Women of the Jewish Bible

When planning a book about women in the Old Testament, the first problem is the order. The easiest and clearest option – as the author himself mentions – is alphabetical, starting with Abigail and ending with Jael and Zilpah. But this prioritizes the work's specific utility as a dictionary, to the detriment of its integral value as a transmitter of a collective message. Nor is the chronological order presented in the biblical text itself satisfactory, if we assume, as is the case, that it does not coincide with the order of its composition.

For this reason, the author has chosen to focus instead on the meaning and function of women (Eve) in the Jewish Scriptures. It is not, therefore, a biographical book. It does not recount in detail the history of each of the women of the Old Testament, seeking to extract primary moral or spiritual lessons from them. Rather, it presents and analyzes their image and personality, the conduct and behavior of each one in the light of the thought of the sacred writers and rabbinic theology, trying to unravel why they are presented in that way, the reason for the particular details told about each one, and the symbolic and subliminal message that is sought to be communicated. To do this, the work is divided into three parts:

1. Women of Memory: In the Beginning. This section deals with women before the exile. It dedicates a broad introductory chapter to "The Erased Goddesses," the female deities of the environment: Asherah or Astarte. Jewish monotheism replaced these with the mothers or matriarchs of the people: Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel. But they never completely disappeared from the people's thought and caused constant relapses into idolatry.

It then proceeds to an individual analysis of these Matriarchs of Israel, dividing them into cycles: Abraham and Isaac: Sarah, Hagar, Lot's wife and daughters, Rebekah. Jacob and his sons, from Rachel and Leah, through Dinah and Tamar, to Potiphar's wife and Asenath, Joseph's wife. And a third of liberators and heroines: Moses' mother and sister, Pharaoh's daughter, Zipporah, Miriam, Rahab, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, etc. Seers and prophetesses; wise women and deceitful women; mothers, wives, and daughters of kings, good and bad.

2. Women in Crisis: Jewish Mutation. Women in the pre-exile, exile, and post-exile periods (6th-5th centuries BCE). A period in which Judaism with a universal vocation was born, no longer centered on the temple and priesthood, but on national life norms independent of a kingdom and a land. And it explains how to understand the meaning and function of Jewish women in this context of mutation. Therefore, this section does not focus on specific women, although it mentions several as examples, but rather on the customs, traditions, laws, and norms that concern and affect them: Legislation on women and marriage; kidnappings and spoils of war; prostitution, virginity and rape, adultery and divorce, the situation of widows, religious laws and social taboos, risks of foreign women, gender violence, or even the sacrifice of women, as in the case of Jephthah's daughter.

A complete chapter deals with the Deuteronomistic reform and its influence on Judaism, pointing out how it induced a rejection and relegation of women, considering them more prone to idolatrous worship of the goddess: the reign of Athaliah, the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah, the worship of the Queen of Heaven (Jer. 7) and the fall of Jerusalem as punishment. It provides a very interesting analysis of the prophetic message presenting a God different from those of all other peoples, who is neither male nor female, Father nor Mother, but transcendent. He cannot be accessed through the usual fertility rites practiced by other peoples, but through personal encounter and ethical responsibility, since He operates on another level of transcendence and creative closeness. In this sense, it expounds and analyzes the prophetic vision of woman as a messianic mother (Isa. 7:14), symbolically elevating her to the feminine expression of the people whom God loves; and presenting Israel and the city of Jerusalem, Daughter of Zion, a feminine sign, as God's daughter-wife.

This section concludes by explaining how, and as a consequence, after the exile, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, Judaism acquired a peculiar sense of peoplehood, closed in on itself, and fell into endogamy, prohibiting the marriage of Jews with foreign women, who are identified and described as the great sin: the Jew is born of a Jewish woman and marries a Jewish woman. Therefore, in this new Judaism, women are already integrated into the people, just like men, because they must listen to the law and must be able to respond, to transmit that same law to the children (Neh. 9:1-8).

The third part deals with symbolic women:

3. Eve: The Great Women of Judaism, where it analyzes the historical or symbolic figure of a series of powerful women who personify Judaism's vision of women, and thereby shape the history of the West. It begins, as might be expected, by exhaustively debating the different symbolisms of the creation story and of Eve, the Living One, mother of all living.

Next, it presents the symbolism of women in wisdom literature, where the Good Woman, the Wisdom of God (a sign of His Law and His People, His creative Word and His Presence) takes on the forms and names of an ideal woman and God's "wife"; in contrast to the Evil Woman, the Prostitute, who opposes God and appears as the Serpent, tempting men.

The book ends with a kind of altarpiece, an octateuch presenting the symbolism of eight great exemplary female figures that have marked and continue to mark the consciousness of Judaism, and thereby of Christianity and Western culture: Three lovers and wives: the Shulamite of Songs, Sarah of Tobit, and Susanna. Two foreigners: Ruth and Asenath. And three liberators: Esther, Judith, and the Maccabean mother.

It concludes that despite the fact that the situation of women has changed and improved, the women of the Bible trace a path that has not yet been fully traversed, and in which we must continue to advance together, men and women. The Bible is what it is and says what it says. But when we are able to read and interpret it with wisdom, we discover that it is an open source that continues to flow and that can, and should, become a river of life. Therefore, a re-reading of the entire Bible from the perspective of women, as this book does, will help us to better understand and resolve the issue of women, not only in the Jewish Bible, but in the history and future of humanity.

It includes an elaborate network of indexes of people and topics, which makes the book a true and useful Biblical Dictionary on Women. And a complete bibliography, although in truth, the specific bibliography offered by the author in the extensive critical apparatus of footnotes far exceeds what is included at the end.

We are facing a masterful and very profound academic book, probably the most serious and rigorous work ever written about women in the Bible. However, its reading requires having gone through a theological seminary, or at least, a mid-to-high level university preparation. It will receive the most effusive applause from the progressive sector; and the harshest criticism in traditional and conservative circles. But what is certain is that no one who reads it will remain indifferent.