Several years ago, I presented a paper at an academic conference about how literary classics owe a debt to the Bible. I pointed attendees in my workshop to content in works such as Pilgrim’s Progress and Les Misérables, The Divine Comedy, and Robinson Crusoe. I mentioned how Dickens and Dostoevsky drew on themes, imagery, and phrases from the Old and New Testaments. I spoke with admiration of the Bible’s metaphors, similes and other figures of speech. And I used examples such as God represented as a protecting hen, nursing mother, and angry mother bear.  Afterward, a scholar approached and stated that imagery for God as female in Scripture is only ever referenced in…