Signs of Virginity, Rosenberg, Michael

Deuteronomys violent vision of virginity has held sway in Jewish and Christian circles more or less ever since. However, Rosenberg points to two authors-the rabbinic collective that produced the Babylonian Talmud and the early Christian thinker Augustine of Hippo-who, even as they perpetuate
patriarchal assumptions about female virginity, nonetheless attempt to subvert the emphasis on sexual dominance bequeathed to them by Deuteronomy. Unlike the authors of earlier Rabbinic and Christian texts, who modified but fundamentally maintained and even extended the Deuteronomic ideal, the
Babylonian Talmud and Augustine both construct alternative models of female virginity that, if taken seriously, would utterly reverse cultural ideals of masculinity. Indeed this vision of masculinity as fundamentally gentle, rather than characterized by brutal and violent sexual behavior, fits into
a broader idealization of masculinity propagated by both authors, who reject what Augustine called a lust for dominance as a masculine ideal.

Дополнительное описание: Introduction - Defining Virginity, Making Men; Part One: Testing Virginity in the Body; Chapter One - Testing Virginity in the Body; Chapter Two - Bloodied Sheets: The Biblical Nuptial Bed as Rape Scene; Chapter Three - Trustworthy Women and Other Witness