Silent Or Salient Gender?

Silent Or Salient Gender?
Author: Hanne Løland
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2008
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9783161497056

Hanne Loland studies gendered god-language in the Hebrew Bible. She offers a theoretical framework that is helpful for the interpretation of biblical language used in reference to God and for the broader theological and scholarly debate on God and gender. One of the main questions Loland discusses is whether and how gende r is salient - that is, of significance - when gendered god-language occurs in a text. This is a new line of questioning in Hebrew Bible research, which so far has been mostly concerned with mapping the occurrences of feminine god-language. The question of gender significance is debated both in theoretical discussions on God, gender and language, and in three case studies (Isa 42:13-14, 46:3-4, and 49:14-15). These texts are chosen primarily because of today's research situation, where there has been a claim that Isa 40-55 (or 40-66) differs from the rest of the Hebrew Bible in its use of feminine god-language. Loland argues that there is in principle no difference between god-language formulated in similes or metaphors. Further, there is no significant difference between male and female god-language in the Hebrew Bible. These findings are also relevant for the contemporary debate concerning god-language in academia, church, and synagogue. This volume was recognized with the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise in 2008.

The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible

The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Hanne Løland Levinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 1108833659

This book investigates the texts in the Hebrew Bible in which a character expresses a wish to die.

On Femininities in the Song of Songs and Beyond

On Femininities in the Song of Songs and Beyond
Author: Vita Daphna Arbel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2022-01-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567700070

Vita Daphna Arbel uses critical theories of gender to offer an alternative reading of the multilayered conceptualization of the Song of Song's feminine protagonist: “the most beautiful woman”. Arbel treats “the most beautiful woman” as a culturally constructed and performed representation of “woman,” and situates this representation within the cultural-­discursive contexts in which the Song partly emerged. She examines the gender norms and cultural ideologies it both reflects and constructs, and considers the manner in which this complex representation disrupts rigid, ahistorical notions of femininity, and how it consequently indirectly characterizes “womanhood” as dynamic and diverse. Finally, Arbel examines the reception and impact of these ideas on later conceptualizations of the Song of Songs' female protagonist with a heuristic examination of Mark Chagall's Song of Songs painting cycle, Le Cantique des Cantiques. These compositions-selected for their diverse depictions of the Song's protagonist, their impact on European art, and their vast popularity and bearing in the broader cultural imagination-illustrate a fascinating dialogue between the present and the past about the “most beautiful woman” and about multiple femininities.

Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible

Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2017-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567668444

Notions of women as found in the Bible have had an incalculable impact on western cultures, influencing perspectives on marriage, kinship, legal practice, political status, and general attitudes. Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible is drawn from three separate strands to address and analyse this phenomenon. The first examines how women were conceptualized and represented during the exilic period. The second focuses on methodological possibilities and drawbacks connected to investigating women and exile. The third reviews current prominent literature on the topic, with responses from authors. With chapters from a range of contributors, topics move from an analysis of Ruth as a woman returning to her homeland, and issues concerning the foreign presence who brings foreign family members into the midst of a community, and how this is dealt with, through the intermarriage crisis portrayed in Ezra 9-10, to an analysis of Judean constructions of gender in the exilic and early post-exilic periods. The contributions show an exciting range of the best scholarship on women and foreign identities, with important consequences for how the foreign/known is perceived, and what that has meant for women through the centuries.

The Oxford Handbook of Isaiah

The Oxford Handbook of Isaiah
Author: Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2020-10-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190669268

The book of Isaiah is without doubt one of the most important books in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, as evidenced by its pride of place in both Jewish and Christian traditions as well as in art and music. Most people, scholars and laity alike, are familiar with the words of Isaiah accompanied by the magnificent tones of Handel's 'Messiah'. Isaiah is also one of the most complex books due to its variety and plurality, and it has accordingly been the focus of scholarly debate for the last 2000 years. Divided into eight sections, The Oxford Handbook of Isaiah constitutes a collection of essays on one of the longest books in the Bible. They cover different aspects regarding the formation, interpretations, and reception of the book of Isaiah, and also offer up-to-date information in an attractive and easily accessible format. The result does not represent a unified standpoint; rather the individual contributions mirror the wide and varied spectrum of scholarly engagement with the book. The authors of the essays likewise represent a broad range of scholarly traditions from diverse continents and religious affiliations, accompanied by comprehensive recommendations for further reading.

Making Sense of Motherhood

Making Sense of Motherhood
Author: Beth M. Stovell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2016-02-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1625646755

Motherhood provides a crucial place for exploring human life and its meaning. Within motherhood lies a deep tension between the pain, crisis, and association with death in motherhood and the joy, transformation, and life in motherhood. Few metaphors in Scripture (or in life) stand so firmly between life and death, love and loss, and joy and deep pain. After all, motherhood's meaning in part comes again and again at these crucial crossroads. Thus, motherhood has powerful implications for our biblical and theological understanding. Bringing together Jewish and ecumenical Christian scholars from North America, Oceania, and South America, this edited volume provides biblical and theological perspectives on understanding motherhood. The authors reflect upon a selection of biblical texts, systematic theologians, and Christian spiritual traditions to dialogue with the experience of maternity in its diverse manifestations. The purpose of the book is to provide essays that--through these biblical and theological lenses--engage the question of motherhood today, from the experience of pregnancy and birth, to raising children, to losing children and coping with grief. In this way, this volume helps to "make sense" of the complexity of motherhood.

Hannevi'ah and Hannah

Hannevi'ah and Hannah
Author: Nancy C Lee
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2016-07-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0227905415

Is it possible to hear women prophets' utterances embedded within lyrics of prophetic books? If so, women prophets should be represented as implied composers along with men. A few scholars have raised this question, yet a clear method for discerningwomen's voices - apart from feminine grammatical forms, genres used, and women's perspectives - has not been offered. This study offers a reliable method, based on the sound patterns of lyrical Hebrew. It discerns a consistent, clear signature of women's composing more broadly, and a different signature of men's composing, across all lyrical genres and historical periods. This methodological key, when turned, unlocks and throws open a window on a significant women's Hebraic composing tradition,resounding in texts where women's voices are attributed, and where they are unattributed. There are also surprising ramifications here for the biblical narratives composed by women and rooted in oral tradition. Integrating indigenous cultural, postcolonial, feminist, and oral poetic approaches, this inquiry moves past closed doors of previous suppositions, including that ancient Israel was simply patriarchal. It also brings a new appreciation of the practice of female and male prophets lyricising in partnership, in an indigenous culture in which women, individually or as a group, were not always given credit for their contributions.

The Bible and Feminism

The Bible and Feminism
Author: Yvonne Sherwood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 750
Release: 2017-11-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191034193

This groundbreaking book breaks with established canons and resists some of the stereotypes of feminist biblical studies. It features a wide range of contributors who showcase new methodological and theoretical movements such as feminist materialisms, intersectionality, postidentitarian 'nomadic' politics, gender archaeology, and lived religion, and theories of the human and the posthuman. The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field engages a range of social and political issues, including migration and xenophobia, divorce and family law, abortion, 'pinkwashing', the neoliberal university, the second amendment, AIDS and sexual trafficking, and the politics of 'the veil'. Foundational figures in feminist biblical studies work alongside new voices and contributors from a multitude of disciplines in conversations with the Bible that go well beyond the expected canon-within-the-canon assumed to be of interest to feminist biblical scholars. Moving beyond the limits of a text-orientated model of reading, this collection looks at how biblical texts were actualized in the lives of religious revolutionaries, such as Joanna Southcott or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It charts the politics of the Pauline veil in the self-understanding of Europe and reads the 'genealogical halls' in the book of Chronicles alongside acts of commemoration and forgetting in 9/11 and Tiananmen Square.

Poetic Heroes

Poetic Heroes
Author: Mark S. Smith
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 660
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0802867928

Warfare exerts a magnetic power, even a terrible attraction, in its emphasis on glory, honor, and duty. In order to face the terror of war, it is necessary to face how our biblical traditions have made it attractive -- even alluring. In this book Mark Smith undertakes an extensive exploration of "poetic heroes" across a number of ancient cultures in order to understand the attitudes of those cultures toward war and warriors. Smith examines the Iliad and the Gilgamesh; Ugaritic poems commemorating Baal, Aqhat, and the Rephaim; and early biblical poetry, including the battle hymn of Judges 5 and the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1. Smith's Poetic Heroes analyzes the importance of heroic poetry in early Israel and its disappearance after the time of David, building on several strands of scholarship in archaeological research, poetic analysis, and cultural reconstruction.