Celebrating Carol Meyers

By: Beth Alpert Nakhai

Together with Susan Ackerman and Chuck Carter, I was privileged serve as editor of the new festschrift honoring Carol Meyers, Celebrate Her for the Fruit of Her Hands (Eisenbrauns 2015), and to have contributed an article to it (“Plaque Figurines and the Relationship between Canaanite and Egyptian Women in the Late Bronze II”). This just-published volume includes articles by Carol’s former students and by her colleagues, who hail from many paths within her most illustrious career.  In addition, it includes a select bibliography of her works. Comments by her former students, who laud Carol as a teacher and mentor, mirror what I know about her as a scholar, colleague and friend.

Carol’s broad areas of specialization include the Hebrew Bible, the archaeology of the First and Second Temple periods, and the study of women in antiquity; in the latter, she has done pioneering work, beginning with her publication of Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context in 1988 (Oxford).  This book was extensively revised in 2013, under the title Rediscovering Eve.  As the contributors to this festschrift volume point out, Carol is honored for her research and scholarship, her intellectual honesty, and her passionate approach to discussing women in the biblical tradition.  Of special importance to members of ASOR is her service on the ASOR Board of Trustees; members of the Society of Biblical Literature know that she served as its president in 2013; those with links to the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem are familiar with her many contributions to that august institution.

The list of contributors to this volume is too lengthy to reproduce here.  Suffice it to say that Celebrate Her for the Fruit of Her Handsincludes essays from fields as diverse as the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran studies, the archaeology of Israel from the Late Bronze Age through the era of early Judaism, gender studies, reception history, anthropology, folk literature, religious studies, and more.  All of us who read this volume will find much that educates and intrigues, as is totally appropriate for a book that honors a great scholar and outstanding human being.

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