STAR - Studies in Theology and Religion, 1 This collection of essays presented by senior international scholars and junior biblical scholars during a colloquium and two master classes of the Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion (NOSTER) discusses the processes by which biblical entities are appropriated, updated, rewritten, reinterpreted and transmitted in subsequent written sources. The contributions focus on textual figures as well as the recycling of concepts, entities, ideologies and theologies. The contributors include, among others, J. Barr, J.C. de Moor, H.A. McKay, P. Beentjes, R.S. Kraemer, and J. Tromp.

This book introduces readers to the diverse field of feminist studies on the Hebrew Bible. Not organized as a traditional introduction to the "Old Testament," the manuscript does not follow a biblical book-by-book structure, but provides an introductory survey of the history and issues as they relate to feminist readings and readers of the Hebrew Bible. Accordingly, feminist scholars of the Bible, their career struggles, and biblical texts, characters, and themes stand in the forefront of this introduction. The volume is biased toward "Western" feminist scholarship because of the historical developments of feminist scholarship in general and biblical studies in particular. Yet, the chapters also include African, Asian, and Latin American perspectives on feminist studies of the Hebrew Bible. In short, the book offers an overview on the historical, social, and academic developments of reading the Hebrew Bible as the "Women's Hebrew Bible."

A comprehensive and comparative examination of the concept of recognition across history and disciplines.

The story of the Garden of Eden is one of the most familiar in the Bible. But if we read it without preconceptions, we discover a narrative as its original audience would have heard it, as its author intended. Robbins explores why the man was created first, and the woman for and from him. She elucidates the reason for the particular punishments, and why the storyteller gave a woman the starring role. She does all this by highlighting the importance of wordplay in the Garden of Eden story. This book introduces not only a wordsmith but, above all, a supreme storyteller who is bound to become a personal favorite.

Karalina Matskevich examines the structures that map out the construction of gendered and national identities in Genesis 2–3 and 12–36. Matskevich shows how the dominant 'Subject' – the androcentric ha'adam and the ethnocentric Israel – is perceived in relation to and over against the 'Other', represented respectively as female and foreign. Using the tools of narratology, semiotics and psychoanalysis, Matskevich highlights the contradiction inherent in the project of dominance, through which the Subject seeks to suppress the transforming power of difference it relies on for its signification. Thus, in Genesis 2-3 ha'adam can only emerge as a complex Subject in possession of knowledge with the help of woman, the transforming Other to whom the narrator (and Yahweh) attributes both the agency and the blame. Similarly, the narratives of Genesis 12–36 show a conflicted attitude to places of alterity: Egypt, the fertile and seductive space that threatens annihilation, and Haran, the 'mother's land', a complex metaphor for the feminine. The construction of identity in these narratives largely relies on the symbolic fecundity of the Other.

Life of Christ bridges the gap between commentaries and devotional accounts of Christ’s ministry. Applying the requisite analytical tools, it addresses the question, is His life worth studying? The Resurrection event would confirm it is, as would the Gospel miracle accounts—neither of which, Geis argues, skeptical response disproves. Salvation history necessitates the reality of Mary’s virginity, which the author develops lexically and theologically. Jesus’ teachings and parables bring out a Christ Whose moral precepts are rooted in His Divinity and not in western philosophic nostrums. Geis’ discussion of Christ on marriage and His commandment of love sharpens this observation with lexical application. He also addresses the inconsistent objectives and circular reasoning of various exegetical schools, which have no place in a study of the Gospels.

The book of Deuteronomy is not an orphan. It belongs to a diverse family of legal traditions and cultures in the world of the Bible. The Social World of Deuteronomy: A New Feminist Commentary brings these traditions and cultures to life and uses them to enrich our understanding and appreciation of Deuteronomy today. Don C. Benjamin uses social-scientific criticism to reconstruct the social institutions where Deuteronomy developed, as well as those that appear in its traditions. He uses feministcriticism to better understand and appreciate how powerful elite males in Deuteronomy view not only the women, daughters, mothers, wives and widows in their households but also their powerless children, liminal people, slaves, prisoners, outsiders, livestock and nature. Through the lens of feminist theory, Benjamin explores important aspects of the daily lives of these often overlooked peoples in ancient Israel.