The best books about women who interpreted the Bible before the twentieth century

In 2007, when Marion Ann Taylor, a pioneer researcher in the study of historical women biblical commentators, picked up a newly-published biographical encyclopedia of 200 “major biblical interpreters,” she was appalled to discover that it contained entries on only three women! This inspired her to edit a biographical dictionary dedicated solely to women who interpreted scripture. Taylor’s handbook contains 180 short articles, authored by expert historians and biblical scholars, about inspiring Jewish and Christian women who wrote about the Bible through the centuries. Readers learn biographical information about these women, as well as their approaches to scriptural interpretation, especially how they commented on the story of Eve and passages about other biblical women.

Drawing upon her expertise in African American literature, Katherine Clay Bassard writes about the ways Black women poets, novelists, preachers, and orators from the 1700s through the 1900s used biblical themes and images to challenge the dominant culture’s oppression of women and people of color. African American women used a variety of scriptural images, including the Queen of Sheba and the “black but comely” female speaker in the Song of Songs, to argue for Black women’s dignity. Bassard celebrates African American women’s creativity and their shrewd employment of scriptural passages to engage in resistance to racism and sexism.   

For centuries, Christian preachers and leaders held all women responsible for Eve’s sin. Since Eve ate forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, leaders called womankind “the devil’s gateway” and the source of all suffering and death. Men also used the Genesis account of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib to argue that all women should hold a secondary status in church and society. However, as Amanda Benckhuysen shows, women through the centuries created a counter tradition. They reinterpreted Eve to argue for women’s dignity and their right to preach, teach, and receive an education. Made from superior substance (Adam’s flesh) rather than the dirt of the ground, Eve was God’s worthy creation. Eve sinned, but so did Adam. Thus, Eve’s “curse” did not bar her female descendants from ministerial roles.  

The Bible contains stories of unspeakable violence and brutality against women: the rape of Abraham and Sarah’s enslaved servant Hagar, the incestuous assault of David’s daughter Tamar, the human sacrifice of the warrior Jephthah’s unnamed daughter, and other horrifying accounts. Scripture also contains passages by the Apostle Paul and men writing in his name—passages that restrict women’s roles in churches and which subordinate women in households. In the late twentieth century, feminist scholars challenged these passages and critiqued the patriarchy found in the Bible. But women’s challenge to patriarchal biblical texts did not begin in the twentieth century, In this essay collection, authors identify women working in the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s who had similar insights into the gendered problems found in the Bible. 

Barred from university education and ministerial roles, most women in the 1700s did not have opportunities to write commentaries or sermons. Instead, some female authors turned to poetry and devotional writing as a vehicle for biblical interpretation. According to literary scholar Natasha Duquette, female poets such as Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American servant, “veiled” their dissenting viewpoints in religious verse. By “clothing” their calls for social justice in genres considered acceptable for female authors, these poets and devotional writers ensured a wider readership for their provocative perspectives on the Bible and society.