ABSTRACT
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the feminist author Elizabeth Cady Stanton had already encapsulated the message of this book. In her discussion of the book of Judges, she wrote:
There are many instances in the Old Testament where women have been thrown to the mob, like a bone to dogs, to pacify their passions; and women suffer to-day from these lessons of contempt, taught in a book so revered by the people. 1
Both of my central points are present in this quote. First, the Hebrew Bible imagines women as food, playing out that imagination in its stories; and second, the depiction of women as food has a dangerous and still lingering resonance.