The biblical narrative of Jephthah and his daughter (Judges 11:31-40) recounts the story of the judge, Jephthah, who vowed to sacrifice to God whatever came to greet him upon his return from a victorious battle with Ammon, and whose daughter became the victim of this vow. The goal of this thesis is to examine a sample of the Jewish responses to this biblical narrative from ancient and medieval times through the twentieth century. The analysis demonstrates the difficult nature of this text, its linguistic and conceptual ambiguities, the solutions to a well-defined series of problems proposed by more than two dozen interpreters, and their failure to deal with most of the historical and ethical problems that emerge from the story.

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