Mother Goose Mother Jones Mommie Dearest

Who are the mothers in the biblical text? What do they do? What kinds of power do have? Issues of identity authority violence gender sexuality race ethnicity sexual exploitation and rape-marriage murder and relation to God have haunted the characters and representations of motherhood from Eve to Mary and beyond. For better or for worse these images speak potent messages even today. To explore biblical mothers and their relationships with their daughters and sons the contributors to this volume participate in a comparative analysis between biblical mothers and mothers in popular media history literature and the arts. The diversity of methods they employ prompts a rich discussion on the deconstruction of motherhood offering new ways of envisioning both biblical and contemporary motherhood.