Honzo April 2nd, 2008
As I am reading chapter 6 of In Memory of Her, Fiorenza is examining the titles and positions of women in the ministry of Paul. I am double checking her claims and translations via BibleWorks in the ESV, NLT, NRSV, Young’s Literal, and both the BGT and BYZ Greek texts. While I don’t have time to get into specifics , the case is getting thiner and thiner for a lack of women in positions of power and leadership in the early Church that were endorsed by Paul.
As a side note, there is an inverse relationship between my hatred for Wisdom Ways and my love for In Memory of Her, both by Fiorenza.
Honzo April 1st, 2008
As I am going through part of of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s book In Memory of Her I came across this nice, compact orienting passage of the various Jewish movements in Israel before 70CE and how the Jesus movement fit in with these other movements.
All these diverse Jewish renewal movements of the time were strongly concerned with how to realize in every aspect of life the obligations and hopes of Israel as the kingly and priestly people of God. … Some stressed and strongly utilized the cultic priestly traditions, some claimed prophetic authority, some reenacted the Exodus, and still others integrated wisdom teachings with an apocalyptic perspective. Regardless of differences in lifestyle and theological outlook, however, all these groups were united in their concern for the political existence and holiness of the elected people of Israel. the proclamation of the [kingdom] of God by Jesus and his movement shared this… However, the Jesus movement refused to define the holiness of God’s elected people in cultic terms, redefining it instead as the wholeness intended in creation. (Page 113)
Honzo January 30th, 2008
As I am wading through In Memory of Her 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.
