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The Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition. Edited by Kari Elisabeth Borresen. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1995. 291 pp. $21.00.
As feminist theologians work their way deeper into the bedrock of Jewish and Christian theologies, they begin to restructure fundamental doctrines. This valuable collection of essays uses the analytical category of gender to examine the concept of the image of God. Working mainly from Genesis 1:27 and First Corinthians 11:7, an international group of scholars inquires into the biblical and ecclesiastical writings about women's exclusion from the imago dei. As editor, the Norwegian scholar Kari Borresen has cast a wide net. Utilizing the work of theologians, historians of the church and of early Judaism, and Catholic and Protestant biblical scholars, she has assembled a book that settles for no easy answers. Phyllis Bird finds that Genesis 1 applies to all of humanity and must be used in that light, no matter what tradition has said to the contrary. Lone Fatum speaks to the Christian portion of that tradition by demonstrating the harm caused to women by Paul's exclusion of them from...