Four Biblical Heroines and the Case for Female Authorship

Four Biblical Heroines and the Case for Female Authorship
Author: Hillel I. Millgram
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-03-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786483946

This work examines the lives of four female characters in the Bible: Naomi, Ruth, Tamar and Esther. Their stories differ significantly from those of most female Biblical characters in that each woman is depicted without a dominant male companion and each is featured in the Bible's more secular texts. The author evaluates each character's role as a female protagonist, and demonstrates how each story represents an innovative view of religion and a revisionist evaluation of women's roles. Finally, the author proposes that these narratives may have been authored by women. Appendices provide additional information about Boaz, Judah and Tamar, Greek versions of the Book of Esther, Mordecai's decree, and literacy in ancient Israel. Includes a glossary and timeline.

Holding Up Half the Sky

Holding Up Half the Sky
Author: Graham Joseph Hill
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532686137

Women have played significant roles in ministry and leadership throughout the history of the church and the pages of the Bible. Today, women make up more than half the church, and do much of the mission, ministry, and discipleship in the life of the church. But women have often been held back from ministry roles. Graham Joseph Hill outlines the biblical vision for women in ministry and leadership. He offers a biblical and passionate call for women to be released to teach, to lead, to preach, to serve, to pastor, and to minister in every area of the church. The Bible paints a radical vision of women, empowered and emboldened for full ministry participation in Christ's church. The biblical vision for women and for their role as teachers, witnesses, disciplers, and leaders transforms not only personal lives, but also the church and the world. This book offers a biblical case for women teaching and leading in the church. Hill then explores practical ways that we can empower and release more female leaders in the church, and ways that we can amplify the voices and honor the gifts of women in the way Jesus intended. Together women and men can revitalize the church and renew the world.

The Invention of Monotheist Ethics

The Invention of Monotheist Ethics
Author: Hillel I. Millgram
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2009-12-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0761849254

The Invention of Monotheist Ethics, Volume II presents a comprehensive analysis of the Biblical Book of Samuel. Usually taken to be a socio-political history of ancient Israel during a turbulent century of change, The Invention of Monotheist Ethics contends that beneath this surface level the true focus of Samuel is a profound appraisal of power, its seductive appeal and its drastic limitations. Thus Samuel emerges as a radical critique of our power-based world, and the way we, its inhabitants, order our lives. Taken together with the contention that the Book of Samuel was written by a woman, the Biblical book emerges as a woman's critique of a man's world. This assessment concludes by proposing an alternative to the world we know: a world based on care and concern. Relying on recent sociological studies, this work explores the ramifications of an ethic based on care rather than justice.

Judges and Saviors, Deborah and Samson

Judges and Saviors, Deborah and Samson
Author: Hillel I. Millgram
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 628
Release: 2018-03-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0761869905

This is a book about a book: it is an in-depth yet reader friendly analysis of the Book of Judges, one of the most dramatic books of the Bible. Against the commonly-held view that this remarkable work is no more than a collection of hero tales stemming from Israel’s earliest days in its land—its “Heroic Age,” so to speak—this study makes the case that the Book of Judges is a unified composition with a single focused message: that it is the values held by a people and not its politics that determine its fate. Further, Judges contends that there is a direct connection between the kind of values people internalize and the level of violence that racks their society, both inflicted from without and generated from within. And not least, that the presence of violence is a symptom that a society has abandoned the moral values of monotheism for the Machiavellian politics of a pagan worldview that worships power as the ultimate reality. The larger-than-life heroes and heroines—Ehud and Jael, Deborah and Gideon, Jephthah and Samson—who people the pages of Judges serve by their example to illustrate the way this thesis works out in the world.

Ruth

Ruth
Author: Alice L. Laffey
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-11-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814679862

This volume, using multiple methods, seeks to bring together the best scholarship and insight-Jewish and Christian, past and present-that has contributed to our understanding and appreciation of the biblical book of Ruth. As a feminist commentary, it is particularly sensitive to issues of relationship and inclusion, power and agency. In addition to the voices of the primary co-authors, Alice Laffey and Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, the volume incorporates and integrates important contributing voices from diverse contemporary social contexts and geographical locations. In sum, the commentary seeks to allow Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz to speak again for the first time.

Ben Porat Yosef

Ben Porat Yosef
Author: Michael Avioz
Publisher: Ugarit-Verlag
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3868352821

Phoenician culture was that of autonomous city-states. Indeed, the Phoenicians seem to have zealously held on to this Bronze Age social structure long after it gave way to nationalism and statehood in the southern Levant. Modern scholars often tend to emphasize the regional and individual nature of each Phoenician city to a point that some even question whether the Phoenicians can be referred to as an ethnic unit. As Aubet (2001: 9) stated, the Phoenicians were "a people without a state, without territory and without political unity." In this study, the author aims at examining this very issue through an analysis of the Phoenicians in the eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age I-III, ca. 1200-332 BCE, the zenith of the Phoenician civilization. By analyzing various aspects of the material culture which were unique to the Phoenicians throughout the periods in question, the author shall attempt to identify a 'Phoenician koine', i.e. a shared material culture which reflected a common ethnic, religious, cultic, and social identity (Burke 2008: 160), which developed despite the lack of political unity.

The Elijah Enigma

The Elijah Enigma
Author: Hillel I. Millgram
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2014-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1476616884

An analysis of the intertwining tales of Elijah and Ahab--mercurial prophet and Machiavellian king--this book is an accessible treatment of one of the most dramatic and well-known episodes in the Bible. In contrast to the popular image of Elijah as a courageous wonder-worker who calls down fire from heaven and ascends to heaven in a fiery chariot, this book contends that the prophet was a deeply conflicted man, torn between a burning idealism and a deep disillusionment over his failure to achieve his ideals. Despite his profound sense of failure, Elijah's struggle against the paganizing regime of King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, managed to save monotheism from eclipse, and in so doing alter the course of human history. This work further proposes that the tale presented by the Bible is more than an account of an ancient battle between two historic figures: it is a paradigm of the struggle between the ideals of human dignity and justice, and the alternative of expediency in the pursuit of power, a conflict that pervades human life to this very day.

The Torah Revolution

The Torah Revolution
Author: Reuven Hammer
Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1580234577

The Torah is the foundation stone of Jewish existence. Embedded within these teachings of Moses are core concepts that radically transformed the important religious insights of the patriarchs into a dynamic new religion that would go on to influence the world. This religion of Israel yielded a new way of understanding God and the meaning of the human life. Some of these concepts have never been fully realized, some have gone unrecognized, and many are obscured under so many layers of interpretation that the original vision is difficult to discern. In this accessible look at these revolutionary teachings of Moses, Dr. Reuven Hammer presents fourteen radical ideas found in Torah, explains their original intentions, and shows how understanding these "truths" can help you better understand the narrative and laws of Judaism. Dr. Hammer shows you that when taken together, these value concepts present a picture of the world and human life that is surprisingly modern and relevant: humani

The Africana Bible, Second Edition

The Africana Bible, Second Edition
Author: Valerie Bridgeman
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 952
Release: 2024-10-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506483038

A landmark volume, The Africana Bible gathers multicultural and interdisciplinary perspectives on the Hebrew Bible. It opens a critical window into the world of interpretation on the African continent and in the multiple diasporas of African peoples, including the African American experience, with attention to Africana histories, literatures, cultures, and backgrounds for understanding biblical literature. The Africana Bible, Second Edition, features an updated critical commentary on each book of the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha that is authoritative for many in African and African-diaspora communities worldwide. It highlights issues of concern to the global Black community (such as globalization and the colonial legacy) and the distinctive norms of interpretation in African and African-diaspora settings.

The Joseph Paradox

The Joseph Paradox
Author: Hillel I. Millgram
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0786489820

This book is a reader-friendly treatment of the Joseph story--one of the most popular tales in the Bible. Instead of the usual interpretation as an Horatio Alger success story, the text proposes that we are presented with a cautionary tale of high achievement and the pursuit of success. In the context of the larger biblical narrative, Joseph's short-term success leads to the enslavement of his descendants and the centuries-long derailment of the destiny of the Children of Israel. The self-limiting nature of the pursuit of power is just one of the themes illuminated in this work.