This article analyzes women’s access to divine dreams in the Jewish texts of the Greco-Roman era: the Jubilees, the Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, the Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities, and Against Apion. By evaluating women’s dreams in light of anthropological understanding of divine dreams, that is, dreams that somehow claim to have a divine origin, this chapter aims to offer a new model for understanding women’s dreams in ancient Jewish texts. It is argued that while the preserved literature includes only a few dreams experienced by women, these examples nonetheless provide essential evidence of women being recipients of divine information in ancient Jewish texts.

Chapter 5 looks at the remaining sections of Proverbs largely in the light of Egyptian influence – Proverbs 22:17-24:22 is the prime example. Proverbs 30:1-6; 31:1-9 and 31:10-31 are shorter and self-contained whilst being collectively disparate. However, the ‘sayings of Agur’ in Prov. 30:1-6 forms a bridge towards the skepticism of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs 31:1-9 in its attribution to a foreign king has interesting implications for social context. The final section in Prov. 31:10-31 with its poem about a worthy woman contains key framing links to Proverbs 1-9 and the female figures within that section.