4–7 December 2025, Naples
The conference, taking place on 4–7 December 2025, will present the final results of the international and interconfessional project “The Bible and Women,” launched in Naples with an international and ecumenical scope in 2006, and at the same time will open a significant dialogue with civil society on the complex, conflictual and liberating relationships that have existed between the Bible and women. It is therefore the final stage of an important international research conducted over 20 years by about three hundred women scholars (biblical scholars, theologians, historians, archaeologists and literary scholars) of different religions and confessions, on the figures of women in the Scriptures and their interpretation in the history of Christianity.
The conference is promoted by Cardinal Don Mimmo Battaglia and will be presided by His Excellency Franco Beneduce, auxiliary bishop of Naples, and Professor Adriana Valerio, theologian and communicator, who conceived the project and coordinated the research together with colleagues Irmtraud Fischer, Mercedes Navarro Puerto and Charlotte Methuen.
The aim of the conference is not only to network a wide number of researchers, exegetes, historians and theologians of high academic profile engaged internationally in the field of gender studies, but also, and above all, to create a dialogue between the scholars and the younger generations, the world of culture and Neapolitan civil society on particularly topical issues.
Sixty scholars have been invited from European and non‑European countries (Germany, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, England, Portugal, Argentina, the USA, Canada and Jerusalem) and about 150 participants are expected overall, including all the speakers who have taken part in the research.
At the conference the results of these twenty years of studies will be presented in the series “The Bible and Women: Exegesis, Culture and History”, articulated in twenty‑one volumes and published in four languages (Italian, English, German and Spanish) by the publishers Il Pozzo di Giacobbe, SBL, Kohlhammer and Verbo Divino.