When parents are narrated in the Hebrew Bible as actively naming their children, mothers naming children occurs more frequently than fathers naming children. When this phenomenon is combined with those biblical texts that indicate women as having influence over the religious leanings or language spoken by their children, it suggests that the authors of the Hebrew Bible texts recognized that women had significant standing and influence in the ancient Israelite household.
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R. Kessler, “Benennung des Kindes durch die israelitische Mutter”, Wort und Dienst 19 (1987), pp. 25-26.
Kessler, “Benennung”, pp. 29-30. ET have long translated ויקרא שמו in Gen 25:26 and 38:30 as, he was called.
R. Alter, “Biblical Type-Scenes and the Uses of Convention”, Critical Inquiry (1978), pp. 355-368; B. J. M. Johnson, “What Type of Son is Samson? Reading Judges 13 as a Biblical Type Scene”, jets 53 (2010), pp. 269-270.
Kessler, “Benennung”, p. 35, indeed calls for this sort of work. My study, which effectively answers Kessler’s call, is, like Kessler’s study, a biblical-text based phënomenologisch-empirischen Ansatz, which examines that aspect of ancient Israelite society of the dealings of the woman over the children (Verfügung der Frau über die Kinder), and the religious independence of the wife from her husband.
Ackerman, “Digging Up Deborah”, pp. 179-182, uses this to argue that this religious devotion had a public dimension, and that the women derived power from it.
See Willis, “Cultic Elements”, pp. 60-61; and A. Kalmanosfsky, “Women of God: Maternal Grief and Religious response in 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 4”, jsot 36 (2011), pp. 55-74, who, using a cross-cultural approach developed by S. S. Sered (“Mother Love, Child Death and Religious Innovation: A Feminist Perspective”, jfsr 12 [1996], pp. 5-23), argues that the Shunnamite woman in 2 Kings 4 becomes a religiously significant person in her own right.
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When parents are narrated in the Hebrew Bible as actively naming their children, mothers naming children occurs more frequently than fathers naming children. When this phenomenon is combined with those biblical texts that indicate women as having influence over the religious leanings or language spoken by their children, it suggests that the authors of the Hebrew Bible texts recognized that women had significant standing and influence in the ancient Israelite household.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 464 | 53 | 2 |
Full Text Views | 289 | 6 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 161 | 15 | 0 |