Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Reading Phinehas, Watching Slashers: Horror Theory and Numbers 25

Reading Phinehas, Watching Slashers: Horror Theory and Numbers 25

Grafius, Brandon R.

Hardcover

Bible StudiesFilm & Video ArtArt & Popular Culture

ISBN10: 1978701209
ISBN13: 9781978701205
Publisher: Fortress Academic
Published: Mar 20 2018
Pages: 228
Weight: 1.10
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
The tale of the zeal of Phineas, expressed when he killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman having sex and thus stopped a plague of consorting with idolatrous neighbors in the Israelite camp (Numbers 25), has long attracted both interest and revulsion. Scholars have sought to defend the account, to explain it as pious fiction, or to protest its horrific violence. Brandon R. Grafius seeks to understand how the tale expresses the latent anxieties of the Israelite society that produced it, combining the insights of historical criticism with those of contemporary horror and monster theory. Grafius compares Israelite anxieties concerning ethnic boundaries and community organization with similar anxieties apparent in horror films of the 1980s, then finds confirmation for his method in the responses of Roman-period readers who reacted to the tale of Phineas as a tale of horror. The combination of methods allows Grafius to illumine the concern of an ancient priestly class to control unsettled and unsettling community boundaries and to raise questions of implications for our own time.

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