Tikva Simone Frymer-Kensky (Hebrew: תקווה פריימר-קנסקי; October 21, 1943 – August 31, 2006)[1] was a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
In 2006, the Jewish Publication Society published a collection of her articles, "Studies in Bible and Feminist Criticism", as part of their Scholar of Distinction series.
While some of Frymer-Kensky's conclusions about the development of religions are popular and often quoted,[4] her contributions to the study of ancient Near East were met with criticism from many Assyriologists and other specialists.
Julia M. Asher-Greve, who specializes in the study of position of women in antiquity, praises her for being "first in addressing the questions of divine sexual difference and sexuality" in the field of Assyriology but criticizes her focus on fertility, the small selection of sources her works relied on, her view that position of goddesses in the pantheon reflected that of ordinary women in society (so-called "mirror theory"), as well as the fact her works do not accurately reflect the complexity of changes of roles of goddesses in religions of ancient Mesopotamia.
[6] JoAnn Scurlock, who wrote extensively about medicine in ancient Mesopotamia, notes that Frymer-Kensky's claim that the healing goddess Gula/Ninisinna was replaced by her son Damu is unfounded, and that Damu was a very minor deity, while his mother was remarkably popular (even among almost exclusively male physicians), and even in "Marduk-centric" Weidner chronicle played a prominent role.