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"Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible," edited by Christina Buchmann and Celina Spiegel (Fawcett Columbine, 351 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Phyllis Alsdurf, coauthor of "Battered into Submission" (InterVarsity).

If women who are not biblical scholars read the Bible as creatively and imaginatively as they would any other book, what interpretations would emerge? Wrestling with that question led Christina Buchmann and Celina Spiegel to compile the 28 essays that make up "Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible."

"We were surprised to find out how many women had an essay on the Bible that they had always wanted to write," Spiegel said during a 1995 book-tour stop in Minneapolis. "And we were surprised at just how fearful women writers were to take on the Bible. They felt intimidated by it."

The authors sought women who were good writers and good readers to interpret the Bible as laypersons. Contributors were invited to choose any passage, character, or theme, whether or not the Bible was personally relevant in their lives.

"Our assumption is that there is no one way to read the Bible," Spiegel said, "so the pieces conflict with one another. The book brings a whole range of perspectives. We weren't trying to answer the question of how to read the Bible as a woman. There are all sorts of lively questions raised in this book that, as far as we know, have not been asked before. Its richness reflects the richness of the Bible."

The book's title was chosen to indicate an "openness on the subject," said Spiegel. "It looks both forward and backward, both at what women have taken from the Garden and where it has taken them."

Spiegel said she has been pleased at the enthusiasm expressed for the book. "People have thanked me for doing this," she said. "Women have seemed hungry for it. My experience in both Protestant and Catholic churches is that taking the Bible out of professional hands has been a really good thing. We can't let the professionals simply have it."

In the introduction, Buchmann and Spiegel question "whether it will ever be possible to read the Bible as one would any other book, simply for pleasure or to satisfy curiosity. Just thinking about the Bible makes many of us feel small or guilty. For women, especially, the Bible may be impossible to read independent of its authoritative claims, as its power over women has been two-fold: religious and social."

SISTER MILLER

Unwilling to abandon the Bible's authoritative claim on my life, I have concluded, nonetheless, that the pews in many evangelical churches are populated with more than their share of women who have had an equivalent of what I call my "Sister Miller" experience: a rite of passage, often not-so-subtly reinforced from the pulpit, that can make a woman gun-shy about approaching Scripture—or, worse, tempt her to look for spiritual nourishment elsewhere.

Sister Miller was my junior-high Sunday-school teacher, whose unhappy task it was to interest a rowdy bunch of reluctant students in Bible study. A formidable task to be sure, the difficulty of which was compounded by Sister Miller's theological bent. Curiously enough, she was convinced that the problems of the world all harked back to Eve. It was Eve who was at the root of all the sin in the world, she claimed.

"Eve caused Adam to sin," she would expound to us girls, all sitting on one side of the room while a chorus of gleeful boys gloated on the other. This would, for some reason, lead to a diatribe on appropriate dating conduct and the girl's responsibility to make sure things didn't go "too far." No Sunday-school class was complete without Sister Miller's stern admonition as we departed: "Girls, remember what happened to Clarise." Clarise, of course, was a teenage mother who had attended our church before her fall from grace.

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October 2 1995, Vol. 39, No. 11