Daughter Zion explores the biblical witness to the Church's Marian dogmas―Mary’s role as Mother of God, her virginity, the Immaculate Conception, and her Assumption into heaven. Cardinal Ratzinger examines how these beliefs are linked to the Church’s faith in Jesus Christ. Far from competing with the truth about Christ, the Church’s Marian beliefs uphold and underscore that truth. Mary’s role in salvation, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, was anticipated in the Old Testament. She was prefigured in Eve, the Mother of the Living; in the holy women of the Old Testament, such as Sarah, Hannah, Deborah, Esther, and Judith; and in the prophetic image of the daughter Zion. Cardinal Ratzinger also considers Mary’s place as the embodiment of created wisdom, who faithfully received the Uncreated Wisdom of the Word of God in the Incarnation. Daughter Zion avoids the extremes of ignoring the biblical foundation for Marian doctrine on the one hand and fundamentalistic proof-texting on the other. Instead, the author beautifully and lucidly develops key biblical themes to help readers understand and appreciate the Mother of God.

An exploration of Israel's use of gender symbolism in times of crisis. In this innovative work, Christl M. Maier argues that the way Israelites in the exilic and post-exilic periods spoke of Jerusalem as gendered space - a female city - helps us trace reactions to the crisis of exile and the emergence of a new national-religious identity.

This volume showcases recent exploration of the portrait of Daughter Zion as “she” appears in biblical Hebrew poetry. Using Carleen Mandolfo’s Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007) as a point of departure, the contributors to this volume explore the image of Daughter Zion in its many dimensions in various texts in the Hebrew Bible. Approaches used range from poetic, rhetorical, and linguistic to sociological and ideological. To bring the conversation full circle, Carleen Mandolfo engages in a dialogic response with her interlocutors. The contributors are Mark J. Boda, Mary L. Conway, Stephen L. Cook, Carol J. Dempsey, LeAnn Snow Flesher, Michael H. Floyd, Barbara Green, John F. Hobbins, Mignon R. Jacobs, Brittany Kim, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Christl M. Maier, Carleen Mandolfo, Jill Middlemas, Kim Lan Nguyen, and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer.

Anyone that wants to be part of the solution must understand the problem! Arise! Daughter of Zion offers practical approach and insights based on biblical principles and contemporary views on how daughters of the Living God could arise to the challenges within our families and communities without breaking down or getting drained by these daunting tasks. The wall is broken, the gates are crushed and the city is in ruins. This is the state of many communities and families today just like it was in the days of Deborah. In this book, you will; Understand who you are. Identify your gifts [Talents], callings and assignment Positioned to be a change agent in your sphere of influence. Fulfil your God ordained purpose. Arise! Daughter of Zion is a clarion call for every daughter of Zion to arise and seize the moment to be a positive change catalyst wherever we are based. The time is now! Arise and take your rightful place in the family, community and market place. Arise and be counted as solution and not a problem. Buy this eye-opening, mind-challenging and outstanding revelation today and unlock the rich treasury of God

The Daughter Zion allegory represents a particular narrative articulation of the paradigm of bridal mysticism deriving from the Song of Songs, the core element of which is the quest of Daughter Zion for a worthy object of love. Examining medieval German religious writing (verse and prose) and Dutch prose works, Annette Volfing shows that this storyline provides an excellent springboard for investigating key aspects of medieval religious and literary culture. In particular, she argues, the allegory lends itself to an exploration of the medieval sense of self; of the scope of human agency within the mystical encounter; of the gendering of the religious subject; of conceptions of space and enclosure; and of fantasies of violence and aggression. Volfing suggests that Daughter Zion adaptations increasingly tended to empower the religious subject to seek a more immediate relationship with the divine and to embrace a wider range of emotions: the mediating personifications are gradually eliminated in favour of a model of religious experience in which the human subject engages directly with Christ. Overall, the development of the allegory from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries marks the striving towards a greater sense of equality and affective reciprocity with the divine, within the context of an erotic union.

Second in The Zion Chronicles, this is the story of Rachel, a returning Jewess whose secret past is uncovered. Met with disdain and left in despair, Rachel's story is full of fast-paced action.