Vindicating the Vixens

Not since Liz Curtis Higgs wrote “Bad Girls of the Bible” have I given much thought to what it means to be a bad girl of the Bible. I was completely excited to read this book when the title was released from Kregel! I knew I had to read it because 1) I am female and 2) I am in the process of becoming a pastor and 3) I yearned as a woman to know the stories of these women much better than what I learned in Sunday school. From the first time I read “Sin is certainly an equal opportunity enterprise” I was hooked. 

However, I also expected this to be a book that would be females bashing men for their understanding of the women of the Bible. This, however, certainly wasn’t the case. Instead I found a book that was Christ-centered and within the first chapter the reader is invited to participate by reading with discernment and even given six questions that help us to understand the text better: 

What does the text actually say? What do I observe in and about the text? What did this text mean to the original audience?  What was the point? What truths in the text are timelessly relevant? And how does the part fit the whole?

The great thing about this collection is that it starts to set the record straight of so many women who have a bad reputation in the Bible. Glahn cites as examples blaming Eve for the guilt of the human race, or blaming Sarah for the political tensions in the modern Middle East. Popular preachers can make a great sermon by “maligning” Bathsheba as a “vixen” or the Samaritan women as an adulterer, or Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Other women are marginalized. Glahn notes the omission of Deborah and Huldah from charts of the prophets in some study Bibles, or (I would add) the translation of “servant” in the ESV instead of “deacon” (NRSV) in Romans 16:1 as well as the always controversial status of Junia in Romans 16:7. The essays in this collection hopes to correct popular misconceptions about some women in the Bible by paying careful attention to the cultural and social context as well as the literary form of the biblical text. For me, I love the fact that his book has a generally conservative view of Scripture, and there is nothing controversial about this. 

If you are looking for a book on the women of the Bible who have been marginalized; then this is a great book and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

This book was provided to me for free by the publisher for an unbiased opinion and review.