Making Sense of Motherhood

Motherhood provides a crucial place for exploring human life and its meaning. Within motherhood lies a deep tension between the pain, crisis, and association with death in motherhood and the joy, transformation, and life in motherhood. Few metaphors in Scripture (or in life) stand so firmly between life and death, love and loss, and joy and deep pain. After all, motherhood's meaning in part comes again and again at these crucial crossroads. Thus, motherhood has powerful implications for our biblical and theological understanding. Bringing together Jewish and ecumenical Christian scholars from North America, Oceania, and South America, this edited volume provides biblical and theological perspectives on understanding motherhood. The authors reflect upon a selection of biblical texts, systematic theologians, and Christian spiritual traditions to dialogue with the experience of maternity in its diverse manifestations. The purpose of the book is to provide essays that--through these biblical and theological lenses--engage the question of motherhood today, from the experience of pregnancy and birth, to raising children, to losing children and coping with grief. In this way, this volume helps to ""make sense"" of the complexity of motherhood. ""Making Sense of Motherhood embraces complex concepts that are central for the Bible and theology. These women scholars are uniquely qualified by who they are and by their social location to make sense of motherhood in its biblical, theological, and practical dimensions in a way that is both academic and personal. They demonstrate that motherhood provides rich resources for biblical studies, and the disciplines of theology."" --Cynthia Long Westfall, Assistant Professor of New Testament, McMaster Divinity College Beth M. Stovell is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Ambrose Seminary of Ambrose University in Calgary, Alberta. She has authored Mapping Metaphorical Discourse in the Fourth Gospel: John's Eternal King (Brill, 2012) and co-edited with Stanley E. Porter Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views (IVP, 2012). She is writing a commentary on the Minor Prophets for the Story of God Bible Commentary series (Zondervan) and co-writing with Stanley E. Porter a book on interpreting biblical language (IVP).