Women in the Bible

Most of the women described in this study were atypical biblical women. Israelite women, like women in most cultures of the world, had status principally within the home. However, exceptional women occasionally had prominent roles outside the home and dared to assert themselves. The chapters contain biographical sketches, with comparisons to contemporary women's roles, of two dozen women. Beginning with Sarah of Ur and ending with Priscilla of Rome, their lives range over an era of nearly two millennia.

This composite, post-colonial and multi-dimensional volume contains sixteen original essays by distinguished Jewish and Christian Scripture scholars on a wide range of perspectives on the relation between Jesus and women as portrayed in the New Testament Gospels, as historically re-constructed in the context of Second Temple Judaisms and of Mediterranean society, as well as in present actualizations.
The contributions reflect the different social locations of interpreters from all continents and testify to the richness of methods employed in biblical interpretation at the end of the 20th century, ranging from literary approaches (narrative criticism, reader response criticism, intertextuality), historical-critical methods, archaeology and social-scientific interpretation to cultural studies and film theory.
By addressing new questions and searching for answers on untrodden paths the vital scholarship on Jesus and women will be re-viewed, enriched, and challenged.

Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror is a landmark among those studying women of the Bible. Focusing on stories of the maltreatment of women, Trible paved the way for subsequent feminist exegetes who have been very critical of such stories in the Bible, and who see Christianity as an unredeemably patriarchal religion. It is commonly said that these Old Testament stories of rape, murder, torture, and abandonment passed without comment until recent times. Here, Thompson traces and analyzes various Christian interpretations of these bible stories of women. In drawing attention to views other than Texts of Terror, Thompson speaks to Christians who are battling over how the Bible ought to be read today.

This groundbreaking study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. Meyers argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts and the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Analyzing the biblical material in light of recent archaeological discoveries about rural village life in ancient Palestine, Meyers depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and society.

In this provocative treatment of the Genesis stories, Phipps maintains that crucial points pertaining to gender have been overlooked because of faulty interpretations that have been accepted uncritically by society for generations. Examining the history of biblical interpretations, the study focuses on both past impact and potential for human relations in the future, and offers a broader concept in which the creation stories are seen as reflections of the male/female relationship as well as the relationship between both genders and their creator. This clearly feminist treatment of the creation stories presents the view that after cultural prejudices are removed, powerful insights for contemporary life are revealed.