feminist hermeneutics dissertation

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The feminist use of inclusive language for the Trinity: A case study in hermeneutical method

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Toward a Latin American Feminist Hermeneutics: A Dialogue with the Biblical Methodologies of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, Phyllis Trible, Carlos Mesters, and Pablo Richard

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Hermeneutics and feminist philosophy

2015, Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, edited by Niall Keane and Chris Lawn, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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A critique of feminist and egalitarian hermeneutics and exegesis : with special focus on Jesus' approach to women

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A dialogue on feminist biblical hermeneutics: elisabeth schüssler fiorenza, musa dube, and john paul ii on mark 5 and john 4.

Maureen Maeve Wood , University of Dayton

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M.A. in Theological Studies

Department of Religious Studies

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Advisor: Jana Marguerite Bennett

The study of feminist biblical hermeneutics is very diverse; it can mean different things to different people. As a result, there is much disagreement concerning how to read Scriptures from a feminist perspective in the correct way. For a proper study of the Scriptures from a feminist point of view, one must converse with other forms of feminist hermeneutics. Therefore, using excerpts from Mark 5 and John 4, this thesis will create a dialogue between the theologians Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Musa Dube, and John Paul II. In doing so, this thesis will attempt to show a more comprehensive feminist biblical hermeneutic using theological perspectives from Catholic Western feminism, Protestant Two-Thirds World feminism, and the Magisterium.

Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, 1938- Criticism and interpretation, Dube Shomanah, Musa W, 1964- Criticism and interpretation, John Paul II, Pope, 1920-2005 Criticism and interpretation, Bible Feminist criticism, Bible. Mark, V Hermeneutics, Bible. John, IV Hermeneutics, Feminism Religious aspects Catholic Church, African studies; Bible; Biblical studies; gender studies; religion; theology; womens studies; feminist theology; Mark 5; John 4; Mulieris Dignitatem; postcolonialism; Biblical hermeneutics; Catholic feminism; postcolonial feminist theology; feminist Biblical hermeneutics

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Wood, Maureen Maeve, "A dialogue on feminist Biblical hermeneutics: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Musa Dube, and John Paul II on Mark 5 and John 4" (2013). Graduate Theses and Dissertations . 501. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/graduate_theses/501

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10 Feminist Interpretation of the Bible

Claudia Setzer is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. Her books include The Bible and American Culture (with David Shefferman, 2011), Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Christianity (2004),

• Published: 06 November 2017
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Feminist biblical hermeneutics has produced many fissures. First-wave and second-wave feminists argued whether the Bible was even salvageable. Womanist and Latina interpreters insisted on the authenticity of their traditions. Second-wave scholars who excavated the texts for women’s history were critiqued by others who said “women” were purely constructs. Many scholars now seek to combine historical and ideological approaches. Third-wave feminists promote individualism and diversity, many continuing the struggle inherited from a previous generation. Because young feminists who remain in religious communities cannot take equality for granted, they exhibit a passion that promises to keep feminism vibrant in the twenty-first century.

Women have always interpreted the biblical text. Within the Bible itself, the prophet Huldah addresses a prophecy in “the book of the law” (probably an early version of Deuteronomy), and Mary of Nazareth is credited with a song of praise that weaves together prophetic and covenantal themes from the Hebrew Bible. 1 Women martyrs and mystics such as Perpetua, Macrina the Younger, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and Christine de Pizan have visions that appropriate and interpret biblical events. Women expressed themselves not only in exegesis, but in poetry, hymns, painting, and folk art.

A history of feminist interpretation of “the Bible” assumes a canonical text, however, which indicates a period after the first century for the Hebrew Bible and after the fourth century for the New Testament. In the United States, “the Bible” has usually meant the Protestant canon. (Catholics use a Bible with a larger number of books, and Jews do not include the New Testament, ordering the books differently than the Christian Old Testament). Feminist hermeneutics assumes an approach that makes women the subject of analysis and promotes an egalitarian ideal of male‒female relations.

The career of the Bible in America had its own peculiar course. From the founding of the Jamestown colony by way of a royal charter in 1606 that included the aim of “propagating of Christian religion” to Native Americans to today’s political rhetoric, biblical language and themes have fused with political movements and events. Unsurprisingly, then, the Bible played a larger-than-life role in early movements for women’s rights.

Feminism in North America is described retrospectively as three “waves,” the result of some feminists of the twentieth century illuminating the legacy of their nineteenth-century pioneers. The first wave is somewhat artificially construed as the period from the Women’s Rights convention of 1848 in Seneca Falls to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granting women the right to vote. In fact, the advocacy for women’s rights went back further, involved a set of social and legal issues in addition to the vote, and was an international movement. 2 It was bound up with other transatlantic reform movements including abolitionism and temperance. Second-wave feminism began in the late 1960s and 1970s in the United States, growing up alongside the civil rights and antiwar movements. A third wave includes the present era, but its conscious diversity of expression poses many questions as to whether it should be called a “wave” at all. The word “feminist” is not claimed by all, and its utility as both a term and as an ideology is contested.

Feminists who address biblical issues agree on two fundamentals. First, the Bible in its canonical form is a patriarchal document that promotes and/or has been used to promote a system that subordinates women. Second, it is an androcentric document that puts the male at the center, in particular in its envisioning of a male God as the ultimate authority. Beyond these two fundamentals, feminist biblical hermeneutics contains considerable variety. Its story is one of both fissures and fusions. These differences and alliances have often been generative and honest in their calling the text and its interpreters to account.

Canons Within and Without

First- and second-wave interpreters had their own “canons within a canon,” most examining the creation stories in Genesis 1‒2, stories of individual women prophets and judges, Paul’s conflicting and ambiguous statements about women’s comportment versus evidence of fellow preachers, deacons, and apostles in the early churches, and women around Jesus and their status as disciples. Jewish feminist scholars, like Ross Shepard Kraemer, Amy-Jill Levine, Adele Reinhartz, and myself do not regard the New Testament as scripture, but study it for evidence of early Jewish women. We also critique some New Testament scholarship for its misrepresentation of first-century Judaism, especially regarding women. Jesus presents a particular challenge for feminists because he made no statements about women’s rights at all and chose twelve men as his inner circle. Yet feminist biblical interpreters almost always endorse him as promoting an egalitarian ideal.

Womanist scholars, who claim the unique experiences of African American women as an interpretive tool, expanded this canon with discussions of Hagar and Gomer, the wife of Hosea, and slavery in the Bible, particularly in the household codes (codes of conduct that mimic Hellenistic conventions of household management). 3 “Texts of terror,” as Phyllis Trible has called them, where women are objects of violence, have engendered work by a number of scholars including Trible, J. Cheryl Exum, and Cheryl Anderson. 4 So too, have models of women’s friendship and more positive portrayals of women’s agency. The prophets offer calls to social justice alongside some of the most misogynist material in the Bible.

Second-wave and third-wave feminists have expanded the canon by promoting awareness of non-canonical texts that offer expansive understandings of gender. The Gospel of Mary shows Mary Magdalene as the disciple closest to Jesus, a subject of Peter’s envy. The Acts of Paul and Thecla lionizes the young woman Thecla for upending gender roles by rejecting marriage, facing martyrdom, and becoming a preacher and healer in Paul’s image. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity also disrupts familial loyalties and gender roles, as the young mother has a vision of becoming male and fighting in the arena, as well as leaving her husband and infant in order to embrace martyrdom. Although these texts are later than the canonical New Testament texts, they bring to light a greater diversity of gender roles and relations in early Christian writings. They also force us to recognize that sexism taints not just the content of biblical texts but the process of canonization too.

Debates and Differences among First-Wave Women Activists

The question “Is the Bible useful to women’s rights at all?” arose nearly as soon as activists began searching it for liberationist themes. Sarah Grimké, accustomed to speaking publicly against slavery, wrote a series of letters in 1837 to Mary S. Parker, president of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Published in The Liberator , William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, these letters asserted an egalitarian ideal at the heart of the biblical message, particularly in the creation stories. Grimké asserted that inaccurate translation, misunderstanding, and deliberate misuse of the text has rendered it anti-woman. For example, Grimké argues that in the “curse against Eve” in Genesis 3:16, “yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you,” the word “shall” should be translated as “will” making it a regretful prediction, not a divine command. 5 Frances Willard, the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, showed a similar faith in the Bible’s liberating message in her Woman in the Pulpit (1888), which advocated the ordination of women in the Methodist Church.

At the other end of the spectrum, Matilda Joslyn Gage pronounced the Bible as “evil” and the source of patriarchy. 6 Ernestine Rose, a Polish rabbi’s daughter turned atheist, blocked an attempted resolution that declared the Bible’s support for women’s equality at a women’s rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, arguing that women’s rights rested on human rights, something more fundamental and earlier than the Bible. Rose illustrated the dilemma of Jewish women, who might support women’s equality, but were wary of a strain of Protestant thought that placed the blame for women’s subordination on the Jewish origins of Christianity. Saint Paul, for example, is presented as a Christian when he promotes equality in Galatians 3:28 but as an unreconstructed Pharisee when he forbids women to speak in church in 1 Corinthians 14:34‒35. Rose rejected religion, but publicly defended Jews and Judaism in a debate with editor Horace Seaver in the Boston Investigator in 1863‒64.

The most significant treatment of the Bible by women’s rights advocates in the Victorian era is The Woman’s Bible , a commentary edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, examining portions of the Bible that deal with women or where women’s absence is conspicuous. While the comments vary, from Matilda Gage’s condemnation to Stanton’s admiring and mawkish statements about Jesus’s mother, The Woman’s Bible commentary is generally negative about the effects of the Bible on women’s status in society. The book had an impact and roused passions, but few were ready to engage its remarks seriously. In the political divisions within the suffrage movement, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a merged group of two suffrage organizations, officially repudiated the work at its convention in January 1896. Consensus on the Bible never was achieved, but as the women’s movement in the early twentieth century focused on suffrage alone, it moved away from invoking the Bible or religion. Lucretia Mott, herself an early proponent of biblical equality, later suggested that using the Bible ultimately became a distraction, as it had in the abolitionist cause. 7 Women’s rights would not be won or lost on biblical arguments.

African American Women Interpreters

African American women had their own traditions of biblical study and activism, but racism also helped create one early fissure between African American and other American women. Although black women were part of the different women’s suffrage associations, the suffrage movement at times marginalized them, at one point flirting with a “southern strategy” to bring southern states into the movement by suggesting the vote for white women would counter the influence of black voters in the southern states. A linkage between equality of both race and gender in biblical interpretation undergirded the writing and speaking of many African American women, from Sojourner Truth’s famous speech for women’s rights in Akron, “Ain’t I a Woman?” to Anna Julia Cooper’s refined A Voice from the South (1892). Jarena Lee became a traveling preacher once she was authorized to preach in 1819 by Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Virginia Broughton and other African American women traveled through the South creating “Bible bands,” groups of women to study the Bible daily. In her reflections, published in 1907, Broughton gathers the biblical texts that authorize women’s authority in general and opportunities for African American women in particular. 8

As biblical scholar Nyasha Junior points out, many relief and organizing efforts were not strictly about suffrage or racial equality, but their effect empowered black women in those directions. 9 She notes that aid societies to improve health, education, and social conditions had been organized since the colonial period according to many affiliations, including racial, ethnic, and religious. The Women’s Club movement after the Civil War included black women’s clubs like the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) that fought for suffrage and against lynching and Jim Crow laws.

Second-Wave Feminist Hermeneutics

These early currents are rehearsed, revised, and amplified in the parallel developments of feminist and womanist biblical interpretation in the twentieth century. Second-wave feminists rediscovered and celebrated Cady Stanton’s commentary and Anna Julia Cooper’s work while recognizing some of their problematic assumptions. 10 Similarly, womanist biblical interpretation saw its own “waves” in the twentieth century, continuing traditions of story-telling that drew from the experiences of African American women in relationship to biblical tropes. Womanist biblical interpretation also drew distinctions between itself and feminist scholarship, seen as dominated by the concerns of white women. Strictly speaking, self-identified womanist biblical scholars are not a large group, if we consider womanist biblical interpretation as a discrete method, and not simply biblical scholarship that is done by African American women. 11 Mitzi J. Smith’s recent collection of womanist biblical interpretation is instructive on this score, as it includes twelve interpreters from cognate fields, including theologians and ethicists. 12 Womanist scholarship has always embraced a variety of methods, while white feminist biblical scholars have frequently been more isolated from their feminist peers in other fields.

Although second-wave feminist scholarship emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist biblical scholarship took time to coalesce. Religious studies professor Judith Plaskow notes the relatively minor and often negative role assigned to biblical studies in the academic and denominational activist conferences and writings of the 1970s. 13 Two early works that brought biblical studies to the table of feminist studies were Leonard Swidler’s article, “Jesus Was a Feminist,” and Phyllis Trible’s, “De-patriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation.” Both attempted to discover within the text itself resources for feminist interpretation. 14 While this struck the radical American feminist philosopher and theologian Mary Daly and others as special pleading, these works provided an impetus for the growth of feminist biblical interpretation in the 1980s. Plaskow’s influential 1972 Midrash (creative expansion) on Eve and Lilith, based on the creation narrative and rabbinic tales of Lilith, suggested the Bible and rabbinics might provide resources for feminist theology. 15

Phyllis Trible is one of the most important of the early feminist biblical interpreters and illustrates the dilemma of many classically trained feminist scholars who enter the field because they love the Bible. While pursuing issues around patriarchy, they are not inclined to dismiss the text or traditional methods tout court . Trible’s works, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality and Texts of Terror interrogate the biblical text, leading her to argue that the text is self-correcting because it offers multiple interpretations and correctives. Song of Songs, for example, is “a midrash on Genesis 2‒3.” She argues that themes surrounding erotic relationships in the Song of Songs offer an antidote to the brokenness that results from humanity’s exile from Eden. She argues for the close relationship between men and women by pointing out that “Adam” is from the same word as earth, “adamah,” thus showing it includes males and females in relationship with each other and with the created world. 16

Tikvah Frymer-Kensky, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School before her death, underlined the possibilities for reading the women of the Bible as widely representative of humanity: some powerful, some subordinate, some victimized. The earlier Ancient Near Eastern setting, with its gods and goddesses, did not present an egalitarian ideal, but relegated women to the domestic sphere. Ironically then, according to Frymer-Kensky, the single male God that emerged in monotheism was a rejection of limiting gender distinctions. 17

Approaches like Trible’s and Frymer-Kensky’s were neither naïve nor apologetic in nature, but they did seem to skirt the fundamental suspicion that the Bible had been a supremely negative force for women. Feminist biblical interpretation divided and split into two trends: first, the excavating of women’s lives and personhood and, second, the examination of the “ideology of woman” in ancient texts. Those in the first school of “excavators” argue that women’s roles and realities show considerable complexity as the search for hidden examples of power and agency renders visible ancient Israelite women as essential to the ancient economy. New Testament feminist scholars reveal women believers as disciples of Jesus as well as deacons, preachers, and patrons of early churches.

The second scholarly approach looks at the assumptions about women that pervade the texts, or how women are constructed. Because this second group is interested in the undergirding values about women as subordinate and marginal in the text, they often reject the results of the first group. Women in the biblical texts, they point out, are not “real” as historical actors, but are ciphers for an idealized version of women in a hoped-for society. Women’s subordination then is not a by-product of ancient societies, but a prescription for how the world should operate. Thus, so-called counter-traditions or individual examples of powerful women and prophets do not interrupt the overarching ideology of women. Although these two interpretive trends existed side-by-side in first-wave, and even more clearly in second-wave feminism, the second trend of examination of ideology generally succeeded and undermined the first. The move to consider the ideologies around women was aided by a general turn toward examining the language of the biblical texts.

The Linguistic Turn

As the project of feminist hermeneutics gathered energy, the field took a “linguistic turn” and analysis of women as historical entities gave way to a focus on how gender is constructed in texts. Historian Joan W. Scott’s influential article, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” moved historians away from thinking they might reconstruct women’s lives from texts to rhetorical considerations such as how women are talked about, placed, depicted, and left out of texts. Influenced by poststructuralism and postmodernism as a whole, gender analysis focused on language and representation, namely what is available at the surface of the text, assuming that any historical reality behind the text cannot be recovered. The category of “gender” meshed with the “linguistic turn” in literary studies and both filtered into biblical studies. Scott has had her critics, but the category of gender was here to stay. Terms like essentialism (that men and women have fixed essences and characteristics throughout time and place) and positivism (that information is accessible and verifiable apart from the orientation of the observer) became terms of critique, if not dismissal. 18

Yet the linguistic turn has been both good news and bad news for feminist exegetes. Religious studies professors such as Elizabeth Clark and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza worried that an entirely linguistic approach sets aside possible valuable information about earlier women, resulting in what Schüssler Fiorenza calls “a loss of heritage” while continuing to put the male subject at the center of rhetorical analysis. 19 Elizabeth Clark put it succinctly when she states that in such scholarship “the lady vanishes.” Schüssler Fiorenza moved the field forward with her “hermeneutics of suspicion,” which reads “against the grain,” or proposed ideology of the text, maintaining its possibilities for giving up material with liberating tropes. The subtitle of her ground-breaking book, In Memory of Her , calls for a “feminist reconstruction of Christian origins,” implying both a historical project and an interrogation of ideological underpinnings. 20

Similarly, Elizabeth Clark proposed an integration of gender analysis with historical method, a type of scholarship that many now engage in. Such scholarship proposes that while texts may not tell us directly about “real women,” exploring gender construction yields historical information as we “explore the social forces at work in these constructions.” 21 Scholarship shifted to examining the underlying ideologies about women and men in texts, recognizing the assumptions and prescriptions about ideal women and men that functioned in the Ancient Near East for the Hebrew Bible and in the Roman Mediterranean world of the New Testament. For example, rather than parsing Paul’s worrying and contradictory statements about women’s leadership in ancient communities, the emphasis was put on examining the ways in which he used the categories of the female (mother, nurse) and applied them to himself, touting not the masculine ideal of self-control, but taking on categories of weakness and submission. Recent works that exhibit this type of scholarship include Colleen Conway’s Behold the Man and Stephanie Cobb’s Dying to Be Men . 22

A further development in feminist biblical scholarship recognizes that gender did not function in isolation from other factors like race, class, sexual orientation, and able-bodiedness. The term for this turn toward integrative scholarship is “intersectionality,” and it comes from legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. Crenshaw considers the multiplying effect of a host of interrelated factors, showing that these different constructions cannot be studied in isolation from one another. Prejudice and Christian Beginnings , edited by Schüssler Fiorenza and Laura Nasrallah, brings together essays that explore interlocking natural and societal relationships in early Christian works and in scholarship on early Christianity, arguing that such explorations yield far more complex and nuanced understandings of the biblical text. 23

Three Feminist Interpreters

Feminist scholarship accelerated in the late 1980s and the 1990s to such a degree that I cannot mention or even list all the women who have participated and continue to participate in such work. Several anthologies gather some of the works of a large cadre of women laboring to bring forth feminist insights from biblical texts, including: Schüssler Fiorenza’s 2-volume Searching the Scriptures; The Torah: A Women’s Commentary , published by the Women of Reform Judaism; The Feminist Companion series to individual books of the Bible, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and others; Women and Christian Origins , edited by Ross Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo; and The Women’s Bible Commentary , edited by Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe, recently published in its third edition. The Wisdom Commentary series from Liturgical Press, is currently publishing several books per year, with the goal of producing a feminist commentary on every biblical book.

Recognizing that one cannot do justice to all these interpreters, I choose to take a closer look at three North American interpreters who incorporate feminist analysis into their work as examples of the various angles of approach that are being pursued in the field of biblical interpretation. First, the biblical scholar Gail Yee interprets the grisly story of the dismembered concubine in Judges 17‒21 from an ideological perspective. The insights of feminist criticism establish the significance of the concubine’s actions of leaving her husband and seeking sanctuary, arguing that “stories ostensibly about male‒female relations are more often about struggles among men for honor and status.” 24 In this particular case, the concubine is judged as a wanton woman, without voice, name, or humanity in the text, whose act of defiance is quashed by the two males in her life. Yee builds on this model by arguing that it is the Deuteronomist’s caricature of the Levites and the body of tribes whose cultic acts outside Jerusalem during Josiah’s reform defy the monarchy. A fate similar to the concubine’s dismembered body awaits the autonomous Jewish tribes’ attempt at independence from Jerusalem.

Second, the late religious studies scholar Jane Schaberg was one of the first to argue that Mary Magdalene’s legacy was grossly distorted by later Christian tradition. In “How Mary Magdalene Became a Whore” and The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene , Schaberg examined the few biblical verses that mention Mary Magdalene and argued that Mary was, in fact, one of the most significant women in Jesus’s life and could be fairly called one of his disciples. 25 Schaberg described the extra-canonical traditions that confer on Mary Magdalene an authority in competition with Peter’s. Yet, in later Christian tradition, Mary Magdelene is conflated with anonymous women in the New Testament, including adulterous and other penitent women. According to Schaberg, the Mary Magdalene of legend, Church teaching, and Christian art was thus transformed from a follower of Jesus into the penitent whore, a potent symbol of the repression of women’s witness and authority.

Finally, the biblical and cultural historian Adele Reinhartz’s “Women in the Johannnine Community: An Exercise in Historical Imagination,” appears in the Feminist Companion series edited by Amy-Jill Levine. 26 John’s Gospel, she observes, is notable for its examples of significant individual women who figure prominently in John’s narrative, such as Jesus’s mother at Cana, the Samaritan woman, Martha and Mary of Bethany (who engage Jesus at the site of his raising of their brother Lazarus), and Mary Magdalene. Reinhartz suggests that these women may represent “types” who functioned within the Johannine community at the turn of the first century, and by so arguing raises the possibility of women preachers, elders and teachers, healers, and deacons.

Tensions between Biblical Studies and Theology

Feminist biblical scholars and feminist scholars in other branches of the study of religion have not always been in accord. While many interpreters like Schüssler Fiorenza and Elsa Tamez propound a hermeneutics that embraces both biblical scholarship and theology, a certain disconnect exists between feminist biblical scholars and their theologian and ethicist colleagues. Many of the most influential feminist scholars of the 1980s and 1990s were theologians and ethicists who often used biblical material to indict patriarchy, provide alternative readings, or point out “counter-traditions,” but their primary interest was not the meaning of the biblical text, its composition, the possible relation of one part to another, or various interpretations suggested by the text. They tended to read biblical texts as unified compositions, finished literary products whose implications were seemingly obvious to any reader. In many ways the general feminist approach was a pre-critical reading, appropriate for discussing the Bible’s effect on society. Such societal effects are well within the purview of theologians and ethicists. Moreover, a hallmark of feminist scholarship has been the appeal to experience in responding to cultural and religious institutions and in fashioning authentic responses.

The suspicion directed toward feminist biblical scholars had to do with both the text itself and the methodologies they brought to bear on that text. Susanne Scholz, a professor of Old Testament studies, articulated the suspicions feminist scholars in other fields have directed at feminist biblical scholars. 27 Some, like Mary Daly and Alison Jasper, in echoes of Gage and Stanton, considered the Bible, like other religious institutions, to be irredeemably patriarchal and not salvageable for feminist work. Moreover, the methods of biblical scholarship in which feminist biblical scholars were trained, were suspect. Audre Lorde’s famous dictum, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” was directed at traditional historical critical methods of study. 28

Feminist biblical scholars are suspected of trying to “save” the Bible by exaggerating the number and significance of women and women’s history to be gleaned from the text, as well as exhibiting a naïve positivism that takes the appearance of women at face value. This is not really a fair critique. Biblical scholar and archaeologist Carol Meyers, for example, has sought to excavate the daily lives of women in ancient Israel using archaeological and historical data, and argues that women played a more complex and significant role in society than recognized. She agrees that the text should not be the sole source of our picture of ancient Israel and thus identifies herself with those who seek to contextualize biblical material about women. 29 In her presidential address at the Society of Biblical Literature in 2013, Meyers responded to critics from second-wave feminism by invoking third-wave feminist critics who say the term “patriarchy,” inherited from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anthropologists, has outlived its usefulness and is not appropriate for the household-based, agrarian society of most of ancient Israel. She recommends the term “heterarchy,” borrowed from the social sciences and used in gender archaeology to designate simultaneous power structures that interact with one another. 30

Critiques of traditional methods can ignore their uses for feminist work. Christian studies professor Bernadette Brooten gathered inscriptions of women leaders in ancient diaspora synagogues, showing how their meanings were refashioned by translators to deny women’s authority. 31 Brooten and New Testament scholar Eldon J. Epp also used text criticism to rediscover the female disciple, Junia, whom Paul calls “prominent among the apostles” (Rom. 16:7). Her name had been corrected in some manuscripts to render it a male name, Junias, and translators followed suit. Without such painstaking work in epigraphy and textual criticism, these ancient women leaders would be unknown. Religious Studies scholar Jennifer Glancy’s Slavery in Early Christianity combines several forms of analysis to consider the situation of slaves in early Christian circles, subject to the sexual demands of their masters, but schooled in Paul’s admonitions against porneia. 32 Professor of Philosophy and Religion Clarice Martin explores the translation issues that attend key words like doulos , “slave.” Its euphemistic translation as “servant” has robbed it of its impact and minimized its cruelty in Paul’s time. Like Glancy, Martin insists on speaking to the reality of women’s experiences, thus examining the reality of slavery in women’s and men’s New Testament lives. 33

Finally, some of the core assertions of feminist scholarship that question the utility of biblical studies include, “the Bible was written by men” or “the texts were written by people in power.” Such assertions assume some knowledge of the ancient Near East for the Hebrew Bible and the Mediterranean world for the New Testament. Furthermore, they are buttressed by examinations of the sources, composition, and redaction of the biblical texts. 34

While most who critiqued feminist scholarship on the Bible came from other fields, Hebrew Bible scholar Esther Fuchs is no less critical than the theologians and ethicists. Her work, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative argues that patriarchy cannot be excised from the Hebrew Bible by methods like those of Trible or Meyers. What many feminist biblical interpreters miss, she says, is that patriarchy and androcentrism in the Hebrew Bible are not merely by-products of a certain time and place but are prescriptive of society. In a more recent article, Fuchs argues that the “neo-liberal” brand of interpretation has failed to recognize that the concept of “woman” is a “construct” in the patriarchal project of the Hebrew Bible. Only an entirely new “literary hermeneutics of resistance” will turn the tide. Fuchs’s incisive and piquant critique has merit, but her solution is not entirely new in its appeal to experience as arbiter of truth, or in its resistant reading, insisting that “all interpretations be anchored in the reader, not the text.” 35

Within Liberationist Paradigms

With its impetus to recover the voices of women who were not at the center of most texts and its “reading against the grain” of intersecting ideologies, feminist hermeneutics inevitably would not stay confined to one issue or one portion of humanity. Challenges from womanist and Latina (or mujerista ) interpreters further unsettled taken-for-granted categories. Moreover, scholars in multiple fields have developed questions regarding sexuality, the body, power, and colonizing, which have been incorporated into feminist work. Feminist hermeneutics has come to want to “have it all,” to contribute to the liberation of human beings on many fronts and in many parts of the world.

This essay has been discussing biblical interpretation as it has been centered in North America and Europe mostly among academics, therefore elites, but Bible reading flourishes in quite different social climates as well. Increasingly, the Bible is read not by those in established positions of power but by people who find themselves on the margins. The 2014 study on Bible-reading in America done by a team at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, found that the Bible reader in the United States is most likely to be black, female, older, and low income. Its most striking correlation shows that African Americans read the Bible considerably more than other Americans. 36

Theologian and seminary professor Kwok Pui-lan notes the dramatic changing global demographics of Christianity in recent years. People who identify as Christian increasingly live in the Global South, while their numbers in Europe and North America shrink. Christianity, at least in terms of population, may become a non-Western religion. As Kwok notes, it is increasingly urgent to bring in other perspectives on the Bible. The New Testament and early Christianity was produced and disseminated throughout the Mediterranean and Asian worlds, often brought to native peoples as a by-product of colonization, so the text is more authentically read “from the underside,” its possibilities for liberation enhanced. 37 Musa Dube, a professor of New Testament from Botswana, shows how the image of Jesus as the powerful “man from heaven” in the Gospel of John has helped authorize colonization and subordination of natives in her own country. 38

Feminist biblical studies developed in Latin America in the shadow of poverty, dictatorships, revolutions, political repression, and imperialism. Elsa Tamez, a Mexican biblical scholar who taught in Costa Rica, describes the feminist scholarly movement as behind the times and is even leery of the term “feminist.” Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz’s label “mujerista” is not well known. Work on Latina biblical interpretation around women has been centered on the publication La Rivista de Interpretación Bíblica Latinoamericana (RIBLA), which began publication in 1988. Like their counterparts in feminist and womanist interpretation, Latin American interpreters put women’s experiences at the heart of their work and tend to fuse biblical studies and theology. They use a variety of methods, including traditional historical-critical and literary ones, but with considerable care and from a different perspective.

Distinctive Latin American interpretations include:

The “use of the hermeneutical circle,” which begins with experiences in the world, draws in the text and its layers of understanding, and promotes liberating practices in a struggling society. For Latin American women, lived reality includes the experience of poverty and violence on individual bodies, where gender, race, class, and ethnicity collide.

The inclusion of works from African-descendant and indigenous perspectives. Tamez notes the work of several women looking at the African and Asian elements and characters in the Hebrew Bible by scholars such as Maricel Mena and Betty Ruth Lozano and Bibiana Peñaranda. Representations of indigenous cultures in biblical texts are examined by Mercedes López. 39

They often include a strategy of resistant reading, where nearly automatic readings of the text are read and “de-normalized.” Sharing this approach with other feminists, texts are read from perspectives opposed to the authors’ intentions. For example, household codes in 1 Timothy, Ephesians, and Colossians that prohibit women’s leadership are “de-normalized” to show evidence of women’s actual authority. Ivoni Richter Reimer brings to the fore the self-sufficient businesswoman Lydia of Acts 16:14‒15, minus the biography attributed to her by male exegetes. 40

Feminist analysis nearly always has a prescriptive element. It cannot ignore issues of oppression related to categories beyond sex, including nationality, race, sexual orientation, and able-bodiedness. Indeed most feminist scholars include such goals in their work. Ecofeminism, in the words of Brazilian Ivone Gebara “emphasizes the idea that we (all creation) are one sacred Body,” and that patriarchy not only promoted injustice in the social sphere but a consumerist approach to nature that led to our current ecological crisis. 41 Tamez uses the book of James and links it to the prophet Amos in light of liberation theology and its “preferential option for the poor.” Tamez underscores the idea in James 2:17 “faith without works is dead” as a credo for the work of theology in Latin America. 42

Hermeneutics, a term with a long and complex pedigree, assumes that interpretation is a process that includes the life-situation and assumptions of the interpreter and is not merely an unlocking of the text. It is not a disinterested search for meaning. Feminist hermeneutics is one of several methods of the twentieth century that demanded recognition of varying meanings and uses of interpretation for different communities, including African Americans, women, and Third World peoples. For these groups, the Bible has been both a source of life and meaning, as well as a tool of their own subordination.

A Third Wave?

The contested term “third-wave feminism” includes at least two rather different brands of feminism. Jennifer Gilley, scholar, librarian, and a self-identified third-wave feminist, describes this flavor of feminism by saying “it celebrates contradiction, complexity, and individual freedom of choice.” 43 One brand of third-wave feminism derives its energy from being reactive, rejecting second-wave thinkers as too ideological, and perhaps assuming that many of the gains achieved by twentieth-century feminism meant political struggle was no longer necessary. They may also be endorsing the work of cultural critics like Katie Roiphe and Camille Paglia, who charged earlier feminists with exaggerating images of women as victims. Not surprisingly, women who represent these trends have little interest in religion or the Bible.

The second kind of third-wave feminism continues many of the drives for reforming society and attacking sexism and racism which typified second-wave feminism. Many of its proponents were raised in feminist households and continue to express those values, but in their own style. The term “third-wave” was coined by Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker, in an article in Ms. Magazine in 1992, called “Becoming the Third Wave.” She spoke of her anger at the treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings and reminded women of her generation that feminism had not completely remade society, especially vis-à-vis women’s rights. 44 Many third-wavers continue the struggle for a just society, but have remade the struggle to reflect their generation. They show a distinct individualism and are more cautious about speaking for all women. They reject strict binaries of male/female in exploring sexuality and difference. These values come across in a third-wave form of biblical hermeneutics, which scholar and preacher Surekha Nelavala calls “an upgraded version of feminism that fits the age and cultures of the post-modern era.” 45

The variety that characterizes third-wave religious feminists is clear in the collection of essays, Faithfully Feminist , a book edited by a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim. 46 These essays are from women in the three traditions who identify as feminists and remain committed to faith communities. Its range is broad and it shows complexity, but the following themes recur:

They draw from the teachings and experiences of previous generations. Elise M. Edwards, a professor of Christian Ethics, notes her mother and grandmother who taught her to pray and connect with the divine, and an aunt who encouraged her in the ministry. 47 Many gave thanks for the earlier generation women theologians and scholars who showed them new ways of thinking.

These women choose to occupy a liminal, in-between status. One Mormon woman engaged in seeking ordination of women to the priesthood said she was “too feminist for Mormons, and too Mormon for feminists.” 48 One spoke of looking for “a sweet spot in the midst of my boundaries as a feminist Orthodox Jewish artist.” 49

They see a symbiotic relationship between religion and feminism. Some Christian women draw strength directly from Jesus or identify with him or Mary Magdalene, bypassing patriarchal trappings of the tradition. 50 One woman said, “Feminism birthed the Jew that I am today.” 51

They see their religious traditions as both flawed and full of spiritual resources. While several experienced the Bible as a tool that was invoked to argue for women’s submission, they found liberating messages elsewhere in the text. 52 Many were attracted by the messages of social justice preached by the prophets, by Jesus’s teaching and example, and by the ethics of communal responsibility. 53 Like some nineteenth-century thinkers, some felt a pure divine message could be discerned despite patriarchal settings. “The transcendent Torah,” says one, “shines forth from Sinai without ever fully revealing itself.” 54

Several note the vitality in struggle. One Orthodox woman suggests it is easier to keep momentum going in non-egalitarian spaces. 55 Miriam Peskowitz remarks that, having come of age in activist Judaism, “when there’s no longer as much to argue about, ritual and learning and all the rest feel different; nice, but perhaps a little flat.” 56

Third-wave religious feminists are poised to keep feminism vibrant in the twenty-first century. While some women and men take for granted the gains of the twentieth century in women’s rights, religious communities continue to present challenges to equality. Furthermore, the individualism, embrace of diversity, and rejection of rigid gender categories that characterize third-wavers serve them well in creating change in religious communities. Sara Hurwitz has been privately ordained as an Orthodox rabba (a feminization of the title “rabbi”). Kate Kelley is seeking equality within the Mormon Church. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes about parenting as spiritual practice. Faithfully Feminist records the experiences of young women in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, who acknowledge their debt to earlier generations of feminist thinkers and continue to remake their religious communities.

At the two recent meetings of the American Academy of Religion, in 2014 and 2015, the “Feminist Theory and Reflection” group presented three and four sections of papers and discussion, respectively, dealing with a book on Foucault, the meaning of work, sexuality, Buddhist Philosophy, and women in indigenous religions. Several were joint sessions with other groups including queer theory, lesbian feminist, and women in Buddhism. In the Society of Biblical Literature for these same years, the Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible section organized four sessions each year, including responses to Meyers’s presidential address, a retrospective on Jacqueline Grant’s book White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus , families in the Bible, and rape culture. Two joint sessions met with African American hermeneutics and with minoritized biblical criticism. Relatively speaking, the word “feminist” does not appear frequently in the paper titles, but the accomplishments of feminist criticism are fundamental to the work of these groups.

There is no specifically American hegemony in feminist biblical hermeneutics. Some of the matriarchs of the field like Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Athalya Brenner, and Mieke Bal are from Europe and Israel and/or have taught in European institutions. Like most scholarship in the humanities, and especially in religion, feminist hermeneutics includes people from all over the world. The United States, however, disproportionately supports the study of the Bible in its colleges and universities, employs biblical scholars, and witnesses the Bible as part of its public and political rhetoric. This platform allows the field to grow and to continue its global reach.

2 Kings 22:14–20; Luke 1:46–55.

2. Margaret McFadden , Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999).

3. Renita J. Weems , Just a Sister Away: Understanding the Timeless Connection between Women of Today and Women in the Bible (Philadelphia: Innisfree Press, 1988) ; Clarice J. Martin , “Womanist Interpretations of the New Testament: The Quest for Holistic and Inclusive Translation and Interpretation,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 6, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 41–61. An example of a household code appears in Colossians 3:18–4:1.

4. Phyllis Trible , Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) ; J. Cheryl Exum , Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) ; Cheryl B. Anderson , Women, Ideology, and Violence (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006).

5. Sarah Grimké , Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 7, http://www.archive.org/details/lettersonequalit00grimrich .

6. Elizabeth Cady Stanton , ed., The Woman’s Bible (1895‒1898; repr., Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2002), 209.

7. Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Susan B. Anthony , and Mathilda Joslyn Gage , eds., History of Woman Suffrage , vol. 1 (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), 540.

8. Virginia W. Broughton , Twenty Years’ Experience of a Missionary (Chicago: Pony Press, 1907), http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/digs/wwm974 .

9. Nyasha Junior , An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 14–15.

10. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza , ed., Searching the Scriptures , 2 vols. (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 1–24.

Junior, Womanist Biblical Interpretation , 122–31.

12. Mitzi J. Smith , I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2015).

13. Judith Plaskow , “Movement and Emerging Scholarship,” in Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century: Scholarship and Movement , ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 6.

14. Leonard J. Swidler , “Jesus Was a Feminist,” Catholic World 212 (January 1971): 171–83 ; Phyllis Trible , “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41 (1973): 30–48.

15. Judith Plaskow , The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 23–32.

16. Phyllis Trible , God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 72–143, 144–65. See also Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).

17. Tikva Frymer-Kensky , In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992).

18. Joan W. Scott , “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1053–75.

19. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza , Bread, Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), xii‒xiii.

20. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza , In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983).

21. Elizabeth A. Clark , “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” Church History 67, no. 1 (March 1998): 31, doi:10.2307/3170769.

22. Colleen Conway , Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) ; Stephanie L. Cobb , Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

23. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Laura Nasrallah , eds., Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2009).

24. Gale A. Yee , “Judges 17‒21 and the Dismembered Body,” in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies , ed. Gale A. Yee (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1995), 163.

25. Jane Schaberg , “How Mary Magdalene Became a Whore,” Bible Review 8, no. 5 (1992): 30–37 ; and The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Continuum, 2002).

26. Adele Reinhartz , “Women in the Johannine Community: An Exercise in Historical Imagination,” in A Feminist Companion to John , 2 vols., ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marianne Blickenstaff (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 2:14–33.

27. Susanne Scholz , “Second-Wave Feminism,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies , ed. Julia M. O’Brien (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 243–51.

28. Audre Lorde , “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1984), 110–14.

29. Carol Meyers , Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5–16.

30. Carol L. Meyers , “Was Ancient Israel a Patriarchal Society?,” Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 8–27.

31. Bernadette J. Brooten , Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982).

32. Jennifer Glancy , Slavery in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

33. Clarice J. Martin , “Womanist Interpretations of the New Testament: The Quest for Holistic and Inclusive Translation and Interpretation,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 6, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 41–61.

34. Scholars who recognize the historical bases of such assertions include Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her , xix‒xxx; Esther Fuchs , Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Bible as a Woman (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 11–12 ; and Kwok Pui-lan , “Reading the Christian New Testament in the Contemporary World,” in Fortress Commentary on the Bible: New Testament , ed. Margaret Aymer , Cynthia Briggs Kittredge , and David A. Sánchez (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2014), 15.

35. Esther Fuchs , Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Bible as a Woman (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 16.

Pui-lan, “Reading the Christian New Testament in the Contemporary World,” 5–30.

38. Musa W. Dube , “Savior of the World but Not of This World: A Postcolonial Reading of Spatial Construction in John,” in Postcolonial Bible , ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 118–35.

39. Maricel Mena , “La herencia de las diosas; Egipto y Sabá en el tiempo e la monarquía salomónica,” La Revista de Interpretación Bíblica Latinoamericana (RIBLA) 54 (2006): 34–47 ; Mena , “Hermenéutica negra feminist: De invisible a intérprete y artífice de su propria historia,” RIBLA 50 (2005): 130–34 ; Betty Ruth Lozano and Bibiana Peñaranda , “Una relectura de Números 12 desde una perspectiva de mujeres negras,” RIBLA 50 (2005): 114–16 ; Mercedes López . “Alianza por la vida: Una lectura de Rut a partir de las culturas,” RIBLA 26 (1997): 96–101.

40. Ivoni Richter Reimer , “Reconstruir historia de mujeres: Reconsideraciones sobre el trabajo y estatus de Lidia en Hechos 16,” RIBLA 4 (1989): 47–64.

41. Ivone Gebara , “The Face of Transcendence as a Challenge to the Reading of the Bible in Latin America,” in Searching the Scriptures , vol. 1: A Feminist Introduction , ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993), 172–86.

42. James 2:17, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” Elsa Tamez , “Feminist Biblical Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean,” in Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century: Scholarship and Movement , ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 35–52.

43. Jennifer Gilley , “Writings of the Third Wave: Young Feminists in Conversation,” Reference and User Services Quarterly 44, no. 3 (Spring 2005): 187–98.

44. Rebecca Walker , “Becoming the Third Wave,” Ms. Magazine , January 1992, 39–41.

45. Surekha Nelavala , “Third-Wave Feminism,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies , ed. Julia M. O’Brien (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 254.

46. Gina Messina-Dysert , Jennifer Zobair , and Amy Levin , eds. Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay (Ashland, Ore.: White Cloud Press, 2015).

47. Elise M. Edwards , “The Faith of My Mothers and Sisters,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 20–22.

48. Caroline Kline , “Reflections of a Mormon Feminist,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 35.

49. Stacy Leeman , “I Still May Push a Little,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 101.

50. Marcia W. Mount Shoop , “Thy Presence Is My Stay,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 160–61.

51. Amy Levin , “Beet is the New Orange,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 64.

52. Emily Maynard, “How Feminism Saved My Faith,” 117–19; Amanda Quraishi, “Same Struggle, Different Dogma,” 164; Mihee Kim-Kourt , “Tilling the Soil of Faith,” 214, in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin .

53. Jennifer D. Crumpton, “Seeing is Believing,” 62; Kathryn House, “Sometimes, the Minister Is a Girl,” 190; Christine Stone, “Finding My Faith through Feminist Jewish Values,” 201; Kim-Kourt , “Tilling the Soil,” 214, in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert , Zobair , and Levin .

54. Leiah Moser , “Speaking Tradition,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 199.

55. Rachel Lieberman , “Blessed Are You, Who Has Made Me a Woman,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 43.

56. Miriam Peskowitz , “My Mother’s Bat Mitzvah,” in Faithfully Feminist , ed. Messina-Dysert, Zobair , and Levin , 17.

Anderson, Cheryl B.   Women, Ideology, and Violence . London: Bloomsbury, 2006 .

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Stanton, Elizabeth Cady.   The Woman’s Bible (1895‒1898). Repr. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2002 .

Stone, Christine. “Finding My Faith through Feminist Jewish Values.” In Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay , edited by Gina Messina-Dysert , Jennifer Zobair , and Amy Levin , 200–205. Ashland, Ore.: White Cloud Press, 2015 .

Swidler, Leonard J. “ Jesus Was a Feminist. ” Catholic World 212 (January 1971): 171–83.

Tamez, Elsa. “Feminist Biblical Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean.” In Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century: Scholarship and Movement , edited by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza , 35–52. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014 .

———. The Scandalous Message of James . New York: Crossroad, 2002 .

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———. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives . Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984 .

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Weems, Renita J.   Just a Sister Away: Understanding the Timeless Connection between Women of Today and Women in the Bible . Philadelphia: Innisfree Press, 1988 .

Yee, Gale A. “Judges 17‒21 and the Dismembered Body.” In Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies , edited by Gale A. Yee , 146–70. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1995 .

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Religion Online

Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies

by Phyllis Trible

Dr. Trible is Baldwin professor of sacred literature at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

This article appeared in the Christian Century February 3-10. 1982, p. 116. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org.   This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.

In various and sundry ways feminist hermeneutics is challenging interpretations old and new. In time, perhaps, it will yield a biblical theology of womanhood with roots in the goodness of creation female and male.

Born and bred in a land of patriarchy, the Bible abounds in male imagery and language. For centuries interpreters have explored and exploited this male language to articulate theology; to shape the contours and content of the church, synagogue and academy; and to instinct human beings -- female and male -- in who they are, what roles they should play, and how they should behave. So harmonious has seemed this association of Scripture with sexism, of faith with culture, that only a few have even questioned it.

Within the past decade, however, challenges have come in the name of feminism, and they refuse to go away. As a critique of culture in light of misogyny, feminism is a prophetic movement, examining the status quo, pronouncing judgment and calling for repentance. In various ways this hermeneutical pursuit interacts with the Bible in its remoteness, complexity, diversity and contemporaneity to yield new understandings of both text and interpreter. Accordingly, I shall survey three approaches to the study of women in Scripture. Though these perspectives may also apply to “intertestamental” and New Testament literature, my focus is the Hebrew Scriptures.

What such narratives show, the legal corpus amplifies. Defined as the property of men (Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21), women did not control their own bodies. A man expected to marry a virgin, though his own virginity need not be intact. A wife guilty of earlier fornication violated the honor and power of both her father and husband. Death by stoning was the penalty (Deut. 22:13-21). Moreover, a woman had no right to divorce (Deut. 24:1-4) and, most often, no right to own property. Excluded from the priesthood, she was considered far more unclean than the male (Lev. 15) . Even her monetary value was less (Lev. 27:1-7).

Clearly, this feminist perspective has uncovered abundant evidence for the inferiority, subordination and abuse of women in Scripture. Yet the approach has led to different conclusions. Some people denounce biblical faith as hopelessly misogynous, although this judgment usually fails to evaluate the evidence in terms of Israelite culture. Some reprehensibly use these data to support anti-Semitic sentiments. Some read the Bible as a historical document devoid of any continuing authority and hence worthy of dismissal. The “Who cares?” question often comes at this point. Others succumb to despair about the ever-present male power that the Bible and its commentators hold over women. And still others, unwilling to let the case against women be the determining word, insist that text and interpreters provide more excellent ways.

Prominent among neglected passages are portrayals of deity as female. A psalmist declares that God is midwife (Ps. 22:9-10):

Yet thou art the one who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother’s breast.

In turn, God becomes mother, the one upon whom the child is cast from birth:

Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.

Although this poem stops short of an exact equation, in it female imagery mirrors divine activity. What the psalmist suggests, Deuteronomy 32:18 makes explicit:

You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

Though the RSV translates accurately “the God who gave you birth,” the rendering is tame. We need to accent the striking portrayal of God as a woman in labor pains, for the Hebrew verb has exclusively this meaning. (How scandalous, then, is the totally incorrect translation in the Jerusalem Bible, “You forgot the God who fathered you.”). Yet another instance of female imagery is the metaphor of the womb as given in the Hebrew radicals rhm. In its singular form the word denotes the physical organ unique to the female. In the plural, it connotes the compassion of both human beings and God. God the merciful (rahum) is God the mother. (See, e.g., Jer. 31:15-22.) Over centuries, however, translators and commentators have ignored such female imagery, with disastrous results for God, man and woman. To reclaim the image of God female is to become aware of the male idolatry that has long infested faith.

A woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw that he was a goodly child she hid him three months. And when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds at the river’s bank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. [Exod. 2:2-4].

In quiet and secret ways the defiance resumes as a mother and daughter scheme to save their baby son and brother, and this action enlarges when the daughter of Pharaoh appears at the riverbank. Instructing her maid to fetch the basket, the princess opens it, sees a crying baby, and takes him to her heart even as she recognizes his Hebrew identity. The daughter of Pharaoh aligns herself with the daughters of Israel. Filial allegiance is broken; class lines crossed; racial and political difference transcended. The sister, seeing it all from a distance, dares to suggest the perfect arrangement: a Hebrew nurse for the baby boy, in reality the child’s own mother. From the human side, then, Exodus faith originates as a feminist act. The women who are ignored by theologians are the first to challenge oppressive structures.

Not only does this second approach recover neglected women, but also it reinterprets familiar ones, beginning with the primal woman in the creation story of Genesis 2-3. Contrary to tradition, she is not created the assistant or subordinate of the man. In fact, most often the Hebrew word ‘ezer (“helper”) connotes superiority (Ps. 121:2; 124:8; 146:5; Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:7, 26, 29), thereby posing a rather different problem about this woman. Yet the accompanying phrase “fit for” or “corresponding to” (“a helper corresponding to”) tempers the connotation of superiority to specify the mutuality of woman and man.

Further, when the serpent talks with the woman (Gen. 3:1-5), he uses plural verb forms, making her the spokesperson for the human couple -- hardly the pattern of a patriarchal culture. She discusses theology intelligently, stating the case for obedience even more strongly than did God: “From the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God said, ‘You shall not eat from it and you shall not touch it, lest you die.’” If the tree is not touched, then its fruit cannot be eaten. Here the woman builds “a fence around the Torah,” a procedure that her rabbinical successors developed fully to protect divine law and ensure obedience.

Speaking with clarity and authority, the first woman is theologian, ethicist, hermeneut and rabbi. Defying the stereotypes of patriarchy, she reverses what the church, synagogue and academy have preached about women. By the same token, the man “who was with her” (many translations omit this crucial phrase) throughout the temptation is not morally superior but rather belly-oriented. Clearly this story presents a couple alien to traditional interpretations. In reclaiming the woman, feminist hermeneutics gives new life to the image of God female.

These and other exciting discoveries of a counter-literature that pertains to women do not, however, eliminate the male bias of Scripture. In other words, this second perspective neither disavows nor neglects the evidence of the first. Instead, it functions as a remnant theology.

The betrayal, rape, murder and dismemberment of the concubine in Judges 19 is a striking example. When wicked men of the tribe of Benjamin demand to “know” her master, he instead throws the concubine to them. All night they ravish her; in the morning she returns to her master. Showing no pity, he orders her to get up and go. She does not answer, and the reader is left to wonder if she is dead or alive. At any rate, the master puts her body on a donkey and continues the journey. When the couple arrive home, the master cuts the concubine in pieces, sending them to the tribes of Israel as a call to war against the wrong done to him by the men of Benjamin.

At the conclusion of this story, Israel is instructed to “consider, take counsel, and speak” (Judg. 19: 30). Indeed, Israel does reply -- with unrestrained violence. Mass slaughter follows; the rape, murder and dismemberment of one woman condones similar crimes against hundreds and hundreds of women. The narrator (or editor) responds differently, however, suggesting the political solution of kingship instead of the anarchy of the judges (Judg. 12:25). This solution fails. In the days of David there is a king in Israel, and yet Amnon rapes Tamar. How, then, do we today hear this ancient tale of terror as the imperatives “consider, take counsel and speak” address us? A feminist approach, with attention to reader response, interprets the story on behalf of the concubine as it calls to remembrance her suffering and death.

Similarly, the sacrifice of the daughter of Jephthah documents the powerlessness and abuse of a child in the days of the judges (Judg. 11). No interpretation can save her from the holocaust or mitigate the foolish vow of her father. But we can move through the indictment of the father to claim sisterhood with the daughter. Retelling her story, we emphasize the daughters of Israel to whom she reaches out in the last days of her life (Judg. 11:37). Thus, we underscore the postscript, discovering in the process an alternative translation.

Traditionally, the ending has read, “She [the daughter] had never known man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year” (11:40). Since the verb become, however, is a feminine form (Hebrew has no neuter), another reading is likely: “Although she had never known a man, nevertheless she became a tradition [custom] in Israel. From year to year the daughters of Israel went to mourn the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, four days in the year.” By virtue of this translation, we can understand the ancient story in a new way. The unnamed virgin child becomes a tradition in Israel because the women with whom she chooses to spend her last days do not let her pass into oblivion; they establish a living memorial. Interpreting such stories of terror on behalf of women is surely, then, another way of challenging the patriarchy of Scripture.

Finally, there are more perspectives on the subject of women in Scripture than are dreamt of in the hermeneutics of this article. For instance, I have barely mentioned the problem of sexist translations which, in fact, is receiving thoughtful attention from many scholars, male and female. But perhaps I have said enough to show that in various and sundry ways feminist hermeneutics is challenging interpretations old and new. In time, perhaps, it will yield a biblical theology of womanhood (not to be subsumed under the label humanity) with roots in the goodness of creation female and male. Meanwhile, the faith of Sarah and Hagar, Naomi and Ruth, the two Tamars and a cloud of other witnesses empowers and sobers the endeavor.

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Heim, Joanne E. "Marginalized women feminist hermeneutics and pastoral praxis /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1995. http://www.tren.com.

Fortuna, Joseph J. "Feminist hermeneutics in relation to the sacramental tradition." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1986. http://www.tren.com.

Jobling, J'annine. "Restless readings : feminist Biblical hermeneutics in theological context." Thesis, University of Kent, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.250342.

Rego, Maria do Rosario. "Feminist hermeneutics women in the Gospel of Mark /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2002. http://www.tren.com.

Jackson, Melissa A. "The Comic Phenomenon in Hebrew Bible Narrative and Its Implications for Feminist Hermeneutics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.504029.

Pacheco, Joice Oliveira. "O pensamento de Maria Lacerda de Moura sobre a emancipação feminina: contribuições e desafios para a educação contemporânea." Universidade do Vale do Rio do Sinos, 2010. http://www.repositorio.jesuita.org.br/handle/UNISINOS/2003.

Dietrich, Tai Lin. "Woman in persona Christi: The Redemptive Power of Feminist Hermeneutics in the Christian Tradition." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/317411.

Kenison, David J. "A praxis of the incipit and the feminist discourse /." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61933.

Wood, Maureen M. "A Dialogue on Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Musa Dube, and John Paul II on Mark 5 and John 4." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1375116095.

Kahn-Harris, Deborah. "A hammer for shattering rock : employing classical rabbinic hermeneutics to fashion contemporary feminist commentary on the Bible." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.557951.

Santos, Odja Barros. "Uma hermenêutica bíblica popular e feminista na perspectiva da mulher nordestina: um relato de experiência." Faculdades EST, 2010. http://tede.est.edu.br/tede/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=270.

Tuohy, Anne Patricia, and res cand@acu edu au. "Transforming the Categories of Western Theology: A critical comparison between the political theology of Johannes Baptist Metz and the feminist theological hermeneutics of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza." Australian Catholic University. Sub-Faculty of Theology, 1999. http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/digitaltheses/public/adt-acuvp219.10092009.

Bispo, Martha Isabel Furtado. ""Vou levantar-me...!" Resistência de mulheres no pós-exílio e no Maranhão." Faculdades EST, 2011. http://tede.est.edu.br/tede/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=327.

Lobo, Aline Jardim. "CORPOREIDADES EM CÂNTICO DOS CÂNTICOS." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2012. http://localhost:8080/tede/handle/tede/837.

Abrahams, Lutasha Ann-Louise. ""A critical comparison of Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza's notion of Christian ministry as a 'Discipleship of Equals' and Mercy Amba Oduyoye's notion as a 'Partnership of both men and women." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/1446.

De, Villiers Desiree. "A hermeneutic of learned helplessness : the Bible as problem in pastoral care." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/3468.

Borsato, Aurelia Silva. "A DIAKONIA DE MARIA MADALENA, MARTA E MARIA E TABITA: UMA ABORDAGEM FEMINISTA EM LUCAS 8,1-3, 10,38-42 E ATOS DOS APÓSTOLOS 9,36-43." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2012. http://localhost:8080/tede/handle/tede/835.

Felix, Isabel Aparecida. "ANSEIO POR DANÇAR DIFERENTE LEITURA POPULAR DA BÍBLIA NA ÓTICA DA HERMENÊUTICA FEMINISTA CRÍTICA DE LIBERTAÇÃO." Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, 2010. http://tede.metodista.br/jspui/handle/tede/530.

Guttler, Michele. "Towards a feminist hermeneutic of Mark 7: 24-30." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17075.

Silva, Mariza Miranda da. "MAIS DEUSA DO QUE ESCRAVA: A MULHER DE PROVÉRBIOS 31,10-31." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2006. http://localhost:8080/tede/handle/tede/937.

Hart, Nancy Tarr. "Beyond the veil : unmasking the feminine." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683065.

Stenberg, Carl-Johan. "Religiös feminism och sufism : en hermeneutisk analys av sufisk teologi." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Religionshistoria, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-296208.

Brimmer, Allison. "Loving loving? problematizing pedagogies of care and chela sandoval's love as a hermeneutic." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0001013.

Borgström, Rebecca. ""Systerskap, Självkänsla och Självförtroende" : En studie av empowerment vid en tjejjour." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Sociologiska institutionen, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-194283.

Kang, Hyun Mi. "Suggesting an eco-feminist 'God of Land' model from Feng Shui cosmology : a hermeneutic reinterpretation of the Trinity in an Asian and eco-feminist perspective." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/27325.

Paris, Aline M.-J. "Women in the synoptic Gospels applying a hermeneutic of imagination to the healing and passion narratives /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1991. http://www.tren.com.

Mulder, Anne-Claire. "Divine flesh, embodied word incarnation as a hermeneutical key to a feminist theologian's reading of Luce Irigaray's work /." Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2000. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/librarytitles/Doc?id=10182191.

Tomas, Catherine. "The actively abjected : a hermeneutics of empowerment in Christian mysticism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:465e2a96-6c14-40be-882e-3d716854cc92.

Barbato, Crystal. "Redefining Gender Roles : Developing relationships between Sacred Texts and Feminism." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-323692.

Carroll, Jean Ada. "Reflexive accounts : the lives of retired professional women." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.268123.

Törnegren, Gull. "Utmaningen från andra berättelser : En studie om moraliskt omdöme, utvidgat tänkande och kritiskt reflekterande berättelser i dialogbaserad feministisk etik." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Etik, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-206500.

Mulder, Anne Claire. "Divine flesh, embodied word incarnation as a hermeneutical key to a feminist theologian's reading of Luce Irigaray's work /." [S.l. : Amsterdam : s.n.] ; Universiteit van Amsterdam [Host], 2000. http://dare.uva.nl/document/81617.

Santos, Léia Rosa dos. "MARIA SÍMBOLO DE DEUS E DA MULHER: estudo das Imagens de Maria na Teologia da Libertação." Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, 2006. http://tede.metodista.br/jspui/handle/tede/222.

Sleeman, Lauren. "The forgotten feminine." Click here to access this resource online, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/422.

Dalessio, Christine Falk. "Prophetism of the Body: Towards a More Adequate Anthropology of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body Through a Feminist Hermeneutic." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1571918527212752.

Mondriaan, Marlene Elizabeth. "'n Hermeneutiese ondersoek na enkele teologiese interpretasies rondom die vroue van Adam." Pretoria : [s.n.], 2005. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-06172005-110415/.

Jones, Laura Frances. "Towards a differently politicised Shostakovich : an analytical, hermeneutical and feminist exploration of the opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District"." Thesis, University of York, 2012. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3384/.

Tingström, Jonna. "Madame Bovary den tredje : en feministisk och socialhistorisk analys av Emma Bovary som kvinna, hustru och moder." Thesis, Högskolan Kristianstad, Sektionen för lärande och miljö, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hkr:diva-10957.

Appelqvist, Lukas. "Ett mynt med tre sidor : En analys av Gal 3:26-29 ur tre perspektiv." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Nya testamentets exegetik, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-451942.

Petersen, Darian Marlo. "Reading Luke in impoverished communities : a social-scientific and feminist hermeneutical approach to Luke 1:39-56 and 4:16-30." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85582.

Neves, Raimundo Clecionaldo Vasconcelos. "Leitura feminista: hermenêutica de resistência da mulher a partir da casa (Mc 1.29-31)." Faculdades EST, 2010. http://tede.est.edu.br/tede/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=214.

Quizzo, Dirce Socorro. "MARIA MADALENA: LUZES E SOMBRAS NA URDIDURA DE UMA IMAGEM." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2005. http://localhost:8080/tede/handle/tede/817.

Rome, Alexandra Serra. "Critical account of ideology in consumer culture : the commodification of a social movement." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23657.

Pereira, Érica Antunes. "De missangas e catanas: a contrução social do sujeito feminino em poemas angolanos, cabo-verdianos, moçambicanos e são-tomenses." Universidade de São Paulo, 2010. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8156/tde-04012011-101230/.

Park, Yoon-hee. "Rewriting Woman Evil?: Antifeminism and its Hermeneutic Problems in Four Criseida Stories." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278387/.

Velez, Camila. "An Exploration of the Counselling Experiences of Women who Work in the Indoor Sex Industry." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/36383.

Matus, Geraldine P. C. "World?s geography of love| An alchemical hermeneutic inquiry into the heroic masculine?s rebirth as influenced by love as the glutinum mundi and the feminine incorporatio." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3701754.

This research generates an alchemical hermeneutic analysis of four archetypes as found in certain ancient Egyptian texts and the contemporary dream text Heart of the Inner Chamber , the landscape of which is the “world’s geography of love.” As symbols of transformation, these four archetypal energies are essential reagents in the dramatic process of individuation, as understood in the depth psychological tradition. These archetypes are (a) the triptych of disintegration-death-resurrection, (b) the dying heroic masculine, (c) the feminine incorporatio (who incorporates the corrupt and dying heroic masculine into her body), and (d) love as the glutinum mundi (glue of the world). Certain ancient Egyptian ritual and mythic texts describe the sungod Re undergoing a recursive renewal of his life-giving force, which is facilitated by the love and ministrations of particular feminine figures. One such figure is the ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut, a personification of both realms of heaven and netherworld, who swallows the failing Re at sunset, and in whose body the mysterious processes of his regeneration take place so he may be reborn at dawn. A Nut like figure appears in Heart of the Inner Chamber linking the psyche of the dreamer to symbols of transformation from ancient Egypt.

As symbols of transformation, love as the glutinum mundi and the feminine incorporatio are not well articulated in the field of depth psychology, and particularly so regarding individuation. This research deepens the articulation of the archetypes of love as the glutinum mundi and the feminine incorporatio. As well the research invites a deeper valuation of a conscious engagement with these symbols of transformation, especially as they may serve us when we find ourselves in those ineffable and inevitable, chaotic, shadowy, and emotionally confounding places of being where we feel that we are dying or dead and hope for the miracle of our transformation and rebirth.

Belardi, Neto Vera Lucia Lotufo. "Um olhar fenomenológico para desvelar a condição feminina no plantão psicoeducativo em uma comunidade de periferia de São Paulo." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2005. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/16333.

Nahnfeldt, Cecilia. "Kallelse och kön : Schabloner i läsning av Matteusevangeliets berättelser." Doctoral thesis, Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-384.

The concept of vocation is central to the Christian tradition and views of life. In the Lutheran tradition vocation is understood as a word describing how man’s view of himself as well as his view of his duties are shaped in relation to God. Although not meant to exclude women, the concept of vocation has been clearly gendered. The references to vocation are manifold, ranging from the realms of individual life choices to life in communities and in the church.

The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of vocation in the perspective of Scriptural Criticism in order to contribute to an understanding of the ambiguous and shifting usage of the term, and to analyse the relationship between vocation and gender, historically and in relation to the Gospel of Matthew, thus also contributing to the construction of a gender aware theology of vocation. In the study Scriptural Criticism, a model for interpretation developed by Cristina Grenholm and Daniel Patte, in which text, theology, and life are combined in mutual and critical interaction, is used as a theoretical frame and interpretative method. Patriarchal and androcentric patterns are fundamental analytical concepts.

The study shows that the pattern of vocation changed during the 19th century from being a patriarchal pattern to an androcentric pattern. These patterns are apprehended as theological interpretations that have come to a stop, and thus applied to new contexts without reinterpretation. In common language the word vocation (or calling) is used as a fixed pattern without reinterpretation, and so mediating a life interpretation that is not renewed in relation either to individual life or to life in social community. By rereading vocation in relation to the narratives of the Gospel of Matthew and contemporary views of men’s and women’s shared life conditions, its fixed patterns can be reevaluated and reinterpreted. The connection between patterns of gender and patterns of vocation can be dissolved, so that vocation as a concept loses its association with the enforced subordination of women.

The study draws attention to the fact that vocation can neither be unequivocally understood as a concept of theology, nor as textually mediated, nor as a life experience. Rather, it is a word that serves as a powerful tool for understanding life, bringing together experiences, narratives, and conceptions of God and the human being. Two patterns of vocation are revealed through the scriptural critical reading of the Gospel of Matthew. These patterns are related to different hierarchical positions, but are not univocally based on gender. The interpreter is underscored to have an important role. The gendered stereotypes of vocation are possible but not necessary to reproduce. In the process of interpretation there are opportunities to reconsider earlier interpreters ways of understanding the relation between vocation and gender. This is a challenging and empowering responsibility.

Defaye, Christelle. "Julien Gracq, texte et sexe : lecture d'une aporie érotique." Thesis, Bordeaux 3, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016BOR30027/document.

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Feminism as an antiwar strategy and practice: the case of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine

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• Published: 25 October 2022
• Volume 74 , pages 521–534, ( 2022 )

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• Veronika L. Sharova   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7405-2992 1  

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The dynamics of political processes in the postcommunist states of Eastern Europe in the 2000s to early 2020s demonstrated a significant number of new challenges and caused many issues, including those related to the transformation of the ways and models of political behavior, civic participation, protest actions, and so on. All these elements of social and political life, in my opinion, have a gender dimension deserving a detailed analysis. In this article, based on Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian cases, I consider what role women have played up to this point, and continue to play, in the public policy of the region and what ideological background serves the theoretical basis of this activity. In particular, these issues are analyzed in relation to the conflict situation—the war in Ukraine, which aggravated not only political, but also sociocultural and ideological confrontation in the studied societies. More or less commonplace is the conviction that to date none of these countries, considering all their fundamental differences, has achieved a sustainable gender balance in the highest governing institutions, and the gender approach is not sufficiently and/or effectively integrated into the policy-formulation process. At the same time, it is impossible to deny the fact that bright, charismatic persons who have appeared in the last 15 years—such as Yulia Tymoshenko, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Maria Kalesnikava, Yulia Galyamina, Yulia Navalnaya, and more—have made up a kind of collective “female face of politics” in postcommunist societies of Eastern Europe. I examine the practical consequences of these changes, and also look at those ideas and ideologies that influenced the formation of this portrait of a new sociopolitical reality. The range of these ideas is very wide and includes the legacy of the Soviet female-emancipatory project, European liberal thought, post-Soviet national projects, and other similar phenomena.

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Sharova, V.L. Feminism as an antiwar strategy and practice: the case of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Stud East Eur Thought 74 , 521–534 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-022-09520-y

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