Negotiating Virtue: Prudent Women in the Bible and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

Across biblical and post-biblical traditions, women frequently emerge as decisive actors in moments of crisis, negotiation, and transition, yet their agency is often mediated through interpretive frameworks that struggle to fully accommodate or theorize it. While the category of “virtue” has long structured philosophical, theological, and ethical discourse in antiquity and its reception, it has typically been defined in abstract, universalizing terms that obscure the gendered and situational conditions under which such virtues are enacted.

In particular, the virtue of prudence (phronesis) has been conceptualized as rational foresight, deliberative judgment, or moral intelligence. However, recent scholarship in biblical studies, gender theory, and lived religion has increasingly highlighted that prudence is not only a cognitive capacity but also a situated, embodied, and relational practice. Women in biblical and post-biblical narratives often perform prudence under conditions of marginality, vulnerability, and asymmetrical power, where discernment is inseparable from risk, improvisation, and social negotiation.

Figures such as the Wise Woman of Abel Beth Maacah, Judith, and later receptions including Thecla and Mary of Egypt demonstrate that prudence is frequently articulated through narrative tension, liminality, and boundary-crossing. These examples invite a reconsideration of how religious traditions construct, attribute, or deny prudence to female figures. The study of such dynamics contributes not only to the history of interpretation but also to broader debates on gender, ethics, embodiment, and agency in religious cultures.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, “Negotiating Virtue: Prudent Women in the Bible and Beyond”, which seeks to advance a renewed interdisciplinary understanding of prudence as a gendered and context-dependent form of discernment across ancient Mediterranean and post-biblical traditions.

We aim to explore how prudence is represented, enacted, transformed, and contested in relation to female figures in biblical, post-biblical, apocryphal, and comparative Greco-Roman contexts, working to move beyond abstract definitions of virtue to examine prudence as a dynamic practice embedded in narrative, social, and visual contexts.

The Special Issue aligns closely with the scope of Religions through critical engagement with religious texts, traditions, and practices across historical periods, while integrating methodological approaches from theology, literary studies, gender theory, art history, and comparative religion. It foregrounds how religious meaning is constructed through interpretation, reception, and material and visual culture, and how ethical categories such as prudence are shaped by cultural and gendered frameworks.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and review essays are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Prudence and gender in biblical narrative traditions;
• Female agency, strategy, and ethical decision-making in ancient texts;
• Reception history of prudence in rabbinic, patristic, and medieval contexts;
• Apocryphal and deuterocanonical expansions of prudential figures;
• The intersection of prudence, embodiment, and vulnerability in religious discourse;
• Visual and material representations of female virtue in antiquity and beyond;
• Comparative perspectives on prudence in Greco-Roman myth and religion;
• Theoretical approaches to virtue ethics, gender, and lived religion.

We hope that this Special Issue will stimulate new interdisciplinary research on the intersection of gender, virtue ethics, and religious history by repositioning prudence as a situated, contested, and relational category rather than a fixed moral abstraction. By foregrounding female figures and their interpretive traditions, it aims to challenge dominant models of ethical subjectivity and expand current understandings of agency in religious narratives.

Further, we seek to bridge disciplinary divides between biblical studies, theology, classics, art history, and gender theory, thereby fostering a more integrated approach to the study of ancient and post-ancient religious cultures. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to a more nuanced account of how virtue is negotiated within structures of power, representation, and reception.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this to the Guest Editors or to the Assistant Editor Ms. Evelyn Zeng at evelyn.zeng@mdpi.com of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors to ensure they fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Deadline for abstract submission: 1st July 2026

Deadline for full manuscript submission: 1st April 2027

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Tobias Nicklas
Dr. Stephanie Hallinger
Dr. Osnat Emily Rance
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• biblical women
• prudence (phronesis)
• gender and virtue ethics
• agency in religious texts
• post-biblical traditions
• apocrypha and reception history
• visual and material religion