"The phenomenal success of Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code suggests that men and women share a deep hunger to know where women fit into Biblical texts, and into the history that follows." So said Anne Braude, of Harvard Divinity School, when she introduced the guests taking part in a December 9 panel discussion on women and spirituality in a series sponsored by The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity in Boston.

The topic for the evening, "It's not your father's Hebrew Bible," was discussed by authors with strikingly different approaches.

• Tikva Frymer-Kensky is a professor of Hebrew Bible, and of the history of Judaism. She also teaches rabbis the Torah in a context that includes both the presence and the absence of women in Hebrew scripture. Her latest book is Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories.

• Anita Diamant is the author of an imaginative telling of the Biblical story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, from the book of Genesis, in her novel The Red Tent. The book has become a publishing phenomenon. Clergy and Biblical scholars see her book as a way of opening up the world of the Hebrew Bible.

The authors covered a wide range of questions posed by Anne Braude, and by the audience. One questioner suggested that society seems to be moving away from traditional ideas of church into a more general spirituality. She asked: "Is this being felt in Jewish communities?"

Diamant noted that Jews, like Christians and many Americans, talk about spirituality in a broader sense saying, "I can be a spiritual person and not belong to organized religion." Despite this, she thought Jewish institutions have been challenged to figure out what the word spirituality means. "Spirituality is not a term that comes from Hebrew," she said. "The notion of a spirituality separated from the language of mitzvah—which are commandments and deeds that one is called upon to do—is challenging. But I think that there is incredible vitality within [Jewish] institutions to make spirituality meaningful. Spirituality for Jews is hooked into learning and a kind of muscular, playful, and generous kind of study. Not just the teacher lecturing, but a back and forth conversation."

Frymer-Kensky feels that Jewish life has become more aware of the individual's needs—even though public prayer in Judaism is more for the purpose of community bonding than to have a religious experience. "There's been an increased turn to music," she said, "to meditation within [Jewish] public services, and of rediscovery of Jewish spiritual and mystical traditions and reintroducing them into mainstream Judaism within and without—there's a lot of 21st-century development."

Another member of the audience asked the authors whether they could shed new light on stories about women in the Bible.

"My intent in writing Reading the Women of the Bible," Frymer-Kensky explained, "has been to understand why there are so many stories about women in the Bible, while the Bible sees women as essentially the same as men. Given that, the stories aren't there to show what women are. So they must be there for other reasons. Almost all are literary creations of enormous complexity. When you follow the clues that come from other cultures of the time, all are illuminated ... that's the way it was then, but also for what it teaches us today." As Frymer-Kensky sees it, the Bible presents men and women as having the same qualities—therefore the inclusion of women is more about what the story teaches than about gender.

Referring to an earlier question about feminist theology, Diamant said that hearing the unfamiliar stories of Biblical women, like Dinah and Tamar, added a voice that had been missing for many thousands of years. "I see [knowledge of them] as adding to the richness of the theology for all traditions. When you add women's voices and questions and scholarship and wisdom, you have a much more human theology."

On the subject of the stories of heroic Biblical women that still need to be recognized and told, Diamant said that Frymer-Kensky's book opened up a lot of characters she'd never heard of. She added, "The Red Tent and other books have made it possible for readers to find themselves in the Biblical text in a way that wasn't possible 40 years ago but is now, because the conversation has widened. It's freer and richer. So it's up to the imagination."

As someone who teaches rabbis, Frymer-Kensky was the obvious one to answer a question about the implication of having women as part of the rabbinate.

"Rabbis traditionally had an aura of authority that made them powerful," she said. "Sometimes beyond where they should be. The presence of women as priests, ministers, and rabbis has changed the whole nature of the office to one which is less parental and authoritative, and more enabling and facilitating. That's a big difference, just because of our reaction to women 'up there.' It enlarges the base of what Jews talk about as theology—the relationship of human beings to each other, to the world, and to the power of God. I do not think that there is anything essentially different about women as rabbis, but we now have an openness when we share on the rabbinic studying level. I've had the experience of watching women develop into rabbis. It's thrilling."

Toward the end of the discussion, the panelists were invited to share some puns or wordplay in the Hebrew language that readers of the Hebrew Bible might not fully grasp.

Frymer-Kensky pointed out that most names in the Hebrew Bible have something to do with the events of the parents' lives, or with the story line. "Names are never accidental," she explained. "Leah means a cow—a symbol of fertility. Translations say, 'Rachel was beautiful, but Leah had tender eyes,' and then translate the word tender to be weak and say her eyes were ugly in some way. Actually she's got cow eyes, the brown eyes of a cocker spaniel or a cow, beautiful. So names often have to do with destiny."

Diamant mentioned that the very first word in the Hebrew Bible has different translations. "We're most familiar with it as 'In the beginning.' I heard it translated as 'In a beginning,' which also means 'Once upon a time.' So every single word, including the words we're most familiar with, has all of this playful possibility."

"The Hebrew word actually means 'The beginning of,'" added Frymer-Kensky. "New translations frequently translate it as 'When.' It could be translated as 'When so-and-so.' But it doesn't really mean 'In the beginning' or 'When,' and so the very first word of the Bible is capable of two meanings, and neither is for sure. It's clearly an example of what's coming."

"Which is why I like 'Once upon a time,'" concluded Diamant with a smile.

To view the webcast of "It's not your father's Hebrew Bible" visit www.marybakereddylibrary.org.