Athalya Brenner

Brenner’s rhetorical strategy is subtle. She selects female characters from the Hebrew Bible who have, in a sense, never died because the Bible never reports their death. “As literary female figures we live everlastingly, eternally, perpetually, as long as the canonical text is still alive . . . .” A “Convener” calls a conference of these women (who, in Brenner’s narrative, still secretly live among us in the world today) at an exotic, but unrevealed location. Brenner hints at the Convener’s identity without revealing it until the book’s closing pages. At this meeting, in chronological order, these biblical women deliver papers (speeches) which tell their stories to each other. Although most of these women have names, some are unnamed and Brenner finds significance in this lack of naming. Each of these women is well, if not too amazingly, versed in the scholarship of her story, and pursues a telling and interpretation of that narrative in an inductive manner. Each character tells her story in a manner consistent with her personality; Potiphar’s wife, for example is defensive and deflects blame, but at the same time thinks that it is not fair that a woman cannot openly address her sexual desires. At the end of the book, Brenner shows that the convener has used her gift to bring characters from the past into contact with people in the present, just as she did in her biblical narrative. Although Brenner uses extensive scholarly tools to enable each character to describe her own narrative, she is largely successful in making that scholarship accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Brenner is a world-class Israeli biblical scholar who taught at the University of Amsterdam when this book was written. She brings an unabashedly feminist viewpoint to the text, and certainly exercises her “postmodern prerogative”. She frankly tells the reader that she does not wish to make these women role models, “ . . . nor is my approach confessional in any way . . . . On the contrary, my approach is utterly ‘secular.’” Although she requires her characters to deal with the text as it is (Brenner has the Convener say, “We can’t forget the original, can we?” ), she is also unafraid to reject the perspective of the text, and even the text altogether. For example, Brenner has Rahab recount her personal history so as to describe the entry of Israel into Canaan in a manner consistent with the gradual settlement theory, instead of a true war of conquest by Joshua. Whatever the reader's view of these issues, Brenner’s insight into the text is outstanding. Her telling of the narrative of Zeruiah reveals deep understandings of the culture of Israel, both ancient and modern. Her Zeruiah realizes that “the more my sons’ reputation for fierceness and cruelty spread, the more the fear people felt about them was extended to me.” This Zeruiah understood that David “inspired ferocious love in some, and an equal measure of furious loathing in others.” Brenner’s Zeruiah also saw that her own sons were not only listening to David, to “ . . . their master’s voice, but also divining his unspoken wishes before he even had time to formulate them in his head.” And Brenner is discerning in projecting that the modern Zeruiah would be one of the “women in black”, who silently protest the continuing violence between Palestinians and Israelis today.

Brenner clearly makes her characters come to life in a believable way, and in a way that appears to be largely consistent with the biblical text. Brenner may have these women behave or say things about God, men, or the biblical text that offend the reader, but those women may very well have chosen to do or say those very things on their own.… (mere)