Work

• Aymer, Margaret P.

• 2023

• Austin Seminary

• This article published here under the SBL Press Open-Access Policy. Scholarship on the Ethiopian eunuch focuses heavily on his foreign otherness, identifying him as the first gentile convert in the Acts of the Apostles. Such a reading tends not only to exoticize the Ethiopian but also to vilify the temple and, by extension, first-century Judaism, for their imagined rejection of this man. Using Saidiya Hartman’s work on “critical fabulation,” I propose instead that the Ethiopian be read as a Jew and, moreover, as an embodiment of the Jewish experiences of exile and enslavement to which his castrated body points. Such a reading supports the theme of the ingathering of dispersed Jews within the nascent Christian movement, which is central to Acts 1–8.

• Bible . Acts
• Ethnicity in the Bible
• Other (Philosophy)
• Ethiopian Eunuch, (Biblical figure)

• English

• Society of Biblical Literature

Empty

• PDF

• Text

• https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1423.2023.9 
• https://www.austinseminarydigital.org/documents/detail/8614 

• In Copyright. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/