ABSTRACT
The undergraduates in my 'Women and the Bible' course usually assume that we will be studying the women in the Bible, because their starting point is the question, 'what does the Bible say about women?' That is a good question from which to explore how feminist readers use existing methods to open new perspectives on women as literary characters in narrative; on the gleaning of women's history from biblical and nonbiblical depictions; and on the appropriation of female imagery both to symbolize divine attributes and to critique religious practices disapproved by the writers. From these studies, however, another level of analysis emerges: what and whose experiences and ideas are privileged, and what materials are privileged to convey them? Such questions draw attention as much to the absence of certain elements as to the presence of those being examined. They also provoke students to examine issues of gender and power in their own lives.
