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With Eyes of Flesh
The Bible, Gender and Human Rights
Carole R. Fontaine
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Carole Fontaine, well known among biblical scholars for her feminist studies in the biblical wisdom traditions and the ancient Near East, is also a human rights and interfaith activist working on issues of violence against Muslim women in the Middle East and Southern Asia and a board member of many agencies such as the International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan, and the Women's Forum against Fundamentalism in Iran.
In this collection of her essays, mostly previously unpublished, she brings together these two concerns, distilling from the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam valuable insights into current questions of human rights. Unlike many writers, Fontaine recognizes the critical role of gender in the fundamental concept of the 'Other', so determinative for our view of humanity.
In our days, Fontaine argues, human rights issues have taken on a new dimension in political discourse about war, peace and terror, where often an appeal is made to religious and scriptural justifications for the violation or preservation of rights. Fontaine urges attention to the priority of the sufferer in adjudicating meaning, and turns to the 'little texts' of daily ethics rather than grand theological abstractions in order to place 'scriptures' in meaningful conversation with the concrete realities of our world.
This is the second volume of the Amsterdam Studies in the Bible and Religion (ed. Athalya Brenner), a sub-series of the Bible in the Moden World.
Carole Fontaine is John Taylor Professor of Biblical Theology and History, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Massachusetts. |
| Series: Bible in the Modern World, 10 | | 1-905048-54-8, 978-1-905048-54-0 hardback / 1-905048-55-6, 978-1-905048-55-7 paperback | | Publication September 2008 |
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Contents
1. ‘With Eyes of Flesh’ (Job 10.4): Toward a Concept of Human Rights in the Bible and the Ancient Near East
2. Gendering the Captive: Representations of the Abuse
of Human Dignity
3. The Body Breached: Intimations of Human Dignity
4. Reading for the Best: Toward Diversity in Interpretation
5. The Abusive Bible: On the Use of Feminist Method in Pastoral Contexts
6. ‘Many Devices’ (Qoheleth 7.23–8.1): Qoheleth, Misogyny, and the 'Malleus maleficarum'
7. ‘Come, Lie with Me!’: The Mythology of Honor Killings and Female Desire in Biblical Israel and the Ancient Near East
8. You Shall Not Stand Idly By
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Reviews
This is a very personal, political and post-Enlightenment book. … Above all, the book is written out of deep passion and outrage at what the United States government and a good number of its people are doing at home and abroad. It is also written with a deep passion for the Bible, a desperate hope for a better country than the one in which Fontaine lives now, and for justice, especially for women but in the end for all human beings. It is a long book and to read it is to get a sense of a deep cleansing, a release of frustrations, anger, desire and hope that had been bottled up within the requirements of ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ scholarship. Roland Boer, The Bible and Critical Theory.
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