Bible Babel by Kristin Swenson

Author:Kristin Swenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-03-13T05:00:00+00:00

FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION

Feminist scholarship has contributed a great deal to our understanding of biblical texts. For one thing, it has reminded us of the inevitability of interpretation. No text makes sense or can be applied without interpretation, and the biblical texts that we have are themselves interpretations. Within the Bible itself, for example, Paul interprets the story of the creation of human beings narrated in Genesis chapters 2–3 to understand woman as created second, reflecting (or being the “glory” of ) man, though this is not explicit in the Genesis text. Paul reasons, then, that women should comport themselves accordingly.75

Hermeneutics is a fancy word that refers to the science of interpretation. In the 1970s, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur noted the importance of accounting for the possibility that the surface meaning of a text masks political interests, prejudices, and the narrow perspectives of social location. To make sense of texts, then, it makes sense to investigate the influences behind them as well as simply to read them at face value. Ricoeur called this process of listening and questioning a “hermeneutics of suspicion.”76 Because the Bible comes from cultures dominated by patriarchal structures and ways of thinking, making sense of its texts requires taking into account the assumptions and motives of authors under such an influence. For example, interpreting relevant texts within the context of the developing church, we can understand why the new “family of faith” would be organized in keeping with social convention. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, to read “Wives, be subject to your husbands…obey,”77 immediately following a similar exhortation for “slaves” to be “subject to your masters,” no matter how cruel those masters may be.78

Recognizing that interpretation is inevitable, identifying how biblical texts interpret earlier texts, and appreciating how a text’s social and historical context affects interpretation can modify the impulse to pluck out particular passages and plop them down without reflection as prescriptive today. Methods of biblical scholarship informed by the feminist principle that women should be afforded the same dignity, value, and potential as men have put the hermeneutics of suspicion to good use.

Feminist scholarship has also brought to our attention the relative lack of attention to women in biblical stories, laws, and accounts. It has taught us to read for the silences, to note what is not said, to note who is not present, and to ask why and how. This is not to suggest that feminist scholars speak with one voice or are motivated by a single aim, however. Some seek to rehabilitate female characters, to fill out their roles on the basis of subtle clues in the text or nonbiblical information about a text’s particular time and place of origin. Others name and note how biblical texts have been used in hurtful ways, and some conclude that women should look elsewhere than to the Bible for religious authority and spiritual direction. Some find hope and an exhortation for equality in the Exodus story of liberation; in women movers

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