The term "patriarchy" denotes the social-science concept of male dominance. This concept was formulated by nineteenth-century anthropologists using classical literature, especially legal texts, in ...their attempts to understand the history of the family. Biblical scholars interested in Israelite family structures soon took up the term. By the early twentieth century, sociologists (notably Weber) extended the concept of patriarchy to include society-wide male domination. This too entered scholarship on the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel. However, the validity and appropriateness of this concept to designate both families and society have recently been challenged in several disciplines: in classical scholarship, by using sources other than legal texts; in research on the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel, also by using multiple sources; and in the work of third-wave feminists, both social theorists and feminist archaeologists. Taken together, these challenges provide compelling reasons for abandoning the patriarchy model as an adequate or accurate descriptor of ancient Israel.
The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II. By Avraham Faust. Translated by Ruth Ludlum. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012. Pp. xviii + 328, illus. $49.50.
This study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. ...The book argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts, and the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Drawing on archaeological discoveries and ethnographic information as well as biblical texts, the book depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and society. In so doing, it challenges the very notion of patriarchy as an appropriate designation for Israelite society.
The biblical image of Eve has powerfully influenced ideas about women for the past two millennia. Yet, as Carol Meyers argues in Discovering Eve, the image of the first of women as subservient and ...dependent does not represent some irreducible historical truth. Rather, it represents the androcentric constructions of a group of urban elite males (including, most notably, the Apostle Paul and Rabbi Yohannan) who had a decisive effect on the founding of Judaeo-Christian traditions. Meyers produces convincing evidence, archaeological, scriptural, and sociological, that ancient Israelite woman fulfilled a role very different from that of the biblical Eve. The real Eve, she demonstrates, was a figure of some social substance, a strong and important figure in the social and familial milieux.
In the household and beyond Meyers, Carol
Studia theologica,
05/2009, Letnik:
63, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The social world of Israelite women was more extensive and complex than is usually recognized. This study problematizes assumptions about female isolation or seclusion by considering a variety of ...sources for reconstructing their lives. Examining archaeological and ethnographic data related to women's household activities and looking at biblical texts mentioning women's extra-household (professional) roles indicate the nature and range of women's contacts and connections with others, both female and male. The dynamics and significance of the interactions comprising women's social world are then suggested by engaging information and models from anthropology.
Integer equal flows Meyers, Carol A.; Schulz, Andreas S.
Operations research letters,
07/2009, Letnik:
37, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The integer equal flow problem is an NP-hard network flow problem, in which all arcs in given sets
R
1
,
…
,
R
ℓ
must carry equal flow. We show that this problem is effectively inapproximable, even ...if the cardinality of each set
R
k
is two. When
ℓ
is fixed, it is solvable in polynomial time.
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