This thesis is a thematic examination of two primary texts from the Second-Temple period of Judaism. 1st and 2nd Maccabees, two "histories" which cover the same political events from diverging perspectives, were examined exhaustively for their depiction of women. These depictions were catalogued and analysed, resulting in the creation of seven original categories which organized the results. The results were compared with contemporaneous depictions of women, and it was decided that the literary treatment of women was, in both works, in keeping with a patriarchal Greco-Roman Jewish status quo, with some noteworthy exceptions.

Thesis (M.T.S.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1989. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-50).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Sydney, 2000. / Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 21, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy to the School of Studies in Religion, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliography. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-291). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-64).

Thesis (M.T.S.)--Catholic Theological Union, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-75).

No description available.

The Gospel of John records a cosmic lawsuit between God and the world with Jesus at the centre. Jesus, tried and condemned by worldly opponents, is retried before readers. John presents witnesses for Jesus, challenging readers to weigh their testimony and decide in Jesus' favour, that he is the Messiah. Among the witnesses, John presents several women. Since women in first-century Palestine were in most cases barred from giving juridical testimony, it might seem that John is undermining his purpose. Old Testament, pseudepigraphal, rabbinic, and apocryphal writings demonstrate that the exclusion of women from testifying was based on technical grounds and no inherent incompetence, although many felt that women were unreliable to witness. Further, women's exclusion was not comprehensive, and they could give juridical evidence in certain situations. Women also had a longstanding history of competence and leadership in religious testimony: prophecies, prayers, songs, confessions, oaths, and vows. The women whom John presents are Jesus' mother, the Samaritan, Martha and Mary, the women at the cross, Mary Magdalene, the mother of the blind man, and Annas' doorkeeper (the story of the adulterous woman is a later addition to John's Gospel). These women offer convincing, tentative, or no testimony, depending upon the situation. In no case does any one of these women offer a testimony that breaches the laws and customs governing women's capacities as witnesses. Thus, John's readers would be able to evaluate the testimony of the women no differently than that of the men. Narratologically, the women function as individuals, and John does not have any interest in or treat them as a gender class. Historically, because the women's testimonies fall within the legal, religious, and social bounds of Jesus' culture, John gains credibility as an historian, albeit one whose Gospel has a persuasive purpose and rhetorical cast.

Thesis advisor: Angela Kim Harkins / Thesis advisor: Margaret E. Guider / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

This thesis presents a series of feminist counter-readings of the two women in Proverbs 1-9: Woman Wisdom and the Strange-and-Foolish Woman. It therefore seeks to both discern and challenge the traditional male scholarship's understandings of both women, and, more importantly, to read both as women rather than as stereotypes. Most readings of the text construe Woman Wisdom as a personification or a hypostasis, and the Strange-and-Foolish Woman as a stereotype or series of stereotypes of promiscuous and assertively sexual women. Few scholars focus on the significance of these representations of women as women. My feminist counter-reading methodology involves a triple hermeneutic-suspicion, resistance, rereading and representation. This hermeneutic is also informed by an insistently embodied reading practice. My methodology draws on various fields of feminist scholarship, including feminist literary theory and film theory, feminist hermeneutics and feminist biblical criticism, feminist theories of embodiment, and feminist epistemology. In addition, I use contemporary ideas relating to translation to re-translate key terms integral to the focus of my thesis. Each chapter of the thesis focuses on a site of contestation-both within biblical scholarship and within the text. As a piece of feminist scholarship, this thesis both works within the constraints of the traditional understanding of a thesis and contemporary 'malestream' scholarship, and pushes gently at the boundaries, seeking to make spaces for different ways to approach, and write, theses. The first four chapters focusing on the textual analysis are presented as being in a constellation relationship with each other and the later textual analyses. Using a variety of strategies, originating in a variety of feminist disciplines, I have demonstrated that both Woman Wisdom and the Strange-and-Foolish Woman can be read as representations of real women. In each case, their representations-in-the-text are partial, designed to categorise them in the interests of the male system (malestream), and to keep them separate from each other. I also demonstrate, however, that both women resist these attempts at patriarchal and androcentric colonisation. Woman Wisdom, in assertively building her own house within the malestream, claims her own space for her alternative way of wisdom in the male-dominated world of the text. Using her location 'inside' the system to gain access to the young future leaders-both men and women-she disseminates her alternative way with the apparent approval of the system. Contrary to the view of most scholars, she does not speak with the voice of the patriarchal system-she has her own style, and her own message, which she shares freely with all who accept her invitation to her feast of wisdom. The Strange-and-Foolish Woman more openly resists malestream attempts to control and confine her. Like Woman Wisdom, she resorts to resistance strategies to access her audience: she masquerades as a vamp to attract her audience and poke fun at the foibles of the 'wise' old men who denigrate her sexuality but secretly lust after her body. She, too, is a woman who defines herself, and her way of being sexual, and seeks to make a space for an alternative way of being woman, and celebrating her sexuality, in the world of the text. / thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 1999