Download or read book The Absence of God in Biblical Rape Narratives written by Leah Rediger Schulte and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work to identify and address God’s absence in three key rape narratives in the Hebrew Bible, Leah Rediger Schulte finds a pattern that indicates a larger community crisis. With a careful look at Genesis 34, Judges 19, and 2 Samuel 13, this study outlines God’s absence, a foreign presence, and a persistent problem that is resolved incorrectly to highlight consequences of the Israelites breaking their covenant with God. Using methodologies from literary criticism and gender studies and situating rape in its historical context, this volume makes distinctions between modern constructs of rape and biblical rape. Commentaries and studies on rape in the Bible often read a modern understanding of the victim and rapist back into the biblical text, missing how it would have been understood in ancient Israel. These biblical rape scenes are intimately connected to and assist in telling the story of Israel’s history as a people and their covenantal relationship with their deity.

Download or read book The Presence and Absence of God written by Ingolf U. Dalferth and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2009 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Safeguarding the distinction between God and world has always been a basic interest of negative theology. But sometimes it has overemphasized divine transcendence in a way that made it difficult to account for the sense of God's present activity and experienced actuality. Criticisms of the Western metaphysics of presence have made this even more difficult to conceive. On the other hand, there has been a widespread attempt in recent years to base all theology on (religious) experience; the Christian church celebrates God's presence in its central sacraments of baptism and Eucharist; process thought has re-conceptualized God's presence in panentheistic terms; and some have argued that God might be poly-present, not omnipresent. But what does it mean to say that God is present or absent? For Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike God is not an inference, an absentee entity of which we can detect only faint traces in our world. On the contrary, God is present reality, indeed the most present of all realities. However, belief in God's presence cannot ignore the widespread experience of God's absence. Moreover, there is little sense in speaking of God's absence if it cannot be distinguished from God's non-presence or non-existence. So how are we to understand the sense of divine presence and absence in religious and everyday life? This is what the essays in this volume explore in the biblical traditions, in Jewish and Christian theology and philosophy, and in contemporary philosophy of religion.

Download or read book Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative written by Esther Brownsmith and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses three examples of violent biblical stories about women, explored through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory in relation to culinary language used within these texts, to examine wider issues of gender and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible. Utilising the tools of conceptual metaphor theory, feminist criticism, and classic textual analysis, Brownsmith interrogates some of the most troubling biblical passages for women—neither by redeeming them nor by condemning them, but by showing how they are intrinsically shaped by the enduring metaphor of woman as food in the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near East, and beyond. The volume explores three main case studies: the Levite’s “concubine” (Judges 19); Tamar and Amnon (2 Sam 13); and the life and death of Jezebel (primarily 1 Kings 21 and 2 Kings 9). All depict violence toward a woman as perpetrated by a man, interwoven with culinary language that cues their metaphorical implications. In these sensitive but critical readings of violent tales, Brownsmith also draws on a broad range of interdisciplinary connections from Ricoeur to ancient Ugaritic epics to modern comic books. Through this approach, readers gain new insights into how the Bible shapes its narratives through conceptual metaphors, and specifically how it makes meaning out of women’s brutalized bodies. Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor is suitable for students and scholars working on gender and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East more broadly, as well as those working on conceptual metaphor theory and feminist criticism.

Download or read book The Absence of God in Biblical Rape Narratives written by Leah Rediger Schulte and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work to identify and address God's absence in three key rape narratives in the Hebrew Bible, Leah Rediger Schulte finds a pattern that indicates a larger community crisis. With a careful look at Genesis 34, Judges 19, and 2 Samuel 13, this study outlines God's absence, a foreign presence, and a persistent problem that is resolved incorrectly to highlight consequences of the Israelites breaking their covenant with God. Using methodologies from literary criticism and gender studies and situating rape in its historical context, this volume makes distinctions between modern constructs of rape and biblical rape. Commentaries and studies on rape in the Bible often read a modern understanding of the victim and rapist back into the biblical text, missing how it would have been understood in ancient Israel. These biblical rape scenes are intimately connected to and assist in telling the story of Israel's history as a people and their covenantal relationship with their deity.

Download or read book Texts after Terror written by Rhiannon Graybill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-23 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texts after Terror offers an important new theory of rape and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible. While the Bible is filled with stories of rape, scholarly approaches to sexual violence in the scriptures remain exhausted, dated, and in some cases even un-feminist, lagging far behind contemporary discourse about sexual violence and rape culture. Graybill responds to this disconnect by engaging contemporary conversations about rape culture, sexual violence, and #MeToo, arguing that rape and sexual violence - both in the Bible and in contemporary culture - are frequently fuzzy, messy, and icky, and that we need to take these features seriously. Texts after Terror offers a new framework informed by contemporary conversations about sexual violence, writings by victims and survivors, and feminist, queer, and affect theory. In addition, Graybill offers significant new readings of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen. 34), Tamar (2 Sam. 13), Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), Hagar (Gen. 16), Daughter Zion (Lam. 1-2), and the unnamed woman known as the Levite's concubine (Judges 19). Texts after Terror urges feminist biblical scholars and readers of all sorts to take seriously sexual violence and rape, while also holding space for new ways of reading these texts that go beyond terror, considering what might come after.

Download or read book Women in the Bible written by Jaime Clark-Soles and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was it like to be a woman in the biblical period? It depended, in part, on who you were: a queen, a judge, a primary wife, a secondary wife, a widow, a slave, or some other kind of "ordinary woman." In Women in the Bible, Jaime Clark-Soles investigates how women are presented in Scripture, taking into account cultural views of both ancient societies as well as our own. While women today are exercising leadership in churches across a number of denominations and our scholarly knowledge related to women in the Bible has grown immensely, challenges remain. Most of Christendom still excludes women from religious leadership, and many Christians invoke the Bible to circumscribe women's leadership in the public square and in the home as well. It is more urgent than ever, therefore, to investigate closely, honestly, and intrepidly what the Bible does and doesn't say about women. In a multipronged approach, Clark-Soles treats well-known biblical women from fresh perspectives, highlights women who have been ignored, and recovers those who have been erased from historical memory by particular moves made in the transmission and translations of the text. She explores symbolic feminized figures like Woman Wisdom and the Whore of Babylon and reclaims the uses of feminine imagery in the Bible that often go unnoticed. Chapters focus on themes of God's relationship to gender, women and violence, women as creators, and women in the ministry of both Jesus and Paul. Clark-Soles aims to equip clergy and other leaders invested in the study of Scripture to consider women in the Bible from multiple angles and, as a result, help people of all genders to live God's vision of better, more just lives as we navigate the challenges of our complex, globally connected world. --- Table of Contents Series Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Of Canaanites and Canines: Matthew 15 2. God across Gender 3. Women and Violence in the Bible: Truth Telling, Solidarity, and Hope 4. Women Creating 5. The Book of Ruth: One of the "Women's Books" in the Bible 6. Magnificent Mary and Her Magnificat: Like Mother, Like Son 7. Women in Jesus’s Life and Ministry 8. Jesus across Gender 9. Women in Paul’s Ministry 10. The Muting of Paul and His Female Coworkers: Women in the Deutero-Pauline Epistles Conclusion: In the End, Toward the End (Goal): Truth, with Hope Works Cited Scripture Index Subject Index

Download or read book Rape Culture in the House of David written by Barbara Thiede and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-04-24 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rape Culture in the House of David: A Company of Men describes a biblical rape culture sustained and maintained by Yhwh and a host of men—from royal kings and princes to their relatives, counselors, generals, and servants. This volume reveals that sexual violence in the house of David is not simply perpetrated by its most powerful men. Rather, in the pursuit of power, status, authority, and honor, men form alliances and networks that support the use and abuse of women’s bodies and valorize sexualized violence against other men. The man who is most capable of sexual violence is Israel’s ideal king. Barbara Thiede deftly addresses the power and contemporary relevance of these narratives and argues that exposing and naming rape culture in biblical literature is essential—in social, economic, and political realms. This is a meaningful feminist intervention in the field of biblical studies and is of great benefit to graduate students and scholars of religion, gender studies, and masculinity studies.

Download or read book Telling Terror in Judges 19 written by Helen Paynter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Telling Terror in Judges 19 explores the value of performing a ‘reparative reading’ of the terror-filled story of the Levite’s pilegesh (commonly referred to as the Levite’s concubine) in Judges 19, and how such a reparative reading can be brought to bear upon elements of modern rape culture. Historically, the story has been used as a morality tale to warn young women about what constitutes appropriate behaviour. More recently, (mainly male) commentators have tended to write the woman out of the story, by making claims about its purpose and theme which bear no relation to her suffering. In response to this, feminist critics have attempted to write the woman back into the story, generally using the hermeneutics of suspicion. This book begins by surveying some of the traditional commentators, and the three great feminist commentators of the text (Bal, Exum and Trible). It then offers a reparative reading by attending to the pilegesh’s surprising prominence, her moral and marital agency, and her speaking voice. In the final chapter, there is a detailed comparison of the story with elements of modern rape culture.

Download or read book Who Is to Blame for Judges 19 written by Grace Kwan Sik Tsoi and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-06-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The horrific text of Judges 19 is puzzling, especially to Chinese Christians who read the Chinese Union Version. This dominant translation of the Bible seems to place the blame for the tragedy on the concubine, which in turns legitimizes violence against women. Using tools of narrative, intertextual, and ideological criticism, Tsoi reveals an anti-Levite rhetoric in the text that has been neglected by translators. An examination of the translation context suggests that an anti-concubinage agenda in the social context of Republican China might have contributed to the bias in the translation, resulting in more than a century of misinterpretation among Chinese Christians.

Download or read book Bitter the Chastening Rod written by Mitzi J. Smith and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2022-02-28 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bitter the Chastening Rod follows in the footsteps of the first collection of African American biblical interpretation, Stony the Road We Trod (1991). Nineteen Africana biblical scholars contribute cutting-edge essays reading Jesus, criminalization, the enslaved, and whitened interpretations of the enslaved. They present pedagogical strategies for teaching, hermeneutics, and bible translation that center Black Lives Matter and black culture. Biblical narratives, news media, and personal stories intertwine in critical discussions of black rage, protest, anti-blackness, and mothering in the context of black precarity.

Download or read book From Widows to Warriors written by Lynn Japinga and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For too long the women of the Bible have been depicted in one-dimensional terms. On one side are saints, such as Mary, while on the other are "bad girls," such as Eve and Jezebel. Just as often, the female characters of the Bible are simply ignored. However, the women of the Bible are complex, multidimensional individuals whose lives are inspiring, funny, and tragic in ways too many of us never hear. In this first of two volumes, Lynn Japinga acquaints us with the women of the Old Testament. From flawed heroes like Ruth and Rahab to fierce fighters like Deborah and Jael to tragic characters like Jephthah's daughter and the unnamed concubine of the book of Judges, readers will encounter a wealth of foremothers in the faith in all their messy, yet redeemable, humanity. This Bible study introduces and retells every female character who contributes to one or more Old Testament stories, diving deeply into what each woman's story means for us today with questions for reflection and discussion.

Download or read book Rape Myths the Bible and MeToo written by Johanna Stiebert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biblical studies is increasingly interdisciplinary and frequently focuses on how the Bible is read, received, and represented in the contemporary world, including in politics, news media, and popular culture. Rape Myths, the Bible and #MeToo illustrates this with particular and critical assessment of #MeToo and its rapid and global impact. Rape myths – in particular the myth that rape victims are complicit in the violence they encounter, which consequently renders sexual violence ‘not so bad’ – are examined both with regard to current backlash to #MeToo and to biblical texts that undermine the violence perpetrated by rape. This includes aggressive media attacks on the accusers of powerful men, as well as depictions of biblical rape victims such as Dinah (Genesis 34), Bathsheba, and Tamar (2 Samuel 11–13). Biblical studies channels and expresses wider cultural and political manifestations. This exemplifies that the influence of ancient texts is abiding and the study of the past cutting edge.

Download or read book Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative written by Esther Fuchs and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is for anyone interested in religious studies and women's studies, as well as for biblical scholars. It offers a feminist oppositional reading of the biblical text. The main argument is that the Bible constructs a fictional universe in which women are shown to be intent on promoting male interests, and, for the most part, appear as secondary characters whose voice and point of view are often suppressed. In their limited roles as mothers, wives, daughters and sisters, women are constructed as male-dependent pawns intent on securing the status of their male counterparts. The Biblical narrative highlights the contribution of women as reproductive agents and protectors of sons. In this challenging collection of essays, Fuchs focuses on type-scenes as a way of demonstrating the mechanisms by which the texts validates male power and superiority. She also deconstructs the Biblical sexual politics by asking whose interest is being served by the 'good' women of the Bible.Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement series, Volume 310.

Download or read book Texts of Terror written by Phyllis Trible and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Phyllis Trible examines four Old Testament narratives of suffering in ancient Israel: Hagar, Tamar, an unnamed concubine and the daughter of Jephthah. These stories are for Trible the "substance of life", which may imspire new beginnings and by interpreting these stories of outrage and suffering on behalf of their female victims, the author recalls a past that is all to embodied in the present, and prays that these terrors shall not come to pass again. "Texts of Terror" is perhaps Trible's most readable book, that brings biblical scholarship within the grasp of the non-specialist. These "sad stories" about women in the Old Testament prompt much refelction on contemporary misuse of the Bible, and therefore have considerable relevance today.

Download or read book The Abduction of Dinah written by Daniel Hankore and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-02-18 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Hankore argues that the story of Genesis 28:10--35:15 has been misunderstood and mistranslated for two thousand years. He seeks to shed new light on it from Ethiopia's Hadiyya culture, revealing Genesis 28:10--35:15 to be a votive narrative. Making use of relevance theory Hankore tries to reconstruct the intended message of the story from the narrator's point of view. Genesis 28:10--35:15 is presented as a coherent narrative unit and each episode of the story, including the Dinah story, is a part of the building blocks of the discourse structure of this coherent votive narrative. Hankore shows that a correct understanding of the Hebrew concept נדר (vow) in the context of the ancient Israelite's social institution is fundamental for the reading and translating of Genesis 28:10--35:15.

Download or read book Judges and Ruth Teach the Text Commentary Series written by Kenneth C. Way and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focused Biblical Scholarship to Teach the Text The Teach the Text Commentary Series utilizes the best of biblical scholarship to provide the information a pastor needs to communicate the text effectively. The carefully selected preaching units and focused commentary allow pastors to quickly grasp the big idea and key themes of each passage of Scripture. Each unit of the commentary includes the big idea and key themes of the passage and sections dedicated to understanding, teaching, and illustrating the text. The newest Old Testament release in this innovative commentary series is Kenneth C. Way's treatment of Judges and Ruth.

Download or read book Characters and Characterization in the Book of Judges written by Keith Bodner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Book of Judges, why, if we view Samson as a heroic Übermensch, do we read his story one way, yet if we read him as a buffoonish and violent oaf, we read the story another way? How does our assessment of the characters of a story, our empathy with them or suspicion of them, shape the way we read it? This book addresses these questions by analyzing the complex characterization in the Book of Judges, paying attention to an often neglected but important area of study in the Hebrew Bible. Its international group of contributors explore the implications of characterization on storytelling, situating their contributions within the context of literary studies of the Hebrew Bible, and offering multiple perspectives on the many and various characters one encounters in the Book of Judges. Chapters examine a range of topics, including the relationship between humor, characterization and theology in Judges; the intersection of characterization and ethics through the story of the story of Jephthah's daughter; why the 'trickster hero' Ehud disturbs interpreters; and the ways in which Abimelech's characterization affects the key narrative themes of succession and kingship in his story.