REVIEW OF A FEMINIST COMPANION TO JOHN I-II, EDITED BY AMY JILL LEVINE WITH

A Feminist Companion to John consists of 16 articles divided into two volumes. According to the preface, the contributors range from established scholars as well as beginning scholars, pre-viously printed work and fresh essays. The series sees itself as a sister series to The Feminist Companion to the Bible edited by Athalya Brenner. This little sister strives to follow in the footsteps of two very popular and successful older sisters, without perhaps fighting the same battles, since the path seemingly has been cleared. This is not to say that feminist issues are a thing of the past but that the need to explain what is meant and what is not meant by the term ‘feminist criticism ’ has not been deemed necessary to clarify in this volume. And perhaps at a time when feminist biblical criticism is a somewhat prolific enterprise, some clarifications and precisions would have been helpful. After reading these 16 articles, I was very confused as to what the Feminist in the title referred to. I understand feminism as a political movement, breaking down the universal male subject and placing or replacing women as subjects. One of the key issues is not to perpetuate these male power structures but to spot them, reveal them and contest them. The site of this struggle may be a biblical text, its theological tradition and / or a contemporary social structure. The categor