Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Our Own Complicity: The Unnamed Woman In Judges 19 And Mmiwg, Cassidy Crosby

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Singular brutality marks the unnamed woman’s story in Judges 19—perhaps the most disturbing and upsetting story in the Hebrew Bible, in which a group of men rape and then murder her. Our religious discussions therefore usually ignore this story, preferring to focus on tales that are not as difficult to deal with. However, ignoring the woman’s story does a disservice to her life and death, and to ourselves. If we believe the content in the Bible is divinely inspired, then we have a duty to search for the divine in this story. Perhaps the most important path comes in applying …

Judith: A Literary Analysis Of A Female Legend, Contrasting Biblical And Medieval Elements, Celisa Fullmer Young

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

It’s not every day that a youthfully beautiful maiden commits manslaughter. Then again, it’s not every day that an unarmed, outnumbered band of would-be martyrs conquers world-class military threats. And it’s not every day that violence promotes peace, or that vice masks the victory of virtue. Yet these are the ageless anachronisms that have shaped both our social reality and our beloved legends, the unanticipated underdogs. “Ic him ealdor oðþrong,” Judith said humbly of her malignant captor, “I took his life” (Cooper 9). This eponymous, 10th century war- hero—a seemingly obscure Hebrew woman—turned the tide of a critical battle between …

From Divinely Equal To Violently Oppressed: Brutality Against Women In The Bible, Shana Clemence

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

The Old Testament tells us the first woman on earth, Eve, was created from the rib of the first man, Adam. To many, this symbolizes equality between the sexes. A historical theologian said, “to be formed from the side symbolically indicates equality rather than domination or subjection” (O’Loughlin, 1993). Wheelwright-Brown (2020) stated how the effect of mankind’s view of Eve’s brave choice to partake of the fruit of the tree of life had serious, harmful consequences for women:

There’s the effect it had on men, and the way they have been subtly influenced to perceive women and think of women. …