Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible

Call For Papers: 1) Open session: “Women Biblical Interpreters in a Man’s World.” In 1894, Anna Ely Rhoads (1862-1943) was the first woman invited to become a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis (SBL’s original name). She was joined in 1897 by Emilie Grace Briggs, uncredited author of entries in the magisterial Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon co-edited by her father. Other women SBL members followed, such as Mary Emma Woolley (joined 1898) and Louise Pettibone Smith, the first woman to publish an article in the Journal of Biblical Literature (1917). For this open session, which commemorates the 125th anniversary of the first woman to join SBL, we invite papers on the struggles and achievements of historical female interpreters through the ages (late antiquity through the opening decades of the 20th century), including, but not limited to, early members of SBL and other scholarly societies. 2) Our second session will be a special session commemorating the 125th anniversary, with invited panelists telling the stories of women’s contributions to biblical studies. 3) The third session will be a review of Amanda Benckhuysen’s The Gospel According to Eve: A History of Women’s Interpretation (InterVarsity Press), with invited panelists.

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