- "It is hard to imagine that anyone could discover a genuinely fresh approach to modern biblical interpretation, yet Taylor and Weir have done just that. At the same time, they offer new insight into the life, learning, and thinking of nineteenth-century women, both Jews and Christians. Their careful work will benefit scholars and students of modern history, biblical studies, and women's studies."
-Ellen Davis, Duke Divinity School
"This remarkable volume not only fills a painful lacuna in the history of biblical interpretation, but it opens up a new field within the discipline by recovering hundreds of forgotten female voices. I am confident that this volume will serve as an important catalyst to subsequent generations who will be stimulated to pursue a gripping subject matter still largely unexplored."
-Brevard S. Childs, Sterling Professor of Divinity emeritus, Yale University
"An invaluable collection of rare primary sources. Taylor and Weir's introductions to the authors and summarizing analyses enhance the significance of this book for the history of biblical interpretation, women's studies, and nineteenth century cultural history."
- Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary
Here is the Introduction.
1 comment:
Thank you, Suzanne!
Rereading this Introduction, I get an overwhelming sense of shame for our society today. How far we've regressed, and how much we've repressed the important contributions of the people named in this history. When they were doing so much good interpretive work with the Scriptures, how embarrassing that we in this age are redoing some of it in the name of originality. How awful that our work also has to be in recovery of the repressed and repressive histories we've written. When, for example, we're now seeing documentaries like Ben Stein's Expelled how could we have forgotten the engagements of Harriet Beecher Stowe with Darwinism? Or not built upon the critical approaches to the Bible that Julia Wedgwood, Darwin's cousin despite his theory, developed with the encouragement of Elizabeth Barret Browing and Robert Browning too? What if the generations of our daughters and sons and grandsons and grand daughters could look back at ours and say, what a dark time in the history of women and men, but what a helpful recovery they made?! Thank you again, Suzanne McCarthy and Marion Ann Taylor and Heather Weir!
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