Reviewed by: Anonymous

It is striking how often Christian theologians as well as churches interpret Acts 8:26-40 within a categorized framework. To many Bible readers, the identity of Ethiopian Eunuch seems obscure. The narrative in Acts 8 causes a lot of questions and misunderstanding.

However, traditional interpreters have addressed the ambiguity around the Eunuch in four ways. Some have ignored the ambiguity of Eunuch’s identity, others have concluded that we are not able to resolve the ambiguity, others have been trying to come up with definitive conclusions, and lastly, the rest of interpreters consider that the author of Acts intended to create ambiguity in the text. Burke specifically takes the position of the fourth approach, and argues that the ambiguity is not merely one of the aspects of this story but the essence of the rhetoric. He proceeds his views on the ambiguity by employing queer theory. According to Burke, queer theory decentralizes and denaturalizes categories that emerged from modernism. Queer theory rejects to be subjected to the binary. It replaces modernity by situating non-categorized concepts, such as paradox, irony, indeterminacy, and ambiguity at the center. In such a way, Burke proposes a new way of reading the narrative of Acts 8 as “rhetorically productive.” (123)

Burke first explains what are the five criteria which are functioning as the key factors to understand the ambiguity around the Ethiopian Eunuch’s identity. The readers may come across challenges while trying to understand what kind of person he is, in terms of his religion, class, race, gender, and sexuality. Burke raises the questions of if the Eunuch is a Jew-Gentile, proselyte or God-fearer? Is he a free person, slave or freedman? Is he a high-class wealthy official? If so, how he would be identified? Is he powerful but at the same time enslaved? Or how has he been freed from slavery? Does he have whitewashed skin or black skin? In terms of his gender, is he a castrated male or just a sterile man or unmanned one? It is more complicated when it comes down to the term Eunuch. This term means both castrated male and high official. What is the author’s intention for the Eunuch? Finally, the sexuality of the Eunuch is also ambiguous, as we are not sure if he is chaste or castrated for his master or did not have secondary sexual characteristics. How one could be both powerful and stigmatized by the castration? Burke points of highlighting these ambiguities is that Act 8 itself “permits all these readings with all their attendant ambiguities.” (15)

Burke offers critical insights that help read the Ethiopian eunuch as a castrated male. He first explores the common assertion of some scholars that eunuchs were often non-castrated court officials. However, he refutes this assertion by arguing that such an assumption overlooks the inextricable connection between the eunuch’s status, gender, and ethnicity. He goes on to explain how those complexities would have affected his status. Instead, we may find out the term for “eunuch” was used to refer to a castrated male in Acts 8. For example, in the Septuagint, for both elite and non-elite Greek-speaking Jewish, the word εὐνοῦχος referred to a castrated male or a person born with non-normative genitalia. Hebrew term, סריס, also was used to describe a non-castrated person connected to a ruler’s court.

Burke also elaborates on the identity of eunuchs in relation to the discourses of gender, sexuality, class, and race. In the ancient Greco-Roman context, the primary purpose of castration was to control the eunuch’s ability of procreation so that a master could argue the absolute ownership of a slave’s body making him incapable of engaging in sexual relations. Burke offers several reasons why ancient rulers found castrated slaves to be dependable. Firstly, they could not run away and establish other dynasties. Secondly, they were more dependent on their masters, since being removed from their family and home community. Thirdly, they were nor able to form a family because of the incapability of the reproduction. And finally, they were generally not accepted by others by their ambiguous gender and sexuality condition. The castrated males were the ones who in between but did not belong to either of male and female boundaries. Therefore, scholars see that ancient rulers employed court eunuchs because of this liminality, as they could function as surrogates where rulers could not enter. (102)

Burke finally explains how “men” and “unmen” are portrayed differently throughout Greek and Roman texts. Eunuchs were regarded as gender-liminal figures with one part in the realm of women and the other part in the realm of men: “In some discourses, eunuchs are gendered as not-men, effeminate males, ... even the loss of humanity itself.” (107)

Not only the gender but also the body of the Eunuch was ambiguous. His bodily features were so ambiguous that could not picture as definitive form. Since it is not clearly stated that what age or how the Eunuch was castrated, we only can guess that he might lack secondary sexual characteristics. A eunuch’s sexuality was also surrounded by uncertainty and ambiguity.

The text does not provide us with what kind of sexual roles he could perform. Again, the Eunuch was therefore perceived as an ambiguous character.

Burke also expounds the ambiguity surrounding the Eunuch’s class. In the Greek and Roman Empire, court eunuchs troubled social categories in terms of not only gender and sexuality but also of class. The first troubling group was elite slaves, who would have great wealth and influence but not dignity or agency as an independent being. Another troubling social group is occupied by court eunuchs that were freedman. They crossed class binary in a number of ways that they fell in between the categories of free and slave, and also still had obligations to their former masters even after being manumitted. Freedmen were therefore not slaves, but would continue to be treated very much like slaves.

These aspects of Burke provide us with a picture of what it meant to be a eunuch in ancient society. Burke creates the ambiguity in the Eunuch description that troubles the ancient discourse. However, it is significant to note that this ambiguous character has been baptized. And this event happened to him teaches us a crucial point. If the most ambiguous eunuch could be baptized, Gentiles also could be. The baptism of the Eunuch means that deconstruction of the binary oppositions in every aspect, between Jews and Gentiles, man and unman, male and female, free and slave, citizen and non-citizen, and penetrator and penetrated. Burke says that the ambiguity is not a problem to be resolved, instead it functions to denaturalize and destabilize the ancient constructions so that the Gospel seeps through outside the boundaries.

As readers, we may ask what strategy should we use as a queering lens before approaching the text. Therefore, Burke introduces queer theology and proposes its strategies to engage issues of identity, difference, and ambiguity. His suggestion is to use queer as a verb not as a noun. This creates “multiple strategies in order to deconstruct and to denaturalize the dominant social constructions of identity.” (42) Many have applied queer strategies in deconstructing binary oppositions in the realm of gender and sexuality. He addresses that queering has the potential to challenge the construction of broader categories around one’s identity. Considering this Burke’s offering, we may explore what is our personal queer reading of the text. As Burke referred to Bede’s etymological analysis that the Eunuch as the one whose body was not whole because of the ambiguity but rather called a man because of wholeness in mind “in Christ neither sex nor condition matters.” (13)

The importance of Burke’s ​Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch​ is that he challenges the lens in which we read the text. Having the ambiguity of the Eunuch at the center, we understand the whole narrative. We then must ask ourselves what would be our personal ambiguity be that we could bring to the center of our understanding of the text? My personal implication would be discovering a new space for unmasculine bodies, including my own, within the Gospel. If the Eunuch could evangelize, then my Asian female body, which has been denied ordination because of my gender can also evangelize. It is not wrong to conclude that reading through a queering lens is liberation. It denaturalized the construction of the masculine body as being regarded as the norm and wholly embraces anyone who has a non-masculine body. Overall, as the eunuch embodies the boundary-crossing nature of the gospel with all of his ambiguity. And therefore anyone of us can do the same.

Acts 8 should be read through a lens developed by queer strategy. When we approach the text with a queer strategy, we may bring the story hiding in the margins to the center and openly discuss the ambiguity within the Christian circle.