Introducing the Women's Hebrew Bible (review)

Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 324 Reviews In contrast, the initial colon is a simple SVO topic-comment structure, completely “canonical” on the non-VSO view; such canonicity would not be inconsistent with aperture. The second dependent colon becomes the marked member of the pair, consistent with a licensing theory of poetic variation; here, an ellipsis of the subject is the required explanation. (This is not an isolated case where the alternative syntactic theory yields a superior analysis.) Lunn’s points for further study include consideration of non-verbal constructions and post-verbal word order as an extension of his programme. Point 5 on the nature and distribution of poetic variation as an index of stylistics , and accordingly a possible clue to the relative date of composition, should be emphasized, as should point 6 on the exploration of prosodic explanations of poetic non-canonicity. In a licensing approach, non-canonical syntactic structures necessarily appear in dependent, non-initial cola; however , these very same dependent, non-initial cola in turn are prosodically prominent in terms of phrasing and accentuation, and so it is reasonable to imagine word-order variation for the sake of improved cadence on the major accents. Vincent DeCaen University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada decaen@decaen.ca INTRODUCING THE WOMEN’S HEBREW BIBLE. By S. Scholz. Introductions in Feminist Theology 13. London: Pp. ix + 142. New York: T&T Clark, 2007). Paper, $29.95. This book is a very readable introductory survey of the entire field of feminist biblical studies—the history, the participants, the methods, and the main topics addressed by feminist biblical scholars. I heartily recommend it to the uninitiated. It opens the field, and it changes perceptions. No one will be able to see these stories quite the same way again. After a very engaging personal introductory chapter, Scholz begins with the history of feminist interpretation beginning with a twelfth century Christian mystic, Hildegard von Bingen. To von Bingen, Gen 1:26–27 proved that both men and women were created in God’s image, and that the then current Christian view that women were lesser human beings was erroneous . Scholz presents other women throughout the centuries who also argued for women’s equality based on these two verses. Most important of these was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, editor of The Women’s Bible (1895), who Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 325 Reviews believed the Bible to be the original cause of women’s oppression. Feminist thinkers and theologians in the 1970s found this argument simplistic, beginning in 1978 with Scholz’s own teacher and mentor Phyllis Trible, whose books God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality and Texts of Terror sparked a feminist hermeneutic of the biblical text. Trible was the first to point out exegetically that the human of Genesis 2 is sexually undifferentiated, and is better called “earth creature,” or “earthling.” Sexual identity begins only when the woman is separated out of the earthling, leaving the man. This important interpretation of the text places man and women on equal footing, created at the same moment in time. Scholz takes the time in this first chapter to outline the development of a feminist methodological hermeneutic. To Phyllis Bird a feminist hermeneutic is a two-step process. The first step is to understand the passage in its ancient context, to understand the author’s intention and of what and how the text aimed to persuade its ancient readers. Only then should one perform the second step of analyzing the gender relations, norms, and expectations that define women’s thoughts and behaviors in the text. Later scholars found the first step too confining, however, and chose to read the text as a comment on present-day patriarchal society, to use the text to unmask society’s androcentric bias. The goal was not to understand the biblical text in its time, but to “transform the patriarchal structures” of our own day. Chapter 2 describes the careers of four biblical scholars: Phyllis Trible, Athalia Brenner, Elsa Tamez, and Marie-Theres Wacker. These women are concerned that the Hebrew Bible condones, even advances, violence against women. Brenner is typical when she points to the androcentric metaphor of the conquered city as God’s wife...