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Biography
American

Phyllis Trible

1932

American biblical scholar and feminist theologian whose rhetorical-critical readings of the Hebrew Bible transformed the field of feminist biblical interpretation. Her book God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (1978) argued that the Bible, properly read, contains a radical message of gender equality, while Texts of Terror (1984) confronted the Bible's narratives of violence against women with unflinching directness. She taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Past sales0
PeriodPostwar & Postmodern
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Phyllis Trible (born 1932) is an American biblical scholar and feminist theologian who spent most of her career at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she was the Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature.

Major Works

God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (1978, Fortress Press) applied rhetorical criticism to biblical texts to argue that the Hebrew Bible, read carefully, contains a more egalitarian vision of gender than traditional interpretation has acknowledged — including a rereading of the Genesis creation narratives.

Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (1984, Fortress Press) confronts four biblical stories of violence against women — Hagar, Tamar, the unnamed concubine in Judges 19, and Jephthah’s daughter — reading them not as moral lessons but as “texts of terror” that demand witness and protest. The book became a foundational text of feminist theology.

Collecting Trible

Texts of Terror (1984, Fortress Press) and God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (1978) are academic publications collected by scholars of feminist theology and biblical studies. First editions are modestly priced at $20–$60.