Phyllis Trible (undated) and her 1984 book. Credit: Composite / Wikimedia Commons

Is God male? Or is she female? For Scripture scholars, the answer is equivocal…or the answer is neither. “The God of scripture is beyond sexuality, neither male nor female, nor a combination of the two,” the renowned scholar Phyllis Trible said in a 1989 interview. “Many places in the Bible God is described as a male and a few places as a female. But that is not to say that God as God is male, or female, or male and female.” 

The assertion sounds matter-of-fact if one accepts that God has neither limitation nor human characteristics: In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we are made in the image of God, not vice versa. But it hasn’t stopped scholars and students of Scripture from bringing their own notions of the divine to the table from Adam on down—and that table was usually occupied by men alone. It was a reality Phyllis Trible addressed head-on in a 1973 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation.”

While it was “superfluous to document patriarchy in Scripture,” Trible wrote, since patriarchy could be found everywhere in Biblical texts that emerged out of and were digested by patriarchal cultures, the permanence of that paradigm need not be something scholars or believers should be required to accept. Scripture also featured feminine imagery for God, stories that subverted a patriarchal worldview (such as those of Miriam, sister of Moses, in Exodus) and a liberative message that was good news for all. “I affirm that the intentionality of biblical faith is neither to create nor to perpetuate patriarchy, but rather to function as salvation for both women and men,” she wrote.

Trible, who died last month at the age of 92, had already been teaching Scripture and theology for a decade by that point, and would follow the article with four more decades of teaching, publishing and public witness. Obituaries over the past two weeks called her “a towering figure in biblical scholarship,” noting that she “touched off a revolution in biblical exegesis” and “leaves behind a legacy that cannot be understated.”

Born in Richmond, Va., in 1932, to Baptist parents (though she later identified as a Presbyterian) Phyllis Trible was raised by her mother and stepfather after her father died when she was a year old. She was interested in journalism at a young age and served as editor of her high school paper. After graduating from Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., in 1954 with a degree in religion, she received her doctorate in Old Testament Studies in 1963 through a joint program run by Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. While working on her dissertation from 1960 to 1963 (on the Book of Jonah), she taught at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., an all-girls prep school at the time. 

From 1963 to 1971, she taught religion at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., then spent another eight years at the Andover Newton Theological School in Massachusetts. She then became a professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, one of the first women to be named a full professor there. In 1981, she was named the Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature, a position she would hold until her retirement from Union in 1998. 

Trible then helped to found Wake Forest Divinity School, serving as associate dean and professor of Biblical Studies from 1998 to 2001 and University Professor from 2002 to 2012.

Among Trible’s many academic works were two groundbreaking texts that are still used in graduate schools in theology: God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (1978) and Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (1984). The latter is a literary critical analysis of four Old Testament stories in which cruelty displayed against women (including ones whose names are very familiar to Jewish and Christian readers, like Hagar and Tamar) is met by silence and apathy from men—and sometimes from God. 

What does it signify to believers, Trible asked, when these stories are used to describe our covenantal relationship with God? What are we absorbing, and what are we ignoring, when we read such texts without a critical eye? An honest, genuine answer to such horrors and their commemoration in sacred texts, Trible wrote, is to “direct our hearts to that most uncompromising of all biblical commands, speaking the word not to others but to ourselves: Repent, Repent.”

Though Trible never wrote for America, she was regularly cited in book reviews, “The Word” Scripture column and other articles by scholars like Raymond Brown, S.S., and Daniel Harrington, S.J. The latter said in his review of God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality that “[t]he deft use of rhetorical criticism and the feminist perspective yield fresh insights into the texts of Scripture.”

In 1994, she served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature. In addition to the academic appointments above, she also taught at various theological schools around the world, including the Claremont School of Theology, the Pacific School of Religion, the Iliff School of Theology and Vancouver School of Theology. Among the many honors she received were honorary degrees from Franklin College, Lehigh University, Meredith College and Wake Forest University.

She died in New York City on Oct. 17, 2025, just a few days before her 93rd birthday.

In the 1989 interview mentioned above, Trible described her fundamental approach to the sacred texts that she cherished but also challenged throughout her career:

One needs to learn to read texts closely but not literally. It’s very important to distinguish between those two things, especially in a country where fundamentalism is on the rampage, promoting literal reading. People confuse that kind of reading with close reading. Close reading is comparable to reading a love letter…. I read the Bible as a love letter.

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Our poetry selection for this week is “The Pardon,” by S. D. Carpenter. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

In other news, we still have a few spots left for our pilgrimage to Ireland in April 2026. Led by myself and America editor in chief Sam Sawyer, S.J., the trip, “The Land of Saints & Scholars: A Journey into the Heart & Soul of Ireland,” will be from April 19 to 28, 2026. We promise a lot of spiritual insights and a lot of absolute blarney.

In this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular writer or group of writers (both new and old; our archives span more than a century), as well as poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this will give us a chance to provide you with more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to some of our online content that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.