| “Feminism is the cause of more bad than good and people are justified in suppressing it.” “The Bible is irrelevant in our modern, secular world.” The above two statements are commonly held opinions. They make it difficult for people to be feminists and discourage them from taking the Bible seriously. To be both a feminist and a committed Bible reader, then, is to have two strikes against you. Yet from the first to the last page of Introducing the Women’s Hebrew Bible Susanne Scholz strives to persuade us that we should be both. Before reading this book I was already in agreement with Susanne Scholz on the positive value of Feminist scholarship and as practicing Christian eager to learn more about Feminist interpretations of Old Testament writings. I am very grateful to her for the authoritative, clear and condensed glimpse that her book gives into the history and breadth of feminist scholarship on the Hebrew Bible. As an argument for the feminist cause I think she was successful. In her introduction and conclusion, however, Susanne Scholz seems to address the academic setting alone and evaluate the Bible only from an a-religious perspective. As such I feel she was unable to decisively answer the second challenge which she tries to address and falls short of making a convincing argument for why the Bible is important in the modern world. |
