Phyllis A. Bird – författare

Faith and feminism unite in these essays to explore the theology of the Hebrew Bible as testimony to the faith of ancient Israel and as a source for Christian theology and ethics. Each chapter in Faith, Feminism, and the Forum of Scripture approaches the Bible as a site of theological reflection in which multiple voices are heard (in chorus and debate), as a forum that invites readers to join the conversation and extend it. Acknowledging the patriarchal world of the Bible and the androcentric distortions of its views of both human and divine, they identify foundations and directions that point beyond the cultural frames of the texts. Individual essays present the possibility of an Old Testament theology that integrates feminist insights and concerns into the full range of theological subjects; discuss the theological anthropology of the Hebrew Bible and its root texts in the Genesis creation accounts; outline a proposed new understanding of the authority of the Bible consonant with its nature as a historical, multivocal, and multivalent document; and offer a critical and constructive appraisal of the Old Testament's contribution to current debate on the place of homosexual persons and relations in the church.

Harlot or Holy Woman? presents an exhaustive study of qedešah, a Hebrew word meaning “consecrated woman” but rendered “prostitute” or “sacred prostitute” in Bible translations. Reexamining biblical and extrabiblical texts, Phyllis A. Bird questions how qedešah came to be associated with prostitution and offers an alternative explanation of the term, one that suggests a wider participation for women as religious specialists in Israel’s early cultic practice.Bird’s study reviews all the texts from classical antiquity cited as sources for an institution of “sacred prostitution,” alongside a comprehensive analysis of the cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia containing the cognate qadištu and Ugaritic texts containing the masculine cognate qdš. Through these texts, Bird presents a portrait of women dedicated to a deity, engaged in a variety of activities from cultic ritual to wet-nursing, and sharing a common generic name with the qedešah of ancient Israel. In the final chapter she returns to biblical texts, reexamining them in light of the new evidence from the ancient Near East.Considering alternative models for constructing women’s religious roles in ancient Israel, this wholly original study offers new interpretations of key texts and raises questions about the nature of Israelite religion as practiced outside the royal cult and central sanctuary.