Susan Ackerman, a respected biblical scholar who currently chairs the religious studies department at Dartmouth College, brings to her study of the David and Gilgamesh narratives two important qualities: a knowledge of ancient languages that allows her to explore the emotional coloring and sexual associations of key words, and a thorough grounding in contemporary gender theory, which allows her to negotiate the essentialist-constructionist debate concerning the evolution of gay identity.

Exceeding the Love of Women

By RAYMOND-JEAN FRONTAIN on March 1, 2006

When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros
in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David
by Susan Ackerman
Columbia University Press
336 pages, $45.

“VERY PLEASANT hast thou been unto me,” David laments for his fallen friend and possible lover Jonathan at the opening of the Bible’s Second Book of Samuel; “thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” The feeling was mutual, for the biblical narrator also records that Jonathan’s soul “was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” When King Saul’s murderous jealousy causes his young rival David to flee the court, David and Jonathan suffer a poignant parting at which “they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded.”

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