Although the majority of the Hebrew Bible prophets are men, their masculinity has rarely been examined. This article analyzes the masculinity of Jeremiah vis-à-vis traditional hegemonic ideals of masculinity. These ideals include sexual, physical, and inner strength as well as authority and persuasive speech. The book of Jeremiah values these traditional ideals but Jeremiah himself is not a hegemonically masculine man. He does not exhibit sexual strength since he is not married and has no children. He lacks masculine authority when he does not succeed in persuading his opponents. Whereas God shows masculine physical strength, Jeremiah does not defend himself against his opponents. Jeremiah also lacks inner strength when he complains to God in his so-called confessions.

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Although the Gospels include several stories in which Jesus interacts with women, the women themselves often have very limited roles in these narratives. However, there are also women who do not submit to the traditional ideals of emphasised femininity, which included silence and submissiveness. In this article, I study three women who challenge Jesus: the Syrophoenician woman in the Gospel of Mark, and Jesus's mother and the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John. How did these women shape and change Jesus's understanding of his mission? What implications did these narratives have for the women's femininity and Jesus's masculinity? In these narratives, Jesus attempts to put these unruly women back into their proper place. Previous studies have downplayed or excused the rudeness of Jesus's actions and words. Undaunted by Jesus's behaviour, the three women refuse to be silenced. Not only are these three women "out of place," their behaviour also calls Jesus's masculinity into question.

NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV.This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library.This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0