It's a question you've probably not thought much about, but were any parts of the Bible written by women? We count about forty different writers in scripture, and according to the usual assumption, all of them were men. Among the reasons for that conclusion is the fact that the dominant culture of the ancient Middle East was patriarchal. Men were in charge, and women had few rights of their own, not unlike in some of the stricter Muslim countries today. Also, in those times, literacy rates for women were low, because they were not offered formal education.

There is, however, at least one modern literary critic who suggests that a woman wrote parts of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Although tradition attributes the authorship of all five of those books to Moses, most bi…