We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (But Still Have a Ways to Go)
U.S. News’s report on feminist Bible scholarship is good—but it’s too bad it didn’t get the full picture.
It’s happened. After years of being eclipsed by our colleagues in the Jesus Seminar and by Dead Sea Scroll scholars, those of us engaged in feminist Bible study have finally made it into one of the big news weeklies. Sure, we’ve gotten some media notice before, in more highbrow publications, such as The Atlantic Monthly, and in magazines that specifically cover biblical scholarship, such as Christianity Today and, of course, Bible Review. But only now have our attempts to analyze women in the Bible gone big time, making the August 10, 1998, issue of U.S. News & World Report. And we’re no mere filler, either: U.S. News devotes seven lavishly illustrated pages to Cullen Murphy’s article “The Bible According to Eve.” The designation “Special Report” is stamped across the front page.
I freely admit: I delighted in this fanfare. It was exciting to see the work I do so glamorized—and the celebrity wanna-be in me loved seeing the names of my peers among the likes of such modern-day luminaries as Monica Lewinsky.
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