List of Contributors

Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

Ph.D., is Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology Department Chair at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Her research interests include reception studies, religion and film, and representations of women, race, and class in both biblical texts and their reception. Among her publications is the two-volume The Bible in Motion: A Handbook on the Bible and its Reception in Film (Walter de Gruyter, 2016); and she serves as a general editor of the SBL monograph series The Bible and its Reception.

Carol J. Dempsey, OP

Ph.D., is Professor of Theology (Biblical Studies) at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. Her areas of expertise and interests are Hebrew Bible/Old Testament prophets, biblical Hebrew poetry, biblical Catholic ethics, and the Bible and ecology. Select recent publications and works in progress include The Bible and Literature (co-author, Orbis Books, 2015); The Paulist Press Commentary (co-editor and author of “Introduction to the Prophets,” “Isaiah,” “Habakkuk”; Paulist Press, 2018); Isaiah (Wisdom Commentary Series; Liturgical Press; in progress); Beyond Christian Anthropocentrism: What It Means to Be Catholic in the New Diaspora (Dispatches from the New Diaspora Series; Lexington/Fortress Press; in progress).

Anne Elvey

Ph.D., is an Honorary Research Associate at Trinity College Theological School, a member at the Network for Research in Religion and Social Policy at the University of Divinity, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests are in ecopoetics, ecological hermeneutics, ecological feminism, new materialism, poetry, Gospel of Luke, and the Magnificat. Her recent books include Ecological Aspects of War: Engagements with Biblical Texts (co-editor; Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017); and White on White (Cordite Books, 2018).

John W. Fadden

Ph.D., is an Adjunct Instructor at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, U.S.A. His research interests include the use and abuse of the Bible, the Bible and popular culture, and teaching undergraduate biblical studies.

Carole R. Fontaine

Ph.D., is Distinguished Taylor Professor of Biblical Theology and History, Emerita. Her research has been primarily in the area of feminist theological approaches to biblical wisdom literature and its cognates, as well as human rights, iconography, women’s history, and archaeology. She is the author of With Eyes of Flesh: The Bible, Gender and Human Rights (Brill, 2008); Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomsbury, 2009); and is the co-editor of A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Methods, Approaches, Strategies (Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), and other volumes of The Feminist Companion to the Bible, with Athalya Brenner, and more than one hundred articles. A human rights activist, she currently resides in the Berkshires, where she serves as the WUNRN Research Associate, blogging for a women’s NGO (www.wunrn.com; carolefontainephd.com) reporting to UNWOMEN.

Esther Fuchs

Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A. In addition to biblical studies, she is interested in the intersections of gender and feminism with Hebrew studies, Israel studies, and Holocaust studies. She has published numerous books and over eighty essays in academic journals and anthologies, and over one hundred book reviews in Jewish and women’s studies. In biblical studies her writing has focused on textual biblical politics, and feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible. She is the co-editor of On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds (Continuum, 2004); and is the author of Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman (Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); and Feminist Theory and the Bible (Lexington, 2016).

Anne Hege Grung

Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Interreligious Studies at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo in Norway. Her research area is in empirical and theoretical studies of interreligious relations, particularly Muslim-Christian relations, with a feminist perspective. Her works include studies on Muslim-Christian co-readings of canonical texts and on questions of authority, leadership, and women’s human rights connected to religious pluralism and interreligious encounters. She is the author of Gender Justice in Muslim-Christian Readings (Brill, 2015); Christian and Muslim Women in Norway Making Meaning of Texts from the Bible, the Koran and the Hadith (Brill, 2016); and she is the co-editor of Bodies, Borders, Believers: Ancient Texts and Present Conversations (James Clark, 2016).

Teresa J. Hornsby

Ph.D., is Professor of Religious Studies, Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, U.S.A., and Affiliated Professor of Religious Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Her research is in gender theory and biblical criticism. Among her publications are Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship (co-edited with Ken Stone; SBL Press, 2011); and Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation (co-authored with Deryn P. Guest; SBL Press, 2016).

Rainer Kessler

Dr. theol., is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, University of Marburg in Germany. His research interests include social history, biblical prophecy, and ethics. Among his publications are Micha (second ed.; Herder, 2000), The Social History of Ancient Israel: An Introduction (trans. by Linda M. Maloney; Fortress Press, 2008); Maleachi (Herder, 2011); Der Weg zum Leben: Ethik des Alten Testaments (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2017).

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Ph.D., is Professor of Religion at Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. Her areas of expertise and interests include theology; justice; womanist and feminist studies; the Bible and culture; violence and religion; grief and trauma; music; ethics; humor; faith, spirituality, and health; women’s religious and leadership experience; pedagogy; rage, grief, and transformation; gender theory; sexuality; and popular media as praxeology for constructive and narrative theology. Among her recent publications and works in progress are Baptized Rage, Transformed Grief: I Got Through So Can You (Wipf and Stock, 2017); Hosea (co-author with Valerie Bridgeman; Wisdom Commentary Series; Liturgical Press, in progress); Embodied Ecstasy: A Womanist Systematic Theology of Relationality (in progress).

Sara M. Koenig

Ph.D., is Professor of Biblical Studies at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Her research focuses on biblical hermeneutics, literary readings, and the field of reception history. She published Isn’t This Bathsheba? A Study in Characterization (Wipf and Stock, 2011); and Bathsheba Survives (University of South Carolina Press, 2018).

Anton Karl Kozlovic

Ph.D., researches in the Department of Screen and Media at Flinders University in Australia, and the Department of Media and Communication at Deakin University in Australia. He has published extensively in the areas of religion and film, Cecil B. DeMille studies, and interreligious dialog. His chapters and multiple entries occur within Sex, Religion, Media (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives (Scarecrow Press, 2006); Encyclopedia of Religion and Film (ABC-Clio, 2011); Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films (Routledge, 2013); The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and its Reception in Film (Walter de Gruyter, 2016).

Beatrice J. W. Lawrence

Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Her research interests include biblical interpretation, rape culture in the Bible, religious studies, rabbinic texts and hermeneutics, and theologies of suffering. Her book is Jethro and the Jews: Jewish Biblical Interpretation and the Question of Identity (Brill, 2017); and she is co-editor of Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements (Lexington, 2019).

Helen Leneman

Ph.D., in an independent scholar. Her research investigates biblical narratives in music, especially in operas and oratorios, with a focus on biblical women. Among her publications are The Performed Bible: The Story of Ruth in Opera and Oratorio (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007); Love, Lust and Lunacy: The Stories of Saul and David in Music (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010); Moses: The Man and the Myth in Music (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014); The Bible Retold by Jewish Artists, Writers, Composers & Filmmakers (co-edited with Barry Dov Walfish; Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015); and Musical Illuminations of Genesis Tales (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017).

Vanessa L. Lovelace

Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. Her research interests include sociological approaches to the study of women in the Deuteronomistic History, particularly feminist theory of gender and nation. Among her recent publications are Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse (co-editor; SBL Press, 2016); and “The Deuteronomistic History: Intersections of Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Nation” (Fortress Press, 2018). She is currently working on a reading of Hebrew Bible narratives as a womanist politics of belonging.

Dora R. Mbuwayesango

Ph.D., is George E. and Iris Battle Professor of Hebrew Bible and Dean of Students at Hood Theological Seminary in Salisbury, North Carolina, U.S.A. Her research interests include postcolonial interpretation, colonial Bible translations, and sexuality in the Hebrew Bible. She is the co-editor of Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Hermeneutics (SBL Press, 2012). Among her articles are “The Bible as Tool of Colonization: the Zimbabwean Context” (Lexington Books, 2018); and “Numbers” (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019).

Judith E. McKinlay

Ph.D., was Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Among her publications are Gendering Wisdom the Host: Biblical Invitations to Eat and Drink (Sheffield, 1999); Reframing Her: Biblical Women in Postcolonial Focus (Sheffield, 2006); Troubling Women and Land: Reading Biblical Texts in Aotearoa New Zealand (Sheffield, 2014). She passed away on February 9, 2019. What a privilege to have received her last contribution and what an honor to be able to publish her essay in this work. In celebration of her life and rich legacy, this volume is dedicated in memory of Judith, a revered feminist postcolonial Bible scholar, colleague, mentor, and teacher. Her feminist spirit lives on in her numerous contributions to feminist biblical studies.

Carol Meyers

Ph.D., is the Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A., and past president of the Society of Biblical Literature. Her research interests include Hebrew Bible studies, Syro-Palestinian archaeology, and gender in the biblical world. Among her published books are the edited reference work Women in Scripture (Houghton Mifflin 2000), Exodus (Cambridge, 2005), Households and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women (Fortress Press, 2005), Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs (co-author; Eisenbrauns, 2009), Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford, 2013), The Bible in the Public Square: Its Enduring Influence in American Life (co-editor; SBL Press, 2014 ) and The Architecture, Stratigraphy, and the Artifacts of the Western Summit of Sepphoris (co-editor; Eisenbrauns, 2018).

Sarojini Nadar

Ph.D., holds the Desmond Tutu Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. The chair focuses on developing and supporting advanced research at the intersections of religion and social justice. Her research interests are in the areas of gender studies and religion, and focuses specifically on physical, sexual, and epistemic violence. Among her publications are African Women, Religion and Health: Essays in Honour of Mercy Amba Oduyoye (Orbis, 2006).

Funlọla O. Ọlọjẹde

Ph.D., is a researcher at the Gender Unit of the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Her research focus includes gender and feminist hermeneutics, Old Testament studies, wisdom literature, and African biblical interpretation. Ọlọjẹde is a fellow of the UBIAS Network. She was a researcher at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ, U.S.A., the Alexander von Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Jeremy Punt

Ph.D., is Professor of New Testament in the Theology Faculty at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. His work focuses on biblical hermeneutics, past and present, including critical theory in interpretation, the intersection of biblical and cultural studies, and on the significance of contextual configurations of power and gender, and social systems and identifications for biblical interpretation. Recently he published Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation: Reframing Paul (Brill, 2015); and he contributes regularly to academic journals and book publications.

Adele Reinhartz

Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She has published extensively on the New Testament, Bible and film, and feminist biblical criticism. Her books include Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (Continuum, 2001); Jesus of Hollywood (Oxford, 2007); Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (Routledge, 2013); and, most recently, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2018). She served as the General Editor of The Journal of Biblical Literature from 2012–18, and served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2019-2020. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2005 and to the American Academy of Jewish Research in 2014.

Charles M. Rix

Ph.D., is Dean of the College of Humanities and Bible and Associate Professor of Bible at Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.A. His research interests focus on the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory and the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas to feminist and post-Shoah readings of the Hebrew Bible. His essays appear in Representing the Irreparable: The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samuel Bak (Syracuse University Press, 2008), as well as in the Journal of Cultural and Religious Studies, the Stone-Campbell Journal, and Dialogismos. He is a classical pianist who gives master classes and benefit recitals for humanitarian causes.

Aaron Rosen

Ph.D., is Professor of Religion and Visual Culture and Director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts & Religion, at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, USA. He works on the intersection of religion and visual culture. He is currently writing a book entitled The Hospitality of Images: Modern Art and Interfaith Dialogue. He is the author and editor of many books, including Art and Religion in the 21st Century (Thames and Hudson, 2017); Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue (Brepols, 2018); and Brushes with Faith (Wipf and Stock, 2019).

Linda S. Schearing

Ph.D., is a Professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, U.S.A., where she has taught Hebrew Scripture and Women’s Studies from 1993 to 2022. Her academic interests include the history of biblical interpretation, gender studies, and popular culture studies. She is the co-author of Eve & Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Indiana University Press, 1999); Those Elusive Deuteronomists: Pandeuteronomism and the Hebrew Bible (Bloomsbury, 1999); and Enticed by Eden: How Western Culture Uses, Confuses (And Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve (Baylor University Press, 2013).

Susanne Scholz

Ph.D., is Professor of Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. Her research focuses on feminist biblical hermeneutics, the epistemologies and sociologies of biblical interpretation, cultural and literary methodologies, biblical historiography and translation theories, interfaith and interreligious dialog, as well as general issues related to women, gender, and sexuality studies in religion. Among her fourteen books and over sixty essays and journal articles are Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: Method (Vol. 3) (editor; Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2016); La Violencia and the Hebrew Bible: Politics and Histories of Biblical Hermeneutics on the American Continent (co-editor; SBL Press, 2016); The Bible as Political Artifact: On the Feminist Study of the Hebrew Bible (Fortress Press, 2017); and Introducing the Women’s Hebrew Bible: Feminism, Gender Justice, and the Study of the Old Testament (second rev. and exp. ed.; T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2017), She is the editor of the book series Feminist Studies and Sacred Texts (Lexington Books).

David A. Schones

Ph.D., is Visiting Assistant Professor in Biblical Studies at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, U.S.A. His research focuses on biblical infertility at the intersection of gender and disability studies. His dissertation thesis is entitled “Infertility in 1 Samuel 1: Toward a Hermeneutic of Reproduction.” He published “Buying Biblical Babies: Genesis 16 and Commercial Surrogacy,” in Resonance: A Religious Studies Journal (2017) and “Can I Bring Him Back Again? Infertility and Masculinity,” in Communitas: Journal of Education beyond the Walls (2018).

Joy A. Schroeder

Ph.D., is Professor of Church History and holder of the Trinity Chair in Lutheran Heritage at Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. Her research interests include medieval women’s mysticism and the history of biblical interpretation. She is the author of Deborah’s Daughters: Gender Politics and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2014); and the editor and translator of The Book of Genesis and The Book of Jeremiah (Bible in Medieval Tradition Series; William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015 and 2017).

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

dr.dr.h.c., is Krister Stendahl Professor at Harvard University and co-founding senior editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR). Her teaching, research, and numerous publications focus on questions of biblical and the*logical hermeneutics, ethics, rhetoric, and the politics of interpretation. Her landmark work, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (Crossroad, 1983), has become a classic in biblical studies. Among her latest book publications are Ephesians (Wisdom Commentary Series; Liturgical Press, 2017); and Congress of Wo/men: Religion, Gender and Kyriarchal Power (FSR Inc., 2017).

Hanna Stenström

D. Theol., is Senior Lecturer in New Testament at the University College Stockholm in Sweden. Her research interests are feminist and gender studies, with particular attention to the book of Revelation, and the interpretation history and sociopolitics of biblical scholarship in Sweden. Among her English publications are the following three essays: “Masculine or Feminine? Male Virgins in Joseph and Aseneth and the Book of Revelation” (Mohr Siebeck, 2008); “Is Salvation Only for True Men? On Gendered Imagery in the Book of Revelation” (Peeters, 2011); “Unity and Diversity in Nordic Biblical Scholarship” (SBL Press, 2012).

Ken Stone

Ph.D., is Professor of Bible, Culture, and Hermeneutics at Chicago Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. He focuses his research on the relationships between biblical interpretation, critical theories, and matters of gender, sexuality, animals, and ecology. He is the author of several books, including Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies (2017); and co-editor with Teresa J. Hornsby of Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship (2011).

Caryn Tamber-Rosenau

Ph.D., is Instructional Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Houston, Texas, U.S.A. Her research interests include feminist and queer interpretations of the Bible, literature of the Second Temple period, and Jewish reception of the Bible. She is the author of Women in Drag: Gender and Performance in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Literature (Gorgias Press, 2018).

Katy E. Valentine

Ph.D., is a New Testament scholar, transformational spiritual coach, and minister in Chico, California, U.S.A. She researches the relationship between contemporary transgender identities and Scripture with particular interest on gender fluidity in the ancient world as a source of empowerment for trans people today. She is the author of “For You Were Bought with a Price”: Sex, Slavery, and Self-Control in a Pauline Community (GlossaHouse, 2017).

Arthur W. Walker-Jones

Ph.D., is currently the United Church of Canada Research Chair in Contemporary Theology and Professor of Religion and Culture at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. He specializes in ecocriticism of the Hebrew Bible and the intersections of ecocriticism with feminism, post-colonialism, and animal studies. He is the author of Hebrew for Biblical Interpretation (SBL, 2003); The Green Psalter: Resources for an Ecological Spirituality (Fortress, 2009); and Psalms Book Two: An Earth Bible Commentary: “As a Doe Groans” (T&T Clark, 2019).

Karen Strand Winslow

Ph.D., is Professor of Biblical Studies, Chair of the Biblical and Theological Studies Department, and Director of the Master of Arts in Theological Studies of Azusa Pacific Seminary, Azusa Pacific University, in Azusa, California, U.S.A. Her research interests cover the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament; women in the Bible, history, and theology; early Judaism; feminist biblical interpretation; and science and theology. Among her publications are Early Jewish and Christian Memories of Moses’ Wives: Exogamist Marriage and Ethnic Identity (2005); and 1 and 2 Kings: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (New Beacon Bible Commentary Series, 2017).

Yani Yoo

Ph.D., is a lecturer at Methodist Theological University in Seoul, Korea. She reads the Bible from feminist and literary viewpoints and is interested in learning and spreading queer interpretations of the Bible. She is the author of The God of Abraham, Rebekah, and Jacob (The Christian Literature Society of Korea, 2009); and From Eve to Esther (The Christian Literature Society of Korea, 2014).