Sex, Wives, and Warriors

'...Each study is fascinating and thought-provoking: social context insights at their most perceptive...' Richard Briggs, Biblical Studies Bulletin, Issue 66, December 2012. '...a tour de force, often brilliant and original, always illuminating...The book is highly recommended to all biblical scholars, including New Testament scholars, particularly to those interested in literary and social-science perspectives. Esler has taken a necessary and sophisticated first step in attempting to bring these discrete approaches together.' Mark Sneed in Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament, vol 2.1, June 2013 "These stories offer readers an almost esthetic pleasure to enter an imaginative world which, whilst distant in terms of time and contemporaneity, can be established in the setting of ancient Israel using ethnographic evidence. It is in this context that Esler offers us a fresh historical and literary review of the Old Testament narratives. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and exhaustive book that illuminates and brings new life an ancient narrative using socio-scientific methods that can no longer be ignored if scholarship is to glean a true insight into the content and context of the Old Testament." Benjamin Bury, Reviews in Religion and Theology Vol.20 Issue 3. July 2013 "...Esler is doing what OT scholarship has been doing for at least 250 years - interpreting the Bible in the light of what can be surmised about the customs and social background of the presumed biblical writers - but doing it in a much more informed way than was possible for earlier scholars." Canon Rogerson, Church Times, 12 July 2013 "Esler's analysis of social and cultural themes in these texts is consistently fresh and perceptive - [ - ] A wide range of readers will benefit from Esler's distillation of anthropological research and from his fresh reading of familiar texts." William L. Kelly, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, The Expository Times, Volume 125, Number 1, October 2013 "Esler has written an excellent and refreshing work that I highly recommend." Walter Vogels, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, Vol. 42(3)