How does one read the story of Sarah and Hagar, or Jezebel and Rahab today, if one is a woman reader situated in a postcolonial society? This is the question undergirding this work, which considers a selection of biblical texts in which women have significant roles. Employing both a gender and a postcolonial lens, it asks sharp questions both of the interests embedded in the texts themselves and of their impact upon contemporary women readers. Whereas most postcolonial studies have been undertaken from the perspective of the colonized this work reads the texts from the position of a settler descendant, and is an attempt to engage with the disquietening and challenging questions that reading from such a location raises. Letters from early settler women in New Zealand, contemporary fiction, and personal reminiscence become tools for the task, complementing those traditionally employed in critical biblical readings.
This work looks at the intertextual relationships of the invitations to eat and drink in Proverbs, Ben Sira and John 4. If the first two invitations are offered by a female Wisdom/Sophia, what are the gender implications when the hostess becomes a host in John 4? The study poses the possibility of an ongoing convergence strategy, which may have begun when Israelite sages adapted for a Yahwistic context language and imagery earlier associated with female deities. In a subtle move, McKinlay draws upon contemporary reader resistance in order to counter such ideological moves by the scribes, whose ambivalence towards real-life women is also observed in these works.
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