This paper explores the way several biblical stories of sexual misconduct are retold in The Testament of Reuben, and other, related, compositions. Through a close reading of these narratives we shows how, in contrast to the biblical narrative, the Testaments tends to expand the female characters' responsibility for causing the forbidden acts. This trend is further revealed as but part of a much broader transformation in which internal thoughts and inclinations rather than actions become the focus of the religious struggle. The stark misogyny of these Testaments, rather than merely a commonplace to be noted, is revealed here as a representation of a whole new era of sexual discourse; one which carries with it also a new economy of gender. This, finally, leads us to rethink Foucault's thesis regarding the Christian origins of sexuality in Late Antiquity.

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The increasing interest in Jewish carnality and sexuality in recent years has influenced many areas of research, one of which is the rabbinic ‘evil yetzer ’ (inclination). More and more studies discuss the rabbinic yetzer in sexual terms, and yetzer has become almost synonymous with ‘sexuality’. In this paper I wish to show that this perception lacks textual justification. Most rabbinic sources present the yetzer as the enemy of men, constantly dragging them to sin, and accounting for their difficulty to become and remain servants of God. The yetzer drags one to sexual sins just as it drags to any other sinful acts, as it is an antinomian entity, the enemy of Torah and its commandments. The sexualisation of the yetzer appear only in Babylonian sources, and for the main part is a post Amoraic development. The paper ends with an attempt to locate this phenomenon in a broader Babylonian context: a process of hyper-sexualisation which takes place in the Bavli alone.

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