Women’s Journeys in the Hebrew Bible

GT-seminar: "Women’s Journeys in the Hebrew Bible" ved lektor Elisa Uusimäki, ARTS, Aarhus Universitet.

The presentation explores literary representations of female mobility in the Hebrew Bible. While it is often assumed that women barely moved in the ancient world, I argue that the Hebrew Bible gives witness to a vast spectrum of travelling agents. The texts do not offer direct access to socio-historical realities, but as documents of cultural history, they hint at the variety of the phenomenon in ancient Israel. It is not meaningful to speak of the travelling women as a collective, however, as the motives for their movement are tied to various socioeconomic contexts, ranging from slavery to economic migration to foreign policy.