ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we looked at the Genesis narrative and discussed how stories contained in it reveal an ordered world that can be destabilised in order for God's purpose to be worked through. This has the double-edged theological impact of showing both that God maintains and controls his creation at all times, and that he can disrupt it at will. Human male autonomy, in particular, could be identified as a significant casualty in this process. In the present chapter this major biblical trend will be explored further by investigating more closely the biblical writers' use of the female heroic and anti-heroic as a literary device. Esther Fuchs has argued that the treatment of female figures in biblical texts serves the purpose of reinforcing the values and beliefs of a patriarchal society:
This discriminatory treatment produces female portraits intended, among other things, to validate the suspicion that women's apparent impotence is nothing but a deceptive disguise, that underneath their vulnerable coyness lurks a dangerously calculating mind.
(Fuchs 1985: 143)