JESUS, THE UNCHOSEN AND THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD: THE CENTRALITY OF THE CATEGORY OF DISABILITY IN BIBLICAL WRITINGS

Abstract

This essay focuses on the ways in which disability was presented in the Old and New Testaments, taking this fact as fundamental to understanding the representation of this category throughout history, as well as to project new ways of viewing this concept. We assume that, although contemporary hegemonic forces interpret the category of disability from an eminently clinical knowledge or from the perspective of human rights, past forms of understanding continue to be present, with emphasis on the religious field due to its expansive presence in representations of everyday life. Therefore, the reorganization of the religious form of viewing disability can cause changes in the way in which we relate to this phenomenon. The presence of people with disabilities and their relationship with religious practices occupy a central place in passages from the Old and New Testaments and without which part of the biblical messages would lose their originally intended meaning, which is one of the theses defended in this essay, characterized as a qualitative research designed through an integrative literary review that seeks to understand the formation of the concept of disability and its representations from a comparative historical perspective.