Scarlet and Harlots: Seeing Red in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

In this contribution, I offer a semiotic study of seven terms for the color red in the Hebrew Bible. I contend that such an approach allows us to recognize that the terms convey far more than mere hues in that they appear in texts that cluster references to stigmatized sexual behavior and blood and/or that involve implicitly bloody contexts. I first examine eleven texts in which the cluster appears, and then sixteen more that employ the cluster in more subtle ways. Afterwards, I offer an explanation for the cluster by examining the sympathetic and performative aspects of color in the wider Near East – specifically, how red, as the color of blood, encodes notions of protection, fertility, and defilement. Finally, I demonstrate how recognizing this code sheds light on a number of other biblical texts.