Blog — Women in the Bible

By Anna Grace Glaize

Dr. Julie Faith Parker is the author of Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions. She holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible from Yale University and is ordained in the United Methodist Church. You can find out more about Dr. Parker at her website juliefaithparker.com.

This interview was conducted on July 22, 2024 via Zoom and has been edited for clarity and length.

AGG: If you wouldn’t mind, could you share a little about why you wrote Eve Isn’t Evil?

Dr. Parker: Sure. First of all, Anna Grace, thank you so much for having me. I’m really delighted to be here, and I’m so excited about your website! I’ve looked at it. I’m just thrilled to see that there is such a strong, reliable, smart, insightful source that is freely available on women in the Bible. Because there is so much out there that is just junk—especially when it comes to the Bible—and so it’s really wonderful that you are doing this really important work and providing this ministry to lots of grateful people like me. I just wanted to say thank you for all that you do, and also for inviting me to come and talk about my most recent book Eve Isn’t Evil…

The genesis of this book was actually a meeting that I had with a medium in 2015. I was leading a women’s retreat. My husband’s a pastor. I’m the wife of a minister, the daughter of a minister, the sister of a minister, and a minister myself! So I’m very steeped in church. At this particular church, every spring I would lead the women’s retreat. I had been at two separate campuses for campus interviews as a professor. I had two three-day interviews, and I didn’t know if I was going to get one offer, or two offers, or zero offers!

This two-week period of uncertainty and waiting happened to be when the women’s retreat took place. I knew a woman on the retreat happened to be a medium. She had an office in Manhattan and an office in L.A. She paid the rent on those offices working as a medium, so I thought there must be something to it otherwise she could never afford those rents! I said to her during a break in the retreat schedule, “Can I meet with you please?”

It wasn’t like I made an appointment weeks in advance. She just was there and I was there. I just asked her and she very graciously said, “Sure!” Her name is Alexandra LeClere. I share that name with you with her permission. We went into her little lodge bedroom and she sat on one bed and I sat on the other. She looked out the window, she said the Lord’s Prayer, and then she said, “Columbus.” Which was where I ended up teaching. In Columbus, Ohio. Then she said, “Write a book in your own voice. Don’t wait.”

But I did wait! That was 2015. The book came out in 2023. I published two other books in between, lots of articles, it’s not like I wasn’t writing! But this book was on my heart all that time because it took me a while to muster the courage to write a biblical book that’s so personal. In this [Eve Isn’t Evil] I share some real personal stories, and that is not something I read by other academics. So I thought this might be my contribution: to be a little more vulnerable in my sharing because I can let people know how the Bible has been really helpful to me…Hopefully, they might find the Bible to be really helpful to them, too.

AGG: That, to me, is one of the most endearing parts of the book. It is so strongly in your voice and is so warmly written. I read a lot of academic stuff, and so to get great content and also in a very accessible, approachable style is one of the reasons why I’ve been recommending this book.

Dr. Parker: Thank you, Anna Grace! Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

AGG: It sounds like you knew going into it that this book was going to be a little bit different. Also, I’ll say, this is not the first time I’ve heard your voice! I’ve literally heard it before on the audiobook narration. Did you expect to be creating audiobooks? What was that process like?

Dr. Parker: You know, I really wanted to do the audiobook! I was hoping that they would make it an audiobook because it is in my voice…I wanted to give voice to these words. At first, when I told the editor at Baker Academic about this, he said, “You know, we usually hire professionals for this. It’s like getting a haircut. You can do it yourself, but chances are a professional would do it better.” But I really wanted to do it!

I studied acting in college, I took these voice-building classes in seminary, and I was in a lot of plays back in my younger days. I said, “If you get someone else, they’re gonna mispronounce the Hebrew, and that would be really bad.” And he said, “Oh yeah, you’re right.” So that’s how I got to do my own recording.

I had so much fun with it, Anna Grace! I live in Manhattan. That really helped a lot…I just hopped on a bike and biked down to the theater district where the studio was. I recorded it in a couple of days in a soundproof booth with an engineer and the headsets and the whole thing. And I just loved it! It was just a lot of fun, and people I know who have heard the recording really recommend it over reading the book. They say you just get another whole dimension of emotion in the reading.

AGG: You are really good! I listen to lots of audiobooks because I like to be able to move around, do my dishes, or something as well as “read.” That’s why I asked.

Dr. Parker: Thank you! I really had so much fun. I’m sure that’s a factor; I really had so much fun doing it.

AGG: How interesting that your theater background got to be used in your life as an academic.

Dr. Parker: I hired someone, also. I hired a vocal coach beforehand. I got lessons from her. I have a whole series of voice-building exercises that I do every time before I speak publicly.

AGG: Our website is dedicated to women in the Bible. Who are some of your favorite women in the Bible and why?

Dr. Parker: Hard to choose because there are so many women in the Bible whose stories I find really exciting. Sometimes you really have to look closely to find them because women are not the focus of the Bible writers…Rarely, sometimes they are. Those instances are some of my favorite passages.

I really love the story of Deborah, whom we read about in Judges 4 and 5. I like this story so much because Deborah is a prophet. She’s called a prophet (“neviah” in Hebrew). She’s a military commander. She is a judge; she’s judging Israel.

So she has all of these roles, and she’s also called a mother in Israel. And there’s no reference to her being married or having any biological children…I say there’s no reference to her being married. But in English, somebody might say, “What? She’s called the wife of Lappidoth!” That’s not in the Hebrew. In Hebrew, it’s “eshet lapidot.” “Lapid” is torch. That [“eshet lapidot”] means “woman of torches” or a fiery woman. But we get “wife of Lappidoth” in English. Who’s Lappidoth!? [He’s] Mentioned nowhere else in the entire Bible…This is just one of my translation issues, shall we say, but I like to think of Deborah as a fiery woman.

I also love the story of the Israelite slave girl. That’s a story of a girl in 2 Kings 5. It’s a little girl who’s been captured from Israel, and she’s brought north to Aram. She serves this woman who’s known to us as Naaman’s wife. Naaman’s a commander who has leprosy. She [the slave girl] just expresses a wish for his healing. “Oh that my lord knew that there were a prophet in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.” That’s 2 Kings 5:3. Namaan goes and follows this advice, and he goes to Samaria, and he encounters the prophet Elisha, vicariously, but it’s enough. He dips himself in the Jordan seven times, and he’s made clean.

I’m leaving out a lot of beautiful details! Everyone should go read it: 2 Kings 5:1-14. In that text, she is the one who makes his healing possible. She is the one who has this idea. She expresses a compassionate hope, and so I love her story. She’s also the only girl in the entire Hebrew Bible who is explicitly called “little” who speaks. The only little girl who speaks in the entire Hebrew Bible, and it’s a big text, you know? So that’s another reason why I love her story.

AGG: How interesting!

Dr. Parker: I know! Isn’t that fascinating? There are girls who speak like Jephthah’s daughter for example. Or Tamar…but they’re the age of puberty. They’re around marriageable age. We know this because of the words that are used to describe them. And this is a little girl, a “qetannah” in Hebrew, so it is fascinating. Children are also not really the focus of biblical writers. But that’s another one of my favorites…

The story of Ruth and Naomi I love, because it’s women choosing each other in a man’s world. They go from this place of famine and despair to hope and abundance and new birth. So it’s a wonderful story.

Also, let’s not forget the New Testament, or, as I like to call it, the appendix! You know, I love Mary Magdalene. We think of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. That’s how people think of her: as a prostitute…In no place in the Bible does it say Mary was a prostitute. Nowhere in the entire Bible! Yet that’s all that most people know about her.

In Greek, Mary Magdalene reads “maria hē magdalēnē” or “Mary the Magdalene.” “Gadal” means to be big or to be great, and “migdal” is tower. So we can translate her name as Mary “the tower” or Mary “the magnified one.” Which I like a whole lot more than Mary Magdalene because there wasn’t even a place “Magdala” in the first century! It didn’t even exist. But people think of her as a prostitute from this place—not in the text!

In Chapter 10, I have these academic deep dives…and I look at this whole question of Mary Magdalene with an interview with Elizabeth Schrader Polczer who’s done a lot of important research on Mary Magdalene. She, along with Joan Taylor who’s an Aramaic scholar in London, published an article that goes through all the semantics of how we can read Mary as the Magnified One or Mary the Tower. Because she is indeed a magnified, towering presence in the Gospels.

Many thanks to Dr. Parker for her time and insight. Part 2 of our interview is coming soon!