Rereading the three "lost" parables of Luke 15 through the eyes of Arab Christian women and in the light of women's lives in northern Yemen demonstrates both the fruits and the difficulties of applying contemporary social description and models from cultural anthropology to Second Testament narratives. In this study the combination yields new understandings of the parables themselves and of gender roles and relationships in the biblical narrative world, as well as raising important questions about the interface between anthropology and exegesis of biblical texts.
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