Womanist Midrash, Volume 2, continues Wilda Gafney’s unique and imaginative work of in-depth explorations of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures.
This volume focuses on women and girls in Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. As in her successful and widely read first volume, Gafney uses her own translations and offers midrashic interpretations of the biblical text rooted in the African American preaching and rabbinic traditions to tell the stories of a variety of female char...
Womanist Midrash, Volume 1 is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Using her own translations, Wilda Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless. Gafney employs a solid understanding of womanist and feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and the socio...
Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder provides an engaging womanist reading of mother characters in the Old and New Testaments. After providing a brief history of womanist biblical interpretation, she shows how the stories of several biblical mothers—Hagar, Rizpah, Bathsheba, Mary, the Canaanite woman, and Zebedee's wife—can be powerful sources for critical reflection, identification, and empowerment. Crowder also explores historical understandings of motherhood in the African Am...
CLICK HERE to preview the table of contents and introduction. This book offers a much-needed introduction to womanist approaches to biblical interpretation. It argues that womanist biblical interpretation is not simply a by-product of feminist biblical interpretation but part of a distinctive tradition of African American women's engagement with biblical texts. While womanist biblical interpretation is relatively new in the development of academic biblical studies, African American...
Faith and Feminism brings together leading voices in biblical studies, inter-religious encounters, theology and ethics. Originally delivered as part of the Phyllis Trible Lecture Series at Wake Forest University School of Divinity (2003- 2013), these essays demonstrate the breadth of feminist interpretation on compelling topics: interpretation of sacred texts; Judeo-Christian and Islamic perspectives; gender and sexuality; race and cultural identity; and ecology and religion. An in...
Traditional understandings of God as deliverer depict God as a mighty liberator-warrior and wrathful avenger. Juliana Claassens explores alternative Old Testament metaphors that portray God as mourner, mother, and midwife—images that resist the violence and bloodshed associated with the dominant warrior imagery. Claassens discusses how metaphors of God as life giver began to develop in the aftermath of the trauma of Israelite exile. She offers compelling examples of how ...
The Women's Bible Commentary is a trusted, classic resource for biblical scholarship, written by some of the best feminist scholars in the field today. This twentieth anniversary edition features brand new or thoroughly revised essays to reflect newer thinking in feminist interpretation and hermeneutics. It comprises commentaries on every book of the Bible, including the apocryphal books; essays on the reception history of women in the Bible; and essays on feminist critical metho...
Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that it is necessary to reframe the field of biblical studies and replace the competitive teaching models prevalent in graduate programs with an emancipatory, radical democratic pedagogical model that fosters collaboration, participation, and critical engagement. To achieve constructive engagement with the differences of social location and diversity of perspectives that exist both in the Bible and in our contexts, Fiorenza argues, we must become ...
Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that it is necessary to reframe the field of biblical studies and replace the competitive teaching models prevalent in graduate programs with an emancipatory, radical democratic pedagogical model that fosters collaboration, participation, and critical engagement. To achieve constructive engagement with the differences of social location and diversity of perspectives that exist both in the Bible and in our contexts, Fiorenza argues, we must become ...
This best-selling book, now revised and updated, shares the work of many feminist biblical scholars who have examined women's stories for several years. These stories are powerful accounts of women in the Old Testament--stories that have profoundly affected how women understand themselves as well as men's perception of them. Here, Alice Bellis shares the research of feminist biblical scholarship during a quarter of a century, which renders a vast amount of refreshing, exciting, s...
In his epistles, Paul at various points uses maternal imagery to talk about his apostolic labors, sometimes actually referring to himself as a mother. For example, Paul writes that he must behave "like a nurse caring for her own children." Later, he writes, he "is in labor again" and must continue to nurse his fellow Christians with milk. These images, though known among earlier generations of Christians, today remain largely both unacknowledged and unexplored in thinking about Paul ...
In this introductory textbook, some of the most widely respected scholars in the field introduce students to the methods, issues, and theoretical frameworks central to feminist biblical interpretation. In highly accessible essays, the book covers the history, achievements, and cutting-edge questions in the area of gender and biblical scholarship, including violence and the Bible, female biblical God imagery, and sexuality. The contributors--women and men--are feminist, womanist, a...
In different ways, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all trace their beginnings to Abraham. His wives, Hagar and Sarah, though also pivotal in the story, have received far less attention. In this book, however, noted Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars focus on Hagar, Sarah, and their children, from Ishmael and Isaac to their many descendents through the centuries.Moving from ancient and medieval sources to contemporary appropriations of the Sarah and Hagar story, the authors be...
p>Many Christian feminists wonder if they can simultaneously maintain their commitment to principles of gender equality and their faith in the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament. Writing in response to feminist biblical scholars who approach the Old Testament with a hermeneutic of suspicion, Jacqueline Lapsley offers Christian feminists strategies to hear the subtle ideas and voices of the less powerful within the Old Testament texts. Reading and interpreting a number of ...
Exploring six Gospel texts in which women encounter Jesus, Frances Taylor Gench encourages us to view these stories anew through the eyes of contemporary biblical scholarship. Summarizing and making accessible the work of a diversity of feminist scholars while also engaging many of the more traditional voices of the past, she examines each story's language, structure, and literary and socio-cultural context, and recounts many traditional and contemporary interpretations. In the ...
Giving astute attention to social worlds of women of both ancient and modern times, Katharine Sakenfeld explores the stories of eleven women in the Old Testament. In clear and engaging fashion, she reveals the complexity of these women's lives, drawing out the issues they faced and relating their struggles to those women around the world face today. By encouraging women from across the world, in various cultures, to bring their own experiences to the biblical texts, and sharing t...
Sharon Ringe sheds new light on a heretofore neglected aspect of the Fourth Gospel--friendship--and through it links the concepts of community and Wisdom Christology. This connection between Johannine ecclesiology and Christology, she writes, is critical to an in depth understanding the Fourth Gospel.
Adultery. Harlotry. Indepedence. Power. Few today would say that all these are equal. But to the male-dominated, male-documented world of ancient Israel and early Christianity, a woman who asserted herself was the equivalent of a prostitute. In a world where religious law severely limited women's opportunities, those who did use prostitution and adultery to find a form of freedom not readily available to women where castigated for their actions. In this book, Gail Streete examines t...
Lydia's Impatient Sisters offers a social history of the everyday life of women, setting common experiences of labor, money, illness, and resistance in the context of the Roman imperial society.Luise Schottroff relates this history to important theological topics in New Testament, such as the revelation of God and the daily life of the church. Schottroff's work demonstrates how women were embedded in their social world.
Can believers talk about God and to God in a way that is not exclusively male and is biblically responsible? Johanna van Wijk-Bos asks this question as she examines alternatives to the dominant male language associated with God in the Bible. Focusing primarily on the Hebrew Bible, van Wijk-Bos mines a rich source of God-imagery. Along the way, she also discusses alternative language associated with God that transcends the narrow confines of male/female imagery.
The Bible holds a great treasure of amazing women. They are judges and prophets, caregivers and teachers, prominent matriarchs of large clans or quiet disciples, women who suffered alone or sang joyous praises to God amid the crowds. Their stories come alive in these pages as they are interwoven with the lives of modern women, bound together by common threads of strength and courage in the face of vulnerability and violation. From Eve to Revelation's woman clothed with the sun--from...
This is the first book-length attempt to examine the attitude of the ancient rabbis towards some of the most significant feminine figures in the Old Testament. It traces the biblical stories, examines their objectives and methods, and discusses how these original intentions were altered--sometimes beyond recognition--when the women discussed in them were subjected to the unique exegetical technique of midrash.The Gender and the Biblical Tradition series brings to a wide audience im...
This important collection draws together fascinating recent studies of aspects of the New Testament of special interest to women by Louise Schottroff, a leading European scholar. These essays, translated for the first time, will deepen feminist scholarship in the English-speaking world. There are insightful depictions of the Virgin Mary, "the woman who loved much," Mary Magdalene, and the women at Jesus' grave. Schottoff also studies Paul and women in the first Christian communities ...
Cheryl Brown studies the portrayal of women in Biblical Antiquities, attributed to Philo, and in the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, two documents that characterize women differently than their biblical prototypes. Her insightful investigation will bring new perspectives on the subject of women in Judaeo-Christian tradition during the Greco-Roman period.The Gender and the Biblical Tradition series brings to a wide audience important new discoveries concerning women and the Bible, an...
Using interpretation from modern critical scholars, rabbis, and feminist scholars, Katheryn Darr offers a fascinating book that provides new ways of understanding the stories of four biblical women. The author studies Ruth, a foreigner from Moab who became the ancestor of Israel's King David; Sarah, who lost hope of bearing a child yet she became the mother of Isaac and the entire Hebrew nation; Hagar, who was mistreated by Sarah, her boss, yet survived under persecution; and Esther,...
Women’s Bible Commentary, Third Edition
Author(s):Carol NewsomSharon RingeJacqueline Lapsley
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