Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Professor of Hebrew Bible and the History of Judaism in the University of Chicago’s Divinity School and frequent contributor to our magazines, died on August 31 after a four-year battle with breast cancer. She was 62 years old.
Frymer-Kensky was an expert on Assyriology, Sumerology, Biblical studies and Jewish studies In a eulogy her long-time colleague Jeffrey Tigay said that “her brilliance was almost intimidating.”
She was especially known for her work on women and religion. Her best-known book, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth, explores, as Tigay explained, “what happens in the Bible … to the functions and roles once played by goddesses” in Mesopotamian religion. She argues that “the absence of goddesses causes major changes in the way the Bible … looks at humanity, culture, society, and nature.” God himself absorbs most of the functions of the goddesses, including control of fertility, and as a result the divine is sexually neutralized: God is non-sexual; he is masculine only in grammar and metaphor, but not in actual gender. And corresponding to the absence of gender differentiation in the divine is the Biblical concept of humanity that transcends gender. As Tigay observed, one of Frymer-Kensky’s major insights is that the Bible does not see men and women as being different in essence. They are socially unequal, and women are subordinate, but in Frymer-Kensky’s words, “They are not inferior in any intellectual or spiritual way.” Misogyny and notions such as feminine wiles and the battle between the sexes are absent. To the extent that such ideas are found in Judaism, she attributed them to Greek ideas that entered Judaism in the Hellenistic period. The Bible’s positive evaluation of women was, for her, one of the beneficial effects of Biblical monotheism. However, she also noted the negative effects of the Bible’s removal of gender from the divine, particularly the fact that the Bible, and Judaism and Christianity in general, have so little to say about human sexuality and reproduction
Frymer-Kensky was deeply committed to writing for readers beyond her academic peers. As she explained:
“When I study the Bible … I am aware … of the impact that my study can have on people, of the possible transformations that it can occasionally cause in Judaism and … [in] the spiritual lives of people who might never even hear my name.”
Tikva Frymer-Kensky combined the highest standards of objective contemporary scholarship with a deep appreciation for traditional rabbinic learning. May her memory be for a blessing.—H.S.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Professor of Hebrew Bible and the History of Judaism in the University of Chicago’s Divinity School and frequent contributor to our magazines, died on August 31 after a four-year battle with breast cancer. She was 62 years old.
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