THEO 329: Feminist Theology

The Women's Bible Commentaryis 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 method. The contributors raise important questions and explore the implications of how women and other marginalized people are portrayed in biblical texts, looking specifically at gender roles, sexuality, political power, and family life, while challenging long-held assumptions. This commentary brings modern critical methods to bear on the history, sociology, anthropology, and literature of the relevant time periods to illuminate the context of these biblical portrayals and challenges readers to new understandings.

The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible brings together 37 essential essays written by leading international scholars, examining crucial points of analysis within the field of feminist Hebrew Bible studies. Organized into four major areas - globalization, neoliberalism, media, and intersectionality - the essays collectively provide vibrant, relevant, and innovative contributions to the field. The topics of analysis focus heavily on gender and queer identity, with essays touching on African, Korean, and European feminist hermeneutics, womanist and interreligious readings, ecofeminist and animal biblical studies, migration biblical studies, the role of gender binary voices in evangelical-egalitarian approaches, and the examination of scripture in light of trans women's voices. The volume also includes essays examining the Old Testament as recited in music, literature, film, and video games. The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible charts a culturally, hermeneutically, and exegetically cutting-edge path for the ongoing development of biblical studies grounded in feminist, womanist, gender, and queer perspectives.

#rahab #jezebel #dinah #hagar #bathsheba #delilah #sarah

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 American community and how these help to inform present-day perspectives. She includes questions for discussion with each chapter.

This book will be on reserve.

#hagar #rizpah #bathsheba #canaaintewoman

Expand the discourse and open the spheres of engagement to include new voices of scholars and bold, innovative interpretive approaches This edited volume brings together cross-generational and cross-cultural readings of the Bible and other sacred sources by including scholars from the Caribbean, India, and Africa who have not traditionally fit into the narrow U.S., African American paradigm for understanding womanist biblical interpretation. The volume engages the reader in a wide range of interdisciplinary methods and perspectives, such as gender and feminist criticism, social-scientific methods, post-colonial and psychoanalytical theory that emphasize the inherently intersectional dynamics of race, ethnicity, and class at work in womanist thought and analysis. Features Topics include the Black Lives Matter movement, domestic violence, and AIDS, while at the same time uncovering the roles of children, women, and other marginalized persons in biblical narratives Coverage of Hebrew Bible and New Testament texts, as well as Ifa spiritual narratives, Hindu scripture, and Ethiopic texts Responses from four respected womanist and feminist critics: Katherine Doob Sakenfeld, Emilie Townes, Layli (Phillips) Maparyan, and Sarojini Nadar

#delilah #jezebel #jephthah’smother #syrophoneicianwoamn

Texts after Terror offers an important new theory of rape and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible. While the Bible is filled with stories of rape, scholarly approaches to sexual violence in the scriptures remain exhausted, dated, and in some cases even un-feminist, lagging far behind contemporary discourse about sexual violence and rape culture. Graybill responds to this disconnect by engaging contemporary conversations about rape culture, sexual violence, and #MeToo, arguing that rape and sexual violence - both in the Bible and in contemporary culture - are frequently fuzzy, messy, and icky, and that we need to take these features seriously. Texts after Terror offers a new framework informed by contemporary conversations about sexual violence, writings by victims and survivors, and feminist, queer, and affect theory. In addition, Graybill offers significant new readings of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen. 34), Tamar (2 Sam. 13), Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), Hagar (Gen. 16), Daughter Zion (Lam. 1-2), and the unnamed woman known as the Levite's concubine (Judges 19). Texts after Terror urges feminist biblical scholars and readers of all sorts to take seriously sexual violence and rape, while also holding space for new ways of reading these texts that go beyond terror, considering what might come after.

This book will be on reserve.

#dinah #tamar #bathsheba #hagar #sarah

Bitter the Chastening Rod follows in the footsteps of the first collection of African American biblical interpretation, Stony the Road We Trod (1991). Nineteen Africana biblical scholars contribute cutting-edge essays reading Jesus, criminalization, the enslaved, and whitened interpretations of the enslaved. They present pedagogical strategies for teaching, hermeneutics, and bible translation that center Black Lives Matter and black culture. Biblical narratives, news media, and personal stories intertwine in critical discussions of black rage, protest, anti-blackness, and mothering in the context of black precarity.

This book will be on reserve.

#dinah #leah

Womanist Sass and Talk Back is a contextual resistance text for readers interested in social (in)justice. Smith raises our consciousness about pressing contemporary social (in)justice issues that impact communities of color and the larger society. Systemic or structural oppression and injustices, police profiling and brutality, oppressive pedagogy, and gendered violence are placed in dialogue with sacred (con)texts. This book provides fresh intersectional readings of sacred (con)texts that are accessible to both scholars and nonscholars. Womanist Sass and Talk Back is for readers interested in critical interpretations of sacred (con)texts (ancient and contemporary) and in propagating the justice and love of God while engaging those (con)texts.

This book will be on reserve.

#susanna

Professor Trible focuses on four variations upon the theme of terror in the Bible. By combining the discipline of literary criticism with the hermeneutics of feminism, she reinterprets the tragic stories of four women in ancient Israel: Hagar, Tamar, an unnamed concubine, and the daughter of Jephthah. In highlighting the silence, absence, and opposition of God, as well as human cruelty, Trible shows how these neglected stories interpreted in memoriam challenge both the misogyny of Scripture and its use in church, synagogue, and academy.

This is a classic work in feminist biblical interpretation written in 1982. The ebook is the 40th anniversary edition, with a new forward by Gale Yee.

#hagar #tamar #unnamedwoman #unnamedconcubine #jephtha

This book lifts up women of the Hebrew Bible who, working with the Divine, play amazing roles in the stories of Israel--prophet, judge, worship leader, warrior, scholar, scribe. They helped people celebrate the Divine's triumph over oppression. They spoke boldly to those in power. They went into battle to secure their people's safety. They gave wise judgments in important legal matters. They authenticated sacred texts and inspired a reform to help Israel return to the way of Torah. In roles that were not tied to their wombs or fertility, these women made Israel's story possible and helped it to continue to future generations.
#miriam #deborah #esther