The essays explore how religious, political and cultural identities, including ethnicity and gender, are embodied in biblical discourse. Following the authors, we read the Bible with new eyes: as a critic of gender, ideology, politics and culture. We ask ourselves new questions: about God's body, about women's role, about racial prejudices and about the politics of the written word.Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies crosses boundaries. It questions our most fundamental assumptions about the Bible. It shows how biblical studies can benefit from the mainstream of Western intellectual discourse, throwing up entirely new questions and offering surprising answers.