I Am ...: Biblical Women Tell Their Own Stories.

I Am ...: Biblical Women Tell Their Own Stories. By Athalya Brenner. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. xviii and 228 pages. Paper. $13.00.

This is not your grandmother's book of stories of the lives of biblical women. This is edgy, forceful, insistent, angry. This is the liberation of suppressed women, marginalized by biblical authors, editors, and redactors, finding their own voices in today's world.

The literary context is a conference at which the invited presenters are biblical women who "do not die in the text--that is, no mention is made of their death and burial, hence they have been made immortal by the same text that doesn't pay them the tribute of decently and naturally disposing of them" (p. xiv). Twelve autobiographical stories are told: Adah and Zillah, Dinah, Madam Potiphar, Zipporah, Rahab, Ruth and Orpah and Naomi, Rizpah, Tamar and Tamar, Zeruiah, Huldah, the anonymous woman from the Song of Songs, and the medium of Endor. Each presenter retells the biblical narrative and highlights insights from commentators through the ages, thereby remedying the male abuse of the text. As Madam Potiphar voices, "And the world intervened, and the story was re-written. And I got the bad press, and Joseph escaped almost unharmed. Everything in order: the female side of the story suppressed, misunderstood, or condemned" (p. 56).

This is not the typical sociohistorical embellishment of the stories of biblical women (a la Anita Diamant's The Red Tent [St. Martin's Press, 1997]). These presenters call a spade a spade: date rape, lesbian lust, sexual abuse for political gain. If this book is used in a Bible study group, be prepared for some uneasy feelings among the participants. Oh, yeah, and close the door--this could get very interesting.

Marty Stevens

Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary 

Columbia, South Carolina