Building bridges has been and still is the main task of the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR). It aims to facilitate theological and academic religious debate transcending the borders between languages and countries, as well as those resulting from religions, confessions, cultures or traditions, in order to offer constructive future perspectives. This volume has now adopted "building bridges" as its main theme. It reflects the contributions to the 11th International Conference of ESWTR held in 2005 in the unique historical and cultural setting of Budapest. European women in the lead of theological research discuss the subject on the basis of their different specialist approaches and thus provide a unique spectrum of contemporary discourse from very varied disciplines in theology and religious studies.

Scandinavian Critique of Anglo-American Feminist Theology is a collection of articles by scholars in various theological disciplines from five Scandinavian or Nordic countries. The articles cover a wide range of topics, including feminist sexual ethics, ecofeminist theology, gender perspectives on European welfare systems, Birgitta of Sweden and a search for Mary beyond stereotypes. As the title implies, a critical dialogue with US feminist theology is a recurrent theme throughout the book, but the essays also include constructive work from different theological perspectives. The journal also includes a bibliography that shows the diversity of Scandinavian and Nordic feminist theological research.

Conjoining diverse methodological and ideological approaches with a focus on specific texts, this volume ..... presents ground-breaking insights on the Gospel of Matthew...... (from back cover)

In this diverse collection of writings on the Acts of the Apostles, the contributors use a variety of approaches to address issues including ethnicity and class, economic and social status, construction of masculinity, and literary influences both behindand in front of the text.

This book examines the personification of Wisdom as a female figure - a central motif in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Wisdom and Baruch. Alice M. Sinnott identifies how and why the complex character of Wisdom was introduced into the Israelite tradition, and created and developed by Israelite/Jewish wisdom teachers and writers. Arguing that by personifying Wisdom the authors of Proverbs responded to Israel's defeat by Babylon and the loss of Davidic monarchy, and by retrieving and transforming the Wisdom figure the authors of Sirach, Baruch and Wisdom responded to the spread of Hellenism and the potential loss of identity for Jews. Sinnott concludes that personified Wisdom functioned to reinterpret and transform the Israelite/Jewish tradition.

Readers may be surprised at the complex course that many biblical texts traveled between original composition and inclusion in the Jewish or Christian canons of Scripture. Four different patterns of development are examined and evaluated in this study.