Female participation in Judean family religions

Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 2016

Short abstract: This paper shall demonstrate that a gender-stratified template for the leadership of family and government believed to be modeled after ancient Semitic patriarchal structures according to a pattern found in Old Testament biblical texts is erroneous. It shall demonstrate that strong elements of matriarchalism existed alongside of patriarchalism and that Old Testament texts offer no accurate template for gender-based governance.

Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 2016

This article demonstrates that a gender-stratified template for the leadership of family and government believed to be modeled after ancient Semitic patriarchal structures according to a pattern found in Old Testament biblical texts is erroneous. It shall demonstrate that strong elements of matriarchalism existed alongside of patriarchalism and that Old Testament texts offer no accurate template for gender-based governance.

Religions, 2019

Historically, those studying Israelite religion have ignored the existence of women in Iron Age Israel (1200–587 BCE). They have, therefore, accounted neither for the religious beliefs of half of ancient Israel’s population nor for the responsibilities that women assumed for maintaining religious rituals and traditions. Such reconstructions of Israelite religion are seriously flawed. Only in the last four decades have scholars, primarily women, begun to explore women’s essential roles in Israel’s religious culture. This article utilizes evidence from the Hebrew Bible and from archaeological sites throughout Israel. It demonstrates that some women had roles within the Jerusalem Temple. Most women, however, resided in towns and villages throughout the Land. There, they undertook responsibility for clan-based and community-based religious rituals and rites, including pilgrimage, seasonal festivals, rites of military victory, and rites of mourning. They fulfilled, as well, essential roles within the sphere of domestic or household religion. At home, they provided medico-magical healing for all family members, as well as care for women and babies throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond. They, and the men in their communities, worshipped Yahweh, Israel’s primary deity, and the goddess Asherah, as well; for most people, these two divinities were inextricably linked.

What we know about the roles of women in Israelite family religion is a topic in need of reassessment. In this article, the author evaluates a number of common claims which have been made about family religion and gender. These include the idea that goddess worship was especially important to women; that Judean pillar figurines were used primarily or exclusively by women in their ritual activities; that the religious practices of ancient Israelite women overlapped little with those of men; and that birth-related ritual contexts were a special preserve of women.

2013

Description of the Assignment: Discuss the question of what we can say about women and their roles in early Judaism. Compare the role of women in Jewish communities with that in Christian and emerging Muslim communities. Base your discussion on the course readings, both the literature given in the syllabus and the literature for the fixed exam. Bio‐anatomy vs The Individual…and The Twist From a methodological point of view, the topic at hand is hugely difficult because it touches on every skein of human relations. The question arises immediately, therefore, as to which characteristics are common to all the threads of all the skeins that touch on the topic. I chose the title " Bio‐anatomy vs. The Individual… and The Twist " because I see those three concepts as the protagonists every time I struggle to comprehend the source of the problematics that has plagued relations between men and women seemingly since day one. Let us make use of a bit of dialectics and horistics, then. I would like to define Individual as it is used in this paper: Individual is the sum of mental, moral, and cultural characteristics that make up the personality. Since men and women are surely more similar than different, perhaps it is best to start looking at the differences first.

Religion Compass, 2007

This article investigates the roles played by women within the religion of Iron Age II Israel (1000-587 BCE). That little is presently known about this important topic can be attributed to the androcentric perspective of the Hebrew Bible and to gender bias within the modern academy. Recent scholarship has begun to turn the tide, and this article shows the many ways in which women contributed to – and were an integral part of – the religion of ancient Israel.

A review and analysis of the role of women and marriage in ancient Judaism, with a focus on what this means in the context of the life of Jesus.

The Fifth Workshop on Gender, Methodology and the Ancient Near East (GeMANE 5), 2022

Seals have become a core component of the study of Levantine and Ancient Near Eastern social, economic, and religious history. Within the Levant, these occur primarily in the form of stamp seals. Due to their dimensions and form, the base of stamp seals provides less iconographic and textual data compared to cylinder seals. In contrast to other regions, the practice to inscribe individual names unto seals emerged as late as the Iron Age across the Levant. Many inscribed seals provide family relations or titles in addition to the individual's name. Academic research of these inscribed Levantine seals has centered on publishing individual finds, which are often unprovenanced, and on publishing corpora of stamp seals. Concerning inscribed seals, their categorization has relied mainly on titles („governor“, „minister“) and family relations („son of“, „daughter of“) or their absence. Moreover, Levantine archaeology has relied on unprovenanced glyptics and centered on the epigraphic identification of biblical, elite male persons of the Israelite, Judahite, and Persian administration. When women are considered seal owners and users, it is regularly framed within two narratives in academic discourse. The first presents women's seals as scarce compared to the high number of men's seals, and the latter promotes exceptional female individuals. This second narrative singles out a queen or high-ranking, “exceptional” woman and her seal. Therefore, academic discourse ultimately represents seals as primarily owned and used by males. Facing this situation, a critical reassessment of academic scholarship and its interpretational patterns is necessary. Hence, from a gender-archaeological perspective, I reevaluate inscribed seals from the Iron Age Levant. Stamp seals and seal impressions on jar handles or bullae document social and economic activities in Iron Age Judah. Therefore, Carol Meyers has argued that female-owned inscribed seals document women’s economic activities and independence as businesswomen. I will discuss the corpus of finds for attesting female seal ownership and use in my paper. My approach is based primarily on provenanced artifacts and considers their archaeological context. I consider seals and literacy as technologies producing and materializing gender on the body. Hence, my paper addresses how seals engender social performances in the Iron Age Levant. This material approach to embodiment and gender understands material culture actively engaged within social performances. Thus, material culture is part of the naturalization of gender as a social construct and supplies the possibility of aberration from social norms. It will become evident that glyptic inscriptions show a high standardization, and at the same time, they offer spaces of individual agency and self-representation.