Anonymous, The Request of the Mother of James and John, France, sixteenth century

Editor's note: In 1993, on the day of his daughter's first communion "in a denomination that still restricts the role of women," Cullen Murphy completed an essay about women and the Bible. He wrote "in the expectation, to employ a biblical turn, that the present way's days are numbered." That essay, published in the Atlantic Monthly, where Murphy is managing editor, launched him on a larger inquiry into the relationship between women and the basic texts of Judaism and Christianity. His search led him, notebook in hand, to the contemporary scholars and theologians who are reexamining the biblical tradition. He now reports on their work and ideas in a new book, The Word According to Eve.

Due to copyright restrictions, the excerpt from The Word According to Eve that appeared in our September-October 1998 issue may no longer appear on our website. However, interested readers should note that the book will be available in paperback from Houghton Mifflin in October of 1999.