The Female Ancestors of Christ
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The spiritual power of the Feminine shines forth in this psychological study of four Old Testament heroines from Jesus’ family tree. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba are the only women mentioned by name in the Gospels’ genealogies and, for Ann Belford Ulanov, this indicates that they impart something essential to the lineage of Christ. By exploring their brave and unconventional lives, she demonstrates how salvation enters the world in the feminine mode of being human, through these women’s embodiment of such powerful and deeply feminine qualities as ingenuity, audacity, determination, compassion, seduction, and devotion.
“Like bolts of lightning, the stories of these outcast virgins illuminate what spiritual wholeness can be in the lives of contemporary women and men.
Ann Ulanov’s riveting insights into their daring acts reveal their deep significance in the genealogy of Jesus and expand our understanding of the words courage and love.” — Marion Woodman, author of Addiction to Perfection and Leaving my Father’s House
Ann Belford Ulanov, M.Div., Ph.D., L.H.D., is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Religion, Emerita, at Union Theological Seminary, a psychoanalyst in private practice, and a member of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association, New York City, and the International Association for Analytical Psychology. She is the author of many books, her most recent including: Madness and Creativity (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology, 2013); The Unshuttered Heart: Opening to Aliveness and Deadness in the Self (2007); Spirit in Jung (2005); Spiritual Aspects of Clinical Work (2004); and Attacked by Poison Ivy, A Psychological Study (2002). She is the co-author, with her late husband Barry Ulanov, of Religion and the Unconscious; Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer; Cinderella and Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying; The Witch and The Clown: Two Archetypes of Human Sexuality; The Healing Imagination; and Transforming Sexuality: The Archetypal World of Anima and Animus.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ulanov ( The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and Christian Theology ) seeks in this slim volume to aid in the rediscovery of the female voice in the Christian religious tradition. Her vehicle is a reexamination of the four women listed in the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel according to Matthew. Ruth is the Moabite widow who with the help of her mother-in-law secures a new marriage. Tamar, also a widow, disguises herself as a prostitute and seduces her own father-in-law to produce a child. Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who, in order to save her family, betrays her own people to aid the Israelite invaders. Bathsheba, whose affair with and marriage to King David were the source of many problems, rounds out the list. Why would such people be included in the lineage of Jesus? According to the author, they embody and closely link sexuality and spirituality, symbolizing Jesus' feminine side. Ulanov's style, however, is difficult and her writing frequently seems deliberately obtuse. Her psychological analyses must often be taken on faith. These flaws obscure the vitality of her argument and risk leaving these women as voiceless as Ulanov shows Bathsheda to be in the biblical text.
