently discussed in the literature of psychology and anthropology. In the first chapter psychological explanations for the origins of the apparently universal human emotion of shame are described. In the course of this, phenomenological similarities between shame and guilt, grounded in the shared centrality of negative self-evaluation are outlined. The role of shame in social contexts is described with regard to stigma and, more fully, in the second chapter, in the light of socio-anthropological field studies conducted primarily in the Levant. In the Mediterranean studies shame is usually paired with its binary opposite honour. The honour/shame model is characterised especially by defined gender roles and challenge-ripostes. Shame is associated parti...

Journal of Ancient Judaism, 2021

The modern conception of the self as bifurcated between inner and outer realms has and continues to hold sway as an unchecked presumption in biblical interpretation. The past decade of biblical scholarship, however, has seen a burgeoning effort to problematize this imposition with regard to emotion and interiority. The present study joins this conversation by challenging the presumption of “shame” as an emotional and interior category in the Hebrew Bible, a challenge that has already been initiated but is ripe for further probing. Informed by a practice theory of emotion and embodied cognition, and focusing on the metaphor Shame is Clothing, which appears in Job, Ezekiel, and Psalms, this study proposes material and enactive readings of “shame” wherein so-called shame roots as bwš, klm, and ḥpr center on bodily diminishment and practices of defeat as a matter of relational dynamics and power disparities.

Recherches De Theologie Et Philosophie Medievales, 2007

The topic of shame has attracted little attention in Augustinian scholarship. This article will provide a detailed analysis of Augustine's case studies of Lucretia's rape and Adam's act of covering himself after the Fall in De ciuitate Dei. It will be argued that Augustine's subtle depiction of shame-feeling in the context of guilt and sin offers us an illuminating interpretation of shame and its intimate relation to personal identity.

2002

The Heythrop Journal, 2024

While the philosophical study of shame has gained popularity, its application in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible remains in its early stages. This paper delves into an analysis of shaming and unreasonable shame in the Book of Job, particularly in chapter 19. Through an examination of the Hebrew text and drawing on contemporary philosophical definitions of shame and shaming, I argue that Job perceives his friends, God, and the community to be employing shaming tactics against him, attempting to induce feelings of shame, a sentiment Job considers unjustified. In his case, shame is deemed unreasonable because Job has not violated any cherished values that would warrant such an emotion. Additionally, I demonstrate that while Job senses God shaming him, the biblical character acknowledges that his deity is the sole entity aware of his innocence–God's eyes perceive accurately, in contrast to humans', which only assess outward appearances. The role of God as the perfect witness to Job's life is fulfilled in the epilogue of the book, where Yahweh vindicates Job from the shame he has endured by publicly denouncing the serious faults of his friends.

PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY, 2024

Shame is the emotion that mediates the developing infant’s sense of synchrony with their social world. Between the ages of 1 and 2, the social world of infancy is characterized by here-and-now enactive rhythms with others, and shame comes about through ruptures in those present moment interactions. Between the ages of 3 and 5, with increasing narrative fluency through conversations, the toddler develops an ability to reflect on past actions in the company of others. They now can experience shame for actions they performed (or failed to perform) in the past that didn’t live up to the expectations of a familial community of minds. We understand both the purely enactive and the reflective versions of shame as operating on a continuum. On one end, shame functions as a signal to repair mis­ alliances. On the other, shame can become a totalizing experience of isolation and self-consciousness. We use these ideas to explore, in novel ways, certain psychoanalytic phenomena such as dissociation, narcissism, PTSD and body-dysmorphia.

Thetorah.com, 2022

The stories of Enosh, Noah, Nimrod, the Tower of Babel, and the marriage of the “sons of God” to human women (Genesis 4–11) all feature the Leitwort החל “began,” signaling an attempt to be more than just human. The human attempt to become godlike is a consistent theme throughout the opening chapters of Genesis. Each further attempt is highlighted by a form of the word ח.ל.ל “began,” which functions as a Leitwort (“Leading word”; מילה מנחה),[6] as Martin Buber called it, “a word or a word-root that repeats meaningfully within a text, a sequence of texts, or a set of texts.”[7] The term appears five times in Genesis 4–11. After pursuing the repetitions of the term, the text’s “meaningfulness” unfolds as a series of epochal ‘beginnings’ that chart repeated quests for godlike power inaugurated by Adam and Eve to become like God (Gen 3:5,22).

Journal of Philosophical Research, 2016

The atonement has been traditionally understood to be a solution to the problem created by the human proneness to moral wrongdoing. This problem includes both guilt and shame. Although the problem of human guilt is theologically more central to the doctrine of the atonement, the problem of shame is something that the atonement might be supposed to remedy as well if it is to be a complete antidote to the problems generated by human wrongdoing. In this paper, I discuss the difference between guilt and shame; I explore the different varieties of shame, and I suggest ways to connect the atonement to a remedy for all the kinds of shame.

Dress Hermeneutics and the Hebrew Bible: "Let Your Garments Always Be Bright" (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 724), 2022

nakedness from the divine? This is unlikely since previously in the narrative the man and the woman are routinely in the presence of God naked, and the deity expresses not a hint of displeasure with their nudity. Although a reader might likely infer feelings of shame upon the couple, the text itself is silent. Rather than shame, the narrative connects the primordial couple's act of clothing to fear. In Gen. 3:10 Adam defends his actions before the deity, explaining that he was afraid because he could see that he was naked and out of this fear, he attempted to hide himself in the garden. Not only is the man apparently unmotivated by shame, there is no indication in the narrative that Adam felt aggrieved for violating the commandment. Instead, he reacts out of a sense of his own preservation. The shift from nakedness to girding fig leaves in the midst of the trees was to hide from YHWH, not out of shame but fear. 8 Moreover, the deity, inattentive to Adam's fear (after all the deity could have said "do not fear, " but does not), fixates on the newly uncovered knowledge of Adamthat he knows he is naked, not that he is naked. Perhaps rhetorically, YHWH queries if he was told by someone (the serpent?) that he was naked? Then, specifically, the deity interrogates Adam to discern if he violated the commandment and ate from the tree of discernment. Instead of answering the deity's question directly, "Yes, I ate from the tree, " Adam blames his wife: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate. " Turning to the woman, the deity now interrogates her actions. She, too, adopts a circuitous answer and blames the serpent for "tricking her" into eating the fruit. Although both the man and the woman blame and dodge, it is not evident in the text that they do this motivated by shame. Fear, itself, of their own vulnerability before the deity, is the narrative's overt contextual explanation. Why is the couple afraid after eating the fruit when earlier they were not? Prior to and between the two acts of clothing, the narrative emphasizes the deity's command. In Gen. 2:16, YHWH commands the man to refrain from eating from the tree of discernment ‫ם‬ ‫דָ‬ ‫אָ‬ ‫ַל-הָ‬ ‫ע‬ (‫ים‬ ‫ֱֹלהִ‬ ‫א‬ ‫יהוה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫צַ‬ ‫ַיְ‬ ‫.)ו‬ In YHWH's interrogation of Adam in Gen. 3:11, the same lemma (ṣāwāh ‫ָה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫צָ‬ "to command") is emphasized (ּ ‫תָ‬ ‫לְ‬ ָ ‫כ‬ ‫אָ‬ ‫ּּנוּ‬ ‫מֶ‬ ‫ָל-מִ‬ ‫ֲכ‬ ‫א‬ ‫י‬ ‫ּתִ‬ ‫לְ‬ ‫בִ‬ ‫לְ‬ ‫יָך‬ ‫ּיתִ‬ ‫וִ‬ ‫צִ‬ ‫ׁר‬ ‫שֶ‬ ֲ ‫א‬ ‫ֵץ‬ ‫ע‬ ‫ן-הָ‬ ‫ֲמִ‬ ‫ה‬ ‫ּה‬ ‫תָ‬ ‫.)אָ‬ Then, pointedly, in the chiasmus of the curses the commandment violation is invoked, "because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you ‫ָה(‬ ‫ו‬ ‫,)צָ‬ 'You shall not eat of it, ' cursed is the ground because of you" (Gen. 3:17). In terms of characterization the deity repeatedly chooses the language of command much like a parent, or a human sovereign, or even a despot. Because the couple, each alone and in turn, refuses to take responsibility for violating the divine 8. Note this trauma reflex is not necessarily normative. In Lam. 1:9, the exposed and stained persona (mother Jerusalem) wants to be seen in her misery. See Anne Letourneau, "The Stain of Trauma: The Skirts of Jerusalem in Lam. 1:9" (forthcoming). Letourneau's observation leads one to posit the following question: "Is there a sense that the primordial couple wants to be found out at some level in their psyche despite hiding?"