Raphael Barker

Texts like Genesis 16, 22 and 31 mention an enigmatic figure, ‛the messenger/angel of the Lord’. The identity of God and this angel is merged. The angel is anonymous and speaks with divine authority as if he is God Himself, there being no clear distinction between sender and messenger. The angel accepts being worshipped by men and is acknowledged as divine. This book explores the ambiguous relationship between God and his angel in early Jewish interpretations of Genesis. The study is set in a wider context as part of the development of angelology and concepts of God in early Judaism.

The Desiring-Image yields new models of queer cinema produced since the late 1980s, based on close formal analysis of diverse films as well as innovative contributions to current film theory. The book defines "queer cinema" less as a specific genre or in terms of gay and lesbian identity, but more broadly as a kind of filmmaking that conveys sexual desire and orientation as potentially fluid within any individual's experience, and as forces that can therefore unite unlikely groups of people along new lines, socially, sexually, or politically. The films driving this analysis range from celebrated fixtures of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s (including Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman and Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine) to sexually provocative films of the same era that are rarely...