Hospitality in the Hebrew Bible

Gudme applies an anthropological approach to the Hebrew Bible and carries out a systematic study of the role, function and literary use of hospitality in the biblical texts.

Gudme's starting point is a contextualization of classical anthropological themes such as reciprocity, guest friendship and kinship structures, which is supplemented by insights from more recent studies on gender, materiality and space.

She moves on to provide a much needed critical and systematic analysis and overview of the key hospitality texts in the Hebrew bible, including discussions of the ‘dark sides’ of hospitality such as deceit, rape and violence. Gudme shows that hospitality is a central theme and a core value in the Hebrew bible.

This is famously illustrated by the patriarch Abraham who acts as the perfect host to a visitor that turns out to be God himself in the Book of Genesis chapter 18.

In the biblical texts, hospitality creates social capital, it forges alliances and marriages and it is used as literary tool to characterize both people and deities.