Introducing the Women's Hebrew Bible

Susanne Scholz is Professor of Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, USA. She holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Her research interrogates past and present cultural-political discourses on the Hebrew Bible, with an emphasis on feminist/gendered hermeneutics. She can be reached at susanne-scholz.com.

• Chapter 1. From the "Woman's Bible" to the "Women's Bible": The History of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible Chapter 2. A Career As a Feminist Biblical Scholar: Four Stories Chapter 3. Gendering the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Considerations Chapter 4. Rape, Enslavement and Marriage: Sexual Violence in the Hebrew BibleChapter 5. Hagar, Ruth, and Jezebel As "Other" Women: Integrating Postcolonial Perspectives

"I simply love this book. This book offers precisely those elements that one needs in order to fall in love with women's readings of the Hebrew Bible. It first takes the reader on a historical train ride visiting the major stops of feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Then, the readers' horizon in expanded by a critical reading of the life stories of four true great ladies: Phyllis Trible, Athalya Brenner, Marie-Theres Wacker, and Elsa Tamez, and how and why they became epigones of Hebrew Bible feminist scholarship. The book then dives into all the sorts of methodologies that Feminists have been using. In the fourth chapter, the author uses "rape stories" to exemplify the hermeneutical issues that feminists have to deal with. The author then takes on the post-modern and post-colonial readings in order to truly contextualize feminist interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. In the last chapter, the author reflects on the future of the feminist approaches of the Hebrew Bible and pleads for creative readings of Biblical texts that connect the Biblical texts with the socio-political, academic, and religious developments in the world. Truly, there are not many books that combine history of methods and research with true life stories of great persons and their impact on scholarship, and that push biblical scholars to go beyond the critical readings and connect the interpretations with the world we live in."- Kristin De Troyer, Claremont Graduate University, USA