Task 1: Thesis statement and annotated bibliography: The assessment strategy is intended to allow you to display development of thesis writing and research methods skills appropriate for an Honours thesis. All three assessment tasks are linked together so that the feedback received from each task also acts as a feedforward to help you prepare for the next task. Assessment task 1 enables you to display achievement of LO 1 by asking you to compile an annotated bibliography of relevant key resources for your proposed thesis topic and drafting a thesis statement, outlining the argument of your proposed thesis Requires students to demonstrate the skills of writing a thesis statement and compiling an annotated bibliography of relevant sources. Due Friday 26th March 2021 For this task, you are asked to write an annotated bibliography of ten selected relevant sources for your thesis project. Your annotations should be approximately 100 words each. Each annotation should explain what that resource is about and why it is an important resource for your thesis. You are also asked to include a draft thesis statement written at the top of the document. There is a guide to writing Annotated Bibliographies in Appendix A. Length and/or format: 1200 words: A single sentence thesis statement plus ten 100- word annotations. To enable you to gather ten key sources for your project and explain why they are relevant; and to support you in writing a thesis statement, which will provide direction for your thesis project. The annotated bibliography also provides a basis from which you can develop your Literature Review.
Patricia Erlandsen Draft Thesis Statement and Annotated Bibliography
The land of Canaan was divinely promised to Israel through their fore-parents, Abraham and Sarah. Due to acts of divine deliverance, Israel was now poised to enter the promised land.
Moses appointed to each tribe their portion of land. A discrepancy arose and the daughters of Zelophehad approached Moses. Their petition was twofold: “Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? give us property among our father’s relatives.” 1 To ensure the women remained with their land, endogamous marriage was instituted. A statute was passed that showed the land belonged to Yahweh: “the request of the daughters of Zelophehad is justified; you shall certainly give them a possession as an inheritance among their father’s brothers, and you shall transfer their father’s inheritance to them.” 2
This thesis attempts to answer the question, “what motivated the ancient Israelite custom reported in Numbers 27:7 of permitting daughters to inherit?; and is therefore, the matter of women inheriting land in Ancient Israel more of a theological justification about divine ownership of the land?; further, “did the women of Israel typically inherit land? and is this interrelated with widows inheriting land through the endogamous Levirate marriage law?”; so that, in reality, “was inheriting land by all members of the tribes and endogamous marriages a distinctive feature of Israelite society?”
Below: 100 words each Annotated Bibliography.
Ackerman, Susan. 2003. “Digging Up Deborah”. Near Eastern Archaeology 66, no. 4: 172-184. http://doi.org/10.2307/3557917.
Biblical scholar, Susan Ackerman, a biblical scholar, draws from Carol Meyer’s work using archaeology as a tool to uncover the sub text. This opens up indicators of deeper meaning between Iron I period in the book of Judges and Israel’s pre-monarchic era of Iron 11. Close attention is given to the way the ordinary everyday tasks of the women opened up ways for them to influence the society’s economical, judicial and legal affairs and to participate in religious observances. Ackerman also compares the ancient Semitic language and includes extra-biblical source materials, all adding valuable weight to my thesis.
Benjamin, Don C. 2015 The Social World of Deuteronomy: A New Feminist Commentary. Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Both legal traditions and cultures in the bible world are brought together in Don Benjamin’s work. He brings to the reader empathetic insight into the social world of Israel’s women and their household members. Yahweh’s patronage allowed all Israel to receive a divine land grant: “The land that Yahweh is giving.” 3 The author engages feminist criticism, law, social life and customs. Benjamin explains simple lineages, segmented lineages, and genealogies. He uses social – scientific criticism to reconstruct the social institutions that appear in Deuteronomy’s traditions. Along with this, the book’s bibliography is of value in developing my thesis.
Brenner-Idan, Athalya. 1993. Feminist Companion to Genesis. London, Bloomsbury.
Brenner’s approach of feminist criticism and interpretation examines sexism and sex in the bible. Wives controlling their husband’s sexual activity through the wife’s directive led to controlling childbirth. Women therefore were central to building up their clan leading to the growth of the tribe. Brenner concludes it does not infer domination. However, that is questionable. This is relevant to my thesis in showing the way women had autonomy in critical issues and decision making. It also ensured a woman’s relative freedom in preventing sexual harassment. It infers they were not overtly patriarchal households.
Brenner-Idan, Athalya, and Brenner,Athalya. 1993. Feminist Companion to Ruth. London, Bloomsbury.
An explicitly feminist approach is adopted as Brennan shows the way in which the Levirate law in Israel is applied on behalf of widows in Israel. Redemption is the theme. Its central issue is twofold: retention of land and name which works through endogamous matrilineal kinship ties. Brenner insight defines the way in which the matriline is the strength of the society they live in as it provides the source of female authority to help cull the potential of aggressive male domination.
Bridge, Edward J. 2014. A Mother’s Influence: Mothers Naming Children in the Hebrew Bible. Vetus Testamentum 64, no. 3: 389-400.
Edward Bridge shows during the pre-Israelite pre monarchic and monarchic periods women exhibit significant standing and influence in Israel. They predominantly named their children, educated and chose their children’s language. They expressed preference for children over husbands; singularly inquired of God; some were recognised as wise. One saved a city, another built them; others were prophets and mediums, others served at the tabernacle. The Shelomith seal, late fifth early sixth century BC, has a woman acting in the capacity of government official or functionary. Overall, Bridge demonstrates it is a gross misrepresentation to interpret Israelite women as docile which is in keeping with my thesis.
Chapman, Cynthia R. 2016. The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. New Haven, Connecticut.
To provide a lens to magnify ancient Israelite kinship ties, Chapman combines biblical and extra-biblical linguistic analysis with anthropological theory, ethnographical insights, and archaeological data. These serve to help the readers’ gaze converge on what Chapman calls “horizontal lines”. These are matrilineal lines leading to far more complexity in the patriarchal structure of the tribes of Israel than might once be thought. Chapman refers to these as a “more complex maternally subdivided household”. These are identified as “the House of the Mother”. Chapman’s study supports the argument that one-dimensional patrilocal marriage and male only line of descent is inaccurate.
Carol Meyers scholarly feminist critique: “Was Ancient Israel a Patriarchal Society?” seeks to reexamine the concept of patriarchy as a negative descriptor of ancient Israel. Employing historical text analysis, anthropology, archaeology, Hebrew language, science and society, the author highlights the social problems associated with patriarchal interpretation. Meyers says other scholars such as third-wave feminists, social theorists and feminist archaeologists agree. Meyers disagrees with the way theorists use the Roman “paterfamilias” as an example to compare with the families of Ancient Israel. This archaic view has never been entirely corrected. I agree with Meyers: it is too long a time period to make any relevant comparison.
Meyers, Carol. 2013. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press.
Meyer’s feminist study investigates the popular view of Israelite women in their households being at the bottom of a blatantly patriarchal social structure in Iron Age 1 Israelite society. Meyer considers the mundane lives of such ordinary women agrarians residing in matrilineal kinship groups. It reveals a micro-view of their economic, social, political, and religious significance in the tribe’s internal and external cohesion. The author draws upon archaeological discoveries from that period. In support my thesis in as much as it allows a broader picture of Ancient Israelite women’s roles, their worth in the family as well as their interactions amongst themselves and the broader community.
Oden, Robert A. 1983. “Jacob as Father, Husband, and Nephew: Kinship Studies and the Patriarchal Narratives”. Journal of Biblical Literature 102, no. 2 189-205. http://doi.org/10.2307/3261157.
Robert Oden’s emphasis in the study of biblical literature is about modern analysis of kinship studies. This offers the reader the opportunity to research the Hebrew texts in greater depth. In this instance, Jacob and Laban are brought to the fore to examine the special relationship between a man and his maternal uncle. Its most prominent features concern kinship studies and genealogy in the family of Abraham, Sarah and their descendants, allowing preservation of its system of land tenure. The author helps me articulate my argument in the way in which endogamy served Israel.
Zafrira, Ben-Barak. 1980. “Inheritance by Daughters in the Ancient Near East”, Journal of Semitic Studies 25, no. 1, 22-33. https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/25/1/22
Zafrira’s approach is one of bible criticism and interpretation It deals with ancient Assyro-Babylonian literature and Semitic Languages of this period. It ascertains that the situation of women’s right to land also occurred in the course of establishing justice in Middle Eastern society. Certain documents from there show widows orphans and daughters become heirs; this occurs when there is no son. The author explores Job’s daughters inheriting land. The endogamous marriage arrangement is also considered. Zafrira’s study enables comparison between law cases listed here to the one concerning the five daughters of Zelophehad.