Athalya Brenner-Idan – författare

Athalya Brenner, a leading feminist critic of the Hebrew Bible, has gathered a unique anthology of feminist writing, offering a rich resource for reclaiming the female heritage in these classic texts.

Biblical humor about women and gender remains elusive for many readers, for its recognition may imply the realization that it's a cruel and disrespectful humor, ridicule rather than good-natured fun. But viewing humor as social critique, as is largely done in the essays in this volume, with respect to both the texts read and their actual or implied author, may be fun as well as significant for understanding the biblical worlds. As most of the essays show, writing about women is writing about men as well. In other words, it is writing about gender roles. The critique of women, womanhood and femaleness implied by biblical and related texts serves, in equal measure, as a critique of men, manhood and maleness in the texts, of the texts authors, and of the texts' commentators and readers. Contributors include Scott Spencer, Mary Shields, Kathleen O'Connor, Toni Craven, Kathy Williams, Athalya Brenner, Gale Yee, Amy-Jill Levine, and Esther Fuchs.

The format of the new The Bible in the 21st Century series reflects an international dialogue between experts and graduate students. In this book, experts on Bible translations present essays on the practices of translating the Bible for the present and the future, through Christian and Jewish approaches, in Western Europe and North America as well as in the former Eastern Bloc and in Africa. Each paper is paired with a response. The international contributors here include Adele Berlin, John Rogerson, Robert Carroll, Mary Phil Korsak, Everett Fox, Jeremy Punt and Athalya Brenner, and the debate is prefaced with an introduction by the Editors.

A Feminist Companion to Tobit and Judith extends the work of the hugely influential and respected Feminist Companion series, which continues to set the standard for feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible and related texts. In the present volume Athalya Brenner-Idan (with Helen Efthimiadis-Keith) draws together a range of scholarly commentators and addresses the core issues relating to feminist interpretations of the two texts at hand. The volume examines attitudes to gender, identities, exile, social mores, beliefs, clothing, food and drink, personal relationships, and biblical reception. The contributors are: Beverly Bow and George Nickelsburg, Athalya Brenner-Idan, Ora Brison, Helen Efthimiadis-Keith, Renate Egger-Wenzel, Beate Ego, Emma England, Jennifer Glancy, Jan Willem van Henten, Naomi Jacobs, Amy-Jill Levine, Pamela Milne, and Barbara Schmitz.

A Feminist Companion to Tobit and Judith extends the work of the hugely influential and respected Feminist Companion series, which continues to set the standard for feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible and related texts. In the present volume Athalya Brenner-Idan (with Helen Efthimiadis-Keith) draws together a range of scholarly commentators and addresses the core issues relating to feminist interpretations of the two texts at hand. The volume examines attitudes to gender, identities, exile, social mores, beliefs, clothing, food and drink, personal relationships, and biblical reception. The contributors are: Beverly Bow and George Nickelsburg, Athalya Brenner-Idan, Ora Brison, Helen Efthimiadis-Keith, Renate Egger-Wenzel, Beate Ego, Emma England, Jennifer Glancy, Jan Willem van Henten, Naomi Jacobs, Amy-Jill Levine, Pamela Milne, and Barbara Schmitz.

In the first edition of The Israelite Woman Athalya Brenner-Idan provided the first book-length treatment by a feminist biblical scholar of the female characters in the Hebrew Bible. Now, thirty years later, Brenner provides a fresh take on this ground-breaking work, considering how scholarly observation of female biblical characters has changed and how it has not. Brenner-Idan also provides a new and highly personal introduction to the book, which details, perhaps surprisingly to present readers, what was at stake for female biblical scholars looking to engage honestly in the academic debate at the time in which the book was first written. This will make difficult reading for some, particularly those whose own views have not changed.The main part of the book presents Brenner-Idans’s now classic examination of the roles of women in the society of ancient Israel, and the roles they play in the biblical narratives. In Part I Brenner-Idan surveys what can be known about the roles of queens, wise women, women poets and authors, prophetesses, magicians, sorcerers and witches and female prostitutes in Israelite society. In Part II the focus is on the typical roles in which Hebrew women appear in biblical stories, as mother of the hero, as temptress, as foreigner, and as ancestress. In these narratives, for which there are standard plots and structures and characterizations readily available, women play a generally domestic role.Not only is the book a highly valuable resource detailing the social role of women in ancient Israel, and showing how the interpretation of women in the bible has been influenced by convention, but it is also a challenging reminder of how outdated attitudes can still prevail.

In this volume scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations are gathered together to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light, focusing on issues of intertextuality. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles I sheds light from new perspectives on themes in these so-called historical books including Asian American and Chinese readings, issues of land, genealogy and maleness. The authors challenge us to consider how we deal with cultural distances between ourselves and these ancient writings - and between one another in the contemporary world.These goal of these essays is de-centre the often homogeneous first-world orientation of much biblical scholarship and open to up new possibilities for discovery of meaning and method.

In this collection, scholars from diverse geographical locations revisit a cluster of five biblical texts: Ruth, Song of Songs, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), Lamentations and Esther. The volume presents various viewpoints and contexts—geographical, communal, religious, social, economical and ethical. Matching scholarship with social awareness, the contributors keep asking themselves and their readers a dual-faced question: how does our life context influence our scholarly and non-scholarly readings of the Bible, and how does reading the Bible critically influence our life? To answer this question and to show it at work the contributors employ a range of contextual lenses. Geography is a major factor of the contributors’ contexts – with contributors from South Africa, Argentina, Israel, the Pacific Islands – but not the only one to influence their readings. Issues of society, culture and community are at the foreground for all contributors and their reading agendas with specific focus on the AIDs crisis in Africa, issues of migration and asylum, and feminist approaches to biblical texts.

In this volume scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations are gathered together to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light, focusing on issues of intertextuality. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles I sheds light from new perspectives on themes in these so-called historical books including Asian American and Chinese readings, issues of land, genealogy and maleness. The authors challenge us to consider how we deal with cultural distances between ourselves and these ancient writings - and between one another in the contemporary world.These goal of these essays is de-centre the often homogeneous first-world orientation of much biblical scholarship and open to up new possibilities for discovery of meaning and method.

In this collection, scholars from diverse geographical locations revisit a cluster of five biblical texts: Ruth, Song of Songs, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), Lamentations and Esther. The volume presents various viewpoints and contexts—geographical, communal, religious, social, economical and ethical. Matching scholarship with social awareness, the contributors keep asking themselves and their readers a dual-faced question: how does our life context influence our scholarly and non-scholarly readings of the Bible, and how does reading the Bible critically influence our life? To answer this question and to show it at work the contributors employ a range of contextual lenses. Geography is a major factor of the contributors’ contexts – with contributors from South Africa, Argentina, Israel, the Pacific Islands – but not the only one to influence their readings. Issues of society, culture and community are at the foreground for all contributors and their reading agendas with specific focus on the AIDs crisis in Africa, issues of migration and asylum, and feminist approaches to biblical texts.

This volume brings together disparate views about biblical texts in the books of Samuel, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah and examines their influence in the life of contemporary communities, demonstrating how today’s environments and disorders help readers to acquire new insights into such texts.The contributing scholars hail from different continents - from East Asia to the United States to Europe to South Africa and Israel - and count themselves as members of various Jewish and Christian traditions or secularist ways of life. But, in spite of their differences in location and community membership, and perhaps in the spirit of the times (2020 and its global discontents), they share preoccupations with questions of ethics in politics and life, ‘proper’ death, violence and social exclusion or inclusion. This volume offers readers a better understanding of how politics and faith can be melded, both in ancient and contemporary contexts, to serve the interests of certain classes and societies, often at the expense of others.

This volume brings together disparate views about biblical texts in the books of Samuel, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah and examines their influence in the life of contemporary communities, demonstrating how today’s environments and disorders help readers to acquire new insights into such texts.The contributing scholars hail from different continents - from East Asia to the United States to Europe to South Africa and Israel - and count themselves as members of various Jewish and Christian traditions or secularist ways of life. But, in spite of their differences in location and community membership, and perhaps in the spirit of the times (2020 and its global discontents), they share preoccupations with questions of ethics in politics and life, ‘proper’ death, violence and social exclusion or inclusion. This volume offers readers a better understanding of how politics and faith can be melded, both in ancient and contemporary contexts, to serve the interests of certain classes and societies, often at the expense of others.

This unique volume on the Psalms is the final Hebrew Bible installment of the Texts@Contexts series. Each contribution provides a contextual reflection on a Psalm as chosen by the contributor. These contributions take account of the contributor's own personal context or the contexts of those around them, providing readings that are varied in geographical and linguistic scope, that reflect on pressing themes such as immigration, diversity, race, marginalized voices (such as those of adults with learning disabilities) and postcolonialism. Scholars also reflect on their own contexts of research and education. Taken together the contributions to this volume provide a sort of contextual commentary on the Psalms, gathering a wide range of voices and reflecting a diverse range of cultural afterlives of the Psalms.

This unique volume on the Psalms is the final Hebrew Bible installment of the Texts@Contexts series. Each contribution provides a contextual reflection on a Psalm as chosen by the contributor. These contributions take account of the contributor's own personal context or the contexts of those around them, providing readings that are varied in geographical and linguistic scope, that reflect on pressing themes such as immigration, diversity, race, marginalized voices (such as those of adults with learning disabilities) and postcolonialism. Scholars also reflect on their own contexts of research and education. Taken together the contributions to this volume provide a sort of contextual commentary on the Psalms, gathering a wide range of voices and reflecting a diverse range of cultural afterlives of the Psalms.

Biblical humor about women and gender remains elusive for many readers, for its recognition may imply the realization that itGCOs a cruel and disrespectful humor, ridicule rather than good-natured fun. But viewing humor as social critique, as is largely done in the essays in this volume, with respect to both the texts read and their actual or implied author, may be fun as well as significant for understanding the biblical worlds. As most of the essays show, writing about women is writing about men as well. In other words, it is writing about gender roles. The critique of women, womanhood and femaleness implied by biblical and related texts serves, in equal measure, as a critique of men, manhood and maleness in the texts, of the texts authors, and of the textsGCO commentators and readers. Contributors include Scott Spencer, Mary Shields, Kathleen OGCOConnor, Toni Craven, Kathy Williams, Athalya Brenner, Gale Yee, Amy-Jill Levine, and Esther Fuchs.

Judges is a book with much to say about women, especially about their fate in a masculine world, subject to male values. This sparkling new collection of studies subjects Achsah, Delilah and Jephthah's daughter to the female critical gaze, while an increased emphasis on the body (whether gendered or not), violence of various forms, and intertextuality reflect the growing importance of these issues in biblical exegesis. The contributors to this second Judges Companion are Lillian Klein, Claudia Rakel, Shulamit Valler, Phyllis Silverman Kramer, Carol Smith, Renate Jost, Ilse Müllner and Alice Bach.

The ten essays in this volume, the majority specially written, engage with questions of voice (whose?) and interplay (what kind?) between received interpretation and resisting female reader, and venture into methodological territory familiar and unfamiliar to biblical scholars, including autobiographical criticism. Among earlier readers invoked in these pages are Jerome, Rashi and Fray Luis de LTon, who brush pages with Haitian prostitutes. The three sections of this fresh, colourful and adventurous journey into love, sex, allegory and self inside the Most Sublime Song are: Feminist Appropriations; Specific Readings: Allegories and Feminists; and The Song of Songs Personalized.

The studies in this collection, reflecting recent developments in feminist exegesis in Europe and the United States, comprise three 'revisits': the first, to Exodus and Moses, includes Susanne Scholz on a literary feminist reading of Exodus, Harold Washington on Exodus and Zora Neale Hurston's 'Moses, Man of the Mountain', Ilona Rashkow on 'Oedipus Wreckes: Moses and God's Rod', and 'Divine Puppeteer: Yahweh of Exodus' by Cheryl Kirk-Duggan. The second revisit, to Miriam, comprises 'Miriam' by Phyllis Silverman Kramer, 'Miriam Re-Imagined, and Imaginary Women of Exodus in Musical Settings' by Helen Leneman, Alice Bach, 'Dreaming of Miriam's Well' and Irmtraud Fischer on 'The Authority of Miriam'. The third revisit is to Daughters, where Tal Ilan writes on the daughters of Zelophehad and Leila Bronner on' Serah and the Exodus'.

This collection of studies, reflecting developments in feminist exegesis over the last few years in Europe and the United States, includes treatments of key female figures ('Tamar and the "Coat of Many Colours"' by Adrien Janis Bledstein; 'Michal, the Barren Wife' by Lillian R. Klein; 'On Centering a Fringe Figure: The Wife of Jeroboam in 1 Kings 14:1-18' by Uta Schmidt; 'The Widow of Zarephath and the Great Woman of Shunem: A Comparative Analysis of Two Stories' by Jopie Siebert-Hommes), and a new examination of a biblical threesome, 'Saul, David and Jonathan: The Story of a Triangle? A Contribution to the Issue of Homosexuality in the First Testament' by Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli.

The feminist Companion to the Bitle (second series) This sparkling new collection of studies covers topics such as the Queen of Heaven, Saying No to a Prophet, Circumcision of the Prostitute, with the section on Daniel addressing, among other things, the wise queen mother of Daniel 5, and the Obtuse Foreign Ruler. This sparkling new collection of studies includes a reassessment of previous feminist exegesis, reconsiders women as prophets and takes a new look at goddesses. In particular, it looks more closely at the 'porno-prophetic' marriage metaphor. Essays include Judith Hadley on the Queen of Heaven, Mary Shields on 'Circumcision of the Prostitute', Julia M. O'Brien on 'Saying "No" to a Prophet', and articles by Esther Fuchs, Renat Jost and Rainer Kessler. The section on Daniel comprises A. Brenner on the 'Obtuse Foreign Ruler' in the Hebrew Bible, H. van Deventer on Women's Wisdom in Daniel 5, and an essay by Emily Sampson.

This volume is the first in a series which provides a fundamental resource for feminist biblical scholarship, containing a comprehensive selection of essays, both reprinted and specially written for the series, by leading feminist scholars.

This volume is part of a series which provides a fundamental resource for feminist biblical scholarship, containing a comprehensive selection of essays, both reprinted and specially written for the series, by leading feminist scholars. In this volume, Brenner-Idan collects some of the foremost feminist scholars in biblical studies, including Susanne Scholz, Carol Delaney and Lyn M. Bechtel, to offer their words on the role of woman in the first book of the Old Testament, how she is portrayed, and the implication of attitudes towards her.

This volume is part of a series which provides a fundamental resource for feminist biblical scholarship, containing a comprehensive selection of essays, both reprinted and specially written for the series, by leading feminist scholars. 'An enterprising series of collections of important and pioneering studies.... Those teaching feminist courses will find the books invaluable as a resource for students.' C.S. Rodd, Expository Times.

The book of Judges is replete with female figurations, and has, therefore, received a lot of attention from feminist critics. This volume of essays, however, changes the motivation behind this apparent centrality of female figures, claiming that in fact strong androcentric premises underlie the texts. The overall theme of this sparkling collection focusses on wives, daughters and mothers, and their relationships. An introductory section surveys the women of Judges, investigation satire, paradigm and deviation and the midrashic sources; Brenner and Van Dyck investigate the story and song of Deborah; Fuchs and Exum turn their attention to Jephthah's daughter; Amit and Reinhartz look at women in the Samson story. Finally, three essays, including one by Mieke Bal, deal with the brutal finale of the book in chapters 19-21.

This volume is part of a series which provides a fundamental resource for feminist biblical scholarship, containing a comprehensive selection of essays, both reprinted and specially written for the series, by leading feminist scholars. The essays in this volume deal with social status and female sexuality, the textual figure of 'the daughter' and the character of Miriam. 'An enterprising series of collections of important and pioneering studies.... Those teaching feminist courses will find the books invaluable as a resource for students' (C.S. Rodd, Expository Times).

A stimulating collection of studies by leading feminist scholars offering radical readings of the Old Testament books of Samuel and Kings. Although gender ideology may have been only a 'side issue' for the writers of these texts, the articles in this collection show that it is definitely a constituent of the general ideological framework of this section of Israel's historiography, and they explore the texts for women's lives, female voices, gendered types, and the presence of women in the written history. As Athalya Brenner states in her introduction to the volume, in looking at the presentation of women and femaleness in Samuel and Kings we 'encounter chiefly relational images': women are seen as daughters, mothers, queen mothers, and in their relations to kings and prophets.

The authoritative status of 'Prophecy' in the Bible poses a challenge to the feminist readers. This challenge is sharpened by the widespread symbolism in prophetic discourse of woman, wife, mother, harlot and the use of what the volume call 'pornoprophetics'. In this collection it is the book of Hosea that attracts special attention, but there are also articles on sexual violence and an introductory essay on prophecy itself as a literary phenomenon. This Feminist Companion offers a sharp confrontation between the voice of the prophetic male and the resistance of the feminist reader.