Laing Talks Women’s Study Bible, Written by and for Women

Dr. Stefana Dan Laing is an Associate Professor of Divinity and the Director for the Center for Women in Ministry at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. She is also the General Editor of the CSB Women’s Study Bible, a study Bible designed for and written by women.

ALPolitics.com recently spoke with Dr. Laing, and we began by asking the obvious question: why a Women’s Study Bible?

“This is the Christian Standard Bible version of the Women's Study Bible,” Dr. Laing explained. “A study Bible is a Bible that contains the text of the Bible with explanatory notes at the bottom, and these notes are incredibly concise. They're like mini-commentaries, and they're very densely packed with information.

“In our study Bible, these notes are written by female scholars who are subject matter experts in Old Testament or New Testament. A couple are experts in theology or history, but we want to we wanted to put together a Women's Study Bible so that women can have access to a scholarly understanding of the Bible, and to answer two questions that I think everybody is asking when they read the Bible: What does this mean, and what does it mean for me? How does it apply to me?

“Everyone learns from a study Bible, but frequently women and men have different questions. Youth and other demographics, they have different questions, and so we have multiple tailored Bible products. For men who see so many men on the pages of the Bible, like the great heroes, we learn about them in Sunday school and whatnot. It's pretty easy to see somebody and say “let me imitate their life,” the good stuff in their life. For women, there are fewer role models. There’s sometimes less clear information. 

“The Women's Study Bible aims to focus on women in the text, also unnamed women or categories of women, like the wise women; or on women's lives, on women's responsibilities in the community, or their opportunities for service and leadership, on their lives in Israel and Judah, and also on their lives in the context of the ancient Near East. Some of these things that we want to learn about women, so that we can better understand the women in the Bible? They're not just presented in the Bible. The original audience of the Bible already knew those things, and we don't. We wanted to draw those things out.

“The scholars that have done the notes for this study Bible are all women who have researched, published, taught, asked questions, answered questions, and I think they can anticipate women readers' questions. So, we could have a scholarly question like, "What is embalming?” You know, Egyptian embalming. We see this in the Book of Genesis and Exodus and other places. Then there are specific questions like, "What are women's lives like in these different books of the Old and New Testament? Women giving birth, their mothering, their marriage, infertility issues that they struggle with? What are women's vocations like? Weaving, pottery making, midwifery? What are women's religious lives like? We have bits and pieces spread out, through the prophets or in the narrative books. But, sometimes you just need a study resource to bring it together.”

We then asked Dr. Laing to talk briefly about the process of putting the Women’s Study Bible together, and what that entailed.

“Well, the Study Bible is a work of scholarship. It's like a reference work, and we pulled it together with about 30 or so scholars,” she said. “This is not an exhaustive work of scholarship, but we wanted to help people understand what the Bible means. And then, secondly, we added a lot of other features, because we don't want to leave aside the spiritual life, spiritual formation. 

“Reading the Bible is not just an act of your brain; it's an act of your whole self. We don't want to leave out the Christian heritage overall. So we have multiple features. It’s kind of an immersive experience, especially in this one feature we have called a ‘closer look’ feature, along with study notes and doctrines and history. 

“We also wanted to use this work of of scholarship and spiritual formation to try to demystify women's world and women's lives as they are a part of God's work in the world in all times and all places, and we also want to emphasize that God has intended for men and women to work and serve in ministry as partners — starting with Adam and Eve, who were commissioned to keep and tend the garden — and all the way to today. So, one of the features that we include are biographies of Christian men and women through history.”

ALPolitics.com then asked what one question people should ask about this book, but never do.

Dr. Laing began by saying, “This is kind of a set of questions for asking yourself when you come across a female figure, sometimes obscure or unnamed, or even named. Anytime you kind of come to a female figure, just ask ‘who is this?’ Where is she from? What is her world like? What is her life like? How do I know? What kind of information do I have in order to to have a multi-dimensional understanding of this person, as much as is possible. I think that helps people to relate to other persons in the Bible, to develop empathy, to see themselves in these biblical persons. I think it encourages us in our own walk.”

In concluding the interview, we asked Dr. Laing to give us the two or three sentence elevator pitch for the Women’s Study Bible.

“This Bible is written for women, by women scholars, to help us understand the Bible better, the context of other women in the Scripture, to help us to relate to them across time, and to understand them and ourselves as a part of God's plan in all times and in all places,” she concluded.

The CSB Women’s Study Bible is available online at BH Publishing and on Amazon.

Stefana Dan Laing, PhD, MSLS, is a patristics scholar and theological librarian, and the general editor for the new CSB Women’s Study Bible. Laing is Associate Professor of Divinity and the Director for the Center for Women in Ministry at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, where she teaches Patristics and Spiritual Formation. Her other publications include Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church.