Biblical women – Jewish literary and religious ideals

Abstract

During the past two decades the new awareness of women has developed from a diffuse protest to conscientious and ambitious research. The fact that the new wave of awareness at least to some extent was initiated by Jewish women is not a unique phenomenon in Jewish history. On account on their position Jews have always strongly identified with different revolutionary movements and stood up for leadership in them. Jewish women have experienced themselves as a double minority because their international Jewish world has not developed from patriarchalism to wider perspectives as rapidly as their external non-Jewish society. From a literary and feminist point of view it is obvious that Tanach has undergone the same process as all other Jewish literature. The scriptures that we today consider authorized are a selection, the result of a process and in order to understand them we must accept that they reflect development both in culture and society.