An Intersectional Perspective on Female Mobility in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

This article explores literary representations of female mobility in the Hebrew Bible. While it is often assumed that women barely moved in the ancient world, the study shows that the Hebrew Bible gives witness to a vast spectrum of travelling agents. The texts do not offer direct access to socio-historical realities, but as documents of cultural history, they are argued to hint at and echo the variety of the phenomenon in ancient Israel. It is not meaningful to speak of the travelling women as a collective, however, as the motives for their movement are tied to various socioeconomic contexts, ranging from slavery to economic migration to foreign policy. While class is fundamental to ancient female mobility, the sources also reveal the significance of other intersecting differences such as age, sexuality, kinship, ethnicity, or religion displayed by the (in)voluntary travelling agents.