Envying Jephthah‘s Daughter: Judges 11 in the Thought of Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1652)

Arcangela Tarabotti, a seventeenth-century Venetian nun, forced into a Benedictine convent against her will, wrote a protest against the involuntary monastic enclosure of women entitled Paternal Tyranny. In what may be the earliest extant example of a woman‘s exegesis of Judges 11, Tarabotti argues that the tragic sacrifice of Jephthah‘s daughter was less violent than imprisoning women in convents for their entire lives.