A Womanist Reading of Hebrew Bible Narratives as the Politics of Belonging from an Outsider Within

The U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776 decreed that all men were created equal and were endowed by their Creator with ＂certain unalienable Rights.＂ Yet, U.S.-born free and enslaved Black people were not recognized as citizens with ＂equal protections under the law＂ until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. Even then, White supremacists impeded the equal rights of Black people as citizens due to their beliefs in the inferiority of Black people and that America was a nation for White people. White supremacists turned to biblical passages to lend divine justification for their views. A Womanist Reading of Hebrew Bible Narratives as the Politics of Belonging from an Outsider Within analyzes select biblical narratives including Noah’s curse in Genesis 9, Sarah and Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21, Mother in Israel in Judges 5, and Jezebel, Phoenician Princess and Queen of Israel in 1 and 2 Kings, to demonstrate how these narratives were first used by ancient biblical writers to include some and exclude others as members of the nation of Israel and then appropriated by White supremacists in the antebellum and early twentieth century periods to do the same in America. The book analyzes the simultaneously intersecting and interconnecting relations between race, gender, class, and sexuality and biblical narratives to construct boundaries between ＂us versus them,＂ particularly the politicization of motherhood to deny certain groups’ inclusion.

Vanessa Lovelace is associate dean and associate professor of Hebrew Bible Old Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.