Is the Bible Good for Women? - Book Review

Wherever Wendy Alsup is speaking, that's where I want to be. Here is a woman who has a lot of good insight, a lot of Biblical knowledge, and an interesting way of explaining things. Several years ago I read her book By His Wounds You Are Healed, which was a Bible study for women through the book of Ephesians. Looking back at my old posts about reading the book, I'm reminded how much I enjoyed it (and how much I've forgotten from it, unfortunately).

I didn't make the connection between Alsup's new book Is The Bible Good for Women? and By His Wounds You Are Healed when I first requested to review the new book from Blogging for Books. I just thought it sounded interesting for someone like me (a Christian woman) to read. But once I received the book, I realized that I was familiar with the author, and so I was even more excited to get started.

If you're wondering if the Bible is good for women, Alsup is going to tell you "yes". You should just know that going in. You can't go into reading this book with suspicions. Leave all your baggage at the front cover.

Here's the thing about this book. It takes you through a lot of Bible background, and this is in an attempt to help you understand how to use the Bible to find the answers. The Bible is its own source! You just have to understand how all the stories are interconnected, as opposed to each story standing on its own. Some Bible stories about women might seem bad, but those events were part of a larger picture that could only be understood down the line. Alsup writes in chapter 5, "The stories of women of Scripture, read thousands of years after their death, inspire me, too, to give myself to something that transcends my lifetime." (p. 93)

You have to understand the context of each story and remember that things in Biblical times were not like how they are today.

The book was good but it wasn't what I expected. I wanted to go through the stories of women in the Bible and dissect them to see what they really meant back then and what they mean for women today, and there just wasn't enough of that for me. The way the book was written was not what I had anticipated, and I just couldn't move past that to really enjoy reading the book as much as I had hoped.

Alsup is able to make some good points, but she needed to make them faster for me.

If you're going to read this as a Bible study or small group book, then you'll be pleased to know there are discussion questions in the back of the book to aid your group conversation about each chapter.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.