Carol Meyers is renowned for her expertise in many fields: the use of social-science methodologies to understand the Bible and the world of Iron Age Israel; the archaeology of ancient Israel, especially important sites of the Second Temple period; and the study of women in the Bible and in ancient Israel. In this volume, some of Meyers’s foremost scholarly peers honor her by offering essays that build on her work and depend on her expertise. For example, Norman K. Gottwald uses a social-scientific analysis to continue his groundbreaking work on the structure of the early Israelite confederacy; Eric Meyers discusses how certain Second Temple artifacts, such as ossuaries and bathing installations, might be used as markers of Jewish ethnicity; and Ross S. Kraemer, in conjunction with Jennifer Eyl, takes on the issue of how women are represented (or not) in Bible translators’ renderings of certain ambiguously gendered terms.
Joining this community of Carol Meyers’s peers are some of her most noted students, who also have contributed essays that speak to Meyers’s many areas of interest and expertise and reflect what they have learned from her about, especially, the study of women in the Bible and in ancient Israel, and the application of social-scientific approaches to biblical studies. Moreover, as Meyers’s work spans the millennium-long history of the Iron Age and the Second Temple period, so do the essays of Meyers’s students, with offerings that consider some of the earliest texts in the Bible (Judges 5), as well as texts that come from the Second Temple archive of scrolls discovered at Qumran.
The result is a collection of essays that are as richly multifaceted as is the work of the extraordinary scholar whose career they honor.
Preface: A Student’s Appreciation (Charles E. Carter)
Abbreviations
A Select Bibliography of the Works of Carol L. Meyers
Introduction: A Colleague’s Appreciation (Susan Ackerman)
Hannah’s Tears (Susan Ackerman)
Women, Law, and Legal Procedure in Ancient Israel (James P. Ashmore)
Nationalist Narratives and Biblical Memory (Cynthia M. Baker)
When It Both Is and Is Not Rape: Gender Constructions in 2 Samuel 13:1-22 (Karla G. Bohmbach)
Speaking as “Any Foolish Woman”: Ms. Job in the History of Reception (Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch)
Numbers 5:11-31: Women in Second Temple Judah and the Law of the Controlling Priest (Claudia V. Camp)
“There Is Much Wisdom in Her”: The Matriarchs in the Qumran Library (Sidnie White Crawford)
Poor but Wise (Qoheleth 9:13-16) (James L. Crenshaw)
Regarding the Bible as Agrarian Literature (Ellen Davis)
Israelite Women as “Ritual Experts”: Orthodoxy or Orthopraxis? (William G. Dever)
Structure and Origin of the Early Israelite and Iroquois Confederacies (Norman K. Gottwald)
The Place of Biblical Studies in the University Curriculum: Beyond the Religious/Secular Divide (Sandie Gravett)
Bargaining with Patriarchy in the Book of Ruth (F. V. Greifenhagen)
Gendered Sectarians: Envisioning Women (and Men) at Qumran (Maxine L. Grossman)
Translating Women: The Perils of Gender-Inclusive Translation of the New Testament (Ross S. Kraemer and Jennifer Eyl)
Ethnicity, Culture, and Religion in Artifact and Text: The Emergence of Complex Common Judaism (Eric M. Meyers)
Plaque Figurines and the Relationship between Canaanite and Egyptian Women in the Late Bronze II (Beth Alpert Nakhai)
The Story of David and Goliath from the Perspective of the Study of Oral Traditions (Raymond F. Person Jr.)
I Sing the Body Politic: Stillborn Desire and the Birth of Israel in Judges 5 (Anathea Portier-Young)
