The Goal of Feminist Biblical Interpretation
As I am wading through In Memory of Her1 I came across this quote from Fiorenza where she outlines what she considers to be the goals of good feminist scholarship. Given some of the issues that came up in another post, I thought this was appropriate.
The debate between feminist “engaged” and androcentric academic “neutral” scholarship indicates a shift in interpretative paradigms. Whereas traditional scholarship has identified humanness with maleness and understood women only as a peripheral category in the “human” interpretation of reality, the new field of women’s studies not only attempts to make “women’s” agency a key interpretative category but also seeks to transform androcentric scholarship and knowledge into truly human scholarship and knowledge, that is, inclusive of all people, men and women, upper and lower classes, aristocracy and “common people,” different cultures and races, the powerful and the weak.
Methods and implementation aside, the above is a worthy and necessary goal in biblical interpretation. Historically, scholars have viewed women as a variation of men, often as incomplete version of a man. Accordingly all scholarship and philosophical reflection is colored with this lens.
- and I do mean wading - right now I am trudging through the barrow-downs of her survey and critique of all previous feminist biblical scholarship [↩]
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
EI,
Why are there no more? Because women (and other people lacking power) are the victims of history - both in history’s actions and being left out in its telling. I understand your concern about the “victim role,” but from what I can tell, it is justified. I think that there is a brand of “feminist” scholarship out there, or that can be constructed that gives voice to both the victors and victims of history.
Male scholarship = 99% of scholarship done so far in the history of the world. It certainly is lacking in total perspective and thus loses a measure of truth - but, that does not warrant throwing the whole lot out… at least to me as of right now.
Was Adam originally asexual, before Eve was created, is something I’ve been wondering about lately… There’s Adam made in God’s image, and God’s thinking of him having a pet dog or something, and then God makes Woman instead, so how could Adam have been Man in the first place, since Man goes with Woman? (It’s especially hard to tell from the Scriptures because of the stupid use of ‘Man’ to mean humanity.)
Through out history, great women had risen above their peers and competed neck to neck with men. Many might have even died trying - no ones. The great women of history: Sor Juana Ines De la Cruz, Joan of Arch, The Bleeding women in Mark 5:21, Queen Elizabeth, Antigone, tabitha from Acts 9:36, etc, they are the ones we have and know about. Why are there no more? Did history erase their names and contributions?
My concern is with women playing the victim role. Not only that, it makes it sound like male scholarship is lacking truth.
Am I misreading this post?
Edgar.