Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes, Second Edition: Women's Stories in the Hebrew Bible

This is not a book for the Fundamentalist Christian that believes that every word in the Bible is inspired by God.The Author's purpose is to present the various secular Feminist and Womanish evaluations of the Women of the Bible in terms of their oppressive, Patriarchal culture and times in which they lived. In most cases their stories are presented in a way that ignores the spiritual context in favor of contrasting the ethical and ethnic contradictions to what women of today must deal with in the area of sexual oppression and harassment compared to similar situations in the lives of Bible women. The author uses the schoarly four points of addressing historical or spiritual women. Quotes from various Feminist and Womanish scholars are used to suppport the points the author wishes to emphasize in each Bible woman's life. As a book to teach one the acceptable scholarly method of evaluation any book's characters, or to help the Christian understand the non-Christian point of view on these Bible Characters, this book is excellent. Dr. Bellis is a Bible Languages teacher at Brown University in Washingtoin D.C. If the Christian is not offended by other views of Bible Stories, they can learn much from this book. I enjoyed it and recommend it highly.

A great introduction to modern scholarship on biblical women, and a good book to assign for a college course on the subject.

Designed to be for a class to read and discuss. I read it on my own and it was challenging.

I had to buy this book for a college course I was taking on Biblical Studies. I'm not very religious by any means, the book wasn't hard to read in terms of having to have extensive of prior biblical knowledge. The format of the book is set up in smaller "story" sections, and features different author's views on stories from the Bible, particularly from women's views of it. This book treads on the feminist side of perspectives, but not a bad read if that's what you're looking for.

"Feminism" and its sister philosophy "womanism" are the main subjects of this new book by Alice Bellis. Not so oddly, it is an excellent critique of the problems that faced women of yesteryear. Better yet, it addresses the adjustments, both good and bad, that challenged women in the early days of seeking for equal rights and the challenges facing women tomorrow as they now find a world that has embraced many, but not all of the indictments that feminism avowed.It is these adjustments that the author speaks of in her piercing analysis of the woman's movement.

Excellent for to compliment bibical reading for Bible study.

Loved the class and this book gave me alot of insight about the women of the First Testament. I would recommend this book.

Awesome book. Dr. Bellis does a stellar job with an overview and survey of this biblical women.