This accessible, readable book breaks new ground in the cultural study of the Bible, challenging the traditional mode of reading the women in the Bible. Using the stories of the "wicked" literary figures in the Bible--the wife of Potiphar, Bathshebha, Delilah and Salomé--Bach argues that biblical characters have a "life" in the mind of the reader independent of the stories in which they were created. Thus, the reader becomes the site at which the texts and the cultures that produced them come together.