The female ruse : women's deception and divine sanction in the Hebrew Bible /

The female ruse : women's deception and divine sanction in the Hebrew Bible / [print] Rachel E. Adelman - Sheffield [England] : Sheffield Phoenix Press, (c)2017. - xv, 256 sider ; 24 cm - Hebrew Bible monographs ; 74 . - Hebrew Bible monographs ; 74 .



Introduction: the female ruse -- Chapter 1: Reading Rebekah unveiled -- Chapter 2: The collusion of sisters: a study in The Leah-Rachel-Jacob triangle -- Chapter 3: Of veils, goats and sealing rings, of guarantors and kings: The story of Judah and Tamar -- Addendum: the signet, cord and staff -- Chapter 4: Weaving the messianic light: law and narrative In the making of the davidic dynasty -- Addendum 1: David's inheritance -- Addendum 2: a comparison of the three narratives -- Chapter 5: David's wives as women of oath -- Chapter 6: Michal: the king's daughter or the king's wife? -- Chapter 7: Abigail: woman of valor or woman of wile? -- Chapter 8: Bathsheba: woman of oath -- Chapter 9: 'Passing strange': gender crossing in the story of Joseph and Esther -- Addendum: Analogies between the Joseph and Esther narratives

The Female Ruse Women's Deception and Devine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible From Eve to Esther, the Hebrew Bible is replete wi th gendered tales of trickery, A lie is ut tered, a mask donned, a seduction staged, while redempt ion is propelled forward, guided by the divine hand. From the first 'female ruse' - Eve presenting the fruit of the tree of knowledge to Adam - humanity becomes embodied, engaged i n h istory, moving from the Garden to exile, from wander ing to homeland and redempt ion (and back again). Consider Rebekah dressing her beloved son in goatskins to steal the blessing from his bl in d father; Lot's daughters lying wi t h their drunken father, and then conceiving the founding fathers of Ammon and Moab; Leah and Rachel, the mothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, duping Jacob on their wedding night ; Tamar's seduction of Judah, her father-in-law, who then bears the progenitor of the Davidic line; Naomi sending Rut h to the threshing floor to seduce Boaz by n ight ; Bathsheba invoking an oath that King David had supposedly made in order to forward Solomon, her son, as successor to the monarchy; and Queen Esther concealing her Jewish ident ity in the Persian imperial. Over the course of nine chapters, the author traces these narratives of deception; in each case, God is in cahoots wit h these feminine agents in advancing the provident ial plan, A tension holds between the 'best laid plans' of men and the divine will as forwarded by women. Drawing on classic rabbinic sources and modern literary exegesis, the author exposes the conflict between the simple progression of genealogies and the process of selection through alliances of family and kin . W omen are at the crux of that conflict , seemingly compelled to choose the indirect route while the deity appears to endorse their lie.



9781910928257 9781909697942


Women in the Bible.
Deception in the Bible.

BS1199.A229.F463 2015 BS1199