St. Davids, PA: Palmer Seminary professor, Dr. Deborah Winters, has won the Silver Medal Illumination Book Award in the Biblical Studies category, for her book Through Her Eyes: Bible Studies on Women in Scripture. Dr. Winters, with the help of her “Women in The Bible” class, wrote this 20-chapter book about the ancient women of the Bible and the lessons they teach us today.
Dr. Winters is a professor for the Palmer Theological Seminary at Eastern University, specializing in the Old Testament. She received her B.S. in Music Education from West Chester University, an M.Div from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and she also received both an M.A. and Ph.D in Religion from Temple University.
The Illumination Book Awards is a group of awards created by the Jenkins Group, a book publishing service out of Michigan. The goal of these awards is to bring recognition to the books that are written and published with a Christian worldview.
Through Her Eyes is a book that houses a collection of studies on twenty women from the Bible. The goal of the book is to analyze the stories of these women and connect them to the personal experiences of the authors in today’s world. It was written with the help of Dr. Winters’ nineteen students, with each contributor looking at one woman from the Bible. The multicultural and multi-denominational group of students allows for different perspectives on the women and how they connect to the students uniquely, even offering the perspective of a Muslim.
Dr. Winters said that, “The idea for the book started in the Women in the Bible class I teach at Palmer Seminary as students wanted to be able to present what they were learning in class in a bible study/small group format that they could use in their various churches and ministry settings, hence the birth of Through Her Eyes: Bible Studies on Women in Scripture.”
Judson Press, the publisher for Through Her Eyes, has asked that Dr. Winters write a part two of the book. This new book is under production by students of Dr. Winters’s latest Women in the Bible class.
When Dr. Winters told the students of the award she had this to say about their response, “they summed it up best when they wrote to me that although they felt honored, ‘to God be the Glory.’”