From back cover: "I have been teaching courses on women and religion for nearly fifteen years. Inevitably, the biblical texts bearing on women's status and nature have evoked considerable discussion. To most students' surprise the confrontation with biblical materials turns out to be liberating. Individual texts often take surprising turns that show them to have been originally quite different from the dogmatic teachings associated with them by the churches and synagogues, while the entire mosaic makes it clear that the Bible as a whole is complex, many-voiced, and anything but simplistic. . . .Denise Lardner Carmody