God’s Wife and Big Toe
2nd December 2005
“May I present my wife, Asherah?”
The Fort Wayne News Sentinel has a brief article on William Dever’s recent book, Does God have a Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Eerdmans, 2005; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). Actually, the report was more on his SBL session of the same topic. I particularly liked the quote from Dever which concluded the article:
After quoting a number of feminist scholars arguing for a female deity, Dever then quotes his five-year-old stepdaughter explaining why God must be both “a man and a woman.”
It’s because, she said, “half the people in the world are women and God has to be for everybody.”
God’s Big Toe
I came across what looks like a delightful children’s book by Rabbi Marc Gellman and Oscar de Mejo (Illustrator), called Does God Have a Big Toe?: Stories About Stories in the Bible (HarperTrophy, 1993; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). This book has been around for a while (it won a number of children book prizes when it was first published in 1989), but I had never heard of it. The back cover describes the book this:
Reflecting Mr. Gellman’s lifelong love for his subject, this witty collection of midrashim provides a wonderful way to learn about and to share the stories of the Bible.
While I can’t recommend it without seeing it; it sure looks like it would be a great Christmas/Hanukkah gift!
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:14 am
[...] This week’s Review of Biblical Literature includes a few interesting reviews. Of particular interest to me is the review of Kofoed’s Text and History, which is quite positive (perhaps too positive; it would be interesting to read a review by someone more skeptical of reconstructing Israel’s history from biblical texts). There are also a couple of good reviews of Dever’s Did God Have a Wife? (see here for a previous post on Dever’s book). [...]