From Fertility to Manipulation: Female Characterizations and the Birth Narratives in the Hebrew Bible

This thesis examines all of the birth narratives of the Hebrew Bible, and provides coherent features of female characterization. In the birth narratives in Genesis, women are more concerned with the issues of fertility and procreation, the family inheritance, and perpetuation of the family line than are their husbands or the paterfamilias. In the birth narratives outside of Genesis, mothers contribute to shaping the child’s future destiny. They bestow a special status or privilege on the child, paving the way to make him a divinely chosen charismatic leader. In the HB birth narratives, female characters play a central or even a dominant role. They demonstrate distinctive competence in problem-solving on their own initiative. Despite being considered social underdogs, they actively resist dominant androcentric norms or challenge patriarchal authority, and thus frequently overpower men. In addition to using trickery, they are prominent in the employment of knowledge and wisdom as weapons against powerful authorities. Their resourcefulness, in particular, stands out: they utilize existing social structures and religious practices in a variety of ways to achieve their goals. They exert control over the situation, particularly during a new move — the transitional stage. The narrator presents women as contributing to the fulfillment of the divine covenant, which serves as the theological foundation for group identity formation. Further, the overarching narrative focalization on women, representing them as contributors to the development of nationhood, reflects that the implied narrative agenda could be to encourage women’s roles in community reconstruction and rehabilitation, which proposes the post-exilic Yehud as the social context of these stories’ production. The image of women that is desired by the community of this new era is that they are strong, proactive, and interested in socioeconomic rights and positions, not submissive or obedient to a major authority.