Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

Boaz, gender, survive, Austen, blessing, forefront, Isaac, authority, home, destroyed, children, only, aristocratic, fighting, technologies, cultures, judge, family, romance, catastrophe, procreation, assemblies, military, revelation, identifiable, public, egalitarianism, nation, robust, reconstruct, crisis, patriarchs

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similar to Jane             Austen in English literature, the Biblical authors redefined the hero

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rather than valiant warriors, figures like Ruth and         Boaz were a new kind of hero

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Boaz

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referred to as a mighty hero

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instead of a                 fighting hero, he is a hero through being a man of

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class

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                        aristocratic virtue

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nobility

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established justice in his society

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some of the most beautiful stories in the Bible

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especially in Genesis where most of them are told have nothing to do with                 military virture

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we have a lot of them

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David

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Joshua

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but these are in the background

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in the                   forefront are stories of family life

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finding a wife for Isaac

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similar to themes in Jane Austen's novels

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adventures are about               romance and family life and preserving one's name

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inheritance

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making it possible that a society can survive                       catastrophe and dramatic change

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for a people who lack military                         technologies, strength is in the numbers

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this explains the extraordinary attention paid to                       procreation in the Bible

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its imperative that procreation and                 children are held up in high esteem

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so that the nation can               survive just in terms of sheer numbers

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a                 blessing for people is a long life and children who carry on their names

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Biblical law codes repeated return to family matters

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create conditions to insure the preservation of individual families

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the Biblical authors make the         home, not the battlefield, the center of collective life

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refashion             gender roles

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the domestic sphere is no longer a place         only for women

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this becomes complicated within the Biblical narratives

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men play a larger role in             family life than you would find in much heroic literature

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show women as contributing to military victory

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undermines a traditions justification for male                   authority

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Deborah

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the only female           judge mentioned in the Bible, Deborah led a successful counterattack against the forces of Jabin king of Canaan and his military commander Sisera (Judges 4-5)

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the Biblical authors present women in more             public roles

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expected to be present at public                     assemblies

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extolled for taking individual initiative

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venerated along with the nation's                     patriarchs

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Sarah is next to Abraham

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Rebekah is next to           Isaac

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there was never a full                             egalitarianism within Biblical literature

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but despite all the patriarchal emphasis in the Biblical narrative

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a more             robust role for women

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civic affairs

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military life

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in the creation of the             nation

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Genesis depicts the most important moments in Israel's history in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each of these stories have women prominently in them

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this is not something revelatory

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doesn't have to do with the native Israel compared to surrounding                 cultures e.g. in Babylonia

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or that it received a                     revelation to portray women this way at some point

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these new roles that women and men have to play in society

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have to do with a response to a             crisis and a catastrophe

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that these roles continue on in more progressive societies and are more                         identifiable in our society

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is due to the fact that in a time when their society has been nearly                   destroyed

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they have to involve men in the family life in a different way

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and need to involve women in public life in a different way

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they need to expand their nation

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these ethics were a way for Israel to                       reconstruct and reinvent itself