Queen of Sheba | Searching for Eve

This six-week course is a journey in search of the lost wisdom of our mothers.

Three key benefits of why a person would take the course:

• Gain a greater understanding of how the stories of women in ancient history still affect us today.
• Discover ways to redefine and re-divine yourself as a woman.
• Be inspired to challenge old paradigms of disobedience, betrayal, sacrifice, power and lust.

Imagine that all of us are on a journey, like the Queen of Sheba, in search of wisdom. According to history, she traveled 1400 miles round trip across the desert on a camel, a trip that would have taken more than nine months each way. It is claimed she went searching for the wisdom of a man. How would history be different if a woman had written the story of the Queen of Sheba? What if the truth is that the Queen of Sheba went searching for her mother, Eve, that heroine of questioning and disobedience?

What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a circle in a linear world?

In spite of changes brought by the feminist movement and women’s liberation, these questions are still relevant in a world where silence and marginality continue to characterize the experience of the majority of women. "When a woman seriously asks herself what it means to be a woman, she is pulling at a thread that can unravel an entire culture". Reinventing Eve: Modern Woman in Search of Herself by Kim Chernin

This six-week series is a wild adventure back through time to reconnect with some famous and infamous women. In it we will explore some of the cultural and historical representations of women in the Bible and the legacy handed down to us in these ancient stories of sacrifice, betrayal, namelessness, invisibility and disobedience. These stories are much more than ancient history. Representations of biblical women are so powerful they influence art, movies, literature and language—so much so that names such as Delilah and Jezebel are listed as common nouns in the dictionary. As Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza states in the introduction to her book But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation, "…biblical texts affect all women in Western society."

Our sisters from the past deserve to have their stories retold, and this course provides an extraordinary opportunity for us to do just that as we create stories of our own while defining (or perhaps redefining) ourselves.

During this course we will:

• Go looking for Eve so we can ask her a few questions about breaking the rules.
• Find Lot’s wife and question her about salt and what it means to look back.
• See if Jezebel can give us a few tips on beauty and how to challenge a traitor.
• Ask Jephthah’s daughter for her comments on sacrifice and learn the secret of what she did while wandering around in the hills for three months.
• Discover what the Queen of Sheba was really searching for when she rode through the desert on a camel.

The Queen of Sheba course consists of six segments, each one exploring a different woman from history and the theme of the message she carries. It will contain homework assignments, suggested reading and creative projects. The online forum provides opportunities for discussion, sharing, insights and questions. Each segment will also contain homework assignments, suggested reading assignments and creative projects.

All students will have access to a secure, online classroom where they can share, discuss and receive support from other participants as well as the instructor.