Story Of Eve Research Articles

Can the Story of Eve (Genesis 2-3) be Interpreted as Feminist

This essay will argue that Eve in Genesis 2-3 cannot be interpreted as feminist as her story, tied to Adam, is inherently patriarchal. I will argue against three points that form the basis of a feminist re-interpretation of Genesis 2-3: that Adam is ungendered, that Eve is made from Adam’s side rather than his rib, and, that Eve is Adam’s suitable helper rather than his subordinate. I argue that feminist and traditional interpretations of Eve define her existence in relation to Adam’s prior existence. In this way, Eve consistently represents the Other, as she is defined only in reference to the Subject Adam, a man (De Beauvoir, 1949, 26). Eve is incidental while Adam is essential, and for a representation to be truly feminist it must show the woman as the Subject.

Reframing Genesis 3:16: Eve’s Creation Memoir

I will read Genesis 3:16 through the lens of Genesis 4. While Eve has become a fixed object in traditional interpretation as a dangerous temptress for man and the cause of humanity’s fall into sin, her story does not end in this chapter. Eve’s creative agency as “mother of all living” becomes the framework for the drama that unfolds in Genesis 4. Her body and her voice carry the story of life into the future. This essay shows the connection between Genesis 3:16 and the story in Genesis 4 by moving beyond a linguistic analysis of the common verbs, mashal and teshuqah. I will read the two texts together with the ancient scribes who distinguished Genesis 3:16 by placing this one verse between two setumah markers. Likewise, the story of Eve in Genesis 4:1–5:2 is placed between two setumah markers, thereby showing that ancient Hebrew readings emphasized a close relationship between Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:1–5:2. This is opposed to the Christian chapter division, which separates Genesis 3 from the story in Genesis 4, and places Genesis 3 in an authoritative position for the sake of extrapolating the doctrine of the fall into sin with the woman playing the central role in the fall story. I will further engage in deep reading, literary analysis, and performance criticism, and argue that Eve tells her own creation story with masterful subversiveness and creative audacity. The attempt of the essay is to reorient the dominant negative view of Eve toward a more positive, complex, and nuanced reading of her character in the Genesis text.

Eve

The arts have had a historical relationship with holding technology accountable through artists’ speculation on its harmful and redemptive characteristics. As young futurists born into an age where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related processes have become increasingly integrated into society, we wished to utilise this tradition to engage with contemporary anxieties concerning AI’s role in the potential automation of the creative industries. Using the comic book medium, we speculate on how this automation may prove to be an extension of capitalist exploitation through the story of Eve. Simultaneously, we embrace the more redemptive aspects of this technology’s use. We celebrate non-exploitative ‘machine’ art and the potential modes of expression that it may herald. This is as we do not wish to entirely foreclose the involvement of AI in art but simply question the effects such art may have under capitalism.

THE MOTHER OF ALL LIVING: RE-READING THE STORY OF EVE (AND ADAM)

This is a re-reading and retelling of the story of Eve and Adam. It argues that the action of Eve was at one and the same time Ascent – completing our creation as humans with moral agency, a condition for meaningful Imitatio Dei – and Fall – giving an additional nuance to Original Sin – not merely disobedience but rejection of the very meaning of humanity and liberty offered by the Holy One Blessed Be He. We owe, thus, to Eve the richness of our human existence – with joy and sorrow, with freedom to do good but potential to be sinful, in an eternal search for sanctification and salvation.

The Religious Feminist Subject as Material-Discursive Circuit

Abstract This article describes three different readings of the creation story of Eve and Adam, occurring over the life span of Henny Dons, a Protestant Christian and first-wave feminist in early-twentieth-century Norway. I discuss her changing understandings of this creation account over the course of her life. More broadly I explore her approach to biblical reading (as receiving, arranging, and iterating) and how this shaped her as a religious feminist subject. I argue that what is going on in her iterated re-readings is not fully captured by the frame of self-cultivation. Rather, this religious feminist subject shows us a series of woman-word operations that receive and arrange a variety of material and discursive entities together in a circuit of “being created woman.”

Women (Re)Writing Milton

Women (Re)Writing Milton

ARABIC: قصة آدم وحواء في النصوص القرآنية والكتب السماوية

The paper discusses the comparison between Adam and Eve story in holy books i.e., Quran and Bible, the Holy Quran is the Muslims’ way of life, the Muslims’ practice the Quran in their daily life. Quran is absolutely miraculous God’s words. Its language is very beautiful. It includes stories, the stories in Quran are the best stories, the stories in Quran not the same as previous scriptures. The stories in Quran clarify the stories in the Old and New Testaments. Adam is one of the interesting stories in Quran, its narrated in seven suras. Al Baqarah, Al Araf, Al Hijr, Al Isra, Al Kahf, Sa’ad, and sura Thah. This repetition shows its importance, it also has values for mankind. This story tells us how angels as pious creatures must respect Adam because he is leaned, creature. It is clarified in the story education is functional, practical universal continual, and potential traits of Islam. The research reveals the aspects of the few similarities between the holy books in presenting the story. As the study reveals that this story is repeated in Quran in many suras whereas in the Tawra it is mentioned in one place.

Feminisation of Sin : A Cultural Challenge on Womanhood

In Genesis 2-3, the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden has served as a major tool in the justification of women as evil, seductive, temptress, and the subordination of women. This paper explores the concept of creation and fall (sin) of humanity both in the biblical and some African creation myths. It also underscores the prevalent belief of all subsequent women as daughters of Eve and thus, responsible for bringing evil and death into the world. This perception of women and Eve has endured with remarkable tenacity and persists today as a major stumbling block in attempts by women to correct gender-based inequalities. The paper argues that the downgraded status of women stemmed from the patriarchal society of the Hebrews and the African cultural worldview at large. It examines the African biblical interpretation method which is a biblical interpretation that analysis the biblical text from the perspective of African worldview and culture and has set out to examine the perceived role of Eve and subsequent women in the introduction of original sin both biblical and at the African cultural level. This paper explores this methodology in order to re-appraise ancient biblical tradition, African cultural worldview and life experience with the purpose of correcting the effect of the negative cultural ideological conditioning to which women have been subjected. This paper advocates for a feminist reconsideration along with the existing traditional interpretation of the fall of man in the biblical book of Genesis 2-3 and in African myths on the origin of sin.

Falling into Hope: Wisdom Poetry and the Reinterpretation of Suffering in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's A Drama of Exile

Falling into Hope:Wisdom Poetry and the Reinterpretation of Suffering in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's A Drama of Exile Denae Dyck (bio) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning (hereafter, EBB) claimed in her preface to Poems (published in 1844 by Edward Moxon) that A Drama of Exile was "the longest and most important work" that she had "ever trusted into the current of publication," many of her initial readers disagreed with this assessment (WEBB 2: 567).1 Originally issued in two installments in the July and August 1844 issues of the United states Magazine and Democratic Review, A Drama of Exile featured as the lead work in this two-volume collection, which appeared only a few months later in America as A Drama of Exile: and Other Poems (1845). These widely reviewed books had the effect of making EBB "England's most internationally recognized poet," as Marjorie Stone observes; however, this recognition was not primarily because of the lead poem. While A Drama of Exile was not unilaterally disliked, reviewers dismissed it as an inferior piece, preferring EBB's sonnets and other shorter poems: this trend is evident in the Atlas, the John Bull, the sun, the Examiner, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the Critic, and the Westminster Review.2 EBB herself appears to have tempered her opinion of her work post-publication, writing to her friend and fellow poet Thomas Westwood, "I assure you I have no vain puffings up about the Drama of Exile—& I can easily believe that, as a whole, it may be a failure" (BC 9: 217). Nevertheless, her continued revisions to this poem for its republication in subsequent collections (in 1850, 1853, and 1856) imply that such disillusionment coexisted with ongoing aspirations for this piece. But then, perhaps it is strangely fitting that A Drama of Exile was seen as lacking: the poem is nothing if not a sustained engagement with the experience of limitation. Beginning where the third chapter of Genesis concludes, A Drama of Exile reinterprets the story of humankind's expulsion from Eden. This innovative starting point distinguishes A Drama of Exile from its literary [End Page 27] precursors, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) the most obvious among them.3 Rather than retell the biblical fall narrative, EBB's dramatic poem reflects on what might be more precisely termed "the fallout of the fall," taking up challenging questions about the ordering of the cosmos and the meaning of suffering. Her revisionary engagement with biblical texts thus extends beyond the opening chapters of Genesis: EBB adapts both the topics and the forms of biblical wisdom poetry, the dialogues featured in the Book of Job in particular. Over the course of its 2,270 lines, A Drama of Exile gives voice to Adam, Eve, Lucifer, Gabriel, Christ, Eden spirits, Earth spirits, and angelic choruses. These speakers interrogate the distinction between prelapsarian and postlapsarian states, the rule that the Genesis 1 text assigns to humankind, and the idea that all suffering is punitive. If A Drama of Exile is indeed a "failure," as EBB remarked to Westwood (BC 9: 217), then it is a grandly ambitious one. To analyze the scope of EBB's ambition, this article situates the poem in relation to the interpretive debates sparked by the dissemination of biblical higher criticism in Victorian Britain. Originating in the work of German scholars including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, and Johann Gottfried Herder, this criticism challenged accepted ideas about the Bible's divine inspiration and doctrinal unity, emphasizing instead its diverse historical contexts, theological inconsistencies, composite authorship, and generic plurality. My approach aims to supplement the growing body of scholarship that highlights the feminist energies of A Drama of Exile, from Dorothy Mermin's claiming of A Drama of Exile as "Eve's story" in 1989 to subsequent studies including those by Stone, Linda Lewis, Alexandra M. B. Wörn, Terence Allen Hoagwood, and Karen Dieleman.4 Building on Hoagwood's discussion of this poem's recourse to "the symbolic terms of the [biblical fall] myth for representation of contemporary social themes" (p. 173), I argue that EBB's engagement with what the Victorians called the Woman Question issues from her response to widespread...

Desert Triptych, and: Lifestyle Factors

Desert Triptych, and: Lifestyle Factors Sophia Stid (bio) Desert Triptych You have to learn to say, wrong was done here.You have to learn to say who did it.In October, a wolf walkedin the Grand Canyon for the first time in twenty years— the last October I still wanted to know the copper riveting your jeans with my tongue—& scientists tracked the wolf four hundred miles beyond her boundary.In other words, she broke her boundary. Other-placed, she lickedrocks for water. Tracked seams in granite with the wet pressedtrouble of her thirst. She brought wolf-shaped shadow backto the canyon. Gave that rose-riven ground her good wolfweight. & every day that month I returned to the search bar whereI pressed keys to mean grand + wolf + canyon and the orderdidn’t matter, there she was. Still safe. No headline yet saiddead. I hadn’t learned yet that return can be a kind of prayer.Or that prayer can be a kind of hurt. I loved you & you lovedGod. Now my fingers know what they meant then as they foundthat site again & again, a rosary of keys. They were psalming—~praying— Desert mother, show me your palm, teach me roughness. I want a mysticism that snarls & shakes its salt. I am tired of Jesus. Tired of the people who carry his name in their mouths & never bite down. Give me blood & gravity. What it means to have a body is all I know of God—~At the end of November, a farmer shot the wolf. That December,I came to the desert, to your bed, & slept in that loved dark. Youropen mouth pressed against my throat, my open mouth. You said,Canyonlands keep their own religion. The roosters down your streetwore their small eyes hard as turquoise—one night, we watched them [End Page 149] fight with silver feet. A man took a blood-blind bird & put its headinto his mouth & sucked. Your hand tightened on my jeans.The man spat out dark clots & the bird could breathe again. Spit-cleaned, could see to wound right. & the thirst in my throat, rising— [End Page 150] Lifestyle Factors I am waiting at the campus clinic for my friend,trying to count the times I apologized this week.The last time: a minute ago, to the scrubbed nursestomping by, just in case I was in her way. On our wayhere, my friend asked me to pull over so she could throw up.I’m so sorry, she gasped, gagging with flu. Oh honey,I hummed, my hands gathering her hair. The worldwants women to stop apologizing now. It wants to breakour tongues, our good tongues running wild with the sorrythat it taught. Say you’re sorry—and I did, and I did,and I did. Whatever it was. Whenever they said. My mouthknew the score. Before I could read, my tongue readthe story of Eve’s mouth, how she bit, how she ate, how sheknew. Then the shame, the clothes, the banishing.There’s no God there. The history of women and apologyis a history of our bodies—burned, stoned, shrouded,drowned. Buried, unbelieved. And now the world is boredof our sorry mouths. Every time a lover says, you don’thave to apologize, or the internet buzzes about the waywomen talk, another sorry slips of my tongue, involuntaryas water falling into water. My sorry drops easy as a dress.It loves to be said and I’ll say it. Habit, tic, mouth-memory,spell that kept me safe. But not always. That’s the trickof it. I am Pavlov’s dog for the word sorry. I am trained.And now sorry is one more way to be wrong, to be hungry,the secret stone I carried stolen and thrown right back at me.In the clinic, I stop counting apologies to read a posteron the wall listing Lifestyle Factors That Can Leadto Pregnancy Loss. Smaller print tells me Not All LossCan Be Controlled. The factors: Smoking | Drinking | Drugs | A Sedentary Lifestyle | Domestic...

Eva y la triple T en las tradiciones judía e islámica

En este artículo se pretende llevar a cabo un estudio comparativo del momento decisivo de los relatos bíblico y coránico de la vida de Eva que es la violación del pacto hecho con el Creador, el de no acercarse ni comer del árbol prohibido, con el fin de establecer elementos estructurales comunes y distintos. La violación de la orden divina no nació de la nada, tenía sus causas y consecuencias. La Triple T designa las tres etapas de dicha violación. En la primera que es la tentación, veremos la incitación e iniciación al hecho transgresor. A continuación, en la transgresión, explicaremos cómo fue la desobediencia. Por último, viene la tragedia que engloba los resultados y las consecuencias.

Does Inequality Really Matter?

There is a great temptation to deal with the issues of inequality either in terms of economics alone or in a polemical style that simply dwells on the bad effects of inequality-as if that solves the problem. Instead, I want to start by seeking to address this issue more theologically, thus my question, Does inequality really matter?So what if there's inequality? There has always been inequality and there most certainly always will be inequality. This is not just a quick lapse into an approach much influenced by Darwin, that affirms the solutions for our society are about survival of the fittest and devil take the hindmost, if you'll excuse the mix of disciplines in that sentence. Rather, it's a genuine question in terms of a world that is deeply caught up in diversity, and seemingly to the world's great benefit.To put it another way: are the extremely wealthy merely the latest or possibly the last minority, a persecuted group to be identified, whom we need to defend, not attack? Should there be marches, or possibly processions of limos or Rolls Royces (necessarily chauffeurdriven), down Wall Street or Lombard Street with elegantly crafted placards produced by top-end designers saying, Justice to the ultrarich, Billionaires are people too? Why does inequality matter?I want to go back to two originating stories, turning first to the Genesis story and the development of diversity within humanity in its earliest forms.In the great west window of Canterbury Cathedral, in the center of the bottom row of stained glass, there is an image of Adam digging in the Garden of Eden. The cathedral, for those who do not know it, progresses from west to east upwards, like this church. As you go further east you go further up, except in Canterbury it's pretty steep: it goes up about thirty-five feet. At the east end, just near where the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury would have been until the Reformation, there is the throne of St. Augustine, into which one is rather firmly put when you start this job. Archbishop Robert Runcie used to say that he was constantly reminded that when he sat on the throne of St. Augustine, he was level with Adam digging at the other end of the cathedral.Underlying that comment is a wealth of thoughtfulness about the relative importance of offices to which others ascribe importance, but also the significance of Adam digging in the garden. One can meditate for days on those particular stories in the early chapters of Genesis. But one of the aspects to note is that at the beginning we are all equal. In the days of the English revolution in the seventeenth century, the gentry who were overthrowing the tyrannical rule, as they saw it, of Charles I were not in the slightest bit interested in equality with the peasantry. They wanted a decent hierarchy, only with those who were slightly more important taken down a peg or two, or taken off a head or two. Cromwell took strongly against the levelers and the diggers, quasi-communist groups who went back to Adam and Eve and proclaimed there should be no social distinctions. Hierarchy is deeply embedded, but the Adam and Eve story, the story of the Garden, has constantly come back to capture the imagination of those who see that in the creation of God there is equality.And at the heart of the Genesis story of the creation of human beings is the essential nature of the human being, both male and female, existing to know God intimately and to walk intimately with God. There is an equality of worship, in adoration of the presence of God; there is an equality of reveling and feasting, in fellowship with God in the Garden. Equality is a gift in creation, it is the foundation of equality before the law, equality of voice in the public square, equality in righteousness.Walter Brueggemann makes a similar point in his commentary on Isaiah, concerning chapter fifty-nine. The postexilic community in Israel is deeply flawed: not by its lack of worship, of which there is plenty, but by its inequalities injustice, in voice, in inclusion of all who accept Torah, regardless of wealth and status. …

Adam, Eve, and Jewish Children: Rewriting the Creation of Eve for the Jewish Young at the Beginning of Jewish Modernization

At the end of the 18th century, the Jewish enlighteners invented the Genre of Jewish German Children’s Bibles in their aim to reform the Jewish education system in German speaking areas. This paper initially provides a short introduction to some of the main features of the genre. Subsequently, the story of Eve’s creation as it appears in two of its earliest representatives, Peter Beer’s Sefer toledot yisra’el (1796) and Immanuel Moritz Neumann’s Sefer torat ha-elohim (1816), is analyzed and compared, exploring the literary and interpretative strategies of the two authors in their respective contemporary contexts. Finally, the paper illustrates some of the contributions of Jewish Children’s Bibles to our understanding of the Haskala and the early stages of Jewish modernization.

Book Review: Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology

Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology. Edited by Michelle M. Dowd and Thomas Festa. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012. ISBN 978-0-86698-458-4. Pp. 386. $60.00 In this anthology, Michelle M. Dowd and Thomas Festa gather a varied selection of seventeenth-century women's writing inspired by the narrative of the Fall, particularly the character of Eve. As the editors note, Imagining Eve's voice in early modern England entailed direct engagement with the most issues of identity in political and social life (1-2). The authors of these texts engage such contentious issues, from education to breastfeeding to poetry to theology, as they explore the Fall as a basis for early modern theories about gender, society, and vocation. In publishing this anthology, Dowd and Festa hope to dispel the simplistic myth that religion functioned only to disempower women in the premodern era, or that the story of Eve's fall did not have a productive as well as a counterproductive force in English society (7). Including a wide range of writings inspired by the Fall narrative, the anthology illustrates the generative power of this tale to spark discussion, debate, and imaginative writing in the early modern period. Early Modern Women on the Fall includes relatively well-known voices, such as Aemelia Lanyer (selections from Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum), Katherine Philips (To Antenor, on a Paper of Mine), and Mary Astell Serious Proposal to the Ladies) alongside texts that have never before appeared in a modern edition, including Dorothy Calthorpe's Description of the Garden of Eden and selections from Mary Roper's The Sacred History. Among the other texts are poems by Margaret Cavendish (Poets Have Most Pleasure In This Life), Lucy Hutchinson (selections from Order and Disorder), and Jane Barker (A Farewell to Poetry, With a Long Digression on Anatomy), and prose works by Bathsua Makin (An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen) and Elizabeth Clinton (The Countess of Lincolns Nursery). Along with their chronologically-ordered selection of poetry and prose, Dowd and Festa include appendices containing the first three chapters of Genesis in both the Geneva and Authorized (King James) versions of the Bible, the marriage service from the 1559 Book of Common Prayer, biographical and textual notes, and a selected bibliography for further reading. Dowd and Festa address this anthology to both student readers and the general public. To that end, they ground their editorial practices in accessibility, describing their edited texts as standardized, Americanized, and lightly modernized (15). Their notes for each work are also geared toward accessibility and comprehension; for example, their first footnote to the selections from Dorothy Leigh's The Mother's Blessing places this work in its generic context as a mother's legacy, briefly explaining the genre and directing readers to further information on both genre and work (29nl). Dowd and Festa also use their notes to define unfamiliar terms and to gloss Biblical, literary, and historical mentions of such figures as Hannah (75n10), Nicostrata (151n95), or Brutus (276n57). In addition to providing this information, Dowd and Festa deliberately include as many complete texts as possible (such as those by Astell, Clinton, and Makin) rather than shorter selections, making these texts particularly useful for comprehensive discussion and inquiry (16). Through their editorial and selection practices as well as their careful notes, Dowd and Festa successfully create an anthology suitable for initial encounters with the rich world of seventeenth-century texts. A major strength of Early Modern Women on the Fall springs from another of its goals: inviting comparison of the selected works with each other and with others from the period. Dowd and Festa stress in their introduction that their purpose is emphatically not to re-segregate women's writing, expressing the hope that readers will place these texts in conversation with other works, perhaps beginning with the Fall as narrated in Milton's Paradise Lost (17). …

Adam and Eve - The Story of Two Adolescents

In this introductory address to the the Congress of the Interntional Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology (ISAPP) in Berlin September 14-18, 2011, incoming ISAPP President Annette Streeck-Fischer interprets the Adam and Eve story of Genesis in the Bible as a myth depicting adolescent development. Elements of sexual maturation, risk-taking, and separation from parents, are present in the story. We are reminded of the many challenges todays adolescents face. Keywords: Adolescents, myths, Adam and Eve, Bible, development, sexuality

Adam and Eve - The Story of Two Adolescents

In this introductory address to the the Congress of the Interntional Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology (ISAPP) in Berlin September 14-18, 2011, incoming ISAPP President Annette Streeck-Fischer interprets the Adam and Eve story of Genesis in the Bible as a myth depicting adolescent development. Elements of sexual maturation, risk-taking, and separation from parents, are present in the story. We are reminded of the many challenges todays adolescents face.

Back to the Beginning: An Exploration of the Roles Played by Eve and the Garden of Eden in Modern Poetry by Jewish Women

Despite Eve’s somewhat tarnished reputation in traditional and feminist circles, contemporary Jewish poets often evoke the biblical story of Eve and the Garden of Eden to present it in a more positive light. These rereadings of traditional texts add new levels of midrash and produce new understandings of the original text. This paper analyzes poems by two American poets, Linda Pastan and Kim Chernin, who focus on the Garden, seeing it in the context of other ancient civilizations; and by two Israeli poets, Techiyah Bat-Oren and Ruḥama Weiss, who challenge the classic rabbinic understandings of Eve. Despite the diversity of form, language and context, all of these writers reclaim Eve as a powerful and independent person. The poets create varied templates for the relationships between women and men in society, revisiting issues in the biblical text such as hierarchy, culpability, voice, and agency. In many ways, the biblical character of Eve is unlikely to resonate with modern Jewish women. Long considered an afterthought, a female derivative of the male first human, she was perceived in the early stages of the second-wave feminist assessment of classical Jewish texts as less admirable than her nonbiblical “predecessor,” the demon Lilith. 1 According to some late rabbinic traditions, Lilith was the very first woman, whose creation is implicit in the verses recounting the creation of the adam 2 in Genesis 1. Lilith’s independent mind-set earned her rabbinic opprobrium; Eve was the second “first” woman, a remake described in Genesis 2, who accepted a subservient position and tempted the male who “birthed” her into violating the divine command not to

Simple Stories for a Complicated World: An Interview with Filmmaker Izidore Musallam

Film and television director, writer, and producer Izadore Musallam’s work stretches across national boundaries and explores shifting identities.1 Born and raised in the Middle East and educated as a filmmaker in North America, he continues to reside in Canada while making English and Arabic-language films at home and abroad. Musallam’s debut feature Foreign Nights (1989) dealt with cultural and generational clashes within the Arab diaspora with the story of a Canadian teen dancer and her traditional Palestinian parents; his follow-up Nothing to Lose (1994) is a gangster spoof about a French Canadian boxer. Heaven Before I Die (1997) is a comedy about a young man from Palestine who moves to Toronto, receives advice from the ghost of Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran played by Omar Sharif, and gets a job as a Charlie Chaplin imitator. Forbidden Fruit (2002) is an updated Adam and Eve story of the seduction of a priest.

Gender and Self in Islam * BY ETIN ANWAR

This is an ambitious book that seeks to examine the question of gender and self in Islam from a philosophical perspective, an approach which the author claims is unusual in Islamic scholarship. She justifies this approach by pointing to the revival by Muslim philosophers of Greek ideas pertaining to the status of women; she also considers the philosophical approach effective in disentangling the patriarchal elements influencing the way Muslim women live their lives. An academic, working in America, she writes as a practising Indonesian Muslim, a santri, who attempts to embody Islam in her everyday life. Her aim is to uncover the roots of the patriarchal, hierarchical gender system prevalent in Muslim society and to put forward an alternative model, based on the Qurʾān and traditions of the Prophet, of gender egalitarianism. To achieve this she discusses both general issues raised by a gendered interpretation of the Qurʾān, and examines specific narratives such as the creation stories of Adam and Eve (Ḥawwāʾ), the account of al-isrāʾ and miʿrāj, and the story of Yūsuf and Zulaykha. Unfortunately this detailed analysis, which should provide a precise commentary to illustrate the more general argument, is marred by a lack of clarity in distinguishing between Qurʾān, aḥādīth, and stories, commentary or poems written much later. For example by writing: ‘Even though the “Adam's rib” story has been interpreted in such a way as to support the moral inequality of the sexes, it is not the only Qurʾānic account of the origin of human beings’ (p. 46), she implies that the story of Eve being created from Adam's rib is in the Qurʾān. However on page 54 she says correctly that the Qurʾān ‘does not refer at all to how his [Adam's] female partner was created’. When analyzing the portrayal of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā she moves from Qurʾānic quotation, to modern interpretation (Stowasser), traditional scholarship (al-Ṭabarī), and fifteenth-century Persian poetry (Jāmī) without differentiating clearly between them. The confusion is compounded by a strange use of English: ‘Although men or women can be slyness—depending on what triggers it, this characteristic is more frequently attributed to women rather than men’ (p. 98); ‘She regretted her previous deed and saluted her evil-doer with an awesome utterance’ (p. 99). Indeed the author's English often lets her down in this book, sometimes to the extent of making her say the opposite of what she intends. For example, when discussing abortion, she writes on page 91 that: ‘Islamic law (Shari’ah) rules out the possibility for abortion if pregnancy endangers the mother's life’, whereas on the following page she writes correctly that ‘Muslim countries in general ban abortion, except to save the mother's life’. On page 145 she writes: ‘What differentiates one self from others is intention, deed, and God's conscience’, when clearly she must mean ‘God-consciousness’. A clumsy or sometimes incorrect use of English (the use of the definite article being a particular problem) means that the reader is often distracted in the middle of an interesting argument, and following the author's line of thought becomes difficult. It would have been a better book if it had been more carefully edited. It is, however, worth persevering; the arguments presented are thought-provoking and, although sometimes reiterating common modernist positions, nevertheless do add a new dimension to the current debates on the place of women in the Muslim world.

A Rigorous Diet: Food in Luisa Passerini's <em>Autoritratto di gruppo</em>

A Rigorous Diet: Food in Luisa Passerini's Autoritratto di gruppo Staiscy Diuorski University oj CaUjoruia, Los Angeles Current criticai studies have demonstrated that food, as the object of social constraints and personal desires, plays a centrai role in the creation and niaintenance of gender categories. While across time and geography there are major diflerences in the relationship it is between wonien and food, also possible to identity contniuities.As Maria (iiuseppina Muzzarelli and Lucia nuity is Re note in cibo e le donne nella cultura e nella storia, one conti- that the relationship between food and wonien has represented relations of power to be niaintained and reinforced or changed. ' The relationship complex between wonien, power and food first is present, as Helene Cixous inaugurated also claims, in the fable of our first hook. Eve's action a history not only of control over wonien and food, but of consuniption as a means used by women to express desire tale and transgress authority. Proni the story of Eve through the of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the appie has been a concrete exainple of the gendered nature of authority and expression.- While food, power autobiography. and expression are centrai concerns of Luisa is Passerini's is Autoritratto di i^ruppo, there no appie. Instead, there an onion.The onion presents the reader with an entirely different froni the appie. set of associations The onion is is a pungent vegetable whose preparation in requires tears. It also a at poor vegetable both the center of its its terms of price and nutritional value. While thick white flesh an appie has a core, at the center ot thin, uneven layers an onion is einpty.Thc narrator's description focuses on the inany layers ot an onion, relating theni to feinale subjectivity: a slow shedding of skins, like an onion back, back, you alniost can't capture another, one will it with the eye — -one woinan inside layers woman through another. ^ Since Luisa 's^ autobiography be an attempt to slowly describe the multiple is of hcr identity, the image ot the onion apt for two reasons. First, the onion introduccs the centrai metaphors of food and diet that run through Autoritratto. CARTE ITALIANE, lOL. (2()()H>