Between Woman, Man and God: A New Interpretation of the Ten Commandments

(Paperback, NIPPOD)

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At the heart of the Exodus is a recitation of the Decalogue, a "contract" between Yahweh and Israel that inscribes Israel into the fabric of human societies while emphasizing its uniqueness through Yahweh. According to the demands of the Decalogue, manhood entails the avoidance of stealing, killing, and coveting, not to mention apostasy and violation of the Sabbath and other men's property. What, then, would be the essence of womanhood, if different Is there an exclusion of women from active participation in the Sinaitic theophany and, consequently, from active sharing of responsibility and identity How ethically normative are the Ten Commandments And, in terms of the present study, how gender specific are they This study reclaims the encoded voice of womanhood, or rather the code of women as one crucial key for comprehending the ancient Israelite mind. By selecting female characters' narratives as interpretative clues for the "law", this book presents a reading of the Decalogue at three levels: legal, behavioral and representational.

Reviews

'a new reading of the famous passage' ~ in International Review of Biblical Studies, Vol 51: 2004/0
"This volume is the fourth in a new The Bible in the 21st Century' series, meant to bring contemporary cultural insights to traditional biblical understandings. This volume examines the Decalogue in order to discover the role played by such an authoritative text in constructing gender identity in the biblical world, and how it might continue to do so in the world today... This is a very technical nook, but the fruits of reading it amply reward the effort."- The Bible Today, January/February 2006 * Bible Today, The *
"..the goal of the series is to problematize "authoritative and cultural meanings of bibles," and Sivan clearly achieves this objective with her treatment of the Ten Commandments...I can only hint at the range and complexity of Sivan's readings.A reader may dispute her particular analyses but still appreciate and share her goal of placing the interpretation of the Ten Commandments in a framework larger than two chapters in Exodus and Deuteronomy." -The Catholic Biblical Quarterly * Catholic Biblical Quarterly *

Author Bio

Hagith Sivan is the author of Dinah's Daughters: Gender and Judaism from the Hebrew Bible to Late Antiquity (2002). She teaches at the University of Kansas.