Feminist Interpretation of the Bible,
Book by Letty M. Russell

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Introduction: Liberating the Word

In 1976 The Liberating Word: A Guide to Nonsexist Interpretation of the Bible was published by a small NCCC Task Force on Sexism in the Bible. In the introduction to that book I wrote that the message of the Bible can become a liberating word for those who hear and act in faith but that this same message also needs to be liberated from sexist interpretations which continue to dominate our thoughts and actions. This small book was a "premature" guide to feminist interpretation of the Bible. 1 As the contributions to feminist interpretation have continued to grow in volume and maturity, it has become abundantly clear that the scriptures need liberation, not only from existing interpretations but also from the patriarchal bias of the texts themselves. The more we learn about feminist interpretation, the more we find ourselves asking, with Katharine Sakenfeld, "How can feminists use the Bible, if at all? What approach to the Bible is appropriate for feminists who locate themselves within the Christian community? How does the Bible serve as a resource for Christian feminists?" [ 55 ]. 2

This collection of essays does not pretend to have the answer. Rather, it continues the tradition of the earlier book by inviting a wide readership of women and men to share in discussion of these questions. Discussions of feminist perspectives are not taking place in the academy alone. In all parts of the church, many women and not a few men seek ways of liberating the word to speak the gospel in the midst of the oppressive situations of our time. It is hoped that FEMINIST INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE will provide resources for collective discussion in Bible study, teaching, and preaching as well as personal study and meditation. As we join together in our study of the Bible, we may even be surprised by the fresh insights and challenges that arise as we search out the meaning of the texts for our own lives.

Fresh insights are needed as the rising consciousness of women and people in the Third World or in other oppressed circumstances leads them to challenge accepted biblical interpretations that reinforce patriarchal domination. From this perspective the Bible needs to be liberated from its captivity to one-sided white, middle-class, male interpretation. It needs liberation from privatized and spiritualized interpretations that avoid God's concern for justice, human wholeness, and ecological responsibility; it needs liberation from abstract, doctrinal interpretations that remove the biblical narrative from its concrete social and political context in order to change it into timeless truth.

Feminist and liberation theologians and biblical scholars have begun working on this process of liberating the word. Reading the Bible from the perspective of the oppressed, they note the bias in all biblical interpretation and call for clear advocacy of those who are in the greatest need of God's mercy and help: the dominated victims of society. These scholars lift up not only the personal but also the social, political, and economic dimensions of the biblical narratives, as they try to reconstruct the hidden history of the "losers." Thus they seek to keep the prophetic and liberating story of God's concern for the oppressed and for the mending of creation alive among communities of faith and faithfulness.

Feminists find that even here the going is difficult, for the biblical texts were written in the context of patriarchal cultures. It is not even clear that the category of the oppressed is "generic" in the worldview of patriarchy [ 118 ]. Thus the issue continues to be whether the biblical message can continue to evoke consent in spite of its patriarchal captivity.

The Liberating Word
Perhaps those who wrote The Liberating Word were overly optimistic about the possibility of nonsexist interpretation, but they were certainly not so about the growing concern for feminist interpretation in church and school. In the last ten years, such biblical scholars as Phyllis Trible and Elisabeth Fiorenza have published major volumes of interpretation. 3 All the bibliographical references in a book such as this can hardly do justice to the ever-increasing number of books and articles related to this topic. The urgency felt by the original task force in sharing some early reflections with the wider community of faith has been felt by women and men who consider the Bible authoritative for their faith, as well as by those who wish to challenge the impact of patriarchal tradition on the lives of women.

Click here to read the complete version of Feminist Interpretation of the Bible and get more sources on this subject at Questia.com.

Feminist biblical interpretation has developed into two interdependent areas of research: inclusive language and inclusive interpretation. Both areas have one thing in common: They are carried forward by cooperating groups of women and men who see their work not only as a scholarly enterprise but also as a collective effort to bring about change in the thoughts, values, and actions of religious groups in the United States and abroad. The original task force was created because of a concern for the interpretation of the Bible that takes place through translation. The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. holds the copyright for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and continues to sponsor the committee on revisions. Concern for representation of feminist scholarship on the translation committee has led to the appointment of Phyllis Bird, Cheryl Exum, and Katharine Sakenfeld to the committee currently at work on revisions of the Hebrew scriptures. At the same time, subsequent NCCC task forces have developed An InclusiveLanguage Lectionary for use in worship and preaching.

Like the publication of the RSV before it, the Lectionary has sparked a storm of protest. It has made substitutions for key biblical words and concepts: God the Father [and Mother]; God the SOVEREIGN ONE; Realm of God. 4 These may or may not turn out to be the most imaginative renderings, but the greatest outcry has to do with "changing the canon" and thus weakening its "authority." Detractors seldom notice that The Living Bible and The Good News Bible are also paraphrases, or that the Reader's Digest version is also an alteration by deletion of the RSV. The difference is that inclusive changes have to do with imaging God as transcendent of male sexual characteristics or as inclusive of both male and female characteristics. The Lectionary confronts the seemingly divinely sanctioned patriarchal view of the world that is the basis of religious security for many people [ 64 ].

This book is the fruit of the second stream, cooperative research relative to the inclusive interpretation of the Bible. It seeks particularly to affirm women so that they are acknowledged as fully human partners with men, sharing in the image of God.

Liberating the Word
A group of feminists in the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature decided to make use of the annual meetings to develop a project of feminist hermeneutics (theories of interpretation), seeking to clarify for themselves and for others the distinctive character of feminist interpretation. The participants in the project represented women and men who were concerned about liberating the word from its patriarchal bondage.

The question of liberation hermeneutics has been on the agenda of the Liberation Theology Working Group of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature for some time. It was the theme of the papers in 1979 and has been the central research topic since 1981. In 1980 a particular focus on feminist hermeneutics was added after an SBL centennial session on "The Effects of Women's Studies on Biblical Studies," moderated by Phyllis Trible. The recognition of the marginalization of women in the biblical field provided an impetus for cooperation among feminist and liberation scholars in asking one another how they do or do not do biblical interpretation differently from the mainstream of biblical study and interpretation.

The published papers from this 1980 meeting 5 indicate that there is a second marginality experienced by feminist biblical scholars: They are marginal to a great deal of feminist scholarship because they continue to uphold the value of the biblical materials in spite of their patriarchal bias against women. For this reason it was important to work together as biblical scholars and theologians to reflect on a particular area of activity: feminist interpretation of the Bible. There had been considerable activity. Some members of this 1981 session had been at work in this area for more than ten years and welcomed a chance to reflect together on this action. They were asking, "What is it that we are doing as feminists when we interpret the Bible? Is there something distinctive about this interpretation? If so, what is it?"

Perhaps the one area that could be agreed upon from the beginning was that, like the nineteen women suffragists who worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton from 1895 to 1898 to publish The Woman's Bible, these women are searching today for a feminist interpretation of the Bible that is rooted in the feminist critical consciousness that women and men are fully human and fully equal. This consciousness is opposed to teachings and actions that reinforce the social system that oppresses women and other groups in society. In her contribution to the centennial session, Dorothy Bass reminded us that Stanton published The Woman's Bible because the keystone of misogynist religion and of women's oppression is the Bible. 6 Then as now, there are those who find the Bible irrelevant or hopelessly sexist and others who find feminist critique ungodly, but many women and men struggle to combine a feminist consciousness and serious consideration of the biblical witness with the story of God's presence in the lives of women and men.

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In order to learn about feminist hermeneutics through reflection on action, two feminist exegetical papers were prepared and discussed at the Dallas meeting. (These papers were later published in revised form in the Fall 1983 issue of Semeia, devoted to feminist hermeneutics and the Bible, edited by Mary Ann Tolbert.) Sharon Ringe says that her paper on the transfiguration, " Luke 9:28-36: The Beginning of an Exodus," is an elaboration of Sakenfeld's third option; it looks at a particular pericope from a liberation perspective. Her conclusion is that the exegesis is feminist, not in the way she used techniques of historical and literary criticism but in "the concerns, questions, and sensitivities" she brought to the task.

In contrast, Cheryl Exum's paper, "You Shall Let Every Daughter Live: A Study of Exodus 1:8-2:10," was on a text specifically chosen because the courageous action of women is the beginning of the liberation of Israel from Egypt (fourth option). The actions of the midwives and Pharaoh's daughter become extraordinary as we see the risks they took in opposing patriarchy and hear this old story of liberation in new ways.

What did we learn from reflection on these concrete actions of exegesis by feminist scholars? One thing is that, in the words of Phyllis Trible, "feminist hermeneutics embraces a variety of methodologies and disciplines." 8 A second is that the interpretative bias and understanding is built into the exegesis itself, so that it is impossible to delay the feminist or liberation critical perspective until the exegesis is finished, as a sort of theological afterthought about meaning or relevance. 9 Third, as Fiorenza has pointed out, we must seek feminist hermencutics not just in ways of dealing with the biblical material but in the criteria for evaluating one's approach to scripture. 10

The New York meeting in 1982 was based on a series of responses to Fiorenza's own proposals for evaluating one's approach to scripture. We attempted to move beyond feminist critical perspective and options for biblical exegesis to the issue of criteria for feminist interpretation. In addition to Fiorenza's chapter (published in The Challenge of Liberation Theology) and the circulated responses of the panel, we also considered Rosemary Ruether's first chapter from Sexism and God Talk, entitled "Feminist Theology: Methodology, Sources, and Norms." The criteria were not spelled out in great detail, but it is possible to identify what Ruether calls the "critical feminist principle" as it is found in these two papers. For Ruether, the "critical principle of feminist theology is the affirmation and promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, to be appraised as not redemptive" [ 115 ]. 11 Fiorenza maintains that "only the nonsexist and nonandrocentric traditions of the Bible and the nonoppressive traditions of biblical interpretation have the theological authority of revelation" [ 128 ]. 12

Both statements immediately raise the issue of our understanding of biblical authority and canon, as the panelists were quick to point out. The whole canon is to be taken seriously, especially because of the possibility of the Bible's use as a tool for the oppression of women. But it is not considered to function as the Word of God, evoking consent or faith, if it contributes to the continuation of racism, sexism, and classism. In her "Response to the Responders" in New York, Fiorenza asserted that this was not an issue of authority but rather of the political struggles of women against oppression. 13 She seeks to shift the criteria of biblical criticism from a focus on what is adequate to the human condition and appropriate to scriptures to what is adequate to historical-literary methods and appropriate to the struggle of the oppressed for liberation. 14

From a feminist liberation perspective, feminist theory of interpretation begins with a different view of reality, asking what is appropriate in light of "personally and politically reflected experience of oppression and liberation." 15 Interpretation does not begin with dogmatic statements about the authority of scripture and canon but rather--as we did in the hermeneutic project--with feminist perspective and praxis. Nevertheless, as we arrive at a critical feminist perspective that says the biblical text can only be considered to function as God's word, compelling our faith, when it is nonsexist, we ourselves have raised the question of authority [ 137 ]. The dogmatic and patriarchal view of authority, as timeless truth handed down, is being challenged by what Fiorenza calls a "paradigm of emancipatory praxis." 16

Issues that have been raised in areas of experience, biblical authority, and models of interpretation need to be pursued in a continuing search, not for an abstract synthesis but for a theory of interpretation that is rooted in the concrete particularities of oppression and liberation, such as those expressed by Jewish feminist writers and writers from Black, Hispanic, and Asian perspectives [ 30 , 111 ]. 17 There is much to learn about paradigms of authority from communities of oppressed people such as the Black community, whose members listened to the Bible not for doctrinal propositions but for "experiences which could inspire, convince and enlighten." 18 What is needed is not the old questions and paradigms of authority but the development of new questions and paradigms of authority, which are functional in the communities of struggle wrestling with the biblical text.

Click here to read the complete version of Feminist Interpretation of the Bible and get more sources on this subject at Questia.com.