Jean-Fabrice Nardelli (a classicist at the University of Provence, in SE France) has produced two books related to this subject.    Le motif de la paire d’amis héroïque à prolongements homophiles: Perspectives Odysséennes et Proche-Orientales (2004) discusses the homosexual pairing of certain heroic friends in the Odyssey (Telemachus and Peisistratus) and in the Bible (David and Jonathan).    Then in Homosexuality and Liminality in the Gilgameš and Samuel (2007), he further compares the relationship of David and Jonathan with that of Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh and also offers a critique of Susan Ackerman’s When Heroes Love (2005), along with other historical and literary evidence.    In this later volume Nardelli writes that now only a “dwindling consensus” of scholars fail to see the homoeroticism in these two texts.⁷    Further, in a new Appendix IV, which Nardelli has written to be included in the second edition of this book (a draft of which was received in advance by this writer), there is included a critique of Zehnder’s article.    Susan Ackerman (a professor of religion and women’s and gender studies at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, NH) sought in When Heroes Love to shed new light on Jonathan and David’s relationship not only by comparing the Samuel text with the Gilgamesh epic but also by applying anthropological rite-of-passage theory from Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) and Victor Turner (1920-1983), which describes a “liminal phase” that may be identified in various religious stories and myths, i.e., an ambiguous between-and-betwixt period in which the hero moves through tests and trials to emerge transformed with a new self-awareness and ability to make a significant contribution to his community.⁸    Nardelli draws attention to another important volume, L’homosexualité dans le Proche-Orient ancien et la Bible (2005), which he calls a ‘fine contemporary study’ in which the authors “unpretentiously tackle the passages relevant to same-sex dealings in the Old Testament and main related civilisations without allowing any preconceived agenda to obscure the vision they offer . . . .”⁹    In this volume Thomas Römer (a professor at the College of France in Paris, and of OT at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland) and Loyse Bonjour (a theologian) find that in both the Gilgamesh epic and the Samuel story a ‘range of references appear to conjugal [marriage] metaphors and to erotic images which point to the vital complementary nature of the two partners in each case.’¹⁰ 

Schroer and Staubli, and Zehnder’s analysis.    Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli in their article “Saul, David and Jonathan—the Story of a Triangle?” (2000) begin by proposing that “David and Jonathan shared a homoerotic and, more than likely, a homosexual [sexual] relationship.    The books of Samuel recount the love of [these] two men with utter frankness.”¹¹    Yet they note how recent interpretation, plagued by the ideology that heterosexuality is “natural” (and homosexuality is not), still strives to defend itself “against the assumption which the text itself nearly compels us to make, namely, that it speaks of a homosexual relationship.”¹²    Then they stress two important points:    (1) The existence of a regulation in ancient Israel did not mean that reality on the ground always matched what the law demanded.    (2) Also, just because a man had heterosexual relations does not mean that he could not also have felt strong homoerotic attraction.¹³    They note how Jonathan’s response, when he sets eyes on (the handsome) David, appears “like a bolt out of the blue” (cf. 1 Sam 18:1) and also how Jonathan’s ‘delight’ in David (19:1) recalls Shechem’s earlier ‘delight’ in Dinah (Gen 34:19), where the same Hebrew word (kaphets) clearly refers to sexual delight.¹⁴    They suggest that Jonathan’s asking David to “go out into the field [sadeh]” (1 Sam 20:11) points to a place where lovers sometimes go when they want to be alone, just as in Song of Songs 7:11, where the maiden whispers, “Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field . . .” (KJV).   Although the love of Jonathan and David became public knowledge, it was not lived out openly; and a similar kind of situation is seen in Song 8:1, where the maiden wishes that her lover was her brother so that she could kiss him in public, without criticism.¹⁵    With regards to Saul’s insult (1 Sam 20:30), Schroer and Staubli write, “The issue here is not only the political scandal of a royal son betraying father and kingdom for the sake of a stranger, but also the effrontery of this homosexual love,” which brings shame on Jonathan’s mother as well as on himself.    Relating to David’s aside spoken to Jonathan in his eulogy (2 Sam 1:26), Schroer and Staubli note how lovers in Egyptian love lyrics sometimes referred to each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’    The lovers in Song of Songs are also described as “delightful/lovely,” using the Hebrew root n‘m (cf. Song 1:16, 7:7, and 2 Sam 1:26)¹⁶—which the King James Version renders as “pleasant” in these three references.    Jonathan and David’s friendship was like that of Achilles and Patroclus, where there was a brotherhood in arms, a comradeship of unconditional faithfulness, and also an erotic side, since the Greek terms erastēs (lover) and erōmenos (beloved) were applied to them by ancient Greek authors.¹⁷    The writers of the David narrative were probably aware of the Gilgamesh epic (a fragment of which has been unearthed at Megiddo in central Palestine), where the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu is described in “explicitly homosexual motifs.”    The two men kiss, embrace and touch each other; and later Gilgamesh mourns for his dead comrade in a way very similar to how David mourns the loss of Jonathan.¹⁸    Schroer and Staubli also note how the Philistines came from a Mediterranean culture “which took homosexuality for granted,” particularly in the military and in the academy.¹⁹    No doubt the Philistines “cultivated relationships among men” also, and therefore when the David stories were written down, “it was no scandal that a King David had matured through such relationships.”²⁰    Schroer and Staubli also raise the question of whether David might have had an earlier sexual connection with Saul, their emotional relationship appearing to have “a lot to do with love, passion and jealousy.”²¹ 

Zehnder’s article “Observations on the Relationship between David and Jonathan and the Debate on Homosexuality” (2007) seeks to refute Schroer and Staubli’s claims in a long (48 pages), technical piece, many arguments of which will be examined more closely in two supplements that will follow this chapter.    At the end Zehnder finds no clear evidence in 1-2 Samuel which shows that David and Jonathan had a “homosexual” relationship, which he defines in term of “genital stimulation.”²²    In an extended linguistic discussion, Zehnder notes the main shades of meaning that various key words in the Jonathan and David story display throughout the Bible; and then he argues that these words should not be expected to carry unusual shades of meaning, especially a homosexual meaning, relating to Jonathan and David.²³    Such a strict beginning assumption would never be used in the study of literature in general, since it disregards Schroer and Staubli’s important advice that any word’s precise definition must always be “context-dependent.”²⁴    However, in this manner Zehnder tries to automatically remove any homosexual meaning that might be perceived in important words in the Samuel story, as with: ahaba/aheb (love/to love), kaphets (to desire or delight in), nashaq (to kiss), na‘im (pleasant), ak (brother), gadal/higdil (to grow large or enlarge), bakar (to elect or choose), berit (covenant), qeshet (bow), and qashar (to tie or bind).²⁵    Writing about David’s reference to Jonathan’s love in his eulogy, Zehnder holds that this was simply an emotional and spiritual love, or if more, simply “poetic hyperbole or ornamentation”²⁶—completely ignoring Jonathan’s initial response to seeing David (lightning-quick, like falling-in-love, cf. 1 Sam 18:1, so Schroer and Staubli).²⁷    Zehnder holds that one cannot make comparisons between Song of Songs and 1-2 Samuel because the final form of the latter may have preceded the former—failing to recognize that language in Song of Songs, in either case, was not necessarily novel but was probably already in common use.    In fact, Zehnder acknowledges that Song of Songs and Samuel were “more likely . . . composed or revised at a similar time in Israel,” during Solomon’s reign.²⁸       In the end, many of Zehnder’s arguments are highly tenuous, hypothetical and speculative; and he fails to refute most of the points made in Schroer and Staubli’s article.    Zehnder does note correctly, however, that direct evidence proving that homosexuality was a “common practice” among the Philistines is lacking in available archaeological and literary records.²⁹

Zehnder, and Nardelli’s analysis.    In an “Introduction” (pp. 128-130) and “Some Clarifications” (pp. 130-137), Zehnder notes different views that scholars have held in interpreting Jonathan and David’s relationship; he defines “homosexuality” and notes the difficulties faced in identifying this in history; and he discusses the Levitical ban (Lev 18:22, 20:13).    Then, in his main section, “Remarks on the Relationship between David and Jonathan . . .” (pp. 138-167), he includes lengthy discussions of both semantic [word] uses and narrative issues.    As already mentioned, Zehnder expends extensive energy to assert that homosexual meanings cannot be attached to any words here, but they can only carry commonly used shades of meaning found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.    Also, Zehnder repeatedly draws attention to key words in the David story that are used in other OT contexts to convey political or spiritual meaning, and then he asserts that Jonathan’s and David’s feelings and actions are meant to reflect God’s (spiritual) love or they derive from political motivation.³⁰    He continues the old assumption that Jonathan’s gifts symbolized the handing over of his right to the throne to David (1 Sam 18:4),³¹—even though Steven McKenzie has noted that “it is hard to believe that Jonathan would give up his future to someone he had just met,”³² or that David would reveal his dark secret (Samuel’s anointing him to be the next king of Israel) to the heir apparent.    In the narrative section, Zehnder downplays the references to David’s beauty, insists on David having an erotic relationship with Michal but only a friendship with Jonathan,³³ and holds that a homosexual relationship could never have been part of Yahweh’s plan to bring David to the throne of Israel.³⁴    In the fourth section, “The Canonical [Bible-wide] Context” (pp. 167-170), Zehnder contends that a homosexual reading does not fit with the Levitical ban, with David and Jonathan both marrying, and with the larger portrayal of David as Israel’s ideal king.³⁵    In the fifth section, “Evidence from Other Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations” (pp. 170-173), Zehnder accepts Staubli and Schroer’s evidence for Patroclus and Achilles having a sexual relationship, but dismisses the Gilgamesh epic as having “perhaps only very implicit [implied]” homoerotic connotations and as not being relevant to the Jonathan and David story.³⁶    Finally, in his “Conclusions” (pp. 173-174) Zehnder writes that “a (homo)sexual element does not correspond to the text,” that the Samuel story “does not provide clear, unambiguous indications” that Jonathan and David had sexual relations, and that “a presumed hidden message” can only be read into the story.    David and Jonathan only shared an “emotionally rich and profound . . . non-sexual relation[ship].”³⁷

 In general, Jean-Fabrice Nardelli in his Appendix IV material faults Zehnder for bringing a “tunnel vision” to his word studies and not allowing for any “ambiguity” or variation from “the unproblematic shade[s] of meaning that they possess elsewhere in the O.T.”³⁸    He notes how Zehnder argues that because nowhere else in the OT does the verb aheb (love) refer to homosexual desire, the probability of this occurring in 1 Sam 18:1 and 20:17 is “very low.”³⁹    Yet, Nardelli agrees with Graeme Auld (2004) that what the pair first pledged to was only a “covenant based on love at first sight.”⁴⁰    Zehnder tries to remove the sexual overtones of boshet (shame) in Saul’s insult (1 Sam 20:30) again by applying “his usual statistical trick,”⁴¹ while Nardelli counters that there was certainly much more to Saul’s insult here than just blowing off steam.    Nardelli agrees with David Tsumura (2007) when he notes that the Israelites would have viewed any sight of the genitals as disgraceful, but he disagrees with Tsumura’s outlook that political treason makes better sense as the cause of Saul’s anger than homosexuality.⁴²    In fact, Nardelli writes that the beginning part of Saul’s outburst could well be translated as “you’re a mama’s son [Jonathan], and in love with David,” and indeed the words “perverse/wicked” (‘ava) and especially “nudity/genitals” (‘erva) are highly charged “with overtones of iniquity and sexual indecency.”⁴³    Nardelli also criticizes Zehnder for failing to learn anything from Nissinen (1998) and from Ackerman (2005) in terms of what was involved in same-sex relationships in the second and first millennia BC,⁴⁴ and ignoring the degree to which sexual genders were constructed in a hierarchical way in virtually every corner of the ancient world⁴⁵―for Zehnder writes that “even in antiquity a same-sex relationship was not at all reduced to aspects of domination (or even exploitation) or active and passive roles.”⁴⁶    As Nardelli points out, ancient people viewed themselves not as “heterosexual” or “homosexual,” but rather as expected to take the proper active or passive role in sex.⁴⁷    In fact, Nardelli views what Zehnder offers as ancient Near Eastern evidence as simply “crude, derivative” and of little significance; and he calls his discussion here “very brisk and perfunctory [superficial].”⁴⁸    Also, Nardelli criticizes Zehnder’s view of Jonathan as only a “commodity” introduced into the story by Yahweh to advance David, describing this as an “attempt to import simplicity and order” into a story that is “highly complex.”⁴⁹    How Jonathan’s actions are meant to fit into the overall narrative remains “controversial” because of the “cloudy, largely opaque characterization” that the narrator gives him in 1 Samuel, a point that Zehnder misses.    Zehnder “reads too much into the divine favour given to David,” although this is a basic theme in the Bible and in Samuel.⁵⁰ 

Ackerman, and Nardelli’s analysis.    Susan Ackerman in When Heroes Love (2005) looks for liminal (betwixt and between) indicators in both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Rise of David, which “found throughout the Gilgamesh narrative can illuminate the [Samuel] text’s use of erotic and sexual imagery,” which otherwise remains difficult.⁵¹    She explains that in the liminal state categories are inverted and suspended and social borders are blurred and crossed.⁵²    In the Epic, she sees a feminized Enkidu as a liminal character,⁵³ Gilgamesh and Enkidu together facing trials in the wilderness as passing through liminal space,⁵⁴ and the divine revelation given to Gilgamesh as a liminal reward.⁵⁵    Turning to Samuel, Ackerman writes that David’s liminal phase begins in full when he flees into the wilderness;⁵⁶ and yet Jonathan and David’s relationship at court also “takes place wholly within liminal time and liminal space,” since Jonathan “is over and over depicted as wifelike in relation to David.”⁵⁷    Moreover, this “feminization of Jonathan within a homoeroticized context” is treated as an acceptable and “wonderful” thing (2 Sam 1:26).⁵⁸    Ackerman agrees with Schroer and Staubli in viewing Jonathan’s love for David as homoerotic⁵⁹ and Saul’s insult of Jonathan being sexual as well as political.⁶⁰    Ackerman notes how David “repudiates his marital relationship with Michal in favor of his relationship with Jonathan,”⁶¹ and she sides with Saul Olyan in viewing David’s comparison of Jonathan’s love to that of women in his eulogy as “extremely peculiar in a covenant context,” leading one inevitably to a “sexual or sexual-emotional interpretation” of that love.⁶²  

Zehnder holds that “Ackerman’s description of both David and Jonathan as liminal characters . . . has certainly much to recommend it,” but then he leaves the matter with no further comment, other than to say that this does not require that the pair be homosexual.⁶³    For extended analysis, one must turn to Nardelli, who begins by noting that Ackerman proves Robert Gagnon (The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 2001) wrong in his claim that Jonathan and David’s relationship “was completely asexual,”⁶⁴ not to mention the fact that “one grows tired of being told by him [Gagnon] that there is no room for same-sex love in the Holy design . . . .”⁶⁵    Also, because Gagnon is so unaware that ancient same-sex love and present-day homosexuality are not the same thing, his work “has little authority.”    Instead, Nardelli notes that David and Jonathan provide a clear illustration of “heroic homosexuality,” as seen also in the Gilgamesh epic and in many early Greek examples.⁶⁶    Those who assert that Jonathan and David’s same-sex attachment is only an anachronism (something later that is read back into history) or a hyperbole (simply Middle Eastern exaggerated emotional language) fail to account convincingly for various aspects in the Samuel text.⁶⁷    Yet Nardelli believes that there are limitations to the application of anthropological symbolism as used by Ackerman as a guide to explaining the ambiguous sexual markers found in ancient narratives.⁶⁸    Turner’s liminal rites-of-passage model, where anything can happen, opens the door for too much imagination and over-simplification, when particulars can and should be explained in other ways that are rooted in ancient culture.⁶⁹    For example, Ackerman views Enkidu’s long, loose-hanging hair as androgynous and feminine and therefore liminal,⁷⁰ while Nardelli counters that his abundant body hair and long locks were simply meant to present Enkidu as a handsomely virile figure, the very “epitome of masculinity.”    These features, while “supremely attractive like those of women,” were not meant to imply that the giant was womanlike.⁷¹    Also Ackerman views Gilgamesh as a liminal figure because he appears like an “almost helpless dependent when he beseeches his mother to interpret his two dreams” which foresee Enkidu’s arrival⁷²—yet Nardelli notes that women were more highly respected as dream interpreters than men.⁷³    Yet, there are authentic liminal (rite-of-passage) features here which Ackerman notes, e.g., when Enkidu interprets Gilgamesh’s dreams, since dream interpretation was viewed as a woman’s function.⁷⁴    Yet, in the Samuel story, one must be cautious about calling Jonathan “feminized” because in the story the young David really “does nothing save accept the other man’s love,”⁷⁵ and after Jonathan and David become lovers, who can say who was penetrator and who was receiver in this ‘gay couple’?⁷⁶    One can agree that Jonathan and David were lovers without having to press them into being the “top” or the “bottom.”⁷⁷    What may be more accurately observed, Nardelli points out, is how the pair’s relationship evolves from David viewing himself as Jonathan’s “servant” at the second covenant-making (1 Sam 20:7-8) to David finally viewing the prince as his “brother,” or equal, in his eulogy (2 Sam 1:26).⁷⁸    In the end, Nardelli judges that “the greatest part of the specifics addressed there [in Ackerman’s analysis of the Jonathan and David narrative, pp. 165-194] is sound,” although he is less satisfied with her analysis of the Gilgamesh epic, along liminal lines.⁷⁹ 

In summary, then, from 2005 on, the debate about whether Jonathan and David were lovers has only intensified, with the conservative theologian Zehnder contributing the most technical piece to date arguing that their love was only an emotional, spiritual love.    At the same time, Römer and Bonjour, Ackerman, and Nardelli have pointed out that the widely disseminated Epic of Gilgamesh demonstrates that same-gender love between male heroes was widely acknowledged and accepted in the ancient Near East.    And just as there are multiple, semi-hidden clues in the Epic which ancient Near Eastern scholars now widely read as pointing to Gilgamesh and Enkidu sharing a conjugal (marriage-like) and intimate (sexual) relationship, so the Jonathan and David story contains similar clues that can and must be recognized as sexual markers.    These signposts, taken all together (if not individually conclusive) show that this pair of heroes at Saul’s court became sexual companions, most clearly revealed in Saul’s outburst and in David’s eulogy.    And just as such sexual clues are an integral part of the Epic, so homoerotic details in the Samuel story should not be ignored or ‘explained away’ by convoluted and contrived arguments, but must be given their due place in the Jonathan and David story.    Zehnder’s writing displays many flaws, not the least of which is his dismissal of the Gilgamesh epic as an important comparative source.    His strained linguistic approach fails to understand that words sometimes can carry unusual, even novel, shades of meaning; and he fails also to appreciate the unique importance of a word’s context in determining its precise meaning.    He seeks to import political and spiritual meaning into various words where there is no contextual support for this; and in the process he flattens and diminishes his characters as complex human beings.    Overall his arguments tend to be convoluted, tenuous, tedious, and simply speculative.    Ackerman produced the first book in English entirely devoted to exploring parallels between the Gilgamesh epic and the David story, although she herself acknowledges that rite-of-passage theory does not apply as well to the latter story as to the former.⁸⁰    Schroer and Staubli, Ackerman, Römer and Bonjour, and Nardelli have added much solid and illuminating historical and exegetical evidence, not blinded by heterosexist prejudice (heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality is not) and showing that, based on the most careful reading of the Biblical text and survey of related historical evidence, Jonathan and David did share a homosexual, as well as an intimate, relationship during David’s early years.

 

FOOTNOTES:    1. http://epistle.us/, see “Homosexuality and the Bible,” then “Jonathan and David Series.”    2. Zehnder, Markus, “Exegetische Beobachtungen zu den David-Jonathan-Geschichten,” Biblica, 79 (1998), pp. 153-179.    3. Schroer, Silvia, and Thomas Staubli, “Saul, David und Jonathan—eine Dreiecksgeschichte?,” Bibel und Kirche, 51 (1996), pp. 15-22.    4. Schroer and Staubli, p. 22.    5. Gagnon, p. 146, n. 233.    6. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; pp. 83-84.    7. Nardelli, Homosexuality,  p. 2.    8. Ackerman, pp. 88-103.    9. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 27, n. 37; and p. 51.    10. Römer and Bonjour, p. 100.    11. Schroer and Staubli, p. 22.    12. Ibid., p. 22.    13. Ibid., p. 23.    14. Ibid., p. 28.    15. Ibid., p. 29.    16. Ibid., p. 30.    17. Ibid., p. 34.    18. Ibid., pp. 35-36.    19. Ibid., p. 33.    20. Ibid., pp. 35-36.    21. Ibid., p. 24.    22. Zehnder, pp. 173, 133.    23. Ibid., pp. 140, 144, 147, 152, etc.    24. Schroer and Staubli, p. 27.    25. Zehnder, pp. 139-157.    26. Ibid., p. 140.    27. Schroer and Staubli, p. 28.    28. Zehnder, p. 170.    29. Ibid., pp. 172-173.    30. Ibid., pp. 140, 144, 145, 147, 153, 156, 162, 166.    31. Ibid., pp. 162-163.    32. McKenzie, p. 80.    33. Zehnder, pp. 157-158.    34. Ibid., pp. 166-167.    35. Ibid., pp. 167-169.    36. Ibid., p. 171.    37. Ibid., pp. 173-174, cf. 166-167.    38. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; p. 84.    39. Zehnder, p. 144; and Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; p. 84.    40. Auld, p. 94; and Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 51, n. 66.    41. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 36, last line; p. 82.    42. Tsumura, p. 520; and Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 36, last line; p. 82.    43. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 27, n. 36.    44. Nissinen, pp. 128-134; and Ackerman, pp. 47-87.    45. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; p. 84.    46. Zehnder, p. 133.    47. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 5, and n. 4.    48. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; p. 84.    49. Zehnder, p. 166; and Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; p. 85.    50. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” added note for p. 27, n. 37; p. 85.    51. Ackerman, pp. 102-103.    52. Ibid., p. 104.    53. Ibid., pp. 106-108.    54. Ibid., pp. 108-111.    55. Ibid., pp. 115-117.    56. Ibid., pp. 203-204.    57. Ibid., p. 210.    58. Ibid., p. 221.    59. Ibid., p. 173.    60. Ibid., p. 187.    61. Ibid., p. 178.    62. Ibid., p. 191; and Olyan 2006, p. 13.    63. Zehnder, p. 167.    64. Gagnon, p. 154.    65. Gagnon, p. 164; and Nardelli , Homosexuality, p. 2, n. **.    66. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 27, n. 37; and  Nardelli, Le Motif, pp. 60-91, 204-226.    67. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 2, n. **; and cf. Zehnder, p. 140.    68. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 3.    69. Ibid., p. 16.    70. Ackerman, p. 106.    71. Nardelli, Homosexuality, pp. 17-18.    72. Ackerman, p. 105.    73. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 19.    74. Ackerman, pp. 119-120; Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 20.    75. Nardelli, “Ackerman [book review],” online p. 3.    76. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 39.    77. Ibid, p. 58.    78. Nardelli, “Appendix IV,” note added to p. 29, line 13; p. 88.    79. Nardelli, Homosexuality, p. 26.    80. Ackerman, p. 200.  

REFERENCES:
Ackerman, Susan, When Heroes Love, 2005.
Auld, Graeme, Samuel at the Threshold: Selected Works of Graeme Auld, 2004.
Gagnon, Robert A. J., The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 2001.
McKenzie, Steven L., King David: A Biography, 2000.
Nardelli, Jean-Fabrice, “Appendix IV: Additional Notes,” prepared to be added to the second edition of Homosexuality and Liminality in the Gilgameš and Samuel, a copy received by this writer on September 23, 2008.
--------, Homosexuality and Liminality in the Gilgameš and Samuel, 2007.
--------, Le Motif de la Paire d’amis héroïque à Prolongements homophiles: Perspectives Odysséennes et Proche-Orientales, 2004.
--------, “Susan Ackerman, When Heroes Love . . .,” a book review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, October 2007.
Nissinen, Martti, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective, 1998.
Olyan, Saul M., “‘Surpassing the Love of Women’: Another Look at 2 Samuel 1:26 and the Relationship of David and Jonathan,” in Mark D. Jordan, ed., Authorizing Marriage? Canon, Tradition, and Critique in the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions, 2006, pp. 7-16.
Römer, Thomas, and Loyse Bonjour, L’homosexualité dans le Proche-Orient ancient et la Bible, 2005.
Schroer, Silvia, and Thomas Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan—The Story of a Triangle? A Contribution to the Issue of Homosexuality in the First Testament,” in Brenner, Athalya, ed., Samuel and Kings, 2000, pp. 22-36.
Tsumura, David T., The First Book of Samuel, 2007.
Zehnder, Markus, “Observations on the Relationship between David and Jonathan and the Debate on Homosexuality,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 69 (Spring 2007), pp. 127-174.

 

© 2009 Bruce L. Gerig