Abstract
In the last score of years, there has been a marked increase in the number of monographs, collaborative studies and periodical literature that have focused on biblical perspectives on the roles and status of women. While more than fifty years ago this subject received sustained attention in a few books published in Europe and the United States, by no means do the scope of the treatment, and the stances espoused, or the variety of volumes seen today compare with those found in those earlier studies which appeared shortly after the turn of the last century. Doubtless, the current preoccupation with this subject is a barometer of the legitimate perception, in some quarters, that women have not been accorded in modern society anything that approaches what the Bible itself at times seems to demand or at least to imply strongly in terms of equality. Yet, it is troubling that most, if not all, of this literature, which purports to study the roles and status of “women” in the Bible, invariably appears to have been written for the specific benefit of Anglo-Saxon or Jewish women of today as opposed to Black and other women of the third world who find themselves in far more wretched circumstances than their more privileged female counterparts. For this reason, it is necessary to study some of the lines along which the biblical witness provides images and themes for the uplift, liberation and divinely-inspired leadership not just of “women” in general, but that of Black women in particular.