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.

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.

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.

This valuable resource both presents and demonstrates the numerous developments in feminist criticsm of the Bible and the enormous rage of influence that feminist criticism has come to have in biblical studies. The purpose of the book is to raise issues of method that are largely glossed over or merely implied in most non-feminist works on the Bible. The editors have included broadly theoretical essays on feminist methods and the various roles they may play in research and pedagogy, as well as non-feminist essays that have direct bearing on the methods or subject matter that feminists use, as well as reading that illustrate the variety of methodological strategies adopted by feminist scholars. Some 30 scholars, from North America and Europe, have contributed to this Companion.

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.

This final volume in the Feminist Companion to the Bible Second series is a sparkling collection. These essays revisit the figure of the Goddess, redefine female prophet-(esse)s, consider Yahweh as a violent husband, explore various aspects or eroticism in prophetic literature and discuss how to say no to a prophet. In the section on Daniel the Obtuse Foreign Ruler is viewed from the perspective of both feminism and humor, while Belshazzar's mother is proposed as another wise queen. Contributors include Judith Hadley, Esther Fuchs, Renate Jost, Rainer Kessler, Gerlinde Baumann, Mary Shields, Erin Runions, Tamar Kamlonkowski, Ulrike Sals, Julia M. O'Brien, Mayer Gruber, H. von Deventer, and Emily Sampson.

While the Wisdom volume in the first Feminist Companion series investigated multiple aspects of characterizations of women found in Wisdom literature, the 13 essays in this volume move beyond the study of the characterization of females that formed one of the first steps of modern feminist criticism-the recovery of what had been ignored or trivialized by androcentric readings dominant through the centuries. This second volume takes up questions of voice, exclusion and construction as well as the reinforcement of world views that, while perhaps necessary to the survival of the postexilic community as a whole, nevertheless left a legacy of continued gender asymmetry in Judaism and Christianity.