Poor Banished Children of Eve: Woman as Evil in the Hebrew Bible

by Gale A. Yee

Overview

What gave rise to symbolizing woman as evil in the biblical tradition and other ancient Near Eastern societies? Taking her title from a Roman Catholic prayer called "Hail Holy Queen," Yee investigates the history of this hostile tradition of symbolization, including Eve in Genesis, Gomer in Hosea, Oholah and Oholibah in Ezekiel, and the "strange woman" of Proverbs. Employing a materialist literary criticism, ideological criticism, and the social sciences, she investigates how this negative imagery crops up in a variety of forms. Among her important conclusions is that gender conflicts in ancient Israel could be deflected forms of class conflictthe struggles between the king and peasants are deflected to men and women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800634575
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	10/03/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Gale A. Yee is Nancy W. King Professor Emerita of Episcopal Divinity School.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Ideological Criticism and Woman as Evil

The Social Sciences and Woman as Evil

The Mother of All Living and We Her Children-Eve in Genesis 2-3

She Is Not My Wife and I Am Not Her Husband-Faithless Israel in Hosea 1-2

They Played the Whore in Egypt-The Promiscuous Sisters in Ezekiel 23

My Husband Is Not at Home, He Took His Money Bag with Him-The Other Woman in Proverbs 7

Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

Yee (Hebrew Bible, Episcopal Divinity Sch.) analyzes four biblical passages (Genesis 2-3, Hosea 1-3, Ezekiel 23, and Proverbs 7) in which a woman is the source or symbol of sin. Yee's agenda, however, is not narrowly feminist but "materialist-feminist"; that is, she aims to link the sexism of these texts to other forms of social oppression. In two largely derivative chapters that summarize the work of other scholars (particularly Terry Eagleton's Ideology: An Introduction), Yee describes her guiding hermeneutic and gives the necessary historical account of economic and political conflict in ancient Israel. In each of the following four chapters, she places one of the texts under the Marxist lens, scrutinizing it for oblique references to class struggles. The interpretations, although clever and thoroughly argued, remain hopelessly speculative; for instance, Yee proposes that Genesis 2-3 is a symbolic justification for a shift in power from family lineages to a centralized monarchy. The drab prose, clogged with citations to the scholarly literature, makes this book appropriate only for academic libraries with large collections in biblical studies.-Charles Seymour, Wayland Baptist Univ. Lib., Plainview, TX Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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