ENGL 340
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Judges and Ruth

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. How are things going for the Hebrew people during the time of the Judges?  Are things going well or badly?  Is there a positive or negative trajectory?  Are conditions improving or deteriorating or staying the same?  How did the Hebrew people seem to view this time period in their history?  Choose two or three episodes that illustrate your point, and focus on those episodes.
2. In the Pentateuch, women seem primarily to serve as mothers of sons.  Their social roles are otherwise pretty circumscribed.  In Judges and Ruth, has the view of women and their social roles changed?  Has it stayed essentially the same?  What roles do women play in these stories?  Are those roles significantly different from the roles played by women in the Pentateuch? in Joshua?  How so or how not?
3. In Joshua, we pointed out how images and motifs from the Pentateuch were reused through the concept of typology (e.g., the mini-Passover in Joshua 2 and the mini-Red Sea in Joshua 3).  Do you see any images or motifs from the Pentateuch resurfacing in Judges and Ruth?  Where?  Why?  What effect does the repetition of these images and motifs have in terms of advancing or characterizing the stories in Judges and Ruth?  Focus on one or two particular episodes.

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