Maternal Bodies in the Biblical Books of Samuel and Kings: Notes on the Representation of Maternity in Crisis Contexts

Abstract

Although motherhood is the female destiny par excellence in the biblical narrative, it is an experience only accessible through a male point of view. In order to reflect on the problems of representation of the maternal body in the Hebrew Bible, I propose an analysis of different maternal characters present in the books of Samuel and Kings. My reading aims, on the one hand, to identify the features that define the maternal in the biblical text and, on the other hand, to offer an approach that allows to point to the implications that the crisis context the texts reflect have on the picture of the actions and the destinies of these female characters.