In her foreword, Sarah Bessey offers a concise summary of Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us about Freedom:

Dharamraj reads the Song of Songs intertextually with the prophetic texts; within a literary culture, texts grow out of a shared linguistic, aesthetic, and ideological substratum, and then influence the interpretation of each other when they are read together. Song of Songs paired with the prophetic texts profiles the ideal human-human and divine-human love relationships.

I am a woman, I work in biblical interpretation, and I am not alone. This is the gripping truth presented in Amanda Benckhuysen’s book The Gospel According to Eve. She opens her work with the claim, “In the history of the church, there have always been those who have questioned notions of women’s inferiority and who have believed that the Bible intends woman’s full emancipation and equality” (1–2). The book then outlines the overwhelming historical testament of women interpreting the Bible, and specifically interpreting the figure of Eve, since the beginning of the church.

In her book, 7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership, Kate Coleman outlines what she believes are the seven most destructive behaviors that women in leadership succumb to: limiting self-perceptions, failure to draw the line, inadequate personal vision, an unhealthy work-life rhythm, the ‘disease to please,' colluding instead of confronting, and neglecting family matters.

Larry Crabb’s book Fully Alive purports in its subtitle to “live beyond stereotypes.” Unfortunately, readers are almost immediately confronted with a view of gender essentialism, which suggests that men and women, or even young girls or boys, all essentially act along certain gender-determined ways. For example, after noting we must move beyond stereotypes of what it is to be “masculine” or “feminine” (25), he goes on to discuss how he wonders “God will welcome my wife by warmly saying, ‘Well done!

Ruth Everhart is a Presbyterian pastor and sexual assault survivor, which makes her eminently qualified to address sexual abuse in the church in a book-length treatment. She admittedly writes through a particular lens—that of a sexual assault survivor, former “good girl,” committed Christian, wife, mother, and radical feminist. She clarifies that she is not a liberal feminist but instead thinks of herself as a radical feminist because she believes that “it's not enough that individual women can thrive in a patriarchal culture.

Making my way into this book, I increasingly felt I could not write a review without knowing at least a bit about its author. Debbie Blue is co-founding minister of House of Mercy, a Christian congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her earlier books affirm the Incarnation (Sensual Orthodoxy, 2004), decry bibliolatry (From Stone to Living Word: Letting the Bible Live Again, 2008), and explore the symbolism of birds in the Bible (Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible, 2013). Her bio at houseofmercy.org says she “approaches scripture . . .

“We must revisit what the Scriptures say about some Bible women we have sexualized, vilified and/or marginalized. Because, above all, we must tell the truth about what the text says” (16). So writes editor Sandra Glahn in the preface to this volume. Glahn teaches media arts and worship at Dallas Theological Seminary. She holds a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas. She is author or co-author of more than twenty books, including several volumes in The Coffee Cup Bible Study Series.

The Rev. Dr. Kevin Giles is a longstanding supporter of women in leadership. Over the course of more than forty years, he has written at least nine books on the topics of women, ministry, and the Trinity. Many of his books on women have been published in Australia (e.g., Women and Their Ministry [Dove Communications 1977], Created Woman [Acorn Press 1985], and Better Together [Acorn Press 2010]). Now he has written What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women with a North American publisher (Cascade Books).

In this work of historical fiction, Paula Gooder presents an imaginative telling of the life and ministry of Phoebe. While Gooder does not offer an introduction to the book, she does provide helpful comments in the endnotes. She states that her purpose in writing this story is not simply to provide an entertaining novel, but also to inform readers of the reality behind the NT text (225). Gooder sparks the imagination of her audience by disclosing scholarly information concerning the Greco-Roman world through the medium of narrative.