The nakedness of the fathers : biblical visions and revisions

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

The nakedness of the fathers : biblical visions and revisions

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Rutgers University Press, 1997

  • : hbk
  • : pbk

Available at  / 3 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-260)

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

: hbk ISBN 9780813521251

Description

A meditation on the key narratives of the Hebrew Bible, this book includes characters of the Old Testament, and is viewed by the author from a feminist perspective.
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780813524474

Description

Like much twentieth-century feminist writing today, this book crosses the boundaries of genre. Biblical interpretation combines with fantasy, autobiography, and poetry. Politics joins with eroticism. Irreverence coexists with a yearning for the sacred. Scholarship contends with heresy. Most excitingly, the author continues and extends the tradition of arguing with God that commences in the Bible itself and continues now, as it has for centuries, to animate Jewish writing. The difference here is that the voice that debates with God is a woman's. In her introduction, "Entering the Tents, " Ostriker defines the need to struggle against a tradition in which women have been silenced and disempowered - and to recover the female power buried beneath the surface of the biblical texts. In "The Garden, " she reinterprets the mythically complex stories of Creation. Then she considers the stories of "The Fathers, " from Abraham and Isaac to Moses, David, and Solomon - and their wives, mothers, and sisters. In "The Return of the Mothers, " she begins with a radical new interpretation of the book of Esther, includes a meditation on the silenced wife of Job and the idea of justice, and concludes with a fable on the death of God and a prayer to the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God. Ostriker refuses to dismiss the Bible as meaningless to women. Instead, in this angry, eloquent, visionary book, she attempts to recover what is genuinely sacred in these sacred texts.

Table of Contents

1. Entering the tents In the beginning the being Entering the tents 2. As in myth: The Garden The Garden Creation The brothers Survival The father's nakedness The rainbow 3. Myth into legend: The fathers I The bosom of Abraham Sarah, or defiance The opinion of Hagar The cave Isaac, or laughter The opinion of the ram Rebecca's way Jacob, or the man of touch The sisters Rachel solo The interpretation of dreams. 4. Legend into history: The fathers II The nursing father The songs of Miriam The opinion of Aaron History: A Midrash on Sinai The Sabbath: Mystery against history The story of Joshua Judges, or disasters of war The redeeming of Ruth Hannah, or sons and lovers David the king The wisdom of Solomon 5. Though she delay: The return of the mothers Esther, or the world turned upside down Job, or a meditation on justice Tree of life Intensive care A prayer to the Shekhinah

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