This is the first book-length attempt to focus on female biblical figures in the ancient rabbinic writings of midrash and Talmud. Primary rabbinic sources employed by the author bring new life and insight into the stories of Eve, Deborah, Hannah, Serah bat Asher, and others. As women and men today attempt to reevaluate past historical models, it serves us well to understand the values and inner workings of rabbinic thinking. The examination of what the sources actually say, and not what others would like them to have said, enable reinterpretation of women's role to proceed on an honest and authentic basis. Biblical women, reclaimed with contemporary midrash, can become paradigms for our modern lives.

Mohney draws lessons from the lives of eight Biblical women : Eve, Sarah, Keturah, Jochebed, Zipporah, Miriam, Rahab, Esther.

Women play an immensely important role in the Bible: from Eve to the Virgin Mary, Sarah to Mary Magdalene, Naomi to the anonymous woman suffering severe menstrual bleeding who was healed by Jesus. They are a sisterhood of faith. As such, they challenge many of our assumptions about the role of women in the development of the biblical story; about the impact of faith on lives lived in the 'heat and dust' of the real world. Here we will meet the prostitute who ended up in the genealogy of Jesus, a national resistance fighter, a determined victim of male sexual behaviour who challenged patriarchal power, a far from meek and mild mother of Jesus, a woman whose life has been so misrepresented that she is now the subject of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, and more. Renowned historians and Biblical scholars, Martyn and Esther Whittock, take the reader on a fascinating journey, one unafraid to ask difficult questions, such as, 'Was Eve set up to fall?'

To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. It was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In truth, Eve had endured a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna, though she rarely spoke about it. Yet after her passing, Julie discovered a keepsake box filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a ten-year-old girl named Eva, her mother. This was the first clue to the secret pain that Julie's mother had carried as an immigrant, and it shed light on a family that had to rely on its own perseverance to escape the xenophobia that threatened their survival. A beautiful blend of personal memoir and family history, Metz shows how one woman's search for her mother's lost childhood offers valuable lessons about the sacrifices people make to save their families during some of the darkest times in history.

Do women and men have different intellectual, spiritual, moral, or emotional capacities? Over the centuries, women have read and interpreted the story of Eve, scrutinizing the details of the text to discern God's word for them. Biblical scholar Amanda Benckhuysen traces the history of women's interpretation of Genesis 1-3, allowing the voices of women to speak of Eve's story and its implications for life today.

Retells, in illustrations and simple text, the biblical story of Genesis, from the creation of light through the explusion from Eden.

"The editors have performed a great service in making widely available a documentary history of the interpretation of the Eve and Adam story." —Publishers Weekly "This fascinating volume examines Genesis 1-3 and the different ways that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpreters have used these passages to define and enforce gender roles. . . . a 'must' . . . " —Choice "Wonderful! A marvelous introduction to the ways in which the three major Western religious traditions are both like, and unlike one another." —Ellen Umansky, Fairfield University No other text has affected women in the western world as much as the story of Eve and Adam. This remarkable anthology surveys more than 2,000 years of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim commentary and debate on the biblical story that continues to raise fundamental questions about what it means to be a man or to be a woman. The selections range widely from early postbiblical interpretations in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to the Qur'an, from Thomas Aquinas to medieval Jewish commentaries, from Christian texts to 19th-century antebellum slavery writings, and on to pieces written especially for this volume.