Why Ask My Name?

Anonymous characters -- such as Lot''s wife Jephthah''s daughter Pharoah''s baker and the witch of Endor -- are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles. Adele Reinhartz here answers two principal questions concerning this aspect of biblical narrative. First is there a poetics of anonymity and if so what are its contours? Second how does anonymity affect the readers'' response to and construction of unnamed biblical characters. She is especially interested in issues related to gender determining whether female characters are more likely to be anonymous than male characters and whether the anonymity of female characters functions differently from that of male characters.