Table Of ContentJOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES
81
Editors
David J A Clines
Philip R Davies
BIBLE AND LITERATURE SERIES
22
General Editor
David M. Gunn
Assistant General Editor
Danna Nolan Fewell
Consultant Editors
Elizabeth Struthcrs Malbon
James G. Williams
Almond Press
Sheffield
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ANTI-COVENANT
Counter-Reading Women's Lives
in the Hebrew Bible
edited by
Mieke Bal
The Almond Press • 1989
Bible and Literature Series, 22
General Editor. David M. Gunn
(Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia)
Assistant General Editor. Danna Nolan Fewell
(Perkins School of Theology', Dallas, Texas)
Consultant Editors: Elizabeth Struthers Malbon
(Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia)
James G. Williams
(Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York)
Copyright © 1989 Sheffield Academic Press
Published by Almond Press
Editorial direction: David M. Gunn
Columbia Theological Seminary
P.O. Box 520, Decatur
GA 30031, U.S.A.
Almond Press is an imprint of
Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
The University of Sheffield
343 Fulwood Road
Sheffield S10 3BP
England
Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press
and
printed in Great Britain
by Billing & Sons Ltd
Worcester
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Anti-covenant: counter-reading women's lives in the
Hebrew Bible.
1. Bible O.T. Characters: women
I. Bal, Mieke, 1946- II. Series HI. Series
ISSN 026^4493
ISSN 0309-0787
ISBN 1-85075-207-9
CONTENTS
Preface 7
List of Contributors 9
Introduction
Mieke Bal 1
I. The Legacy of Abraham:
Dubious Male Dominance and Female Autonomy 25
1. The Legacy of Abraham
Carol Delaney 27
2. Anti-Covenant
An Marmesh 43
I. Until I Arose: The Efect of Efective Women 59
3. Desire and Danger: The Drama of Betrayal
Betsy Merideth 61
4. Deborah the Woman Warrior
Rachel C. Rasmusen 79
5. Narrative Theory, Ideology,
and Transformation in Judges 4
Stephen Hanselman 95
6. Constructions of Woman in Readings
of the Story of Deborah
Jane Shaw 13
III. Commemorating the Dead:
Sacrificed Women and Readings of Revenge 133
7. Tamar and the Limits of Patriarchy:
Between Rape and Seduction
Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes 135
8. An Ideology of Expendability:
Virgin Daughter Sacrifice
Anne Michele Tapp 157
9. A Ritual Processed
Beth Gerstein 175
10. Pseudo-Philo and the Transformation
of Jephthah's Daughter
Cynthia Baker 195
11. Between Altar and Wondering Rock:
Toward a Feminist Philology
Mieke Bal 21
Bibliography 23
PREFACE
During the academic year 1985-1986 I was visiting at the Harvard
Divinity School. Immediately upon arrival I was invited to the
meeting of the Women's Caucus, on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m.
Although tired, I went, and never regretted it: it is there that I met
with almost all the authors who contribute to this volume. During
the second semester, we met weekly to discuss Hebrew Bible
narratives and the ways they have been, and still are, read by our
culture. We realized how the stories changed while the culture took
shape, and how the readers did as much violence to the stories as the
stories, through their use as exempla, did to the culture. This
interaction became the focus of our discussions.
The topic of interaction between text and readership centered
around the ideologies of gender, an issue which is acutely relevant in
the case of a body of texts which has shaped our conceptions of
gender to a large extent. Many different readings became suddenly
important: not only the scholarly commentaries which biblical
scholars tend to take as their major source—not always questioning
opinions which are passed off as self-evident—but also more
'popular' readings, which the members of the various religious
groups, and also non-religious members of our culture, read as just
simpler versions of the Bible. Through rewritings such as translations,
popularizations, and commentaries of all kinds, but also literary
rewritings and paintings, views of the proper role and place of
women are conveyed, with the aura of biblical sanctioning to make
them look like truths instead of views.
When the idea emerged to compose a volume of essays around this
issue of readership as ideological agency, I was pleased to find that
Carol Delaney and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, both of whose work
I considered indispensible for such a project, were willing to contribute,
although they had not been part of the discussion group. The
collection thereby gained in variety, in interest, and in quality. I wish
8 Anti-Covenant
to thank the Harvard Divinity School and its members, which
provided a congenial and highly stimulating environment for the
critical thinking in which we were engaged, and especially Constance
Buchanan, direct of the Women's Studies in Religion Program,
thanks to whom the right people were in the right place at the right
moment. The kindness and interest of Patrick D. Miller, Jr of
Princeton Theological Seminary, who was visiting the Harvard
Divinity School the same year, has been a great encouragement. I
also thank the contributors to this volume for their co-operative
spirit and their patience.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Cynthia Baker is a teacher and weaver. She is interested in the study
of women's work and women's communities in antiquity. She is
currently employed by the Cambridgeport Children's Center.
Mieke Bal teaches Comparative Literature and Art History at the
University of Rochester. Her publications include Death and
Dissymmetry: the Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. She is
currently writing on Rembrandt.
Carol Delaney teaches Anthropology at Stanford Unversity. Among
her publications are 'The Meaning of Paternity and the Virgin Birth
Debate' in Man, 1986, and 'Seeds of Honor, Field of Shame' in
Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (ed. David
Gilmore). Her interests focus on the relationship between cosmology
and gender.
Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes is with the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht,
where she is responsible for a flourishing women's studies in religion
program. She teaches Hebrew Bible and Women's Studies. She has
published widely in feminist-literary approaches to the Bible. Her
book En Sara in haar tent lachte was recently translated into
German. She is currently finishing a book on Judges 4 and 5.
Beth Gerstein has been a counselor in a rape crisis center. She has
lectured widely on rape. She is currently in the Ph.D. program of
Anthropology at Stanford University. She is interested in cross-
cultural perceptions of sexuality, and the ways violence against
women is culturally defined, maintained, and perpetuated.
Stephen Hanselman is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School.
Ann Marmesh is a family therapist. She is particularly interested in
how recent insights in the ideological use of religious texts are
applicable to the clinical practice of psychotherapy. She has
published on gender issues in family therapy.
