Women in the Bible: Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church

by Jaime Clark-Soles

What was it like to be a woman in the biblical period? It depended, in part, on who you a queen, a judge, a primary wife, a secondary wife, a widow, a slave, or some other kind of "ordinary woman." In Women in the Bible, Jaime Clark-Soles investigates how women are presented in Scripture, taking into account cultural views of both ancient societies as well as our own. While women today are exercising leadership in churches across a number of denominations and our scholarly knowledge related to women in the Bible has grown immensely, challenges remain. Most of Christendom still excludes women from religious leadership, and many Christians invoke the Bible to circumscribe women's leadership in the public square and in the home as well. It is more urgent than ever, therefore, to investigate closely, honestly, and intrepidly what the Bible does and doesn't say about women.

In a multipronged approach, 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 by particular moves made in the transmission and translations of the text. She explores symbolic feminized figures like Woman Wisdom and the Whore of Babylon and reclaims the uses of feminine imagery in the Bible that often go unnoticed. Chapters focus on themes of God's relationship to gender, women and violence, women as creators, and women in the ministry of both Jesus and Paul. Clark-Soles aims to equip clergy and other leaders invested in the study of Scripture to consider women in the Bible from multiple angles and, as a result, help people of all genders to live God's vision of better, more just lives as we navigate the challenges of our complex, globally connected world.

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Table of ContentsSeries ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Of Canaanites and Matthew 152. God across Gender3. Women and Violence in the Truth Telling, Solidarity, and Hope4. Women Creating5. The Book of One of the "Women's Books" in the Bible6. Magnificent Mary and Her Like Mother, Like Son7. Women in Jesus’s Life and Ministry8. Jesus across Gender9. Women in Paul’s Ministry10. The Muting of Paul and His Female Women in the Deutero-Pauline In the End, Toward the End (Goal): Truth, with HopeWorks CitedScripture IndexSubject Index

Genres: Womens

372 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 1, 2020

About the author

Rev. Dr. Jaime Clark-Soles is Professor of New Testament and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. She is also the Director of the Baptist House of Studies at Perkins. She received her B.A. from Stetson University where she focused on both Philosophy and Russian Studies. She earned her M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and her Ph.D. in New Testament from Yale University.

Reviews

[Amanda B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75-3: well done and thought provoking

[Joel Wentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have some complicated response to this. I really loved certain chapters (especially on Mary and Jesus' ministry), but struggled with some of the lack of nuance in certain interpretive judgements. That said, it's a very good resource for biblical studies and will be keeping it for reference.

Full review forthcoming for Englewood Review of Books.

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers important texts within the Jewish and Christian canons, particularly passages that have been generative within feminist, womanist, and queer theological discourse. Though this book at times is critical of past liberal theologians (e.g. in the way they have portrayed the four women in Matthean genealogy of Jesus, anti-Jewish hermeneutics, or the sterile apologetics some academic commentators can perform that downplay harmful aspects of scriptural texts), I think it sometimes exhibits the same sort of liberal trappings when it covers other subjects as well. There’s quite a bit of engagement with womanist theologians in here, but it would have been interesting to have more Third World, Indigenous, post/de/anti-colonial feminist scholarship engaged with here. There was some interesting stuff on disability in here, which I have not encountered as much in theological scholarship, and which I believe Clark-Soles specialized in as a religious studies scholar.

Quite a bit of the book was devoted to ‘feminine’ or gender fluid depictions of God, of Jesus, or of Paul, most of which I’ve encountered before, and varies widely in terms of quality or plausibility, particularly in the case of Paul. There’s a lot of criticism of Paul and particularly the deutero-Pauline texts in here, as one might expect. But it was interesting to learn more about some of the prominent women who do surface in the Christian testament texts. I particularly liked the section on Deborah, and was reminded of the parallels between the Song of Deborah and the Magnificat.

This is a useful reference text, probably more so for people in ministry, and less so for lay readers like myself. I admittedly skipped over a lot of the lectionary stuff. I’ll finish with an excerpt that sort of describes the intended approach taken by Clark-Soles:

“I assume a stance of reading toward wholeness and liberation for everyone and everything in God’s creation. This entails being honest about potential obstacles to said liberation. Patriarchy constitutes one such entrenched obstacle both in antiquity and in our contemporary society. Patriarchy, literally “rule by the father,” is a system in which men rule by virtue of being male. The a priori assumption in this book is that patriarchy always disadvantages women and is inherently unjust insofar as political and economic power is not distributed evenly. Patriarchy is, by definition, sexist, and sexism is unjust. Thus, when I use the language of “equality” (or lack of) in this book, I refer to having agency and equal access to the power to shape societal structures that affect one’s ability to survive and flourish.

It is the nature of scholarship itself for scholars to debate ideas and evidence in order to advance human knowledge. This book, however, is written not merely as a disinterested historical analysis or a summary of scholarly debate on women in the Bible; rather, as stated above, it is written for the sake of communities for whom these biblical texts are currently authoritative in some way, shaping the moral, intellectual, and emotional lives of contemporary people.”

[Margie Dorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will confess that I skipped the part in every chapter where the author discussed when and how often each woman was read about on a Sunday morning. But I feel the book as a whole deserves a very high rating, because despite all the studying I have done, Clark-Soles awakened me repeatedly to linguistic and other nuanced insights for both Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament that I'd never been alerted to previously, regarding women of God as creators, co-workers, and dispensers of wisdom. All written with clarity based on the extensive linguistic and theological study and knowledge of Clark-Soles. She is able to help me to set aside many of the predispositions I am inclined towards when studying text. She reminds her reader of something that I already know but need to have reiterated, that "All translation is an interpretation," and then she goes on to demonstrate the significance of her statement. And she notes that "Jesus calls all followers to minister, but in the narratives, no male appears doing so. The women exemplify the leadership to which Jesus calls all disciples." She reminds me of the need to continually re-examine my own calling.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jaime is an excellent writer and scholar.

[Catherine McNiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this for Kindle on a recent super sale and thought it might be interesting to skim as a resource. Instead, I'm reading it cover to cover. Excellent work.

[Kristjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit to feeling the lack of a woman's perspective when I have read through the Bible and I was looking forward to reading this book to fill in the gaps. I was not disappointed. The author provides an exceptionally well organized and thoughtful examination of where we find them, and how to better interpret what we know of them, so we can begin to understand their significant contributions to the faith ... and to some degree how and why they have been silenced. The book begins with the a survey of the TaNaKh/Old Testament to provide a context going into the New Testament and the ministry of Jesus and Paul to bring the women supporting each out from the shadows. It finished with some of the more problematic Pastorals with a needed comparison on how they are actually a departure of what came before and perhaps why they do so. Within each chapter the author engages in scriptural exegesis that tries to expose a more nuanced (and in many cases a deeper) meaning to the text that is more egalitarian than might be understood out of context. At the end of each chapter is a quick review on where/when these scriptures might come up in two (2) common lectionaries with an encouragement to take the opportunity to focus on the message revealed within the chapter (especially useful for those who may need to develop a homily or sermon on the scriptural readings of the day). At the very end of the book, there are scriptural and topical indices that makes this an easy to use reference book.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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