Strata: In Their Own Words

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In her paper, “Why Are We Ignoring Women?” presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Professor Beth Alpert Nakhai of the University of Arizona criticized the scope of current scholarship about Israelite religion. A portion of that paper is reprinted here:

“The very limited amount that we know about women in Israelite religion is not related to the past, but rather to the present. That is, it is the state of the field today, rather than life in Iron Age Israel, that restricts our knowledge...Virtually every consideration of Israelite religion, whether textual or archaeological, focuses upon men’s roles: Temple, priesthood, kings, prophets, offerings, purity, rituals, incantations, atonement, liturgy... the list goes on and on. Space for women? Interest in women? Not really...

“How, over all these years, could scholars have missed something so extremely important as the religious lives of 50 percent of the population of ancient Israel? Why is it that so little effort has been put into documenting ritual and belief, as experienced by women?

“One answer is found by looking at those who have been the scholars of Israelite religion ... men who owe their intellectual heritage to a long line of male scholars who began to study sacred texts in the Iron Age and who have done so ever since.

“[As of 2000] the ASOR Annual Meetings had seen more papers on pigs in Israel and Philistia than on women in all of the ancient Near East.”