Women as Ritual Experts in Ancient Israel with Dr. Carol Meyers

Powered by Restream https://restream.io/

Women as Ritual Experts in Ancient Israel
with Dr. Carol Meyers, Duke University

Who were the most important religious figures in ancient Israel? Most people would probably say that the priests were. But they would be wrong. The main arena of religious life for most people in the biblical period was not the Jerusalem temple nor a regional shrine. Rather, it was the family household, and women were major figures in household religious activities. Those activities are largely invisible in the Bible with its focus on the priesthood and sacrifice. However, the use of an array of archaeological materials—and also some carefully selected and fascinating ethnographic data—can reveal many aspects of women’s household religious culture
and its meaning for the lives of ordinary ancient Israelites.

CAROL MEYERS is the Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Duke University. She has lectured and published widely in several fields: biblical studies, archaeology,
and gender in the biblical world. A prolific scholar, she has lectured and published widely. She is the author of more than 450 articles, reports, reference-book entries, and reviews; and she has authored, co-authored, or edited twenty-two books. Her reference work, Women in Scripture, is the most comprehensive study ever made of biblical women. Another book—Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context—is a landmark study of women in ancient Israel. As a field
archaeologist, Meyers has been a staff member or co-director of numerous archaeological field projects in Israel. She has also been a frequent consultant for media productions, including A&E's “Mysteries of the Bible” series, DreamWorks’s “Prince of Egypt,” and Nova’s “Bible’s Buried Secrets.” She is a trustee of several archaeological organizations, including the American Society of Overseas Research, the Albright Institute of archaeological Research, and the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. She recently served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature.