Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation

In this volume Hornsby and Guest introduce readers to the discussion of gender and sex and the various identities of trans people, including definitions of key terms such as transsexual, transgender, intersex, eunuch, cissexism, and heterosexism. They demonstrate how the Bible can be an affirmation of those deemed sexually “other,” providing statistics on violence against trans persons, critique of how biblical texts are used in Christian positional statements on transsexuality, and a call for “trans literacy” within biblical scholarship. The book offers readings of well-known and less-familiar narratives to illustrate that the Bible has been translated and interpreted with a bias that makes heterosexuality and a two-sex, two-gender system natural and thus divinely ordained. It features extensive exegesis of the biblical texts on the creation of the world, the masculinities of Jehu and Jezebel, the nearly naked dance of David before the Lord, and the book of Revelation. The authors present examples that show gender has never been a binary, and in the Bible gender and sex are always dynamic categories that do, and must, transition.