Description: This book employs a creative emancipatory womanist hermeneutic to engage a nonallegorical reading of the book of Hosea.
Brief description: Valerie Bridgeman is Dean & Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of Homiletics & Hebrew Bible at Methodist Theology School of Ohio, USA.
Review Quotes:
"Nearly four decades after I first asked whether Gomer was victim of violence or victim of metaphor, Bridgeman and Kirk-Duggan pick up that question and press it further than I dared. Reading Hosea as drama rather than history, they refuse the easy comfort of allegory and make readers sit with what the marriage metaphor costs real women, then and now. Their 'artistic dialogical discourse'-weaving film, music, and visual art into rigorous exegesis-opens the text in ways historical and rhetorical methods could not. This is womanist biblical scholarship at its most courageous: unflinching about the violence in the text, and unwilling to let scripture off the hook for it. This book takes that question somewhere Battered Love couldn't go in 1995-not for lack of will, but because the discourse and tools womanist scholarship now commands didn't yet exist" --Renita J. Weems, Howard University
"From the contexts of their embodiment, Bridgeman and Kirk-Duggan use their "womanist sensibilities" to engage the strands of Hosea's text and tradition. The result is a volume that both introduces and challenges the prophetic witness from the perspectives of gender, race, class and culture, while making connections with art and contemporary popular culture. Like the book of Hosea itself, the commentary is lyrical and dialogic in nature. This fresh interpretation invites readers into an authentic encounter with the many characters in Hosea and the words that are a part of our tradition. This is womanist work at its best." --The Rev. Judy Fentress-Williams, Virginia Theological Seminary "This volume is indispensable reading for all committed interpreters of the book of Hosea. In dialogue with critiques of films and contemporary politics, Bridgeman and Kirk-Duggan rigorously interrogate Hosea's metaphors and rhetorical language, in all its offensiveness, whilst also seeking a vision of God that resists human degradation. The richness and resources of this womanist reading extend well beyond Bridgeman and Kirk-Duggan's immediate context in the US." --Rachelle Gilmour, Trinity College, University of Divinity "Bridgeman and Kirk-Duggan's Womanist interpretation peers beyond the male narrator of Hosea who speaks as a ventriloquist for all the characters in ways that shatter earlier interpretations. They unleash cultural resources, such as film, music, and literature to reframe traditional patriarchal readings of Hosea." --Stephen Breck Reid, Baylor University "This book is a work of prophetic imagination and sacred seeing. Valerie Bridgeman and Cheryl Kirk-Duggan bring womanist wisdom, pastoral depth, and scholarly brilliance to a difficult biblical text, revealing how justice, memory, and love remain essential to the work of interpretation. As one whose vocation has been shaped by art, theology, and a commitment to the Imago Dei, I am deeply moved by their insistence that every life bears divine worth and that our readings of scripture must serve the flourishing of Black people and all vulnerable communities. This is a timely and necessary book, written with courage, compassion, and prophetic hope." --Ralph Basui Watkins, Columbia Theological Seminary "Valerie J. Bridgeman and Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan offer a creative and evocative Womanist interpretation of Hosea. Their approach, which blends close reading, intersectional analysis, and what they term "artistic dialogical discourse" models tangible strategies for disentangling the disturbingly violent textures of this prophetic book and brokering a relationship with the deity whose love is obscured by its narrative content and editorial norms. The authors encourage us to eschew the violence in our own world and seek the God whose compassion stands in opposition to all forms of degradation. Brilliant and transformational, this volume is a welcome addition to scholarship on ancient Israelite prophecy and its implications for Twenty-First Century existence." --The Rev. Canon Hugh R. Page, Jr., University of Notre Dame "Can anything good come out of Hosea? The history of harm that interpretations of Hosea have encouraged forced me to set it aside as I could not find a way to preach it toward liberation. Kirk-Duggan and Bridgeman give us a way forward in this Emancipatory Womanist Reading, inviting us to search for life-giving claims while attending to patriarchy and misogyny. From the introductory acrostic to the employment of films as a dialogical tool, we encounter complex topics with imaginative breath. This book offers a blueprint for textual study and a process for using art as an accessible entry point." --Rev. Mia M. McClain, Riverside Baptist Church DC