In 1895 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her "Revising Committee" produced The Woman's Bible, a commentary
on passages in the Bible that "do not exalt or dignify women" and "those also in which women are
prominent by exclusion." The women's movement has come a long way in the last hundred years, but so too have
our knowledge and appreciation of religions other than Judaism and Christianity. Serinity Young's Anthology of
Sacred Texts by and about Women is the first comprehensive comparative sourcebook on women and religion. It makes
available readings by and about women from the primary texts of the world's religions. The religions treated include
not only the "big seven," Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism,
but the religions of northern Europe, the Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome, shamanism and tribal religions,
as well as more recent alternative religious movements. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction to the religion
in question, providing a historical overview with particular regard to women. Then follow representative texts
about women (each with its own introduction) from works that are central to their respective traditions. These
texts include creation stories, biographies of founders (in which women often play a prominent role), law codes,
folklore and fairy tales, the "texts" of tribal peoples, and works explicitly by women. Folklore and
fairy tales have particular importance in this book because they generally reveal the beliefs of the "little
tradition," which are often in the hands of women, while the "great tradition" is represented by
the male-dominated forms of orthodoxy. The works by women here take many forms from theological treatises to mystical
poems to poems mourning the loss of a child or husband to the matter-of-fact statements by tribal women, such as
Nisa, expressing the uncertainties of any religious knowing.