This book seeks to reconstruct the Hebrew Bible's ideas of mental and physical disability and their social ramifications.

Introduction; 1. Constructions of beauty and ugliness; 2. Physical disabilities classified as 'defects'; 3. Physical disabilities not classified as 'defects'; 4. Mental disability; 5. Disability in the prophetic Utopian vision; 6. Non-somatic parallels to bodily wholeness and 'defect'; 7. Exegetical perpetuations, elaborations and transformations: the case of Qumran; 8. Conclusion.