Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
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 for the Study of Judaism – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2012
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.