Poor Banished Children of Eve: Woman as Evil in the Hebrew Bible. By Gale A. Yee. Pp. xii + 298. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003. isbn 0 8006 3457 8. Paper $24

Abstract

This book offers a corrective to one of the problematic aspects of feminist hermeneutics: that the attempt to read within the Hebrew Bible a positive and affirming message for women can sometimes lead to a denial of the obvious fact that it not only contains a considerable amount of material oppressive to women, but is, arguably, responsible for much of the oppression of women that has continued throughout Christian history. Yee's alternative approach is to apply a materialist-feminist method to four significant texts—Eve in Genesis, Faithless Israel in Hosea, the two sisters in Ezekiel, and the Other Woman in Proverbs. She examines the production of each text within its own political and historical context, showing how, at various stages in Israel's socioeconomic and cultic development, ‘woman’ is employed as a negative symbol for particular and local purposes—in order to endorse, for instance, a Monarchic hierarchy over a tribal confederacy, or a return to the true cult. Despite the political expediency of the strategy, the result has been an insidious association of evil with the feminine. Thus, as Yee points out, religion is laced together with sexism, racism, classism, and a host of other ‘isms’, such that ‘the Bible continues to be used to legitimate sinful realities’. Yee's challenging and highly readable book is, nonetheless, a hopeful study, since by accounting for the sexist tendencies of the Hebrew Bible rather than interpreting them away, she succeeds in opening up some alternative, and non-sexist reading strategies.