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RETURN TO HOME PAGE I
was prompted to write a book about the women in the Bible in 1996. I had
originally been teaching Religious Education in senior high schools and written textbooks for Australian schools, and found there was hardly
anything on the subject of women in the Bible. The books that teachers were
using
were either scholarly and quite out of the reach of a normal student, or
cloyingly sentimental and sometimes quite inaccurate as well. I approached
Harper Collins with a book proposal and they published 'Women in the Bible' in
1997. After
ten years
the book went out of print and the copyright reverted to me, so instead of letting
it disappear into the ether I decided to put it on the web - where you find it
now. I have added pages/chapters that were not in the original book - the most
recent page is on the Adulterous Woman. 'Women in the Bible' contained the
stories of twelve women, and as you can see there are twenty-one on the
website at present. If there is one in particular that you would like me to
research and write about, I would be delighted to do so. I
was born into a Catholic family, and attended Catholic schools and then the
University of Sydney, Australia. My first degree was in History and Modern
Languages, and I became a schoolteacher. I agreed to teach Religious Studies, which can be taken as a University entrance
subject in Australia, but soon found I was out of her depth - attending church
regularly does not prepare a person for teaching Religion to high school
students. So I went back to University and gained advanced qualifications
in this area. After
my husband died, I moved out of teaching into full-time writing. I wrote
and edited a variety of Religion textbooks, and was one of the team of three
people who developed the Religious Education curriculum now used extensively
throughout Australia. But my chief interest was always Biblical
studies. I
am
interviewed on
national radio or talk-back programs whenever
there is a ruckus about something to do with the Bible and women, as there was
when 'The Da Vinci Code' was published. I
have two grown-up children and four rambunctious little grandsons. Let
me know if you have suggestions for the website. I am always interested in
feedback. Elizabeth Fletcher An afterthought: What
I like about the women in the Bible is that they will not let themselves
become victims. They use the weapons they have - weapons that are quite
different to men's - to get what they want. Now of course the men fight back
by criticizing them, saying things like 'beauty is a trap', 'women are full of
guile', etc. Fighting back is only to be expected - I would do the same if I
were a man. |