The other, by Karla Bohmbach of Susquehanna University, enlightens us on Names and Naming by exploring how names were chosen and given in the biblical world and by examining their range of meanings. In addition to the new information contained in many of the entries and essays, the materials in Women in Scripture in the aggregate produced some surprises, especially in respect to the distribution of named and unnamed women in the various books and sections of the Bible. The concentration in 1 Chronicles is likewise linked to the sporadic appearance of women in the genealogies that dominate its first nine chapters. Women, both named and unnamed, are also prominent in the Book of Judges, where they often play public roles. But thereafter, in the narratives about the monarchies, they make mostly cameo appearances, usually as relatives of biblical kings.
Prophetic books have relatively few female figures, with or without names.
The sixteen named women in this section of the canon are concentrated in only nine books, whereas unnamed figures appear throughout the fifteen books containing females. Nine all of them epistles contain no named women. Another six mention only women from the Hebrew Bible but no women from the authors own milieu. Taken all together, the essays and entries represent the best and most user-friendly scholarship about all female figures in the Bible, many of whom have been misunderstood by 2,000 years of biblical interpretation done largely by men. All too often, contemporary perceptions about biblical women are based on post-biblical traditions art, music, films, literature, and theology that obscure or distort the information in the biblical text itself.