In the days when Moses dictated the law of the land, the five daughters of Zelophephad took issue with the rules of inheritance. The Book of Numbers xxvii recounts how the sisters sought counsel with Moses in front of the congregation of travelling Israelites to demand that the laws be altered to accommodate female succession.

This bit of biblical history is often brushed over, as are other feminist aspects of the Old Testament, because for thousands of years men alone have interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures, according to a feminist revision of the text.

The Torah: A Women's Commentary re-evaluates the Torah's feminine side and offers the first comprehensive analysis of text from a female point of view. “With this commentary we will continue as sisters to empower the women - and men - who come after us for generations to come,” said its chief editor, Tamara Eskenazi, a professor of Bible studies at Hebrew Union College.

The Torah - also known as the Pentateuch or five books of Moses - is the foundational text of Judaism. While scholars have begun to examine women's role in the biblical period, A Women's Commentary is being hailed as a seminal text in religious studies owing to the depth of its analysis and wide spectrum of its contributors - which include several hundred women from the four main branches of Jewish movements - Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist. Those women re-evaluated the text from page one - taking the story of Creation to task for its rendering of Eve as a secondary creation to God's original Adam.

Women and men were created simultaneously, Professor Eskenazi said, though the description of Eve's formation from Adam's rib is often taken as a sign of her inferiority. “It is a sign of equality. They're described as being the same flesh both created in God's image and blessed with fertility and power',” she said.

The tale of Adam and Eve's downfall in the Garden of Eden includes an alleged mistranslation that places the heavier burden of guilt on women. In most standard versions of the Torah, God punishes the transgressions in the Garden of Eden by casting Adam and Eve from paradise and giving man the toil of work, and women the pain of childbirth.

In the original Hebrew the word etzev is used to describe both of their burdens, placing the punishment of the sexes at equal value, said Professor Eskenazi. “By changing the language to the two separate words toil and pain, the story is prejudiced. It gives readers the impression that women's punishment was greater than men's punishment,” she said.

The story of Abraham and Isaac has raised questions about paternal love. In A Woman's Commentary scholars question the role of Sarah, Isaac's mother, when her husband's hand was poised to strike and sacrifice their son to prove his adherence to God's will. How would the mother have responded to her son, bound and tied, at the altar?

Professor Eskenazi also describes how women could have been the original songstresses, and credits them for one of the most famous poems in the Torah, Exodus xv, Song of the Sea. After the destruction of the Egyptian Army at the Red Sea, women penned the joyful song to celebrate their liberation, one passage of A Women's Commentary suggests. “Again and again women who have gotten this commentary in their hands, from all walks of life, said that they felt included in the conversation for the first time,” Professor Eskenazi said.

The book also uses a new model to examine the text, offering six different approaches to each section of the Torah. Each portion includes the Hebrew text with an English translation and commentary, plus a line-by-line explanation. Compiling the book took more than 13 years and $1.5 million (£750,000). The book's initial publication of 12,000 copies sold out within weeks. An additional reprint was ordered this month.

While the book has met with acclaim from secular and Reform scholars, religious leaders from the more conservative communities have been hesitant to comment. Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice-president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said that he was wary of biblical commentary that was exclusively female, just as he was distrustful of the traditionally male commentary. “We need commentaries that speak to all people and that have male and female voices blended together,” he said.

Lost in translation

— Michelangelo’s rendering of Moses with two horns occurred because the Italian Renaissance painter’s Bible, the Latin Vulgate, mistranslated Exodus 34:29 as “Moses had horns” instead of “Moses’ face shone”

— In April 2007, Dr Laleh Bakhtia, a former professor of Islam at the University of Chicago, published a translation of the Koran that challenged the use of words that feminists say have been used to justify the abuse of Islamic women. She asserted that the Arabic word idrib traditionally translated to mean “beat” could also mean “to go away”

— Biblical scholars down the centuries have debated the passage citing Mary as a virgin upon her marriage. Different translators argue that the Hellenistic Greek text describes Mary as being young, or a woman of marriageable age, but not a virgin

Source: Times database