A WOMAN'S BIBLE.

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 135, 18 May 1897, Page 3

A WOMAN'S BIBLE.

'l'm: first volume of the Woman's Bibli hai been published. Jt is the work of u (onimittcc of ladies, under the Presidency of Mrs Elizabeth C.-dy Stanton. The following s a review of the publieatfoil in a London piper :—" Dealing with the opening chiipicr of (iencsi*, the writerßtate.sih.it verse 27 "hen fully read plainly declares the exi-.ii nee of a feminine element in the (iodh' ad, equal ill power and gloty with the mainline : " Cod eeatid man in I>h own image, male :.i;d female." Next it is pointed out that the dominion over every liv.nj thing win Riven " them " jointly, in verse'2B ; not to the man on'y. These are the statements of the Elohislic narrative. The .second and contra lictory story of the Creation the Jahoistio n|<r rativc - is, of course, different. I> at even if this is l.elievul, its gradual ascending series of cniitions— fin t creep ing things, then sea monst r--, then birds, cattle, and living things on t! n rath, then man, and taxtl'J woman -indicate that rhe was the last at d crowning g'ory of the wlio'c. The lady revisers next point out that in Genesis II , vrrsc '24, is found the command to a man to leave his own father and mother and cleave to his wife, in order to make her the head of the liouselio'ri—the home, wlroli in the first days of civilisation was undoubtedly governed by the Matriarch. If this was not so, the alacrity with which Adam, in the story of tho Fall, abdicted his headship and left it to Eve to argue the matter of the apple out with the serpent, is, to say the leist, remarkable. Less so, perhaps, his readiness to fasten the blame of the eating on her, a r ter he had swallowed the fruit ! We agree, by the way, with the lady revisers that it is a pi'y our English Bibles do not give the proper name of our first mother. " Adam called his wife's name Life, for she wa.s the mother of all living." That is the literal translation of Gtr. V. verse '2O. "Space fails us," concludes the reviewer, " to go further into details, but we assure our readers that they will be astonished, and wc hope edified, by the new light thrown by tho lady revisers on many of the familiar incidents of the Pentateuch—Abraham's relations with Hagar, the courtship of Isaac, the lovequest of Jacob, the story of Joseph and I'otiphar's wife, and many mote, in which, under the hands of women, very different inferences are drawn fiom those of the orthodox na'c comment itor.''