AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR OF THE WORD ACCORDING TO EVE.

In his new book, The Word According to Eve, Cullen Murphy explores the revolutionary implications of feminism's encounter with religion "The Bible is famous for being the world's most overstudied book,"

Cullen Murphy writes in the foreword to The Word According to Eve:

Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own. "Overstudied by male scholars and commentators, that is to say." Dramatic changes are now taking place in biblical studies, however: during the past twenty-five years or so a rapidly growing number of feminist scholars have moved into the field. The Word According to Eve is an introduction to much of what has emerged in this early stage of feminism's encounter with the Bible, including revisionist studies of the roles women played in early Christianity (women were much more active than traditionalists would have us believe), examinations of mistranslations that have ossified and become dogma (the Hebrew source of the word "virgin" in the story of Jesus' birth, for example, may have only meant "young woman"), and much more. In the short term, Murphy notes, the feminist study of the Bible has led to "discomfort and uncertainty, and a cacophony of agendas, and a sometimes acrimonious rethinking of yesterday and today." This debate is often dismissed by commentators as meaningless and purely academic, but Murphy's underlying point in The Word According to Eve is that women's involvement in biblical studies is likely to lead to an unprecedented religious, cultural, and intellectual revitalization.

"Perhaps the most important lesson offered by the work of feminist biblical scholars comes in the form of a reminder," Murphy concludes. "In religion, as in other spheres, circumstances have not always been as we see them now. Evolution occurs. Some things, it turns out, are not sacred."

This is the introduction to an interview with Murphy that was printed in The Atlantic Monthly in August of last year. You can read the full interview here...

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/ba980806.htm

The Word According to Eve was first published in August 1998,  by Houghton Mifflin, in the USA