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Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean . By Ross Shepard Kraemer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xv, 322. Cloth with dust jacket. £45.00. ISBN 978-0-19-974318-6.

Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean . By Ross... Over the past decades, Ross Kramer (K.) has dealt extensively with the subject of women and religion in antiquity. In this new book, she reconsiders the historical value of ancient sources for women’s religious experience in light of new theories of literary representation and of gender theories. In the limited space of this review, I restrict myself to the Judaic subjects in the book. In the introductory first chapter, K. presents an overview of various “theories” and discusses the problem of defining “women,” “gender,” and “religion.” She shows great sympathy for several forms of “critical theory” (her favourite is Bourdieu), but does not wholly adopt a hypercritical hermeneutics of suspicion (such as one can observe with uncritical admirers of everything “critical” that comes from la rive gauche ). Also, unlike many “theorists,” she does not overwhelm the reader with a great amount of “critical” jargon. In ch. 2, K. exemplifies the issues by reading “four short stories” (pagan, Jewish, and Christian) in light of such hermeneutics in order to show how gendered concerns considerably detract from historical reliability. It “becomes increasingly difficult to extract reliable historical evidence from the entanglements of gendered concerns that underlie all these narratives” http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal for the Study of Judaism Brill

Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean . By Ross Shepard Kraemer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xv, 322. Cloth with dust jacket. £45.00. ISBN 978-0-19-974318-6.

Journal for the Study of Judaism , Volume 43 (1): 100 – Jan 1, 2012

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Review of Books
ISSN
0047-2212
eISSN
1570-0631
DOI
10.1163/157006312X618000
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Over the past decades, Ross Kramer (K.) has dealt extensively with the subject of women and religion in antiquity. In this new book, she reconsiders the historical value of ancient sources for women’s religious experience in light of new theories of literary representation and of gender theories. In the limited space of this review, I restrict myself to the Judaic subjects in the book. In the introductory first chapter, K. presents an overview of various “theories” and discusses the problem of defining “women,” “gender,” and “religion.” She shows great sympathy for several forms of “critical theory” (her favourite is Bourdieu), but does not wholly adopt a hypercritical hermeneutics of suspicion (such as one can observe with uncritical admirers of everything “critical” that comes from la rive gauche ). Also, unlike many “theorists,” she does not overwhelm the reader with a great amount of “critical” jargon. In ch. 2, K. exemplifies the issues by reading “four short stories” (pagan, Jewish, and Christian) in light of such hermeneutics in order to show how gendered concerns considerably detract from historical reliability. It “becomes increasingly difficult to extract reliable historical evidence from the entanglements of gendered concerns that underlie all these narratives”

Journal

Journal for the Study of JudaismBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2012

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