Rediscovering Eve

Reviews / Votes

Through a thorough analysis of biblical and extra-biblical literature, Meyers uncovers the enormously meaningful roles women played and shows how their active participation within and outside the household shaped Israelite society...Meyers' revised work is rich in content, well documented, and a welcome addition to her earlier contribution on this important topic. * Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament * This is an excellent and extremely important book, to a large extent the starting point of any current and future discussion of gender issues in ancient Israel--and Carol Meyers is to be thanked for offering this important volume to students of ancient Israel in particular and the ancient world in general. * Review of Biblical Literature * Meyers breaks new ground with a fresh examination of roles of the ancient Israelite women...With numerous expansions and multiple new perspectives, even those familiar with Meyers' 1988 work will find Rediscovering Eve a welcome new monograph in the field of feminist research in biblical studies. * Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology * Carol Meyers' Discovering Eve was a milestone in feminist scholarship when it was published in 1988, bringing together disciplines that had not previously had much contact. Now, after nearly twenty-five years of further work in feminist and gender studies, archaeological and ethnographic analysis, Meyers' Rediscovering Eve provides a superb study that retrieves the material and cultural conditions of ordinary Israelite women, as well as shedding new light on how to read and understand the account of the mythic Eve. This book is essential reading for introductory courses on Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. * Carol A. Newsom, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Old Testament, Candler School of Theology * Meyers elegantly documents the Hebrew Bible's minimalist and misogynist views of women in ancient Israel. More importantly, she then proceeds to document this using perceptive new insights into the biblical texts; the pertinent but neglected archaeological data on household activities; and especially a considerable body of ethnographic data unfamiliar to many scholars in our respective fields. This pioneering work goes a long way toward rescuing ancient Israelite women from obscurity, ably demonstrating that they played far more significant roles than we had imagined in the domestic arena, in communal and public life, in the cult, and even in cultural and political life. This is feminist scholarship at its best--neither doctrinaire nor defensive, but simply factual, honest, incisive, bold scholarship...a landmark publication. It will change the way we view women in ancient Israel, in the church and synagogue, and in the academy. * William G. Dever, University of Arizona *