Religion and Female Body in Ancient Judaism and Its Environments

Download or read book Religion and Female Body in Ancient Judaism and Its Environments written by Géza G. Xeravits and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume publishes papers read at the ninth International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, Budapest, 2012. The title of the conference and the issuing volume covers an, on the one hand, extremely important and, on the other hand, regrettably neglected aspect particularly of the ancient Jewish and Christian traditions. Traditional manifestations of both Judaism and Christianity are predominantly masculine theological constructions. Despite their harsh masculine orientation, however, neither Judaism nor Christianity lacks elaboration on the female principle. When an ancient author chooses female imagery in order to make his message more emphatic, the female body as such forms an integral part of their metaphors. The contributions in this volume explore this phenomenon within the literature of early Judaism, and within its broad environments.