Mothers of a Nation: How Motherhood and Religion Intermingle in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

Conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and the rearing of children are truly human experiences. But in religions and in their authoritative texts, these experiences are regularly utilized in metaphorical or symbolic language, or in narratives that tell of the origins of families or even peoples, of the relationship between individuals and groups or the relationship between humanity and the gods. Taking a closer look at the events surrounding childbirth and the time period of breastfeeding, it will be shown how literary texts from the Hebrew Bible go about intermingling motherhood and religion for the purpose of describing the origins of a nation.