page_title: Women in the Bible
section_title: Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
hierarchical_section_title: Women in the Bible / Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
context_page_description: The women in the Bible are rarely mentioned by name, with named women representing only 5.5 to 8 percent of the total of all named characters, male and female. This suggests that women were not usually in the forefront of public life. Those women that are named, rose to prominence for reasons outside the ordinary. They are often an aspect of the over-turning of man-made power structures commonly found in a biblical literary device called a "reversal." Abigail and Esther, Jael who drove a tent peg into the enemy commander's temple while he slept, are a few examples of women who turned the tables on men with power. The founding matriarchs are mentioned by name, as are some prophetesses, judges, heroines, and queens, while the common woman is largely, though not completely, unseen. The slave Hagar's story is told, and the prostitute Rahab's story is also told, along with a few others like them.
  All Ancient Near Eastern societies were patriarchal, and the Bible is a patriarchal document, written by men from a patriarchal age. Many scholars see the primary emphasis of the Bible as reinforcing women's subordinate status.
context_section_description: According to traditional Jewish enumeration, the Hebrew canon is composed of 24 books written by various authors, using primarily Hebrew and some Aramaic, which came into being over a span of almost a millennium. The Hebrew Bible's earliest texts reflect a Late Bronze Age Near Eastern civilization, while its last text, thought by most scholars to be the Book of Daniel, comes from a second century BCE Hellenistic world.
  Compared to the number of men, few women are mentioned in the Bible by name. The exact number of named and unnamed women in the Bible is somewhat uncertain because of a number of difficulties involved in calculating the total. For example, the Bible sometimes uses different names for the same woman, names in different languages can be translated differently, and some names can be used for either men or women. Professor Karla Bombach says one study produced a total of 3000-3100 names, 2900 of which are men with 170 of the total being women. However, the possibility of duplication produced the recalculation of a total of 1700 distinct personal names in the Bible with 137 of them being women.  In yet another study of the Hebrew Bible only, there were a total of 1426 names with 1315 belonging to men and 111 to women. Seventy percent of the named and unnamed women in the Bible come from the Hebrew Bible. "Despite the disparities among these different calculations, ... [it remains true that] women or women's names represent between 5.5 and 8 percent of the total [names in  the Bible], a stunning reflection of the androcentric character of the Bible." A study of women whose spoken words are recorded found 93, of which 49 women are named.
  The common, ordinary, everyday Hebrew woman is "largely unseen" in the pages of the Bible, and the women that are seen, are the unusual who rose to prominence. These prominent women include the Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, Miriam the prophetess, Deborah the Judge, Huldah the prophetess, Abigail, who married David, Rahab, and Esther.  A common phenomenon in the bible is the pivotal role that women take in subverting man-made power structures.  The result is often a more just outcome than what would have taken place under ordinary circumstances. Law professor Geoffrey Miller explains that these women did not receive opposition for the roles they played, but were honored instead.
caption: The Construction of Noah's Ark depicts the eight people said to be on the ark, including the four wives, who are all unnamed in the Book of Genesis. Jacopo Bassano, 16th century.
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