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interpretation of women in the bible has been influenced by convention, but it is also a challenging reminder of how outdated attitudes can still prevail.

Im 19. Jahrhundert liegen die Ursprünge sowohl der Internationalität der Frauenbewegungen als auch des Aufbruchs von Frauen zu wissenschaftlichem Engagement in der Erforschung der Bibel und ihres sozialgeschichtlichen Umfeldes. Wer für die Gleichberechtigung der Frauen und gegen die Benachteiligung aufgrund des Geschlechts kämpfte, kam damals an der Bibel und ihren traditionellen Auslegungen nicht vorbei. Die Beiträge widmen sich Ländern wie Schweden, Finnland, Lettland oder Armenien, dem Schaffen von Literatinnen sowie der archäologischen Erforschung der biblischen Landschaften durch Frauen.

Edited by Christopher Muller, Jay Sanders. Text by Diedrich Diederichsen, Tony Conrad.

Gerardus van der Leeuw was one of the first to attempt a rapprochement between theology and the arts, and his influence continues to be felt in what is now a burgeoning field. Sacred and Profane is the fullest expression of his pursuit of a theological aesthetics, surveying religion's relationship to all the arts -- dance, drama, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. This edition makes this seminal work, first published in Dutch in 1932, newly available. A new foreword by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona analyzes the continuing relevance of van der Leeuw's thought. Van der Leeuw's impassioned and brilliant investigation of the relationship between the holy and the beautiful is founded upon the conviction that for too long the religious have failed to seriously contemplate the beautiful, associating it as they do with the kingdom of sensuality and impermanence. Similarly it has been alien to literati and aesthetes to reflect upon the holy, for they choose to consider this physical world to be permanent, and therefore to be glorified through beauty alone. In truth, as van der Leeuw undertakes to show in Sacred and Profane Beauty, the holy has never been absent from the arts, and the arts have never been unresponsive to the holy. Whether one considers the Homeric epics, the dancing Sivas and Vedic poems, the sacred wall paintings of ancient Egypt, the primitive mask, or the range of sacred arts developed out of Latin and Byzantine Christianity, primordial creation in the arts was always directed toward the symbolization and interpretation of the holy. The fact that in our day this original connection is obscured and the artistic impulse is more generally regarded as wholly individualistic and autonomous does not contradict van der Leeuw's thesis; indeed, the breakdown of the unity of the holy and the arts is central to his thesis. Van der Leeuw was the rare thinker who combined profundity of insight, grace of style, and a willingness to take daring intellectual chances. In Sacred and Profane, he describes each of the arts in its original unity with the religious and then analyzes its historical disjunction and alienation. After a penetrating investigation of the structural elements within the arts which illumines a crucial dimension of the religious experience, van der Leeuw points toward the reemergence of an appropriate theological aesthetics on which a reunification of the arts could be founded.

Provocative insights into the nature of dancing as inseparable from human vitality and distinctiveness emerge from this spiraling study of specific cultural dance traditions brought into conversation with various philosophical/theoretical perspectives centering on the topics: movement, gesture, play, masking, ritual, seduction, performance, religion; each the subject of engaging innovative analysis. The author draws on experience as dancer and academic to address contemporary issues such as gender identity development and plasticity and acuity throughout the lifespan.