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"Women in the Bible investigates how women are presented in Scripture, taking into account cultural views of both ancient societies as well as our own. Jamie Clark-Soles treats well-known biblical women from fresh perspectives, highlights women who have been ignored, and recovers those who have been erased from historical memory"-- Provided by publisher

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Honesty, Transparency, and Sight: Some Introduction...
• Chapter 1
• Genesis 38: "Lest We Become a Laughingstock"
• Chapter 2
• David, Jonathan, and Saul: Being Good at Being a Man
• Chapter 3
• 2 Samuel 13: Rape in the Royal House
• Chapter 4
• Genesis 12, 20, and 26: Bromance in Bible
• Chapter 5
• Judges 19-21: The Warrior God and His Levite Soldier
• Chapter 6
• Judges 4 & 5: Always Mothers, Never Friends
• Conclusion
• Toxic for Women: Conclusions on Biblical Hegemonic Masculinity
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Male alliances, partnerships, and friendships are fundamental to the Hebrew Bible. This book offers a detailed and explicit exploration of the ways in which shared sexual use of women and women's bodies engenders, sustains, and nourishes such relationships in the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew Bible narratives demonstrate that women and women's bodies are not merely used to foster and cultivate male homosociality, male friendship, and toxic hegemonic masculinity, but rather to engender them and make them possible in the first place. Thiede argues that homosocial bonds between divine and mortal males are part of a continual competition for power, rank, and honor, and that this competition depends on women's bodies for its expression. In a final chapter, she also explores whether female characters in the Hebrew Bible use male bodies to form friendships and alliances to advance female power, status, and rank. The book concludes by arguing that women are essential to the toxic biblical hegemonic masculinity we find in the Hebrew Bible, but only because their bodies are used to make it possible in the first place. This book is intended for scholars of the Hebrew Bible, as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students in religious studies, women and gender studies, masculinity studies, queer studies, and like fields. The book can also be read profitably by lay students of biblical literature, seminary students, and clergy.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A fictional account of women in the bible

The biblical stories of Lot's daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba, share much in common - singular women who are left to rely upon their own wits to achieve some measure of victory over the men around them. Scholarly interpretation of these women often reduces them to mere stock characters who inform civic notions about Israel, the perennial underdog who, like these women, achieves against great odds. Or, they reflect the trickery and moral ambiguity inherent in their line as ancestresses of the House of David. However, when read for their gender information (and not for what they can tell readers about Israel), one finds women who employ strategies of deception and trickery, motivated by individual self-interest, in order to successfully maneuver within the system to their benefit. Such initiative can be seen as valorous: they save themselves through their own pluck and ingenuity. Thus, a close consideration of these stories finds that heroic biblical women carry their essential weapons upon and within themselves in their drive, their resolve and their cleverness. Using methods from biblical study as well as folklore, this study identifies biblical women motivated by self-interest coupled with deception and an incidence of the "bedtrick, " an instance of sexual trickery that challenges the text's power and gender dynamics. This identification puts Lot's daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba, in league with female heroes from folk tale and legend. By contrasting and comparing common motifs and actions with traits established by other non-biblical female heroic narratives, strong heroic themes are located in all four narratives. This offers a dynamic argument for identifying the female biblical heroic. This work concludes that this new identification of heroic women in the Bible profoundly affects further interpretation of the Bible.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)