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2 Gender, Hagiography, and the Bible As THE MOST HEAVILY SCRUTINIZED BOOK of the medieval era, the Bible created the normative principles of medieval culture.' Biblical images of women encompass the entire spectrum of Hebrew and Christian spirituality . Pregnant women symbolize the heavenly prototype of the earthly community (Revelation 12.1), and maternal and bridal figures represent earthly Jerusalem and the church (I Samuel 1-2; Galatians 4.26-27; Revelation 19.7-8, 21.2ff). Hebrew women serve as the guardians of Israel (Judges S.7) and personify human virtue (Proverbs 31.10-31), while powerful holy women possess the gifts of prophecy and political arbitration (Judges 4; Acts 21.9). Christian scripture portrays a handful of contrite women as believers of superior faith to most men (Mark S.2S-34, 7.24-30; Matthew 9.20-22, IS.2I-28; Luke 8.43-48; John 11.1-3, 20-44). Repentant and mourning women function as the human signifiers of contrition, compunction, and submission to the will of God (Luke 1.26ff, 8.2-3, IS.810 ; John 4.7-30, I9.2S). Both Hebrew and Christian females personify the contemplative and active components of spirituality (Genesis 29.I6ff; Luke 10.38-42), and they sponsor and serve holy men (2 Kings 4.8-10; Mark 1.29-31; Matthew 8.I4-IS; Luke 4.38-39; Acts 9.36-41, I6.I3-IS). A few Christian women perform the duties of missionaries and deacons (Acts 18.1-26; I Corinthians 16.19; Romans 16.1-4; Philippians 4.2-3; Philemon 2). These unconventional depictions of spiritual women, however, are counterbalanced by more traditional representations of women as the embodiments of fleshly sin. Corrupt female characters in sacred writings function as the incarnation of lust, idolatry, and prideful self-indulgence, and therefore they personify the part of human nature that is alienated from God. A few of the most important metaphors in Hebrew and Christian scripture rely on the image of woman as sin. In the Pentateuch, the harlot-figure exemplifies Gender, Hagiography, and the Bible 29 apostate Israel and other debauched women symbolize the tyrannical empires of the ancient Near East and their associated urban vices (Jeremiah 3; Ezekiel 16, 23; Isaiah 23.17-18; Nahum 3.4). The book of Revelation (1718 ) reproduces the harlot topos by identifying Babylon or the Roman Empire as a drunken whore. Guardians and destroyers of Israel, biblical women are simultaneously intimate with and estranged from God. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures focus on physical appearance, spinning, domestic service, patronage, and contrition as the outward manifestations of feminine piety. Biblical representations of female spirituality surface in later patristic, monastic, and conciliar writings that simultaneously empower and domesticate women's spiritual prowess. The starting point for any consideration of gender and sacred discourse is the Hebrew depiction of the expulsion of Eve and Adam from paradise (Genesis 2-3) and the resulting division of labor between the sexes. The Judaic and Christian interpretations of this famous passage range from praise for Eve's acquisition of knowledge and condemnation of Adam's passivity to denunciation of Eve's seduction by the serpent and her subsequent enticement of Adam." From the patristic period, biblical exegetes have concentrated on the story of the expulsion through the parable of human sexuality. The most immediate ramification of Adam and Eve's fall from grace, however, is God's merciful act of reclothing their naked bodies. In the City of God, Augustine explains that, in Genesis 3, God stripped off the garment of grace (immortality) and reclothed the first couple with garments of skin (mortality)." According to Genesis 3, clothing is the material representation of humankind's fallen state, and, in the subsequent books of the Hebrew Bible, ornamentation of women's bodies personifies further apostasy from God. Biblical Clothing "And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, and clothed them" (Genesis 3.21). The expulsion of Eve and Adam from the garden and God's subsequent reclothing of the first couple in animal skins symbolize the death of their prelapsarian bodies and the birth of their animal-like mortality." The Hebrew prophets, Christian evangelists and apostles, and patristic writers are extremely sensitive to the rhetorical purposes of clothing in the Torah. Because the reclothed human body is such an important image in this fundamental text from Genesis, early church fathers interpret subsequent books of the Hebrew Bible as using symbolic...

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