Breaking Boundaries Female Biblical Interpreters Who Challenged the Status Quo

While people often believe that the feminist movements in Britain and North America began in the late twentieth century, this is certainly not the case. Women throughout the centuries have sought to break out of the constraints that their societies deemed appropriate for them. For interpreters in the Christian tradition, this often meant examining biblical texts that had been understood in ways that demeaned women and using their interpretations to encourage women to break out of their culturally proscribed spheres. The essays in this volume are drawn from the Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible Consultation at the SBL Annual Meeting and from sessions on female interpreters of Scripture at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. The essays address female interpreters of the Bible such as Eudocia and Anna Jameson whose publications have been largely ignored in the fields of the history of biblical interpretation and reception history. Through their publications these women used their interpretive and theological skills to break the boundaries that previous interpretations of the Bible and their societies imposed upon them.

CONTENTSAbbreviations1. Introduction: Boundaries Broken, Voices HeardNancy Calvert-Koyzis, Heather E. Weir 2. Retelling and Misreading Jesus: Eudocia's Homeric CentoBrian Sowers3. Vindicating Womankind: Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum Caryn Reeder4. Reading Nature Before Reading the Bible: Sarah Trimmer's Natural TheologyHeather E. Weir5. Eliza Smith's The Battles of the Bible: Biblical Interpretation in Service of a Christian Social Agenda in Nineteenth-Century Urban ScotlandBernon Lee6. "Miss Greswell Honed Our Hebrew at Oxford": Reflections on Joana J. Greswell and Her Book Grammatical Analysis of the Hebrew Psalter (1873)J. Glen Taylor7. Ready to Sacrifice All: The Repentant Magdalene in the Work of Harriet Beecher StoweNancy Calvert-Koyzis8. Olympia Brown: Reading the Bible as a Universalist Minister and Pragmatic SuffragistBeth Bidlack 9. Leaving Eden: Resurrecting the Work of Katharine Bushnell and Lee Anna StarrKristin Kobes Du Mez 10. Elizabeth Mary MacDonald:  An Early Canadian Contribution to the Study of Women in the Ancient Near East Rebecca G. S. Idestrom11. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Interpretation of the Virgin Mary: The Significance of Maternal Ideology for Home and Society Nancy Calvert-KoyzisIndex