Bible Review

Stone, Contract, p. 38.

Stone, Contract, p. 33.

Variant A translated by Michael E. Stone, in Adam’s Contract with Satan (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 2002), p. 27.

Translated by Charles, in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, p. 136.

Some of these texts are available in English in R.H. Charlesworth, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2, The Pseudepigrapha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 123–154. The stories may also be found, with some discussion, on http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:80/anderson/archive.html.

Other ancient Near Eastern stories also cast the serpent in the role of trickster. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, after Gilgamesh has obtained the plant that gives eternal life, the serpent steals it from him, and Gilgamesh is left weeping over his lost immortality.

On this point, see Exum, “Samson’s Women,” in Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)Versions of Biblical Narratives (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1993), p. 83; Bal, Lethal Love, p. 52; and Fewell, “Judges,” p. 73.

Danna Nolan Fewell, “Judges,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), expanded edition, p. 73.

See Bal, Lethal Love, p. 51.

See Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, p. 182.