Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts

by Sean D. Burke

Were eunuchs more usually castrated guardians of the harem, as florid Orientalist portraits imagine them, or were they trusted court officials who may never have been castrated? Was the Ethiopian eunuch a Jew or a Gentile, a slave or a free man? Why does Luke call him a "man" while contemporaries referred to eunuchs as "unmanned" beings? As Sean D. Burke treats questions that have received dramatically different answers over the centuries of Christian interpretation, he shows that eunuchs bore particular stereotyped associations regarding gender and sexual status as well as of race, ethnicity, and class. Not only has Luke failed to resolve these ambiguities; he has positioned this destabilized figure at a key place in the narrative--as the gospel has expanded beyond Judea, but before Gentiles are explicitly named--in such a way as to blur a number of social role boundaries. In this sense, Burke argues, Luke intended to "queer" his reader's expectations and so to present the boundary-transgressing potentiality of a new community.

Genres: Theology

192 pages, ebook

First published August 1, 2013

Reviews

[Gabby McWethy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read the version of this work that Burke wrote for his doctoral dissertation, and if you can get your hands on that one it is even better than this book version because it is much longer and goes into much greater detail on many topics. I found Burke's synopsis of queer theory to be one of the most comprehensive and easy to digest that I have ever encountered, and I appreciate his work just as much for that as for the actual application of that theory to the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. It is so refreshing to find an approach to queer theory and postmodernism that is informed by Christianity, since most Christians consider those topics to be antithetical to their faith. I am very inspired by this work and will probably be reading it again very soon

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating study on embracing (instead of trying to resolve) the racial, economical, social and sexual ambiguities surrounding the Eunuch in Acts 8 and how the embracing of the (purposeful in the author's mind) ambiguities surrounding this story leads to a fuller understanding of the rest of the book of Acts.

[anna faith adair · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is fairly dense, but really challenged me.

[Tynan Brooks]

Avoids the worst pits of queer theory and mostly focuses on the importance of the Ethiopian Eunuch's ambiguity to the narrative of Acts. Garbage cover design, though.