God, Gender and the Bible

Deborah Sawyer discusses this crucial yet unresolved question in the context of contemporary and postmodern ideas about gender and power, based on fresh examination of a number of texts from Hebrew and Christian scripture. Such texts offer striking parallels to contemporary gender theories (particularly those of Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler), which have unravelled given notions of power and constructed identity. Through the study of gender in terms of its application by biblical writers as a theological strategy, we can observe how these writers use female characters to undermine human masculinity, through their 'higher' intention to elevate the biblical God. God Gender and the Bible demonstrates that both maleness and femaleness are constructed in the light of divine omnipotence. Unlike many approaches to the Bible that offer hegemonist interpretations, such as those that are explicitly Christian or Jewish, or liberationist or feminist, this enlightening and readable study sustains and works with the inconsistencies evident in biblical literature.

'... for a really significant example of theological engagement with text and doctrine, it is Deborah Sawyer's book that merits much thought ... This book helps us read biblical texts with new eyes, and to rethink the implications of their discontinuities. It has much to offer to the reinvigoration of theological thinking.' - Ann Loades, Church Times'This is an important and illuminating book - valuable both for its close readings of specific texts as well as its timely framework argumennt - and deserves to be read by biblical scholars and theologians, by clergy and lay people, by Christians and Jews.' - Theology