2)       The Hebrew laws indicate what one group of influential Jewish theologians and lawyers thought was proper behavior for a people who wished to be considered as holy as their God. Many other voice existed; these voices are either absent from the Bible or present in only a muted voice.

3)       "In a time when foreign disruption of Jewish life threatened to destroy the legal traditions that Jewish religion had developed, priestly lawgivers seem to have redoubled their efforts and narrowed the focus of the covenant so that strict fidelity to the laws it had spawned became the most important, if not the only, way of pleasing God." And so Judaism began to emphasize the importance of ritual and obedience to the law over healthy human relationships. page 16

4)       "So 2 Kings has shown David to be deeply flawed: an adulterer, a murderer (of Bathsheba's husband, Uriah), and a father who alienates his son (Absalom) because he takes no swift action to punish his daughter's rapist." page 45

5)       "In our own land, it must be how one thinks when nuclear arms or racial prejudice stands revealed as naked evil. If one perishes in opposing them, so be it. Not to oppose them would be to lose one's soul, a far worse kind of death.
      I favor neither easy talk about risking life nor hyperbole about the ruthlessness of the unjust power's of one's society. In times of relative peace, in societies of relative decency and justice, easy talk and hyperbole disserve good causes. Even in deadly serious matters, such as the conflict over abortion policy, they obstruct progress and risk obscenity." page 58

6)       "The knowledge we should most associate with theology, divine science, is what one has to know to nourish life." page 70

7)       Regarding Roman Catholic religious leaders: "A few distinguish themselves for their intelligence and depth. . . . Few if any are evil or malicious men. Too many are dullards - D students, party hacks, people promoted because they will not question the party line or rock the boat. My church is not a place where excellence is rewarded. It rules out women and married men for leadership roles, sinfully diminishing its talent pool. The wonder is that it functions at all. There must be a Holy Spirit." page 75

8)       "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, thought I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, " Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Jer. 31: 31-34 (my emphasis)

9)       Regarding the Christmas story: "The incarnation of the Logos depended on her cooperation." page 86 (In other words, God gave Mary a choice of whether or not to concieve of Jesus.)

10)       "To say the least, the early church did not spread because it boasted a celibate, all-male clergy." page 121

11)       "Jesus organized a community distinctly more egalitarian and less hierarchical than those prevailing in the Jewish culture of his time, although he did not challenge Jewish patriarchalism directly or directly sponsor the equality of women for leadership in his community. . . . What we may find in the household codes is thus an accommodation to the prevailing Hellenistic mores, that Christian assemblies and families not seem to stand out or represent anarchic tendencies." page 127

12)       Referring to Galatians 3:28 (In Christ there is neither Jew nor gentile, neither male or female, neither slave nor free.): "In both, women were the second sex; men were the heads and prime instances of humanity. Here Paul is saying that all such thinking as outmoded. Although he himself continued to indulge it in 1 Corinthians (perhaps Gelatians was written after 1 Corinthians and represents progress on Paul's part), when he considered the paschal mystery it seemed clear to him that men had no superiority in Christ. All superiority belonged to the Resurrected One. In their complete debt to him, men and women stood as full equals." pages 133-134

      "Probably he had yet to assimilate the implications of his own deepest insights and did not see that they promised a new social order in which no group would be licensed to oppress another." page 135

13)       "Does God want weak, simpering women? Does God think men by nature nobly to be heads? I cannot believe she does, because I know she sees more than I see, and what I see makes such a view laughable." page 142

Rosemary Haughton, The Re-Creation of Eve, Springfield, Ill., Templegate, 1985

Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1978

Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1984

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