2026-04-09 Physical Witness: Autrocity X Disability in the Hebrew Bible (Corinna Guerrero)

Uh I'd like to welcome our online audience and our speaker for today to the Badè Museum and the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley's online talk series. I'm Aaron Brody, director of the Badè Museum at Pacific School of Religion. I would like to take a moment to highlight our theme for this year and to briefly discuss how our series promotes social justice issues through meaningful dialogue. The Badè Museum is an institution dedicated to advancing knowledge of archaeology and history of the ancient Levant. Over the course of the last few years, we at the museum have realized that such knowledge is enhanced by reflecting on and engaging with perspectives that have largely been ignored by modern-day society. As a result, and have been erased from mainstream historical narratives. The Badè Museum particularly welcomes scholars who are presenting marginalized perspectives that contribute to creating better equity in scholarship and society more broadly. This series, Disability in the Ancient Middle East and Mediterranean, lifts up the experiences of people with disabilities whose voices have been typically overlooked in the study of the ancient world. This program bridges the past and present through the study of disability in antiquity, its contemporary reception, accessibility, and its and its continuing impact today. Contributing to a more nuanced, inclusive, and complete narrative of the past. So, it is my distinct pleasure to introduce today's speaker. Uh Karina Guerrero is a Bay Area scholar of Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, who specializes in the book of Judges, biblical characters and atrocity studies. She bridges the seminary, university, public, and secondary education divide through teaching and talks like the one today. Mother to a teenage novelist and poet, she is most humbled by the honor of having been called Professor Eva's mom at work one day. She is a Spartan, a Bronco, and currently a dragon. It is my distinct pleasure uh to welcome actually one of my former students, a real favorite today uh is Professor Guerrero, uh and her talk is entitled Physical Witness Atrocity x Disability in the Hebrew Bible. So, Karina, the floor is yours. >> Uh thank you so much, Erin. Um before I get going, one of the things that I want to address up front is that when navigating atrocity studies and characters for whom have um been codified into the text due to violence, there will be a number of terms, a number of concepts that get brought up, for which if you need to pause, I completely understand. We are at that particular moment in society, which is kind of why um I do this particular work. So, let me start by sharing the screen, get us ready to go. Okay, let's see. Here we go. There it is. All right, and let's get our slides together. I readapted the Here we go. Let me move this to the side. I readapted the title um mostly for the purposes of getting very specific. The Book of Judges has a number of atrocity figures that are present, and as a result, one of the ones that I think is most helpful for us to get a sense of what's going on in the Book of Judges at large, but also one of the most overlooked biblical figures, especially because of what he represents. So, the talk that I wanted today is about disability made in the Book of Judges through the figure of Adonai-bezek. So, a little bit about me. So, yes, Bay Area scholar, teacher. I studied at the Graduate Theological Union and its affiliate schools, UC Berkeley and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And I've taught biblical studies across the university, seminary, church, secondary, and primary education Bay Area schools. The reason I give this background has to do with the way teaching biblical studies in the 21st century in a Bay Area environment with the dynamic um families, curiosities, conversations that exist here in the Bay Area, it's produced a certain type of question that has started to emerge, especially because religion can be taught in secondary and primary school, I get exposed to a number of young folks asking really adult questions about the biblical text. So, here's an example of a young person's question lifted up large for our community environment right now. So, what happens when war-made disability is embedded and reinterpreted within a sacred text? And what does that mean for enemy bodies? Um if I'm going to be very honest, had I presented this particular work 6 months ago, I would have framed it different. Had I presented it a year ago, I might have framed it different. But let alone we are given the time periods that we are given when we are, and instead this conversation is happening today. So, three interpretive lenses help really bring up what Adonai Besek presents, gets codified, gets interpreted as and moved forward when we talk about disability studies. So, I'll give a brief ancient Near Eastern context for the work and what it means to talk about an enemy body. Um a brief history of disability studies because in each wave of disability studies, it opens up ways that the text itself gives us a way that it is speaking within the text and that has something to be said for the questions that we ask today. And that's why I will focus specifically on the second redactor, which we typically call DTR2 for the book of Judges. So, our three interpretive lenses. So, the types of questions that can be brought forward when we think of an ancient Near Eastern context start looking like what could be done to an enemy. So, within an ancient Near Eastern context, when we start talking about atrocities, what is the limit of what can be done to an enemy body? What is broadly done? What is exclusive to a community? You can ask a number of questions which can spawn a number of research avenues. Um the other part is is what is the place of wholeness, like an entire body, for um specifically the role of kingship and how that plays out in theological interpretations of divine favor. When you take questions like this and you're specifically focused on the body and the roles an individual might have through their existence as portrayed in the text, when we get into a field like disability studies, now we have to be very careful because questions about what is considered a normative body or a non-normative body become really important in how we look at the text, how we interpret the text, and most importantly for living flesh and blood readers of the text or audience members or the faithful, however a community would like to describe that, um that definition becomes vastly important for how they experience um sacrality with the text and build out their faith. So, a good question is how normative or non-normative bodies are constructed. Like what exactly is happening in the passages themselves. Um but also when should a body be considered disabled? And the term in and of itself has a broad history. So, when we look at a biblical figure, what defines when the body is being talked about and how it is defined as abled or disabled? And that furthers into how is the impairment used to signify something moral or a theological claim? And this has a huge legacy in weaponized interpretations regarding um different parts of the body and how that is seen in an ancient Near Eastern culture of body and sin and how that plays out in how people are ministered to in um living ways today. So, those start into questions that we get in the second redactor. So, two waves of editing that bring the book of Judges together. One in an earlier time frame, which I'll specify, and then one in a second layer um at a later time, which helps us understand that the community that's codified these texts, that's bringing them together, they themselves are going through different moments in time and experiencing specifically different empires. Every empire has its own way of scratch squashing rebellion and navigating the body of an enemy. And as a result, when we look at different stages, knowing the impact of empire on a particular era becomes increasingly important. So, for DTR 2, what is the value of a counter narrative built in through the body of an enemy character by a later redactor. So, I'm giving a lot away. What we get in Judges is both an early narrative and then at a later point the editors come in and give us that counter narrative. That's the part that I think is important for readers today. So, let's just take a minute. Ancient Near Eastern contexts. I'm focused on the understanding of enemy for a couple different reasons. One, because it's a term that blinds us. And that phrase, that language of blinding, comes so much into our understanding of disability studies that to speak of enemy is also to use negative phraseology that can be problematic in disability studies. So, it's really helpful to get a sense of where one thing is built and how that intersects the other approach. So, enemy bodily treatment is empire dependent. Ranging from the flaying of a body, the impalement of a body, amputations with additional variations, so you can see this throughout the Assyrian Empire, all the way through something that may appear less physical, but nonetheless also impacts the body in tremendous ways, which has to do with deportations. And it's to that we look toward the Babylonian Empire when navigating a biblical text. So, biblical Israel was one of many peoples who experienced the effects of atrocity by empires of their day. In no way am I saying that biblical Israel was the only community that was impacted by empire. In fact, I actively encourage people to look through um different communities that had different contact with empire in different ways cuz it gives us a more vast research variety and a way to come into contact with living people today and how that impacts the legacy and heritages in the lands that we're all a part of. The second part is that when we're navigating someone like Adonai-Bezek, he doesn't have the full title of king, but he has an understanding that's of high leadership. So, when we navigate kings, kings specifically in the ancient Near Eastern context, both physically and symbolically, have an importance of representing wholeness in their social bodily integrity. So, the body of the king, the physical corporeality of a leader has its own importance, but then king stands in representation or symbol for that which is the social body of their empire, their community, their their kingdom, etc., etc. Queendom if that applies under a set of circumstances in research. But, it also an intact king, so for the king's body to be unimpacted by warfare or by amputation represents a divine support and a community wholeness. So, the body has its own divine representation in whether or not it is intact or whether or not it is pulled into pieces. And that's the part that becomes particularly interesting for when we start talking about the history of disability studies. So, disability studies as it intersects biblical studies has had about three definitive waves. The first talked about representation and social model. So, what we definitely gathered in that first wave was first critiques of ableist interpretations. So, looking at biblical characters from an ableist perspective, looking to fix people. So, the person is blind, therefore we can remove that blindness, allow them to see, and interpretations of of that sort. Also, in that first wave we saw the rejection of automatic interpretation of disability with sinfulness and divine punishment. So, an example would be something like if your parents had sinned and now you have a physical ailment due to hereditary sinfulness, now that body part represents not only a sinfulness potentially of that figure, but the heritage of that family line. So, during the first wave, there was definite critique and rejection of viewing biblical figures in this particular way for the people for whom are encountering these living texts. The second wave was where we started to see more historical context and disability hermeneutics having critique directly against the biblical authors themselves for saying things in a weaponization of disability. So, this can cover deafness, blindness, mobile difficulty. There's actually quite a variety that you can encounter within biblical literature if this is something of your interest. But, it also ended up opening up avenues to start thinking about de-weaponizing interpretation. And that's the part that becomes really critical for readers today because most young readers that are coming to a biblical text for the very first time, or someone who is coming to university for the very first time, or you were at a family Thanksgiving and they have found a passage related to them via social media and they are coming to this passage for the very first time. Um, the text itself has language in there that might give the person the thought that this is license to behave a particular way or license to interpret in a particular way or license you you see what I'm saying. So, what that second wave did we started seeing articles and works that were there specifically talking about how do we de-weaponize interpretation and how do we think through that? In the third wave we end up seeing theory and intersectionality coupled with sensory criticism start to emerge. So, now we're talking about developing a disability awareness or a disability consciousness while reading. So, very similar to early advocacy criticisms that we're talking about opening up different consciousness levels while reading but that's not necessarily about bringing new theory to traditionally disabled characters or metaphors. So, it's not about re-correcting the past. It is about learning how to see the text in a way where you are not only looking for um ableist attempts within the text by the interpreter but also the waves of reading that are built into the text that allow for um disability to be talked about in a way where it can be opened into new horizons for the reader. So, this is the part that becomes really important for new readers because they're already socialized in a way where they think among these levels but when they come to a biblical text there's so many layers of unknowing that they have to piece their way through that it becomes its own stumbling block. So, this is where it becomes really helpful. So, the next part was about up reading bodies that are more traditionally subjugated. So, this is a free license open call to see beyond the meta-narrative of the biblical text, to start actively looking at the counter-narratives built into the biblical texts that are put there by the writers and the redactors themselves. And this is where the work that I'll be talking about grows from because when we're growing our awareness for recognition that the text has opportunities for disruption. It's already built in. So, for the faithful that are like, "How can I read the text this way?" Well, it's already built into the text and that's what makes it so pliable for this kind of outlook, this kind of approach. So, let's take a look at the book of Judges real fast. When we deal with a character like Adonai-Bezek, we're really only looking at seven verses and it's the beginning of the book of Judges altogether. So, on the right side of your screen, I've laid out two redaction layers because what we end up with is a chiastic structure that starts with introduction one and then introduction two shortly following it, but those are our different redactors. So, then equally at the bottom half of the chiastic structure, we end up with conclusion A in chapter 17 and 18 and then conclusion B to that new redaction layer closes out the book. So, what we get in chapter one, these first seven verses, not only is it tethered to its own time period and layer, but it's also brought into a new interpretive outlook based in the shift between empire, but also the shift in the life circumstances of biblical Israel at that time. So, I've highlighted the direct verses about Adonai-Bezek in red and in English they would read, especially out of something like the NRSV, the New Revised Standard Version, they came upon Adonai-bezek at Bezek, Bezek being his the region location, and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Adonai-bezek fled, but they pursued him, they caught him, they cut off his thumbs and his big toes. Adonai-bezek said, {quote} 70 kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off used to pick to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has paid me back. {end quote} They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there. So, we get a very short snippet. It's really only three verses that give us one character, and we really never hear from him again. So, this is the wholeness of him. So, when we start to look at Adonai-bezek from within our ancient Near Eastern context, the ancient world physical wholeness is a prerequisite for priesthood and kingship. So, if we want to have a sense of what's going on behind the scenes within the context that this is being lifted up at, to lose your thumbs is to lose your ability to wield a sword. To lose your big toes is to lose your balance at a very basic level. It's an act of political castration and social disabling. So, taken further, it is the obliteration of one's humanity as the newly disabled leader cannot grasp or walk upright, two components of our species demarcation. So, when we think about what it means to be human, this can be tackled on a number of levels, theologically, spiritually, philosophically. When we look at the biblical text, and we're looking just at the presence of a figure on a text, but in pieces on the text. This is where it opens up for disability studies. So, if only the ancient Near Eastern context is examined, then disability is forced upon an enemy as a tool of humiliation. So, that's what we see having happened. The text creates a spectacle of the broken king crawling under a table for scraps and reinforces the ancient social model where physical capability equals human worth. So, this single statement is radically challenged in the world today. This idea that whatever you physically do is the equivalent of soul worth or the equivalent of your humanity, which would have been normative from what we have in understanding ancient Near Eastern culture in the Levant, but at the same time, we're going to get only this one layer first. So, the normative body is the ideal body from which birth, life, and sinfulness create opportunities for action and belief to either keep the body normative or create a non-normative body, hence the disabled body. So, what we're looking at, the physical act of amputation, the social aspects of excuse me, of humiliating a leader. You couple these together and what we're seeing is the creation of a non-normative body specifically allowable because he is an enemy. And I'm going to pause there. Because he is an enemy. That's the thing that allows most readers of the Book of Judges to read right past him. Because an enemy, based on the meta-narrative, is not worth giving a whole lot of time to. He's not given a lot of page space. We get three verses to get a sense of who he is, what happens, why it's happening, and punctuated. So, when we start to look at Adonai-Bezek from this enemy perspective, um in disability studies, when we use this lens, confronting the interpretation of Adonai-Bezek through a progressive annihilation of his rank, his capacity, and symbolic humanity questions the limitations of his passage, that small pericope, looking deeper at the wartime genre. So, the genre of Judges chapter 1 is a battle anal. So, this reopens Adonai-Bezek interpretation from the category of enemy. Why do I say that? It's not a poetic song that he's part of. It's not um it's not even something like we would get later in chapters 4 and 5, where we see a full-blown narrative and we see a poetic juxtaposed. So, though that seems like a category of the past, it's actually a category for the present and the future. How do we talk about enemies? How do we talk about those represented as enemies within the biblical text from a past that can be verified through other ancient Near Eastern communities? So, what does that look like to classify enemy? So, an enemy in the ancient Near East are in community political opponent. So, it can be a political opponent within your community. We can see it phrased within foreign aggressors with theological implication. That's kind of what we see with Adonai-Bezek. And also, enemies tend to generally be agents of chaos against divine order. So, when eight enemies are presented, they're never presented as something that is going to be reformed in a traditional way. So, the violence against the social body at any level often becomes the justification for extreme violence, and that can include mutilations, decapitations, impalements, and the list really does go on. Regularly unto death. So, let me pause there again. Let me say that one more time. So, as we see the text portrayed within the biblical text, what we see is that if any amount of violence from an in-community political opponent, a foreign aggressor with a theological implication tied, or any kind of agent that works against divine order, what you are going to see in the text is the possibility of an extreme level of violence levied against those individuals proportionally meeting to the point of death. As a result, an enemy can be ritually humiliated through atrocification in the historical past, potentially misread in the present for those who are encountering the text, and potentially misinterpreted for the future. That's the part that taking the time to look at atrocification, taking the time to look at those for whom we typically looked past when navigating atrocification, and taking the time to use a disability lens while looking at those characters, because to look at the non-normative body is to look at everyone for whom not only does the narrative read past, but history tends to overlook. So, let's talk about that theological part, the re-theologization. Um in the first layer, you get Deuteronomy 1, you get this little mini episode. And in three verses, Adonai-Bezek, by virtue of his non-Israelite existence during wartime experiences, had forced amputations as a tool of public humiliation and social disabling. So, it wasn't just like the humiliation happened, it takes him out of his social role. So, only through spoken words do we see this figure say, "70 kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off," the exact thing that happened to him, "used to pick up scraps under my table." So, it wasn't just that the humanity was cut away. Adonai-Bezek was in the habit of taking that dehumanization and turning it into an animalization. "To pick up scraps under my table as I have done." So, animals pick up the scraps under the table as they move through those environments. Um "So, God has paid me back." This understanding of retributive justice completely matches with biblical Israel in the 7th century. So, when we see this first layer of pulling the text together, starting to get them worked through, we see an understanding of the character mapped in their worldview and their theological understanding. Well, by the time we get the exile and we get the writing of the counter narrative with the second layer of redactors and editors, if this were a pure triumphalist history, the story would end with Israelite glory. But, the exilic editors frame this completely differently. The editor forces us to see symmetry of the violence. Adonai-Bezek says, "As I have once done, so God has repaid me." So, this presence of lex talionis, you're going to see this referenced in a lot of different scholarship about this particular thing, because it reads like an eye for an eye. And it's not that it doesn't, but it allows the second redactor subtly to warn the Israelite audience that the violence you inflict on bodies of others will ultimately be the violence inflicted upon you. That's the core. That's the thing that shifts between the DTR1 and the DTR2. An understanding that what we do to others in violence will eventually be inflicted upon you. So, for an exilic audience give or take the 6th century BCE whose own bodies had recently been marched over to Babylon, this is a chilling counter narrative against the glorification of war. That right there. A chilling counter narrative against the glorification of war built into the Book of Judges, one of the most violent books within Hebrew Bible. So, when we're navigating these vulnerable bodies the second round of editors coming with their new exilic life experiences brought about by new wartime tactics create a counter narrative that plays out from the foreign enemy. This leader, Adonai-Bezek, to the atrocities embodied in fragmented Israelite women at the conclusion of the Book of Judges. So, that's where we see not only what happened what he did to others was brought back upon him, but that second editor made sure to put this nice little conclusion right there emphasizing these other forms of destruction. Adonai-Bezek was an enemy, but the effects that are going to happen in community to the bodies of women the other end of the social spectrum is going to be magnified. So, the full full bodily dismemberment of the Levite's concubine positions at Judges 19, and then the kidnapping, forced marriage, and the implied rape for the daughters of Shiloh there in Judges 21. So, relooking at the dehumanization of the body of Adonai-Bezek through the counter narrative of the editors who specifically preserve their texts as a re-theologization of an earlier understanding, his body becomes freed from the pure historical atrocity. It's a crime of the past. It frees scholars from under-recognizing that his humanity cannot be excised as easily as his thumbs and toes. It builds an opportunity for today's readers and audiences to see that the biblical editors wanted future audiences to challenge wartime practices that attempt to dehumanize the highest of enemies because the atrocification becomes the atrocification of the home front social reality. Society cannot allow atrocification at war because it becomes atrocity at home. The living carry it home. So, there's a small portion. He had his thumbs and his toes cut off, but he lived enough to make his statement before he passed away. He lived to carry on the statement further. So, we get back to this question. What happens when war-made disability is embedded and reinterpreted within a sacred text? It's there to call us to see the reinterpretation, to see the possibility of greater violence, to see the fact that whatever happens on the war front will, if it is allowed at an extremely violent level, with those who survive, something will come home. And it will be experienced on the home front, which is why it is put there for us to be able to ask that question over and over about what it means for someone to be an enemy, what it means for how we treat enemies, what it means for how we see other and in community, and how we must also not only examine what we do to the other, the enemy, but we need to be very, very careful during wartime about what happens to women and young women at home. So, what does this mean for enemy bodies? It means we can't disregard them. To look at them as a pure enemy, the book of Judges asks us to look beyond that and to see the re-theologization and to see more humanity in the enemies that would have previously on stelae, on um potential ostraca, however we find them in material culture, to see beyond their dehumanization, to see beyond their atrocification, and to see beyond the fact that they are made disabled by the events, but with the ones that survived, they have something to say. And they have something to say about how that comes back home. So, what does this mean for enemy bodies? Um I ask that as a question for each person who hears this to consider. Thank you. All right. >> Wow, Karina, thank you so much. So much food for thought and such a timely topic uh given our present situation, our being the US um vis-à-vis Iran and a good portion of the Middle East. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um I'm uh wondering, let's see, I should open up my chat or I can also invite uh we have uh two live uh audience participants. Um I see um who are unfamiliar to me, but that's okay. I don't know if uh Caroline or if Alex uh if you have any questions for today's speaker um you're welcome to uh make yourselves visible uh and unmute uh and fire away. I could get us started. Um and then um and we can see if there are any further questions. Um uh uh first of all, uh what an amazing framing of the Book of Judges in general and then um of this uh first sets of passages in specific. Um thank you for that. It It really just helped me contextualize even the um the whole book in in many ways and and other incidents of um uh of atrocities that take place. Um I'm curious, you know, from a material culture perspective, sorry, archaeology. Um so I I So there's a a much earlier and and we're shifting over to Mesopotamia, so sort of the seat of two of the empires that you mentioned. Um there's a famous um bronze head of a king. It's thought to be Sargon. Um and it was, you know, of course, found in an archaeological excavation and its nose has been cut off and one of its ears has been clipped and I think one of its eyes has been gouged out. And I'm forgetting the name of the scholar, but um and this was a while back, uh but who who studied this and and found that that uh punishment of the statue matched Mesopotamian laws. And so what I'm curious of is the the cutting of the thumbs, cutting off of the thumbs, and the cutting off of the big toes, do we have any laws within our uh Hebrew Bible corpus that, you know, say that, you know, if so-and-so does such-and-such, then the punishment will be, you know, the cutting off of a toe or the cutting off of a thumb? >> As far as I know, no. Which I mean, if it's if it's in there, please let me um bring it to my attention. It's so specific. It's so specific as a wartime activity. And the thing that makes that particular act significant is because it cuts one off from even 15 No, it would have been let's see, 2,000, 1,500 3,500 years ago. It still would have been part of how we as Homo sapiens >> Mhm. >> exist. And that's one of the things, especially for contemporary audiences. So, if you've got someone under the age of 25 coming up right now, >> Mhm. >> their understanding of beinghood, what it means to be human, what it means to be a Homo sapien, what it means to be a person, yep, they are bringing together science, a vast deeper amount of science than either you or I probably got in grade school and all the way through early college, a vast deeper understanding to the biblical text, to material culture. So, the fact that it um it eliminates this person's not just his ability to wield a sword, which is important on the battlefield, and the ability to pivot, which would be important on a battlefield, but it's a specific dehumanization to animalization. That's the thing that makes it really specific. So, it's not just that we're going to eliminate your ability to do basic things, and we know that there are individuals today that have succumbed and well gotten over past losing a thumb or losing a big toe. We have absolutely today created some of the most amazing um, prosthetics and one's own human desire to to just overcome whatever circumstance that they have, uh, a true warrior's heart, so to speak. Um, what makes the text really specific for enemy and atrocity research is the animalization part. And that's the part that we see continuously playing out in the world. That didn't go away >> Right. >> as a tandem. Sometimes it goes animalization to dehumanization. Sometimes it goes dehumanization to animalization. But it's not enough just to try to remove someone from a rank or to bring them low. In this particular case, what you're talking about is in the book of Judges, coming to a fuller understanding that if we actually behave like our enemies, if we do the things that our enemies do when they create atrocity, we bring that home. It will live in the survivors and that's why at the end of the book of Judges, when you get to that second day of Moab, we see the full-body destruction of the Levite's concubine and then we see the the agreement to remove the daughters of Shiloh into a new tribe for that tribe to survive. So, we're losing consent there, which is a very modern way of talking about bodily autonomy, but it's all still present within the text. So, it's really about who we're looking at. >> Wow. Wow, thank you. Yeah, I hadn't thought about, you know, cuz in anthropological circles and in medical, we you know, we talk about the opposable thumb. >> Mhm. >> Right? Uh, and how that separates us from, I need help from anthropologists, but I think it separates us, you know, from from other animals. Uh, maybe not from, you know, great apes, but uh, if I'm remembering, but that's been a while, so uh, forgive me if I'm uh, if I'm incorrect on this front, but yeah, that's amazing. Well, and I just had a talk about, you know, education of teenagers, I just had a discussion with my high school age 16-year-old, and he was talking about the dehumanization of enemies, right? And how that's a necessary step before you start uh you know, enacting atrocities. And so this all kind of circles back to your topic. So that's amazing. Thank you so much. Um something else had come up in in my brain. I'm not seeing other questions. Alex Smith says thank you, as do I, but I'll I'll get to that eventually when we when we wrap things up. Um but there's another passage and I I don't think it's in Judges, it might be, but when the um this is where I get lost with chapter and verse, but whatever. Uh when the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines and is brought into the temple of Dagon, um who is of course um a Philistine god, uh and then the next morning, um when the I think it's the Philistine priests go back into the temple, they find that the statue of Dagon has been toppled and also has certain things that happened to it. It's been punished. And I just can't remember the specific uh if only I had, you know, the Hebrew Bible on Rolodex in my head, but I don't. Um but I'm not sure if and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but if you can remember that passage and talk about those the kinds of atrocities that happened to that to the And of course the statue really is the deity or has um elements of the essence of the deity within it, right? And so in some ways it's a it's a kind of divine showdown between um the Hebrew God, Yahweh, who is, you know, associated with the ark. Uh it's the it's Yahweh's footstool or his palanquin or whatever we want to call it. Uh and the God, the the opposing God, Dagon. Um so I I don't know if if you remember that passage well enough. Clearly I don't. I can't remember where it is, but uh it's a fascinating detail and anyway, the floor is yours if you want to comment on that. >> Sure. Um one of the things that I find more interesting now, especially as the world is less it in Catholic circles we call it less churched, but it is less religioned than it used to be 25, 35 years ago. And as a result, one of the things that I continuously encounter are these really vibrant questions, but they come with a little bit of video game. They because video games like to play with religion. So it's mixed up a little bit. Um a passage somebody saw on social media as part of an influencer and maybe maybe something a grandparent had them, you know, read or was part of at at a single trip. Something like that. So younger folks are really trying to make heads or tails of religiosity, but they're coming with a a less um religioned baseline than maybe we would have seen in the United States 30, 40 years ago. So that factors in because understanding the difference between worshiping a God today, a transcendent being that is not part of an object and helping someone understand that in the ancient Near Eastern world that image was tethered to that deity. You mess with the object, you mess with the god. So, in what you're describing, you take a nose, you're taking a nose. You inoculate, I'm sorry, inoculate the removal of the eye. So, if you if you take an eye, which we saw Samson Samson got his eyes taken, another part of the Book of Judges. But, when you're when you're attempting to attack an object, and that can also include um genital mishaps to uh statues, depending on how um uh formal and full the statue is. Um all of this is regularized. And we see these things even today, and that's why I think having a sense of the biblical text actually bringing in really good questions to it. When we look at a human body, or we look at an object of a body, I think in today's world, we need to really have these cross conversations, because we do see statues attacked at a number of different religious sites, and people are still participating in a similar logic, which is, if I want to hurt the community, I will hurt this community through this object, and typically it's a very particular part of the body that is defaced or is broken off as part of that particular act. So, though my work isn't specific to that, there is a constant interplay when we look at the um across biblical literature, and it'll carry into the New Testament for those who are Christ followers. So, we end up with this really rich tradition that if we use this like third-wave disability studies perspective how can we take a look at how ableism is present, understand if we are not careful it can be weaponized. How are we attentive to that and how do we ensure that those who are coming into contact with I'm sorry contact with the text have a new consciousness about what it means for the body to be the body and what is an idealized body and what is not. So for the social media influencer looks maxing world that we live in today, these questions about body and for those of us and I myself have a degenerative neurological condition so I wear a medical alert bracelet. For those that work through body variation yeah, it's it's a whole different way of seeing how to exist in the world. >> Wow, thank you so much and and yeah, your your response reminded me of I think it was the second Gulf War when um there was a famous statue of Saddam Hussein that was very intentionally pulled down by native inhabitants after after he was ousted um and literally dragged around in punishment. So it was the statue of Saddam that was being punished because in the minds of the of the folks doing the punishing it it represented the leader. It represented him. So you know, it's I mean obviously it's not a direct line between the ancient Middle East and the modern Middle East but we see some very similar ideas and practices still in existence. >> We do. And that's the part where for those who encounter texts beyond research, for those who would call it their sacred texts, their scriptures. Yes, the Book of Judges is incredibly violent, which is why we don't see people talk about it nearly enough. It's difficult to handle. But by making sure people understand that there are two different reductive layers, a really helpful casual way to think about it is in one era they told their stories and put them together understanding life a particular way. And later they made sure to edit so that every new generation had to ask themselves a certain question. And that's the part that should be brought out in the lived conversation today about body, about enemies, about how we treat people. Is that is that counter narrative? That was the last part put to that. Asking us to rethink how we treat enemies. And that's the part that if we are at least asking that question in the modern world today, um we've made a step forward. >> Wow. Well, thank you. I I I think that is a perfect place to wrap things up. What a statement. This especially when we think about you know, the way that um folks are being treated in the US today as enemies. You know, put in detention centers, etc. So, thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Um all right. Well, to conclude this presentation I'd like to inform our audience about our next talk in the series on May 7th, which is a Thursday also at 9:30 a.m. California time if you can catch it live. Uh Kyle Jordan will give a talk titled God is his potter disability in ancient Egypt. So, we'll be switching over uh from the Southern Levant to Egypt. So I hope you can all join us. And I also want to add that once today's talk is up on the Badè Museums and the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley's YouTube channels, uh then I'd like you um to to ask our viewers, please, uh to follow the QR code, which will be posted in the comments section uh uh on that YouTube page. Uh and um take the opportunity then uh to support future presentations like the one we enjoyed today. And I really want to thank uh Professor Guerrero uh just for uh opening our minds and also opening our hearts as well. Um I I personally really enjoyed it. I hope you all did, too. And just a big shout-out of thank you. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you for having me. >> It really was wonderful and time like that uh just such a it's such a vital way of thinking of how not only are ancient texts, but you know, the the ancient civilizations that we've been exposed to uh in this talk series, uh how the themes are still so vital in today's world as well. So, thank you, Karina.