Related Papers
Protokolle zur Bibel 27 (2018) 24-41.
GENDER TROUBLE IN JUDGES 4? An Intertextual Approach to the Violent Depiction of Jael
2018 •
Sigrid Eder
This paper contributes to the critical gender discourse by aiming to highlight the relationship between acts of violence and the construction of maleness and femaleness in Jdg 4. After defining how to speak about violence and gender in the Bible, the presentation of Jael in Jdg 4:17-22 will be analysed through a narrative text analysis, through an inner-biblical intertextual approach and through the comparison between the commentaries on Jdg 4 and the biblical text itself. Combining the theory about violence and gender with these three analytical steps, the paper attempts to critically evaluate the effects of gender stereotyping in the discourse about violent women.
Religious Studies Review
Women of War, Women of Woe: Joshua and Judges through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters. Edited by Marion AnnTaylor and ChristianaDe Groot. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016. Pp. x + 278. $35.00
2017 •
Heather McKay
The 'Mothers' Who Were Not: Childless Woman Warriors and Motherhood Imagery in Early Jewish Literature
Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
Biblical Interpretation
Women, Violence, and the Bible: The Story of Jael and Sisera as a Case Study
2019 •
Carleen Mandolfo
Biblical scholars need to pay more attention to violent women as feminist subjects, and violence as a means of enabling women, rather than the disabling that has occurred through a politically and conceptually strategic commitment to their victimization. This paper explores the feminist erasure of Jael's violence in Judges 4, and asks whether this violence might be appreciated as a vehicle of feminist empowerment. This erasure does biblical women a disservice by not taking their violence seriously as a signifier of their identity as women. How might violent biblical women model a kind of radical agency that feminists have typically shied away from? Dismissing these female characters as patriarchal patsies robs them of what might be their last recourse to self-expression. Rather than requiring justification, their violence might better be heralded as a fundamental qualifier of their femininity.
Violence in the Hebrew Bible
Jael: mighty hero or slippery man-slayer? Perspectives on the interpretation of Judges 4-5, then and now.
Jael (from the account of her actions in Judges 4-5) has been viewed in many ways, including as a courageous hero or a deceitful murderer. However, a literary-rhetorical study of the song indicates another purpose of the accounts, one that is not related to her character. Rather a more compelling interpretation (Wong 2007) is that the two texts, particularly the song, were composed to stir the tribes to participate in YHWH's cause, in battle against the enemy. The climax of the account (from the literary rhetoric) is Jael's actions. For Israel at that time, Jael was a hero. But how do women today view Jael's "violent act"? Is violence ever seen as a necessary act for them? For this paper, groups in South Africa study and perform Judges 4-5, with particular focus on the texts relating to Jael. The first group is Coloured women growing up in the violence of the Cape Flats, some of whom deal with "violent men" in their lives through manslaughter. The second group is (educated) young African refugees, from societies where women traditionally submit to men.
Violence and Gender: The Ugaritic "Violent Female" Tradition and the Story of Deborah in Judges 4
Sam Tsang
This article points out the parallels between the Ugaritic story of Aqhat and the story of Deborah in Judges 4. Although many scholars have noted parallels between Ugaritie literature and stories in Judges, this parallel is especially striking because the characters in both stories are ＜||＞violent females.＜||＞ At the same time, this article also notes the various contrasts between the characters in the story and the Canaanite characters as well as those between YHWH and the Canaanite gods. The author of Deborah's story used Ugaritic-like rhetoric of violent females to accomplish his theological purpose of praising the women and YHWH in the Deborah story. More importantly, such rhetoric points to a tactic for Sino-Christian theology where the modern theologian actively seeks to engage Chinese culture.
review (2005) of Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare
Seth Richardson
Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
Man, Woman and God in Judg 4
2006 •
Elie Assis
“Women of War, Women of Woe: Joshua and Judges through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters. Edited by Marion Ann Taylor and Christiana de Groot.”
Rachel Krohn
Review of “Women of War, Women of Woe: Joshua and Judges through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters. Edited by Marion Ann Taylor and Christiana de Groot," published by Eerdmans in 2016. This is a compilation of two review panels for this volume. The first, held at CETA’s annual conference during the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in May 2016 at the University of Calgary, included panelists Lissa M. Wray Beal, Rachel Krohn, and Matthew Forrest Lowe, with responses by the coeditors; the second, held at a “Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible” session of the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2016 in San Antonio, included panelists Beal (whose papers are merged here), Danna Nolan Fewell, and Joy A. Schroeder, with the co-editors again responding in turn. The panel papers have been edited to avoid unnecessary repetition (summaries of the book’s contents, for example), while each of the co-editors offers a combined response to the two panels.
Women in the Old Testament: Issues of Authority, Power and Justice
Dennis Tucker
